The Slim Habit Blog

I’ll admit it. One of the hardest things I have ever done in my life is trying to lose weight. Not because of lack of motivation or commitment, no, I had PLENTY of that. The problem for me was deciding on the ‘how’. It seems as if everywhere you look, there is a new diet out on the market that promises incredible way to help you lose weight and have a perfect body. The before and after weight lose all look fantastic and are enough to sway just about anyone who is desperate to achieve the body they desire. The choices seem endless and all too often, at least for me anyways, I ended up making the wrong choice. So, how does someone know what is the RIGHT weight loss program for them?

Weight loss tip? The first step in any successful weight loss management is and will always be an exercise program which may include weight strength training. Nothing is a substitute for getting up and getting moving. Check with your doctor, make sure you have no health problems that would prevent you from getting physical, and get to it! Jumping rope, jogging, even brisk walking will start the calories burning and get your program off to a great start. In addition, make sure to add some resistance training to your regimen. For those less experience out there, this means weight lifting. Don’t groan, I know what you’re thinking, but here are the facts. Muscle burns fat. The more muscle you have, the more fat you will burn. Even while you are sitting down watching TV, your muscles will be burning fat. Now, don’t think that just because I am talking about lifting some weights you are going to turn into some bulky bodybuilder. That just doesn’t happen. Your physique will become toned, your muscles will start to show, and your clothes will fit better. All the things you want to have happen.

Now, exercise alone may not be all you need. For some of us, quality weight losing programs are what we need in addition to our exercise routines, but back to the original question, how do we know which one to pick?

When choosing a weight loss plan or product, the key thing to keep in mind is, “Is this something that I could do?” Be sure to learn all the parameters of the program or product and ask yourself this question. Try to picture yourself following the guidelines and outlined and be realistic with yourself. Is this something you will really stick to? Does the cost fit into your budget? Are there any special foods or supplements you will need to purchase? Many people begin weight loss program with the best of intentions, but decide later on that they made the wrong choice. Had they done a little more research beforehand, they likely would have had more success.

How to lose weight is an issue for many people all over the world. The health implications alone are certainly a reason to take some action, but it is the results we see as our bodies’ change that really motivates us to continue and hopefully, eventually succeed. If you take your time, do your research, commit to an exercise regimen as well as a program or product that is right for you, then you too can join the thousands of people every year who have success with a weight loss program.

There is only one really sure way of losing weight permanently and that is to change your behavior. How? By learning new eating and lifestyle habits, - slim habits.

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I have come across so many people who are overweight who have given up on diets and weight loss programs because they ‘just don’t work’. They feel that they should just come to terms with the fact that they are always going to be overweight, it’s in the genes or they have a ‘dysfunctional’ metabolism.

In most cases it has very little to do with genes or a ‘dysfunctional’ metabolism. There is absolutely no reason why anybody should resign themselves to being overweight. It is possible for everybody to lose weight.

In simplistic terms, weight is all about calories consumed versus calories burnt. Burn more calories that you consume and you will lose weight. There are ways of burning calories. The first is through normal every day activity and the other is by taking exercise. How effectively you burn calories is again down to how much exercise you take and also to the health of your muscles, both contribute to making your metabolism more effective. Keeping properly hydrated is also important for better metabolic efficiency. If you have been a serial dieter, then your muscle mass may have been seriously depleted. Resistance exercises are needed to build your muscles back up and make your metabolism more effective.

How many calories you consume is very important. If you reduce your calorie intake too much your body will work against you and prevent you losing weight. If you consume too many calories you will put weight on probably whether you take exercise or not.

One common trait amongst those who have ‘given up’ trying to lose weight is that the majority of people fool themselves about the number of calories they consume. In one instance the person concerned was convinced that she was only consuming 1600 calories a day. She was incredibly proud that of her healthy diet. The reality was that her daily calorie intake was 3500 not 1600. The extra 1900 calories she consumed was due to the fact that her portion sizes were too big and that she was economical with the truth when it came to totalling her calorie intake. She was not destined to be overweight. She had it in her power to lose weight and lose weight permanently. A dose of honesty and new eating and lifestyle habits the answer to her problem.

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It’s not as if your learnt how to get fat, is it? No, of course not, you don’t learn how to get fat, it just happens, doesn’t it? One day you are thin and healthy and before you know where you are you have changed out of all recognition. Maybe you’ve always been on the heavy side and putting on weight has been a part of your life.

The thing we have to recognize is that we are who we are. If we are prone to put on weight easily, that is who we are. It doesn’t mean that we have to be fat or overweight, but we have to realize that we have to spend much more time energy – and probably money – keeping our weight down.

This sounds like a life sentence, doesn’t it? It doesn’t have to be. However, we need to take great care that we don’t allow bad habits to creep up and take over our lives.

About habits: habits are very useful things because they allow us to do routine things without having to think very much. We can do them automatically. It also means that we can become lazy. We can get into the way of eating, for example, which we know is not good for us, but because we don’t make any conscious effort to change, because we keep repeating it, it becomes a habit. It becomes automatic.

It’s easy to see that if we allow lots of bad habits into our lives, we end up being run by those bad habits. It’s a difficult thing to recognize and difficult to get out of unless you know how.

You can learn bad habits, so to can you learn new ones. How to get skinny? You can learn to get skinny by learning new habits, slim habits. This is the secret. Change your eating and lifestyle habits, get rid of the bad habits that make you fat and learn new slim habits…the result permanent weight loss – and a slim happy life!

Would you like to give your weight loss a boost? Click here and get your FREE A-Z Calorie Counter.

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The word ‘cancer’ is the one word people don’t want to hear. It has become so synonymous with death and suffering that it is seldom mentioned or even discussed – unless there is very good reason. This is despite the fact that there have been huge advances in the detection and cure of the disease in recent years.

Professor Martin Wiseman of the World Cancer Research Fund said: ‘Cancer is not a fate, it is a matter of risk, and you can adjust those risks by the way you behave’. We should be concentrating not on the emotional issues of cancer, but on its prevention.

How many of us are aware of the link between behavior and disease? Too few of us pay it very much attention even although we might be aware of it. The fact is that there are six cancers that are linked to excess body fat and yet one of the world’s most pressing problems is obesity.

It is a sobering fact that the ‘bill always has to be paid’. One element of the bill that will have to be paid for the current obesity epidemic is a rise in the number of weight related cancers that will surface in the coming years.

There is a very urgent need for all overweight and obese people to lose weight if they are to reduce the likelihood of developing cancer, but what to do? Diets do not deliver permanent weight loss, they deliver short-term weight loss. Most overweight or obese people are caught in a never ending cycle of diets which do nothing to reduce their weight permanently and make them miserable in the process.

Surely there has to be an answer? The answer lies in not going on a diet, but by changing your behavior. If you continue doing the same thing and never make fundamental change you will always remain the same. No diet ever produces change.

Recognizing the bad habits that make you fat is the very first thing that has to happen This is followed by learning new habits, new slim habits.

Learning new slim habits helps you to change your eating and lifestyle habits. Habits can’t be changed so you have to learn new habits to take their place. It is these bad habits that have caused you to be overweight in the first place. Change them and you will be able to achieve permanent weight loss and live a slim, disease free life.

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Goal setting is a very powerful process for focusing your attention on what you really want from life. Without goals, life can lack purpose and become directionless. By understanding what you want and what you want to achieve, you know where you have to direct your effort and energy. Get into the habit of setting goals. It builds self-confidence and self-belief, and it’s also a great motivator.

If you want to lose weigh permanently and to ensure that you succeed, you must have a goal. This is not something that you casually think about, it’s something you need to write down. You have to make a commitment to achieving that goal. If you don’t, your chances of success will be significantly reduced.

Do you have a lifetime goal? Do you have a goal that covers the next five years? You need to know what you want, and have a goal if you want to achieve it.

With your new-found awareness, you should take a fresh look at what you want to achieve. To make it easier, why don’t you split your goals into different categories?  No one goal can cover all you want to achieve. Here are some examples of categories you could use: getting slim, health, family, career, financial, physical, self-improvement. There are other categories you could use. Make a list of your own, and set out your goal for each category.

Remember that each goal must be your goal, and it should be a SMART goal. A SMART goal is one that is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and to be achieved within a set Time. Remember to make your goal statement a positive one. Revisit your goals and update them as you see fit.

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When you start a weight loss program, often as not it turns out to be a journey of self-discovery – you meet many new aspects of ‘you’. Some you like, and some you don’t. You discover hidden strengths, and uncover vulnerabilities that perhaps you’d rather not know about. You begin to understand some of the reasons behind your past behaviors. You start to challenge your thinking. You become aware just how much the way you think can affect your actions and reactions, your relationships, and how you deal with the world around you.

Discovering out the truth about yourself is not something you should ever be afraid of. It’s a process of learning. The more you learn about yourself, the stronger you’ll become. The stronger you become, the more you’ll be able to deal with the challenges life throws at you

If you’ve started a weight loss program, what new, positive things have you discovered about yourself? What have you discovered about yourself that has surprised you – good and bad?

So many of us pay ourselves such little ‘proper attention’. When we do focus our attention on ourselves we realize that we have very little self-awareness. Self-awareness is absolutely vital if we are to uncover the bad habits that have caused us to get fat. We then need to learn new habits – new slim habits if we are to be able to lose weight permanently.

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Have you thought what it’s going to be like when you’ve been successful in achieving permanent weight loss? What are the reactions of your friends and colleagues going to be to your weight loss? You will have to sharpen up your powers of empathy if you don’t want to be confused by their reactions

What is empathy? It’s your ‘social radar’. It provides vital social information. What’s empathy got to do with weight loss? Well, it hasn’t got a lot to do with the actual process of losing weight, but it has a great deal to do with the way you communicate with people and with relationships. As you lose weight, people’s reactions to you may change. This could affect some relationships, which is why understanding empathy is so important.

As you go through your weight loss program, a slimmer, more confident you will be appearing. How will people react to this? It really depends upon you. Over the last six weeks your thoughts have been focused on you and your feelings. This is understandable, but you’re running the risk of not picking up on other people’s reactions accurately and being able to interpret their emotions correctly. You need to ‘put yourself in their shoes’.

Reactions to the ‘new you’ are almost certainly going to be positive, but it will help you immensely if you remove your focus away from yourself and concentrate your attention on others. Notice how they look, their expression, the intonation in their voice, their body language. Try to put yourself in their situation and to recognize their emotions – in other words, empathies. You’re in a programme where you are the focus of your attention. Try not to become too introspective and inward-looking. Practicing your empathy skills will be helpful to you. Here are some tips:

·         Be attentive to emotional cues and listen well

·         Show sensitivity and understanding

·         Understand other people’s needs and feelings

·         NOTICE: Facial expressions, body language, moods, emotions. Be alert to when they change.

Losing weight has a huge number of advantages. Fine tuning your empathy skills will make a huge difference to your life and your relationships.

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If you want to achieve lasting success in anything, but particularly something like permanent weight loss, your efforts will be greatly helped if you have self-discipline.

The best definition of self-discipline is ‘positive action’ – something to feel good about”. You’ve demonstrated self-discipline if you have decided to join a weight loss program, and you should be feeling good about that. Self-discipline is a form of self-control which we exercise consciously. Self-discipline is very important in our spiritual, emotional and spiritual life because it gives us the power, and the focus, to achieve what we want to achieve.

Some of the self-discipline you’ve imposed on yourself in the past few weeks has been quite difficult. Saying ‘no’ to yourself is not easy. Denying yourself the gratification of eating something which is utterly delicious (but swarming in fats and sugars) is not easy, but the pay-off is huge. You feel really good when you’re able to resist temptation.

The temptation to find an excuse for not taking exercise, and not keeping to your personal exercise programme, has probably crossed your mind. When you have the self-discipline to cast out the demons that are trying to persuade you to be weak, the feeling is twice as good.

Napoleon Hill, author of several personal success books, put self-discipline this way: “Self-discipline begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you can’t control what you think, you cannot control what you do. Simply, self-discipline ensures you think first and act afterwards”.

The importance of mastering your thinking process cannot be over stated. . When you’ve achieved the mastery of your thinking process – and you will – you’ll certainly have something to feel good about.

Maintaining permanent weight loss takes self-discipline too. It is all too easy to slip back into your old ways. You have to retain your focus. The personal profit from doing so can be enormous, so keep at it!

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Life is full of the unexpected, some of it good and some of it bad.  You may have had some challenges in your weight loss program, and even some setbacks. How did you deal with the setbacks? Your attitude to setbacks will very much determine how successful you are going to be – in whatever you do. What matters most is how you respond to setback. Ask yourself these questions:

·         Are setbacks overwhelming disasters or manageable hurdles?

·         Do you perceive adversity as unrelenting or short-lived?

·         Is a setback a challenge to be confronted or an insurmountable obstacle to be avoided?

The key to dealing with setbacks, particularly if you are trying to lose weight permanently, is to be an optimist. Optimists see a setback as something they have the power to do something about, not a flaw or deficiency in themselves. Pessimists, on the other hand, see a setback as a confirming sign that there is some internal flaw in themselves that cannot be changed. You have demonstrated great courage and conviction by embarking on this program. You can overcome any setbacks in the future if you maintain the same courage and conviction – and optimism. Always remember to:

·         Persevere in the face of adversity.

·         Maintain a positive attitude and outlook.

·         Always identify a positive outcome.

If permanent weight loss is your goal you will have to work hard to keep your head above water. There will be times when you want to throw in the towel and let things go back to where they were. Even when you have achieved permanent weight loss, you will be faced with many, many challenges which will threaten to derail all your hard won weight loss. The secret is to face up to the challenges and deal with them. You’ll soon become an expert and you will be stronger and more resilient as a result.

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Losing weight can be quite an emotional experience, but do we really understand our emotions? Are our efforts to lose weight hampered by our lack of emotional awareness?

We often fail to identify our emotions properly. We’re too casual (and sometimes lazy) about correctly naming our emotions. We think we’re angry when actually we’re not angry at all – we’re irritated. There’s a very big difference. If we then behave as if we’re angry, we’ll send out all the wrong signals. Confusion and misunderstanding is the result – for us and for others.

There are eight primary emotions: fear, acceptance, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, anticipation and happiness. What you need to be able to do is to identify the ‘color’ of the emotion. For instance, let’s take anger. At one end of the spectrum this could be annoyance, and at the other end it could be rage. In between there’s frustration, irritation, indignation, malice, fury and hatred. There’s a huge variation. Are you angry or just irritated? Is it really hatred that you feel or are you just thoroughly frustrated?

You can see why it’s so important to recognize and identify your emotions accurately. If you get it wrong, or just don’t take enough care, you’ll distort your thinking. Before you know it, negative thoughts will be multiplying in your mind.

Being overweight can be emotionally challenging, so it’s very important that you take care (and time) to identify your emotions properly.

Being able to read and manage your emotions will be very important when it comes to losing weight permanently. When you achieve permanent weight loss you’ll find that an emotionally intelligent approach to maintaining that weight loss will be immensely helpful.

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