The first Success Habit Principle ^TM identified in the Success Habits of Weight-Loss Surgery Patients by Colleen Cook is: PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY. I recognize that I alone am responsible for my success and failures. This is the most important factor contributing to optimum weight loss and long-term weight control.

If each of us was asked the question, “Who is responsible for your success?”, each of us would probably answer “I am”. The religious among us would also likely give credit to God’s help in achieving success. The study that was done on the Success Habits identified that the most successful people at maintaining their WLS weight loss long term had a very strong sense of personal accountability that exhibited itself in some key behaviors.

They developed an indicator that identified WHAT they were doing regularly that was helping them stay in control and remain accountable for their weight every day.

You must be personally accountable for the decisions you have made, take responsibility for your choices, and be honest with yourself. Ms. Cook believes (and I agree) that we are where we are because we have made the choices to be so. Our lives must be serving us in some way (whether we are fat or thin at the point you are reading this), or we would already have made changes. Take responsibility for who you are, why you are and where you are right now and take responsibility for how you arrived there.

Don’t wait for someone else to have to change for you to achieve your goal of long-term weight control. You alone are responsible for this.

Long term weight control is about managing the ratio of Calories-In versus Calories Out. If you eat more than you expend, you gain weight. If you eat less than you expend, you lose. The sleeve is an outstanding tool to help us control the amount we eat (if we use it correctly). You alone are responsible for what you eat, when you eat, and how much you eat.

We are also responsible for the other side of the equation – I alone am responsible for what exercises I do, how often and how I manage making exercise a part of my life.

Successful people do those things which unsuccessful people are not willing to do.

(The above is excerpted from the book with a few minor changes by me)

So what was the great learning I had from this? Bye-bye blaming anyone but myself. Good-bye to any excuses that don’t start with the word “I” at the front. I thought back to the FOUR OTHER TIMES I have lost around 100 pounds and failed to make it past two years in maintaining – before I would gain it all plus more, back.

I identified how I had framed my failures to myself – who or what I had blamed on those failures. Then I rephrased them in my mind, taking accountability for my actions.

Rather than go through all four failures, I’ll just do the last one.

I lost 103 pounds through hypnosis, diet and exercise. I was well on the way to celebrating my one year at goal mark when I had a person in my family close to me die suddenly, I changed jobs to one that required me to travel out of state 80% of the time and didn’t give me the time to exercise, was on an expense account living out of hotels, and forgot to take my hypnosis material with me for a couple of weeks. I went up 3 to four sizes by the time the first year in the new job was over – from a 10 to a 16-18.

So here is the rephrased version of what happened, taking full accountability for my actions.

• After the sudden death of my stepfather, I decided life was too short to worry about monitoring everything I ate. I told myself if he could die like that, what was the point.
  
• I didn’t make time to exercise, even though every hotel I stayed in had a gym.
  
• Consoling myself with food was much more important to me than the pleasure I got after working out.
  
• I chose to quit listening to the hypnosis CD’s, even though I knew they could have helped me get back on track. I felt guilty listening to them while I was overeating and not exercising, so I chose to “forget” to take them on a trip.
  

Here is an accountable version of where I am now.

• I am almost at my initial goal weight, and I am pretty content with where I am.
  
• I have been letting the outside stresses of looking for work (I recently left my employer) distract me from my goal of getting rid of the 10 pounds that stand between me and reaching my goal. This stops TODAY.
  
• Whether I find a job that is commensurate with my education and skills quickly, or whether I have to take a job far below my capabilities, I will practice the Six Success Habit Principles. ^TM My employmentsituation has NO BEARING on my attaining or maintaining my goal weight.
  
• I understand that I must embrace exercise as a life long part of my life. Diet alone will not do it for me.
  

So this is the first thread for the first habit. I will put up two more threads in the near future that are also on this habit. Once will be on building new “good” habits to replace old “bad” habits. The other will be on goal setting. Both skills are really necessary for mastering this accountability thing.

Hope this helps. Good Luck.

Sharon

This is such a great post to open this type of forum! Thanks for starting it.

I agree with the premise that I alone am responsible for whatever situation I find myself in--yes, outside influences make it easy for me to shift attention, time, energy, whatever, away from doing what I know I need to do, but that doesn't mean they're the "reason" for my doing something else. I choose to do it. Period. I choose to do whatever it is that I do.

I'm going to make my own list of behaviors that I know I shouldn't do (or should do!) and make the same sort of "excuse" list that you did--I can see where that would be extremely helpful in combating those "at the time" decisions that subsequently turn out to be bad ones.

I'm looking forward to reading more!

Thank you, Sharon. Very helpful, indeed. I really appreciate you taking the time to share this info. Leah

Thank you for posting this. I am kinda in a rut right now and need to get my rear back in gear!

I will have to read more of the book!