Well honestly, it was a slap in the face to reality. I'm one of those people that blame everything but me for my weight issues. And I fit into all 14 points! Totally embarassing!

Sheamus,
While it may be true that calorie intake > calorie expenditure = overweight, in my experience, it is hardly that simple.

I have been coaching people (primarily women) who struggle with weight loss for a couple of years now, following a year of completely turning inside out everything that I had always believed true about diet and weight loss/gain, (following 35 years of struggling with my own weight.)

In my experience, the reasons that people put on and hold onto extra weight have just as much to do with 1) not having a strong interactive relationship with our own bodies 2) the sense of keeping sex at a safe distance (especially when there is abuse in the past...or when there is concern about cheating) 3) being deprived and overextended, so that food is the only source of nourishment and energy that remains, 4) a core belief in a love of eating and often certain foods or food types in particular, 5) putting yourself last on your priority list, and 6) thinking your body should be at a weight it is not biologically programmed to maintain, to name just a few.

This is not an exhaustive list. There are many more "reasons."

It can be very simple to find and maintain an optimal healthy weight, and the route to that for the long-term has much less to do with eating less and working out more than you might think...and has everything to do with gaining clarity about who you are, what you believe, what you value and how you live.

all the best,
sharon

I think this, while a fun distraction, is just another example of over-complicating weight loss, which is essentially a simple process (at least mathematically), which ultimately makes the process harder. The only item on the list that really holds any value is #9. ("Unaware Of Calories And Fat.")

The reason why anyone is overweight is their calorie intake is greater than their calorie expenditure.

It is that simple.

The quality of calories that one is consuming can certainly make a difference to controlled weight loss (or, indeed, gain) but ultimately another simple truism is that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, certainly in light of the mathematics involved in dropping bodyweight.

Eat less. Workout more. Profit.