Press Release Summary: A woman's letter to food illustrates the psychological principles of self-change necessary to keep your New Year's Resolution.
Press Release Body: Have you made your New Year's resolution to lose weight?
Instead of the usual promise to start another diet on January 2nd, one woman who lost a lot of weight made this New Year's resolution:
Dear Food
I'm breaking up with you.
Don't be surprised. I've certainly tried to do it many times before, but I always weakened and went back to you.
I finally woke up and realized this relationship is not good for me. I'm not getting what I need from you. It's hurting me, not allowing me the space to grow in the ways I need to grow. You're holding me back.
I know I'll have separation anxiety, but I've stayed with you too long, way past when I should have. This just isn't working for me. You don't listen to me. You don't give me attention. You don't care about what I'm going through. It's almost like you don't have any feelings for me at all, yet I've stuck close to you, helpless and dependent.
I know you won't let go of me so easily. I know you'll keep calling me, asking me to come back. But please, let me go now.
In the beginning you were always there, ready to calm me and soothe me, but it went too far. I came to rely on you. I looked to you for everything. In all fairness, it was too much to ask of you. No way could you fulfill all my needs. For so long I've settled, afraid to go out there and find something better for myself. I need to do that.
I now withdraw my heart from you so I can be free to put it elsewhere, some place where I can be loved back. I've tried to break up with you before. This time it's real. I want to be on the cutting edge of my own life, and I can't do it while I'm still tied to you. Thinking about being free scares me, but I want it. I must have it. I think I'm brave enough at last.
I know I'll long for you. I know I'll think of you a lot, especially during those hard times. I know I'll be tempted to come back to you. But this time I've got a plan, things I'm prepared to do when I get lonely and sad. I've been thinking of other ways to celebrate when I'm happy or proud. I have remedies in place for being bored or tired.
At this point you're a troublemaker in my life and I intend to keep my emotional distance from you. So in a way, this is goodbye. Of course, I'll still come into contact with you day to day, but let's just be friends, not lovers.
Don't cry (although you never do, it's me who does all the crying).
Now that's a Dear John letter worth writing.
Kenneth Schwarz, Ph.D., a Connecticut psychologist says, "This is a poignant letter, but it's a lot more than that because it touches on essential principles of personal change. She has a plan, she has a lot of determination, she has knowledge from previous tries, and she has belief in her ability to change. This woman is anticipating the hard parts. She recognizes the pros and cons of her attachment to food and has decided the cons outweigh the pros. All these things are powerful in breaking the bad habit patterns that keep the weight problem going."
According to psychology researchers, professors James O. Prochaska, John C. Norcross, and Carlo C. DiClemente, in order to give up a problem behavior like overeating, you must go through a process of personal change. Their book, Changing for Good, describes a series of stages people need to go through to prepare for taking action. If you try to skip these stages of change and make a sudden New Year's resolution to go on a diet, you will most likely fail.
What can you do to be ready to go on a diet? You need to address those habits that have been so powerful in maintaining your weight problem. Through studying people who have been successful at making important changes in their behavior, Prochaska, Norcross, and DiClemente found that problem behaviors are indeed made up of habits that are central to a person's life. Letting go of these habits is difficult, but changing them is key.
Dr. Schwarz says that women who struggle with food and weight tend to have certain habits in common: They don't think before they act. They lie to themselves about how much they eat. They deny the physical repercussions of being overweight. They avoid knowing how they really look. They eat secretly. They bury their true feelings about being overweight. They ignore the real reasons why they overeat.
He adds, "Habits like these act like glue to hold the weight problem firmly in place. If you go on a diet without also working on changing such habits, you will be fighting against yourself. This is what makes dieting so hard. On the other hand, if you concentrate on changing habits along with dieting, you will be able to make your 2008 New Year's diet resolution stick."
2022
