Behaviours that we’re so used to doing, we do without much thinking. The kind of thinking that is characteristic of us, we do without much reflection. The beliefs we hold near and dear, we hold without further examination. The emotions that have made us comfortable for so many years, we hold onto automatically. Those emotions that have made us uncomfortable for so many years, we automatically defend against. What this means when it comes to trying to make a personal change like losing a lot of weight is that it isn't going to be easy to dislodge who you already are.

You may think that to lose excess weight is about going on steady diet. But remember, a good diet in the strict sense of the word is a food plan. It tells you what to eat, how much to eat, and maybe even when to eat it. The rest is up to you. It’s this “rest is up to you” part that requires the real effort. The “you” of you. The “you” that you've gotten so used to being, your ways, your ideas, and your reactions. How do you change what is so you when you want to lose weight and keep it off ?

One place to start in this process of changing yourself is where you can. Your job, at first, is to find an opening in your “you-ness” and see how you can proceed from there. Perhaps you want to become more aware, more conscious of certain aspects of yourself that bear on your weight problem. For example, you may not now be as conscious as you need to be about how you react to a loss in self-esteem and, as a result, you gobble down too much of the wrong food. Perhaps you find it hard to resist many different kinds of temptations, not only food. Greater self-awareness, as a first step, becomes the all-important supplement to your diet, because it’s the new “you” that’s going to make your good diet plan work.