A former “fast food junkie,” he cut out double-cheeseburger combos and started opting for healthy foods. He also took to walking as far as he could to work before jumping on the subway, rather than going straight to the stop nearest his apartment. “I started walking to Dundas station, then I started going to College, then to Wellesley and then Yonge,” he says of stops farther and farther from his apartment. “I literally did it one step at a time.”
That was in 2003. He eventually got a personal trainer, and continues to work out five days a week, mixing weightlifting with cardio. He has lost nearly 150 pounds.
After losing the weight, Mr. Cicciarella was inspired to write a book to help others follow in his footsteps. As he writes in Life is a Fat Onion: My 8 Rules for Losing Weight and Gaining Life, to find the right motivation you have to ask yourself “what is the most important thing in your life.”
A dieter’s initial motivation is an essential part of how successful he or she will be at losing weight and keeping it off. Many other factors will play a role, but like any change of behaviour, eating healthy and becoming active are first and foremost psychological tasks, not physical ones. If you don’t truly want to change, you won’t.
The National Weight Control Registry, a U.S.-based initiative that collects data on people who have been successful at long-term weight loss, has found that medical “triggers” (the reasons people get off their butts to lose weight) are the most popular motivators. Reaching an all-time high in poundage and seeing a picture or reflection of themselves were the second and third most popular triggers.
Studies of registry members have found that people who set out to lose weight after a medical “triggering” event, defined broadly to include everything from being told by a doctor to lose weight to a family member having a heart attack, lost more weight than people with other types of triggering events and were more successful at keeping it off.The registry has also revealed another key component to the psychological side of weight loss: There is strength in numbers. According to its findings, people who lost weight and attended bi-monthly support groups for a year maintained their weight loss, while people who didn’t attend meetings regained almost half the weight they’d lost.
In Weight Watchers, the diet program first established in Brooklyn in 1963, group support is a key component.
Ashley Gibson, who attended weekly Weight Watchers meetings in Toronto beginning in 2006, credits the groupswith helping her lose 30 pounds. “I think that was absolutely instrumental in me getting to where I needed to be.”
Ms. Gibson, who lives in Durham, Ont., is now a group leader.
“Weight loss and making a lifestyle change is hard, and the group setting allows you to recognize that there are other people in the same place as you,” she says.
Kate Mills credits those group meetings with helping her lose just under 80 pounds since February, 2009.
“Everybody there is going through the same thing, so you get tons of encouragement,” says Ms. Mills, a 29-year-old registered nurse who also lives in Durham. Sharing stories of overcoming the temptation to order a pizza isn’t just cathartic, she says. “People clap. You get applause. Sometimes, that’s what you need.”
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