Saturday, February 4, 2012

Pleasure and happiness

When I joined Motivation Weight Management last year, one of the things I needed to do was read a book written by the doctor who started the Motivation program and clinics.

The book was made up of stories about his clients who were facing challenges with weight loss and how they overcame those challenges. It was quite inspiring as these people had to deal with a lot of hardship in their lives which made them turn to food for comfort or to hide.

What I liked about the stories was that not all of them were successful. It made it more real to me. There were some people who simply could not give up on their old lifestyle choices.

What I didn't like at first was that none of them really seemed relevant to me. I had a good life growing up. My parents were very loving and took an interest in my life. I had and still have a lot of good friends and my extended family are very close and supportive. I ate simply because I like food.

I took an assessment at the Motivation clinic of which the outcome was that I am a perfectionist but also have issues with guilt. This means that if I try something and fail, I feel guilty to the point that I am demotivated and will be less willing to try that activity again. This is true, though I have overcome this for the most part. I found that I was very cautious about doing anything because I was too afraid I would make a mistake. This was true of dieting - if I failed, I simply stopped.

Anyway, I digress. As I read on in the book, there was one message that really stood out to me and spoke to me. It's so simple but it was something that had never occurred to me.

People tend to equate pleasure with happiness. So if something brings you pleasure, it makes you happy, e.g. if I eat deep fried fish and chips, it's making me happy because I like it. However, this is far from true because the end result of unhealthy eating is that I became overweight. And I am not happy being overweight. There are things I can't do and clothes I can't wear.

So I challenge you to think about this. What is more important to you and your happiness? Eating something you like or having a healthy lifestyle and being at a healthy weight? Now step away from the Snickers bar...