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During my graduating year in High School (1977) I got the biggest kick out of the TV commercial featuring the winners of the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. The two mild mannered, plainly dressed, farm folk declared (with more drawl and twang than Gomer Pile) “What luck! We Mays are in luck. We have just won a million dollars! Our lives will never be the same!”
Yep, they are lucky, I thought. I am a May too, so how come I’m not so lucky? Though many spend a considerable amount of time, effort, and energy entering sweepstakes – hoping to get ‘lucky,’ I have adopted a different philosophy. “The harder you work the luckier you get!” Time and time again that has proven to be the case.
Following my weight-loss surgery in 1995, I recall mustering up the nerve to call a few of my friends to tell them what I had done. The first call I made was to a long time nurse friend. I will forever remember her immediate reply after I told her where I was and that I had just had a gastric bypass. “You are so lucky!” she exclaimed. “Lucky?” I replied. “What do you mean lucky?” I have spent my entire life fighting my weight and finally, finally, I had the courage to make this gigantic commitment. It took great thought, planning, preparation, prayer, not to mention a support of my family, and a 2nd mortgage to do this. Luck had nothing to do with it!”
The first year was a dream come true. The weight seemed to fall off. I lost 125 pounds. No complications, no bumps, and very little effort on my part. Wow was I lucky! I would find myself eating something I shouldn’t. Or skipping a few days of exercise only to weigh in to find that I lost another pound! “Dodged a bullet this week; Man I am so lucky!” I thought. And then…. I found that the next month, was not so lucky. I learned by experience that I was not invincible, and that maintaining my weight loss requires much more than luck. It requires dedication, commitment, thought, focus, and constant effort. Indeed I found, that in weight issues too, the harder I work, the luckier I am.
It has been over 19 years now and my weight continues to fluctuate up and down 20 pounds or so. Interesting, when I work hard at it, I lose - when I don’t, I gain. Go figure.
It seems that this weight management thing will always require effort. Throughout your journey, you too, will have ups and downs, good days and bad days. We have a remarkable tool, but we will always reap what we sow. As you work to reach and maintain your weight-loss goals, remember to stay committed to your Success Habits, stay in tune with your body, work hard; and oh, good luck!

If you are anything like me, discipline or strong willpower is not something that comes natural. I have been developing mental toughness throughout the years when it comes to maintaining a healthy weight. Does your mind race with thoughts of eating a smorgasbord of different foods? Is every food going through your mind a carbohydrate loaded with sugar or salt? Do you think, “Let me just eat or drink what I want today, and I will get back on track tomorrow?” Do you go through a plethora of different feelings? You may not even know what you are feeling. All you know is that you are consumed with this urge to eat or drink, many times when you are not physically hungry.


Man, did I feel like that today. I just wanted to check out and lose myself in literally stuffing my face with junk food. I was consumed with thoughts of pizza, nachos and cheese, gummy bears and Ben & Jerry’s New York City super chunk ice cream. Oh, and let’s not forget the peanut butter cup candy. Maybe your favorite question is, “Wine, anyone?” Maybe your choice of food to emotionally zone out is different, but is any of this resonating with you?
So what do I do when this pattern pops up in me? This is where developing mental toughness will get you the desired results you deserve. Below, I am going to walk you through four quick steps that have worked wonders for me in developing mental toughness, and I know they can work wonders for you!
4 quick steps to developing mental toughness:
1. First, realize your pattern of internal dialogue and foods when you are getting ready to emotionally eat or start binge eating. Once you begin to pay attention, you will notice that you crave the same foods every time and that there is an impulse or urge to eat right away. You will have the same automatic dialogue of eating and watching TV or telling yourself you’ll just eat this one time and start fresh tomorrow, etc.
2. Stop and realize you are trying to avoid or escape a bad feeling. We automatically want to feel good. Tell yourself that having a bad feeling is not the end of the world; you are not dying. Take a moment to identify the feeling, where it is in your body and what is it trying to tell you. If you cannot find it, that is okay. Just continue to tell yourself that it is okay to feel bad. Allow yourself to just sit with it.
3. Remember to breathe. Through this time, take deep breathes, letting go with every exhale.
4. Have the mantra: “There is no tomorrow. I only have this moment. What I do right now is the only thing that matters. What I do right now is creating my future.” Repeat this over and over again as you breathe.
You will notice that as you go through this process, the feelings that were leading the desire to eat will lesson; as they lesson, your desire to eat will lesson.
The key to developing mental toughness is to become aware of your automatic behaviors to escape bad feelings. If you follow these four steps every time you have an impulse to emotionally eat, you will create a new pattern of reacting to your feelings. When you have a plan to decrease the number of times you emotionally eat, you will be amazed at how quickly you begin to see results in weight loss!

The latest research is estimating that 75% of over eating comes from emotional eating. Identifying the trap of emotional eating and having the specific steps to escape are essential in learning how to maintain your weight loss.


The Emotional Eating Trap:
Many of us focus our weight loss plans on diet and exercise only; we have no awareness, plan, or tools to work through our emotions which may be contributing to snacks, binges, or over-sized portions. We get excited. We have our new bariatric plan and exercise routine in place and we are feeling great about it. Then BAM, out of nowhere we get an intense urge or impulse to eat a variety of foods that are not on our new meal plan. At the drop of a dime your feelings have instantly changed. In this very moment you are being seduced by a “thought-feeling” state. At this very moment your automatic reaction is to escape the “perceived bad feeling” which many of us are unaware of at the moment it is happening.
Escaping the Trap:
1. Identify the impulse to emotionally eat by asking the question: “Am I physically Hungry?” You will realize you are not physically hungry most of the time.
2. Change your emotional state by doing a quick meditation
Meditation:
1. Close your eyes and begin to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.
2. Think of something you appreciate or you are grateful for. As you think of this person or thing focus your breathing through your heart; breathing in and out. Focus all of your thoughts to this feeling of being grateful for three to five breaths.
3. Now think of something you love about yourself. It can be a physical body part or it can be a personality trait. Continue to focus all your thoughts on something you love about yourself for three to five breaths, focusing on breathing that feeling in and out through your heart.
4. Now think of one kind act someone has done for you. Again as you focus on this thought for three to five breaths, breathe the feelings in and out through your heart.
This meditation only takes a few minutes but will instantly change your feelings or at least neutralize them. This is a plan of self-empowerment that will allow you to escape the “bad feelings” by redirecting your feelings instead of avoiding them by over eating.
If you are interested in not getting caught in the overeating trap again, set up a schedule to do this meditation a few times throughout the day. The more you do this meditation the more you will strengthen your ability to self-regulate. The most important factor in learning how to maintain your weight loss after surgery is being consistent with identifying the impulse to over eat and following through with the meditation.