this is why I think coaching is a good weight loss solution...

Seth Godin's post from Saturday:

The relentless search for "tell me what to do"
If you've ever hired or managed or taught, you know the feeling.

People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: "If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I'm safe."

When asked, resist.

Okay -- we can all see how it works from the perspective of the person being asked by someone else what they should do. But what about the perspective of the person doing the asking?

We all need people to bounce ideas off of. Sometimes we need a different perspective on a situation. We are not always looking for someone else to take the responsibility hit for us.

But diets play on this mindset. The diet industry has worked a system where they are the "experts" and we follow their lead. Most of the time, we do this because we just don't think about it -- we haven't been trained to think that we are the experts about ourselves and perhaps we just need some guidance and perspective -- we do not need to be told what to do.

When you accept that nobody knows you as well as you know yourself then you become empowered to be incharge of your health and well being. There are no absolute right or wrong answers here -- it is just a question of degrees. It is not bad to drink some wine every evening -- probably not a good idea to drink two bottles every night. You don't need an expert to tell you this -- the first time you drink two bottles in an evening, your body will tell you, and then your job become making the connection between drinking two bottles and the terrible feeling you experience the next morning.

Same goes with eating -- there are going to be foods that make you feel great. There are going to be foods that make you feel terrible. Learning to pay attention to those experiences and act on them in the future is what will make achieving or maintaining a healthy weight easier.

Be your own expert. Be in charge of your own health and well being. Understand that you create your own outcome -- not matter what.