Let’s imagine for a moment; you lose that extra 5kg you’ve been dying to get rid of. You magically overnight wake up the weight you have always wanted to be, that majestic number that has always eluded you. These quests for such numbers bring with them a huge promise! Happiness is yours when your that size, right? If your pursuit of health is all about a particular figure, you are setting yourself up for a moment of happiness after a long battle. One of my favourite personalities, Derek Sivers, describes happiness as “a moment of comparison between before and now and then it’s gone”. Perhaps ask a further question when obsessing over the numbers that you are, what does they represent? If for example, Mrs Ex got down to her magical 60kg figure and was wearing size 10, what does that mean? What does your life look like in that picture?
What are you doing differently there that you’re not doing now?
That elusive number meshes with some memory from a previous picture of health. A conclusion you drew in high school, or maybe it has been the number someone told you, you SHOULD be. Whatever the fascination, the figure is lying to you, you don’t suddenly have everything together once you starve yourself down 5kg. Your pursuit of the scale has become the latest focus point on the long list of the “I’m not good enough stories” and “I just need to…” script. When we break this down the number on the scale isn’t what people are chasing. They are telling themselves that by getting to this figure, I will be able to (insert the story of your choice here). Perhaps it’s these KPI’s we should be looking at an individual health.
One thing we do measure in health is quality of life (QOL). QOL is used as a guide when assessing the impact of chronic illnesses such as diabetes. Moving from Type 2 Diabetes to insulin-dependent diabetes (requiring injections of insulin around meals) significantly impacts QOL. What if we looked at this in the wellness space, what if weight loss or a particular size became a by-product of living a higher QOL of life. The life you picture at a certain weight. Imagine waking up tomorrow and living that life! Screw that, don’t imagine, live it!
Sean Cornish
