
My mother bought me a beautiful handmade brocade vest when I lost 45 pounds. It’s my favorite. I can’t button it now. Not even close. I haven’t worn it in several years. My personal health goal: Lose weight and keep it off. It may be the most common American health goal. American’s spent about $60 billion on weight loss in 2013. Every year, 45 million Americans go on a diet. So, I’ve learned that I can lose weight, but not keep it off. To attain my goal I need to adjust my health plan.
What is adjusting? Set a goal, try something, be dissatisfied with the result (learn), then adjust. Adjusting means changing a habit. In my experience as a student of individual and organization health, changing a habit is hard, very hard. I think of changing habits like watching water flow – water flows in the path of least resistance, makes a channel, and gets deeper. We mostly like and value those channels. They’re comfortable until they flood or become polluted. Read More