The Slim Habit Blog

To be healthy, wealthy and wise must be everybody’s dream. What is the most valuable? It has got to be health. Health is something you can’t buy. Sometimes, though we don’t give as much thought to our health as we should.

When we are growing up, most of us don’t give our health any thought whatsoever. When something goes wrong though, we soon sit up and take notice, but by that time it may be too late.

 Diet is somebody else’s concern when we are young, we don’t worry ourselves about it. All we are interested in is getting more of what we like – which is usually candy, cake and cookies washed down with copious quantities of cola. 

When we become teenagers we begin to notice others and make comparisons. This is the first time we become aware of how we look. It’s the first time it becomes an important issue in our lives.

Eating the right food when we are children is vitally important. We don’t normally have too much say in what we eat, but children do try and intimidate their parents into giving them things they want. Sometimes this can result in a very distorted diet – a bad diet.

To be overweight in your early twenties is not a good thing to be. You are probably not aware of what made you overweight and you have very little idea of how you are going to change matters.

The most important thing is to break bad habits and that requires developing an awareness of what they are. Many of the bad habits will have been endorsed by upbringing. To go against this can be a challenge. What has been accepted as a family culture in terms of diet and exercise takes real resolve and determination to change.

To make a real and lasting difference it’s not diets that are needed, but a more fundamental change in behaviour. The only really successful way to do this is to learn new habits, slim habits, that will enable lasting change to take place.

To be able to say goodbye to diets forever is something all dieters thinkof. The Slim Habit makes it all possible.

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If you’re overweight, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

·         Would you like to lose weight and feel better mentally and physically?

·         Would you like to significantly reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke?

·         Would you like to protect your heart and live longer?

·         Would you like to reduce the risk of getting cancer?

·         Would you like to stay younger and be able to live a long and healthy life?

These questions are ‘no brainers’ really, aren’t they? Each one of them share a common thread – exercise. If we take regular, intentional exercise we significantly reduce the risk of attracting disease and improve our quality of life.
Too many of us lead a sedentary lifestyle these days. We spend hours sitting in front of the television or the computer; we don’t have to forage for our food; we have easy access to vast supplies of relatively cheap, high-calorific food – we can even have it delivered to our door. We can eat ourselves silly without moving a muscle. When we want to go somewhere we just jump in the car or take a bus or train or plane and, hey presto, we’re there! It’s all so easy. We are caught up in this modern-day lifestyle whether we like it or not – and it’s killing us!

The consequences of a lifestyle where there is such a low level of physical activity is starting to become more and more apparent. An increase in the number of people who are overweight …yes! An increase in the instances of heart disease and stroke…yes! An increase in cancer rates in people who are overweight or obese…yes! An increase in diabetes…yes! An increase in the number of deaths associated with being overweight or obese…yes! It’s not a pretty picture. Is there an answer? There most definitely is.

If we want to lose the pounds and maintain a sensible weight, if we want to lead a happy, healthy life and feel mentally and physically well, all of us need to take regular, intentional exercise.

Regular, intentional exercise is no big deal. It doesn’t have to be difficult. It doesn’t have to be a chore or painful. The fact is that the thought of exercise is always far worse than the reality. The reality of regular, intentional exercise is that it can enjoyable, and fun too.

For many people the idea of taking regular, intentional exercise conjures up thoughts of making a public exhibition of their lack of fitness, of pain and sweat and misery. It doesn’t have to be like that at all.

The simplest (and one of the most effective) way of taking exercise is to walk. Walking is simple, natural and doesn’t require any special skill or equipment – other than a good pair of shoes.

In the past, running was thought to be the most beneficial aerobic exercise, speeding up your heart and getting your metabolism going, but these days research has proved that walking is able to give you the same long-term health benefits as running – with a lot less risk and a lot less sweat. Running is perhaps more time –efficient, but fast walking delivers the same benefits.

Getting started is always the hardest part, but once you’ve got going you’ll find it easy and you’ll start to really enjoy it. You need a Personal Exercise Plan that doesn’t drop you in at the deep end with an exacting exercise programme. You need something that sets out a gradual programme of exercise that builds up slowly and gently to a level that you feel comfortable with, and that gives you maximum benefit. The Slim Habit has an excellent Personal Exercise Plan which gradually gets you into the way of taking regular, intentional exercise which gives your weight loss efforts a real boost.

Getting the exercise habit is so important. It’s important if you want to achieve long-term weight loss. It’s important if you want to be healthy. Get the exercise habit – get the Slim Habit – and you’ll feel better in yourself and about yourself.

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Most of us are pretty reluctant to give up something we like – or have got used to. We enjoy a beer or a glass of wine. Alcohol puts us in a good mood (in the beginning) and all our troubles seem less of a problem. It puts a gloss over the trivia of daily living and the world seems a better place. We feel we can cope with life. If we drink too much, the depressing effect that alcohol has, brings us down to earth with a bump, and we live in the land of regret for a while until the clouds pass over and reality stares us rudely in the face again. Whether we drink a lot or a little the choice is always ours – until the spectre of addiction appears, but that’s another issue.

We make choices based on our likes and dislikes. We choose to do something because we have facts that influence our decision, but we sometimes make some bizarre choices and stupid decisions. In fact, it’s said that most of us take decisions based on 5% of the available information. No wonder we get ourselves into a mess.

When it comes to alcohol we think we are pretty well informed. Many of the ‘facts’ we’ve picked up about alcohol are not facts at all, but rumours and hearsay that have been embellished in the telling. This is certainly the case when it comes to the relationship between alcohol and weight gain. ‘If you’re on a diet, it’s okay to drink’. ‘Alcohol makes you fat’.  These are two conflicting statements neither of which is completely true.

The first thing to understand about alcohol is that it is stuffed full of calories. All nutrients have different calorific values. Proteins and carbohydrates have 4 calories per gram. At has 9 calories per gram and alcohol has 7 calories per gram, nearly as much as fat!

The interesting thing about alcohol is that it contains no carbohydrate (apart from a few sweet drinks) which means that your body can’t store the energy it provides. Faced with this dilemma it converts this new energy into something called acetate.

The body uses acetate as a source of energy as it would the stored glucose and fat in your body – but here’s the rub. It uses the ‘acetate energy’ before and in preference to your stored glucose and fat. The truth is that alcohol doesn’t make you put on weight, it prevents you from losing it.

If you’re trying to lose weight then you should also be aware that alcohol stimulates your appetite. If you’re trying to lose weight the last thing you need is a stimulated appetite. It also removes inhibitions and melts your resolve… ‘one more cookie won’t hurt’  and you’re on the way to trashing all your efforts to lose weight.

If you’re trying to lose weight, alcohol has some very clear consequences.  Whereas total abstinence may make life a little dull, It makes good sense to get into a new habit – a slim habit, if you like – which helps you to moderate how much alcohol you drink. All it requires is a little self-discipline to achieve the outcome you want.

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The failure rate of most diets is astronomical yet more and more people turn to diets to try and provide a solution to their weight problem.  If you’re a battle scarred veteran of the diet wars you’ll know just how much determination and effort it takes to lose weight.  You will also know how depressing it is when all the weight you’ve lost piles back on again when you finish your diet.

It’s a sad fact that well over 90% of people who go on a diet put the weight back on within six months.  The main reason for this is that your body actually works against you when it comes to losing weight.  Faced with a shortage of calories, its natural response is to conserve energy and so it stores all the energy it can find as fat.  Back in ancient times this mechanism helped your ancestors to survive a famine, but today it makes the life of a dieter very difficult indeed. It’s called the famine factor.

The famine factor has the effect of slowing everything down.  You feel tired and listless. This is to prevent you wasting vital energy.  Your appetite increases to persuade you to go and make even greater efforts to find food.  These natural reactions are just what a dieter does not want.  It means that throughout a diet you’re fighting an increased appetite and feeling tired and listless into the bargain.

As your diet continues, your body, faced with a reduced intake of calories or energy, begins to break down muscle tissue for fuel.  It does this by breaking down protein which releases nitrogen.  Your body clears away the nitrogen by releasing water from tissue your cells.  This has the effect of immediately reducing the water you retain in your body.  You’ll probably notice a marked reduction in your weight.  However, this reduction of muscle is not good. Muscle requires energy/calories to maintain itself.  The more muscle you have the more effective your metabolism.  Reduce your muscle and your reducing your ability to burn calories.  As your muscle mass reduces so does your requirement for calories.  To maintain your weight loss you therefore have to reduce your calorie intake even further.

Faced with the requirement to eat even less to maintain weight loss plus an undiminished appetite, this is usually too much for people to bear and slowly but surely they return to their old eating habits.  Unfortunately, when the weight goes back on, its fat not muscle that reappears.  This means that without muscle your metabolism is slower than it was before you went on your diet.  Your daily calorie requirement is less too. Having returned to your old ways you are more likely to become more overweight than you were before you started the diet. It might sound perverse, but diets make you fat. The alternative? Change! Change your behaviors and learn new habits – slim habits.

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