RESPOND to the situation you are in by focusing on the things you CAN CONTROL

A few years back I worked for two years as part of a team in a bariatric medical program for the treatment of obesity.

Over that time I learned about many of the potential contributors to and predictors of weight gain.

These included things like changes in environmental estrogens, epigenetic programming (what a mother eats during pregnancy), body weights of parents, lack of PE and home economics in schools, engineered hyper-palatability of foods, socio-economic status, medical conditions, and many others.

(If you really want to nerd-out on this stuff go here://www.shiftn.com/obesity/Full-Map.html)

But here is what I also took away from that experience…

You individually may or may not be able to directly influence any of those things. Some are on a scale where you may not have influence (governmental policy) and others might be something that is unchangeable (your genetics).

But what really matters most, at least when it comes to your own physique, is that you maintain a laser-like focus on the things you CAN change for YOU.

Whether your mom ate terribly when you were in utero, or your parents were overweight, or you had no physical education or home economics, or you’ve caved to the deliciousness of hyper-palatable foods in the past, the only thing that really matters to your current physique is what you CAN control RIGHT NOW.

This is not about placing blame on mothers, or parents, or governments for weight gain. This is about acknowledging those things, but realizing that there may not much you can do in this moment to change them, and taking responsibility for what you CAN change right now to create the life and physique you want.

Yes, I believe that we should all be doing our part to support policy and programs to promote healthy eating and increased activity of ALL people regardless of body weight. But for ourselves, we can only control what we can control and often that is just our own dietary compliance and training.

In essence, change is about taking responsibility for the things you do have control over. And when you dissect the word “responsibility” it doesn’t refer to anything that has happened to us in our past that we can’t control, but about or ABILITY TO RESPOND to it.

Regardless of the many factors that may have contributed to getting you where you are today (some of them will have been unchangeable and others will have been the result of your own choices) you have to RESPOND to the situation you are in by focusing on the things you CAN CONTROL to get to where you want to be.