Isn’t everyone competent to lose unwanted weight—if they just put their minds to it? NO. Being competent enough to reach your weight-loss goal entails mastery of what it takes to get to the goal. If you start the weight-loss process without all the competence you need (and everyone starts this way), you can still master the necessary weight-loss steps. In the strict sense, mastery involves setting and attaining little mastery goals along the way to the big goal of permanent weight loss.

For example: You may have to learn good self-regulation strategies, and also ways not to over-regulate yourself; learn to monitor yourself accurately enough and adjust your small goals to fit better with different external circumstances and with your different mind and mood states.

In other words, you can’t just go ahead, start dieting, and expect that you’ll get to that miraculous end point of successful weight-loss maintenance. Losing excess weight, believe it or not, is like building a house or flying a plane. You can’t build it or fly it unless you master the skills it requires. For permanent weight loss, you’ll need to master those very personal skills that will enable you to start a diet, stick to a diet, and then know how to keep the weight off.