The Berenstain Bears Guide to Weight Loss

So, pretty much every evening after dinner, my 4 year old wants to watch an episode of The Berenstain Bears.

She of course wants Mommy or Daddy to sit with her, and if it’s a Daddy night, it’s a good bet that I’ll doze off about three minutes into it. We’ve seen every episode about a hundred times, so I don’t think I’m missing much.

Or at least I didn’t think that I was.

Yesterday I actually stayed awake to watch the epic “Mighty Milton” episode. Here is the synopsis off of the PBSKids web site:

When a new cub at school is teased by Too-Tall and the gang for his lack of sporting ability, Brother Bear takes it upon himself to help his new friend renew his self-esteem by finding value in the things he can do well.

Basically Milton couldn’t catch a baseball, sucked at soccer, couldn’t sink a basketball shot if his life depended on it, and he wore overalls and lived on a farm. You get the picture.

So, because of Too-Tall and the other snot nosed dinks in his gang teasing him, Milton felt like he couldn’t do anything right, so much so that he was ready to give up on school entirely.

Of course, that was until Brother got him to stop focusing on the things he sucked at, and to start focusing on the things he actually was good at.

And, lo and behold, apparently Milton was a beast of a wrestler, proceeded to kick Too-Tall’s hairy bear ass in practice, made the team, and became a school wresting hero. Too-Tall even shook his hand.

Yes, there is always a happy ending in Bear Country.

But, if he had kept on wallowing in self-pity and lamenting all of the things he couldn’t do, Mighty Milton never would have become an ass-kicking wrestling stud and gained the admiration of Too-Tall and the other dinks.

Which is all a nice lesson if you’re four, but what the hell does this have to do with weight loss and fitness?

Well, everything.

Let’s face it, the majority of people who try to lose weight are not successful. Of course, I define success by losing weight and keeping it off. Any schmo can lose a bunch of weight and gain it back. In fact, that’s what most people who lose weight do. Sorry, but that ain’t success.

We’ve all heard the stats that 95% of people who lose weight gain it all back and more. I don’t know if 95% is accurate or not, but it’s probably not far off. Most people lose weight, gain it back, lose weight again, gain it back again. And when that happens enough times, a lot of people simply give up.

They give up not only on losing weight, but on their health in general.

They don’t come out and say they are, but their actions tell the story.

They stop caring what they eat. They don’t make any effort to exercise. They fill their cart with shit at the grocery store and proceed to sit on the couch and eat that shit in front of the TV every night. They’ll circle the parking lot like a vulture, waiting for a space close to the door to open up instead of just parking the car and walking an extra fifty feet. And they keep on buying bigger clothes.

Having tried and failed at weight loss so many times, they basically give up and stop caring about their health in general. And in the process they condemn themselves to a future of poor health, a lower quality of life, physical limitations, and most likely a shorter life span.

Helloooo, earth to Milton. Just because you can’t catch a baseball doesn’t mean you give up on school.

Okay, so your weight loss efforts haven’t worked out. (In most cases, there’s a simple reason for that which you can read about here.) That doesn’t mean you need to throw every possibly healthy behavior out the window. Forget about your weight for a while and just focus on some other simple behaviors that are just good, healthy habits to get into.

How about something as simple as taking a walk every day? I don’t care how far you go. Just commit to yourself that at some point every day, you will get your ass outside and walk somewhere. Go down the street, walk around the parking lot at work, walk to the park, walk the dog, walk the cat, walk somewhere.
Here’s another one. Commit to eating three servings of vegetables every day. Master that, and get crazy and add in three servings of fruit on top. Already do that? Great! Commit to adding a couple more servings per day. Don’t worry, nobody ever got fatter eating more fruits and veggies.
How about you switch from regular soda to diet? Already drink diet soda? Then replace half of your weekly diet sodas with plain water.
Work on the fifth floor? Start taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Up and down.
Go out to lunch with the team from the office every day? Start bringing your lunch four days per week and only go out once.
Got a raging Frappuccino habit? Commit to cutting it in half next week.
Don’t get 7-8 hours of sleep per night? Commit to getting your tired ass in bed fifteen minutes earlier every couple of nights until you do. Don’t underestimate the value of this one Sparky.
Do ten push ups and ten bodyweight squats first thing in the morning when you get out of bed.
Find some highly processed food (frozen dinners, Hamburger Helper, Twinkies, cake, etc.) that is a staple in your weekly shopping trip and eliminate it.
Park at the far end of the parking lot.

The list could go on forever.

All of these things are amazingly simple to do. Anybody reading this can do any of these things.

Don’t even try to tell me that you can’t, because if you do, Brother Bear will say “liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Yes, I know that no individual idea in this list is going to have a dramatic, life-changing impact on your health. But none of them will hurt either, and together they could all add up to having a life-changing impact. Don’t try them all at once though. Just go one at a time. It isn’t a race.

And once you start to do these things and see that you actually can incorporate healthy habits into your lifestyle, maybe then you can go back and try that whole eating-right-and-exercising thing again. I bet it will work out better this time around.

Got any other simple habits that can be worked into daily life without much of a struggle? Let us know in the comments.

~Dave

Dave Soucy is an entrepreneur, coach, trainer, motivator, husband, dad, and former fat guy. Learn more about him here.

The Berenstain Bears Guide to Weight Loss

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