How to talk to a yo-yo dieter

Question
Hi Ray,

my mother is obese and has been trying to lose weight ever since I was born (about 25 years now). She has tried nearly every fad diet including a very popular dieting service that ships meals to your door and has lost up to 60 pounds each diet, all of which she gains back when she hits a plateau in her weight loss and gets sick of eating diet food. She is convinced that she is a "special case" in that she simply can't lose weight past a certain point.

While she does have a tendency to overeat and a penchant for eating out in restaurants, when she's at home she eats fairly healthily. She stopped cooking when I moved out to go to college, and when she does eat at home, she prefers to snack on fresh fruits and vegetables.

She recently started a new no-carb diet recommended by her doctor specializing in alternative medicine and has lost some weight since she started. However, whenever she talks to me about it, she usually complains that she's not losing as much as she would like to. Most recently, she called to tell me that she's started a cleanse for three weeks during which time she will only eat fresh fruits and vegetables.

My problem is that I honestly don't know what to say to her anymore. I feel like this is just another one of her diets that she's going to get sick of before gaining every pound back, plus some more. She leads a sedentary lifestyle (works at home in front of the computer, most exercise comes from walking up and down the stairs). She has trouble walking now because the weight has given her hip problems, and she unfortunately has bone spurs on both her heels, but I know she can walk. She just doesn't want to. I try to be supportive of her and congratulate her on her weight loss, but I feel like I should be encouraging her to exercise, too, because I know that it's healthy for her and she would lose more weight if she did it. Instead of taking it as encouragement, however, she only gets angry at me because she thinks I'm complaining at her.

I don't know how to talk to her anymore because it's very frustrating for me to see her struggle with yo-yo dieting, not exercising enough, and then convincing herself that she's a special case, as if she's the only obese person to struggle with getting down to a healthy weight. How do I talk to her when she brings up her dieting without her getting angry? Should I just listen and keep my mouth shut, or should I keep trying to encourage her to exercise?

Answer
Hello Sarah,

I apologize for the delay in response, this is one of the most difficult situations to respond do because it involves figuring out how to influence another to get them to think in a different way. This is especially complicated by the fact that she is your mother, as they say, "A profit is accepted everywhere but in their own home land."

I see a number of obstacles that we have to deal with in order to make lasting change in your mother:
1. Focus on weight as her primary measure of success
2. Relying on diets that are impossible to maintain, such as a "No Carb" diet
3. The joint problems that are limiting her activity
4. Her weight loss expectations may not be realistic

We need to shift her paradigm about weight loss. That is no small feat. If you could get her access to our free podcast Cut the Fat Podcast, we have over 50 episodes that walk people through many of the very myths that your mother is falling victim to. You could download them to an ipod and let her listen to them while she walks or cycles on a recumbent bike. That way the info is not coming from you. You can download the podcast from iTunes.

Weight is not a great way to measure result, especially as your mother progresses. We need to find other ways for your mother to define "success" with her weight loss program. A good weight loss program achieves three objectives...1. It changes body composition by burning fat and maintaining or adding muscle. 2. It improves health. 3. It improves energy (both physical and mental). Your mom's current program improves body composition, but at the expense of the other two objectives and thus can never be a lasting solution. We have to change  her paradigm so that she builds a lifestyle that achieves all three objectives.

Another issue is praising your mother's weight loss. By doing this, you reinforce that weight loss as the only measure of success. Start praising improvements in health, in energy, and things like movement and skin tone. You might say something like, "Oh, you lost 3 pounds this week? That's great, but what I am noticing most about you is that you seem to have a bit more energy...that makes me happy." or "That's awesome, but I'm also noticing that your skin seems to be glowing a bit more this week! That tells me that you're getting healthier!"

So, she's on the "no-carb diet", how do you get her on more of a healthy diet? Well, education is the way. No-carb diets will provide significant weight loss, but unfortunately, it also raises cortisol levels, which results in muscle loss and poor energy over time. The "no carb" diet fails the "three Objective Challenge".

There is a book that I feel would be good for her to read, it's called "The Primal Blueprint". It would be good for her because it outlines a paleolithic lifestyle that will control for carbs but will also convince her of the importance of vegetables and essential fats. The book is not some sort of fad diet and the pages have many examples of people who were in the same boat as your mother.

As for the joint problems, the good news is that diet is 80-85% of the picture. So, you don't have to be able to run miles to burn fat and be healthy. Try to get her out to walk for 15 minutes twice a day and dedicate much of the remaining effort on food prep. If walking doesn't work, we'll have to get her to a pool or an ergometer.

We also need to convince her that linear weight loss is nonsense. Healthy weight loss is 0.5 to 1 pound a week. She may lose 2-4 pounds a week in the beginning, but as the weeks go on, our weight loss expectations change. As she loses, she has to shift her expectations to 0.5 -1 pound per week. The slow weight loss isn't the problem, the expectation is the problem. There's no way to teach you how to convince her in an email such as this, she just has to educate herself about authentic fat loss. Just because your losing weight does not mean you're burning fat.

So, in a nutshell, if we want to change your mother's results, we have to change her paradigm. We achieve this by educating her strategically. Get the primal blueprint book by Mark Sisson, show her the book and go to the back cover to show her how fit the 55 year old author and his wife are (that's a bit of proof that may spark interest). Get her fitted with the podcast. Praise progress with health and energy and brush over the weight loss. Make a pact with her that she can only do a program that improves body composition, health AND energy. If it violates the rule of Three, she must discard or tweak the program.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have follow up questions!

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