The Psychology of Weight Loss: Personal Responsibility

whey proteinIncreasingly our society is becoming subservient to its government. This is not how it should be, as our governments should serve our interests and work for us as public servants. Instead they see themselves as rulers with subjects, and this has lead to increasing micromanagement of our daily lives. The nanny state as it is called, is reducing the independence of the population, making them increasingly reliant on government and government services for all manner of things. In particular, health is now seen as something that can be managed by the state, and this has significantly reduced the responsibility individual’s feel towards looking after their own health. This is the current model for the mainstream allopathic health system, a system that often treats the patients as little more than numbered cattle on some sort of revolving and continual health plan. It is no coincidence that under this system, the health of the populations living in Western nations has deteriorated considerably.

weight loss

Taking responsibility for your own health is an important step in fat loss. Relying on others for direction and instruction is a dangerous precedent because it puts one’s mindset in a negative pattern. It can also lead to feelings of helplessness and demotivation.

The government however is not interested in a healthy population that can think clearly, perform hard physical labour, is fit, intelligent, astute and capable of critical thinking. For this reason they have no interest in promoting good nutrition and healthy eating. While some advice is available from national health services, the information is largely out of date or erroneous and is therefore misleading. It therefore falls as the responsibility of the individual to maintain their own healthy eating plan, and to achieve this self education is a necessity. Those who want to lose body fat also often turn to the private weight loss industry, but this simply passes the responsibility for their own health to others. However the weight loss industry has no care for your health or the health of others. Their only agenda is to make money, and they make more money from people that stay overweight than from those that obtain successful fat loss. Your personal success is therefore not on their radar, no matter what their slick advertising copy may say.

The responsibility for good health and fat loss therefore rests firmly on the shoulders of the individual. Expecting others to take care of you is acceptable if you are a child, elderly or disabled. However for a normal functioning adult it is unacceptable to pass responsibility of your own health onto others. Such a mindset however is common, and this is a direct result of the government’s insistence that it knows best in its nannying of individuals from cradle to grave. Breaking free from this mindset is paramount for successful fat loss and their is no coincidence that those who take responsibility for their own health are far more likely to succeed at fat loss than those who rely on being told what to do by others. The good news is that those that read this likely fall into the former camp, and this gives a much higher chance of success in the long term. Taking this first step in accepting personal responsibility is highly important.

weight loss

External sources of motivation are important. However, these should be balanced by the ability to self motivate. Self motivation is the driving force that will lead to success, and should be accompanied by personal responsibility in other areas.

Self education can be time consuming and therefore it can sometimes seem daunting to learn about new things. Coupled to this, nutrition is a huge field that contains much disinformation, outdated information and plain erroneous material. One of the most important lessons to learn is therefore to find reliable sources of information and to ignore those that are suspect or contain little useful information. Unfortunately this is not easy, but the responsibility is on the individual to develop discernment and to effectively eat the meat but spit out the bones. Making excuses is also a common fault of many humans and those that choose to take personal responsibility for their own health and fat loss should try to limit the excuses to those that are genuine. A bereavement or accident is a suitable excuse to not have gone shopping for high quality foods, a slight drizzle is not. All the excuses in the World can always be found for those that want to shirk responsibility for their own destiny, those that want to succeed will always find a way.

RdB

About Robert Barrington

Robert Barrington is a writer, nutritionist, lecturer and philosopher.
This entry was posted in Psychology, Weight Loss. Bookmark the permalink.