Think Right, and Lose Weight Now.

What’s the most important step toward losing weight?

No, it’s not what you eat, although that’s important, and pigging out on pizza and chips a couple times a day will scuttle your plans to drop some pound.

No, it’s not exercising, although that’s a critical component of your plan.

No, it’s not the system you buy, although a good system can be tremendously helpful.

The most important step is deciding to lose weight. Most people never do that. They wish they could lose weight, or they long to lose weight, or they’re angry about being fat, or they get mad about not being able to lose weight. But they never make a firm commitment to achieving a reasonable target weight.

Any major life achievement begins with a decision (if it happens by accident, did you really achieve anything?) You have to decide to be thin. You know you’ve really decided when you don’t quit. If you quit, you never really committed in the first place. That might be hard to hear, but it’s the truth.

Suppose your most cherished person in the world was trapped in a burning building. Nobody else is around. You save this person, or this person burns to death, and you’ll hear the screaming. Are you going in to save that person? You bet, and you’ll come out with that person or die trying.

That, my friend, is commitment. If you’re not deathly committed to your weight loss goals, you won’t achieve them.

You don’t have to be super-human, but there’s no escaping the fact that losing weight, like anything else worth doing, takes some commitment and discipline. But the effort will pay you back for the rest of your life.