Our relatively new dieter, Tammy, came in this week and reported that she’s been feeling reluctant to do several of the tasks in The Beck Diet Solution program. She said that the tasks just don’t feel relevant to her and she doesn’t see the necessity of doing them.
This is something we hear from dieters from time to time: they don’t think certain tasks are necessary, they don’t want to expend the time and energy needed to do the tasks, they don’t feel like doing them, they don’t think they need to learn those particular skills, or they are actually scared to try. We tell these dieters the same thing we told Tammy: the fact is we don’t have a crystal ball. (Then again, neither does Tammy.) And it is possible that Tammy can lose weight without doing all the tasks, but who knows what the future will bring? It’s quite possible that a task Tammy is avoiding now will actually be something she vitally needs in five or ten years. If she doesn’t learn the skills now, we predict she may have a difficult time maintaining her weight loss. We always tell our dieters that we’re not interested in helping them lose weight—we’re only interested in helping them lose weight and keep it off!
We then asked Tammy to consider what she would do if she had a bacterial infection and her doctor prescribed her a course of antibiotics. Tammy knows that if she wants to recover, she wouldn’t only take half of the medication prescribed; she would obviously take the full dose. It’s the same thing with The Beck Diet Solution program. Tammy needs to do all the tasks because otherwise she’s not taking the full dose and can’t expect the program to work properly.
Here’s another way to look at it: If Tammy had a very bad headache, she wouldn’t take a quarter of an aspirin; she would take the full pill to maximize the chance that her headache would go away. So, too, with the BDS program – again, she needs to take the full dose if she wants to be successful.
With these thoughts in mind, Tammy realized the importance of doing all the tasks in the program and has a new resolve to do everything she can to take the full dose, because she is absolutely determined to finally be successful in losing weight and maintaining the loss.