Yesterday, I posed the questions:

What if you only had 10 pounds to lose?

Would that change how you felt about losing weight?

Over the weekend, I have been reading Switch. The whole book is about change -- how to create it in ourselves or others, how to get it to stick...

One of the points the authors make over and over again is that changes must be small or people get overwhelmed. They like concrete starting points and a vision for how things are going to end up. But the steps in the middle (the actual change) must be small and incremental.

So what did you come up with? What if you had 10 pounds to lose and that was it. Would you be more confident in your abilities to complete this task in a timely manner?

Would you be less stressed about tackling the prospect?

If you have more than 10 pounds to lose, here is something to think about:

Clients that have a lot of weight to lose (whatever "a lots" is because it varies from person to person) have all lost 10 pounds in the past. They know, from experience, they can do that much. What if I renamed Mindful Eating to be the "The 10 Pound Tool".

To lose 10 pounds, you would use The Tool (reducing how much to eat by 9 bites per day). You would do this until you had lost the 10 pounds.

If you have 30 or 60 or 100 pounds to lose, you would use The Tool 3 or 6 or 10 times. Instead of tackling the whole amount, the weight loss is broken down into a series of smaller, do-able, attainable-in-the-short-term victories. Keep racking up the victories until you get where you want to go.

This has you completing your goal (10 pounds) pretty quickly. Clients feel successful after using The 10 Pound Tool the first time and they want to use it again. Once you've used The Tool once or twice, others might start noticing and commenting on how healthy you are looking. It provides positive feedback for your use of The Tool and next time The Tool is even easier to use.

You get to where are want to go by stringing a series of 10 Pound Tool successes together. How simple is that?