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Explore Bob's Story and the skills he learned:

Out of Hell 

Roots Parable

Lessons in Life

How DO You Begin to Make Lasting Changes?

New Foods

Be Active!

Emotional Area

Spiritual Area

How to Transform Social Isolation

How to Achieve Balance in Life

and...Mental Skills

Introduction to Bob's Story

Free to Climb Up Mountains! Meet Bob.

Discover Skill Power, Not Will Power!

Changing my lifestyle habits allowed me to achieve my dreams. How did I do it? I climbed up the mountain—step-by-step—and transformed my life in the same way.  

In the 8th grade my lifestyle habits were completely off track. I was depressed, emotionally shut down, and had very low self esteem. My eating and lifestyle habits kept me in the same place for years until I was 21 years old. To change, I needed to learn WHY I made the choices I did, and learn new lifestyle skills and tools to do it differently. I've now kept making these new choices for 46 years. I also have been drug and alcohol-free for over 31 years.

BOB'S AFTER PICTURE

  (Hiking in Goat Rocks Wilderness Area) 

Here's me. I'm hiking in Goat Rocks Wilderness. I could NEVER have done this unless I'd changed my lifestyle habits. The quality of my life has dramatically improved because of my learning the 12 essential skills that are shared in my Playbook and on this website. At 68 years old I still go hiking!  I also LOVE gardening and have a lovely flower garden! Check out my Frolic In Nature page for beautiful pictures of lovely spots.

BOB'S BIRTHDAY AT 63 YEARS OLD

Bob's birthday picture at 63 years old!

I was overweight and very unhealthy way before my time!

My story shows an example of how one person worked with the process of making lifestyle changes. It turned out to be a lot easier to learn about new foods and to become more active in my daily activities. For me, the difficult areas to transform were life-balance, self esteem and self talk, emotional eating, and learning the skill of problem solving when things weren't going well.

When I started my journey of change, I didn't know any of the skills in the Essential Skills section. My lifestyle behaviors were autopilot unhealthy. I was always the fattest kid in school. My eating habits and lifestyle involuntarily kept me that way.

I am so grateful that the help I needed was available for me.

Today I find that people are struggling with the same issues in their lives that I experienced over 42 years ago.

On the other hand, we are fortunate that there is so much more information today and such an abundance of support groups.

Why are SO many people overweight in the USA today? It is because we experience:

  1. A too-busy, rushed, and hurried life makes taking time to be healthy a BIG challenge.

  2. Places offering lots of cheap and delicious foods (and HUGE portions) are EVERYWHERE!

  3. Due to TV, computers, cars, neighborhood, community design (that makes it difficult to walk to our destinations) and an infinite variety of devices that diminish our level of activity, we have decreased our level of physical activity 75% since 1900! More than 60% of adults are not regularly physically active and the latest Surgeon General's report says that 40% of adults are not active at all.

  4. Quick-fix diet programs don't teach adequate self honoring and self-management skills that could enable us to go inside of ourselves for our own answers.

  5. Because we are conditioned to believe that every problem has an easy answer, we find it difficult to commit to something that may take years to accomplish. We have a hard time remaining motivated.

  6. Many of us do not have healthy role models to show us how to live a healthful life or have wholesome relationships.

All of these factors make it challenging to achieve a healthier weight and maintain those choices each day--for life. In my story and Web site I share all of the best ways I have encountered that have helped me and the thousands of people I have worked with for the last 42 years.

Explore the The Complex Web Of Weight Management and Socio-Ecological Model--Looking Beyond the Individual for ideas about how our culture and other factors affect us.

A NOTE--BE HEALTHIER AT ANY SIZE: Greater harm can be done to ourselves if we constantly force ourselves to lose weight (and then cycle up and down as we experience a battle inside ourselves because we have not explored root causes of our overweight) and end up disrespecting our bodies, and end up feeling ashamed, inferior, and unlovable. We may also think that just losing weight will bring us the happiness and health that we want. Consider exploring the Dieting vs. Non-Dieting section and Notice in Your Life That Everything Is Interconnected! for ideas on how to change this pattern. For anyone, just following the self-honoring skills that are taught in the Essential Skills section will bring immense benefits--no matter what a person's weight.

The KEY to being successful is to make an ongoing investment in yourself--to learn about the root causes of your overweight and lifestyle imbalances and figure out your personal solutions--and not give up. JUST BEGIN AGAIN! The key skill is to learn from your experiments at creating a more enjoyable life. Learn what works and what doesn't work for YOU. Just don't give up! For a PDF version of Make An Investment In You--Learn Core Skills.pdf

Any mistakes or failures, no matter how great, are never infinite, they're finite! So, climb back up and begin again! It’s all self-discovery! You learn what works and what doesn't work for you. So, if you take one step, then fall on your face, then take another step and...fall on your face...you're PROGRESSING one step by "one body length" at a time! I call it "stumbling in the right direction!" Each day remember your motivation!

HOW you go about this journey is as important as WHAT skills you ultimately develop. My mission is to do no harm through any of this process. I encourage kindness and self-respect towards yourself, to honor yourself with each of your moment-by-moment choices. I want to help each of us to "end the inner emotional war" that many of us have going on inside. The approach follows the Dieting versus the Non-Dieting Approach.

Success is going from failure to failure

without a loss of enthusiasm. Sir Winston Churchill

 

Have Patience

with all things,

but, first of all,

with yourself.

To view a PowerPoint presentation of Bob's Journey:  Celebrate the Basics of Healthy Self-care  It's FUN! Left-click on mouse to advance pictures. For a PDF version of Bob's Story, click here. For a short version of skills learned, click here.

Bob also participated in a NIH (National Institutes of Health) 5-day study called the “neuroanatomical correlates of hunger and satiety by positron emission tomography" to determine how the brain controls the way we eat. To explore this, they compared formerly (or presently) overweight people's brains respond differently to hunger than people who have always been thin. To read about the study and Bob's journey explore: What’s Going on IN there (Word document) To read the actual research paper results check out Post-obese.pdf

Pay a visit to BOB'S STORY Short Skills Version

             Copyright © 2001-2022 Bob Wilson BS, DTR  All Right Reserved. Articles are for personal use only. Please request permission for other uses. Thanks!