The Woman Behind the Woman

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Jackie Stanley

Lettuce Is Not Enough:
The One-Pound-Per-Month Solution to Weight Loss

The beginning of every New Year offers us the opportunity to recreate ourselves. Too often, however, we’re tempted to start the year off with a bang by resolving to make BIG changes in our lives. We resolve to eat the elephant that is blocking our path in one bite.

We commit to a strict diet of boiled eggs, rice cakes and salad until we finally lose the weight that’s been with us since last New Year’s Day. While our intentions are good, they tend to lead us down a road of disappointment.

This year I encourage you to make a simple, but powerful resolution. Resolve to lose one pound a month. I know one pound doesn’t sound very impressive, but what if we had made that resolution on January 1, 2003 and stuck with it? On January 1, 2004, we would be twelve pounds lighter. If we had made that resolution two years ago we would be twenty-four pounds lighter, and if we made the resolution three years ago, we would be thirty-six pounds lighter. Don’t we all know someone who would like to be 12, 24, or 36 pounds lighter?

We can lose one pound each month without feeling deprived or drastically disrupting our life. We can do it without spending lots of money on weight loss gadgets, diet pills, hiring a personal chef or giving up all the foods we enjoy.

We can lose one pound each month simply by saying good riddance to 150 nutritionally empty calories each day - that’s about one can of soda. If we begin by committing to lose one pound each month, before we know it we will be losing more. Momentum, the driving force of nature, will kick in and increase the pace at which we move toward our weight loss goals.

Why not accept the One-Pound-a-Month Challenge? What do you have to lose?