I love words. In college, I had a professor who used to read the dictionary every night before she went to bed which I thought was a little overkill. (Ah, the characters you encounter as an English Lit major.) Plus, it’s really heavy. How do you lay in bed and hold Mr. Webster’s life on you without puncturing your xiphoid process? I don’t think I love words like she did, but I think about them–a lot.

Which brings me to the power of words. Why we choose the ones we choose. Last month in a conference call with other health coaches, Dr. Wendy mentioned the book by Chip and Dan Heath titled Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. Change starts in the language we use. In that call, we discussed how when you “lose” something, you want to “find” it. When it comes to weight, and we shed that weight, we definitely don’t want to invite it back in through our subconscious mind. Better word choices: shed, release, let go of that which was unnecessary, return to a healthy weight. You get the drift.

No need to be a word Nazi when someone says, “How did you lose your weight?” Just answer with “I shed 20 pounds by eating 6 times a day and moving my feet!” Eventually, the rest of the world will catch on and people can stop trying to relocate those pounds they’ve released.

Spread the word.