I can see from yesterday’s comments that we’re on the same page here – there’s a little bit more that goes into losing weight and making a lifestyle change than just “getting a grip on yourself” and exercising self-control. 😉

Does this mean that you can let it all hang out and still reach your weight loss goals? No, we all know that you need to utilize self-control as far as making healthier choices in your diet and exercise habits, but that’s different than saying that your overweight is due simply to a lack of self-control (if you haven’t read yesterday’s post yet, you can find it here).

Maybe You ARE Out of Control (?)

I wanted to share one other thought I have about this topic – that there are some things that you might be doing that can contribute to a feeling of being out of control in your eating. One is a familiar theme here at The Fit Shack – indulging in refined sugar and white flour.

These ingredients are highly addictive for many people and Sugar Blues gives us examples and evidence that the human body isn’t meant to be ingesting the stuff because it is so addictive. But putting that aside, how many of us binge on foods that do not contain any refined sugar or white flour? According to my binge eating survey results, 72% of the smart readers of Fearless Fat Loss choose sugary foods to binge on.

Binging – a.k.a. Out of Control

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If you’ve ever binged, you can relate to feeling out of control in your eating. And here’s something else – did you know that high fructose corn syrup helps you overeat? Yep, that’s right – it effectively keeps the brain from receiving the message that your stomach is full and since high fructose corn syrup is corn sugar (yeah, another form of refined sugar), the food you’re eating tastes pretty good. Not only is it easy to keep on eating, but also it’s especially easy to overeat since your brain doesn’t know that you’re full!

This leads to the larger issue that most processed and fast foods contain refined sugar in some form or another. High fructose corn syrup and other corn sugars are rampant in these foods, but no matter what the refined sugar’s form, since it’s practically everywhere you can see why there’s a bit of a problem with overeating for many people today. So even though weight loss isn’t achieved by just using some self control, I think it’s important to realize that the food you’re eating could be contributing to a cycle of overeating, making it quite hard to “quit”.

Is This All An Excuse?

Hey, I’m not saying that anything I’ve suggested in yesterday’s post or this one should be used as an excuse to stay overweight. It’s all about learning – learning about yourself, about why you use food, about how what you eat could be hurting your motivation, and more. We still have to take responsibility for our own actions and we always have the choice to either give our power away to food, (which can’t do a darned thing to help us with our problems), or to take steps towards claiming our personal power and taking concerted action to accomplish our goals.

Remember, you can always make a different decision no matter what you did in the past. If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, you can make the choice to get off the foods that create that “out of control” feeling so that you can regain your personal power and achieve the weight loss goals you’ve set for yourself. 😉