The Slim Habit Blog

Before you begin a weight loss program, who is it that you have to convince that the whole thing is a good idea? It’s you, isn’t it? You’ve had endless conversations with yourself about how to achieve permanent weight loss, how to stay slim and diet free. You’re very familiar with all the arguments.

We never stop talking…to ourselves. There’s a constant internal conversation going on in our minds. It’s called self-talk. Self-talk goes on in our mind all the time. What’s it all about? Anything and everything:  from a commentary on the way you feel to something deep in your imagination.

Most of us allow our self-talk to carry on unchecked and uncontrolled. This is dangerous because the thoughts we have influence our behavior. If you allow your negative thoughts to go unchecked, there will be consequences in both your behavior and your actions. Negative thinking will reduce your self-confidence, and harm your self-esteem. Positive thoughts, on the other hand, will produce positive outcomes.

The important thing to remember is that thoughts influence behaviors, and you are programmed by your thoughts. It’s crucial, therefore, that you learn to manage your thoughts.

How do you do this? The first thing is to deliberately change to positive self-talk when your self-talk starts to become negative.  If your self-talk is saying “I can’t lose weight”, then don’t be surprised that you don’t. If on the other hand your self-talk says “I’m going to achieve success with my weight loss program”, then you will.

Make your self-talk work for you, not against you.

Positive self-talk is something that will help you to maintain permanent weight loss, it’s important.

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When you’re trying to lose weight there are quite a few unexpected obstacles which make your task quite difficult. If you can pre-empt them it can make life a whole lot easier.

“Have some more, dear.”  You can probably hear your mother saying it to you now. You feel that you might offend if you refuse, so you allow your plate to be piled high with food that you don’t need or probably want. It can be a tricky problem to overcome. The best way is for you to prepare the ground before you sit down to eat. Make it clear to your friends and family that you’re trying to eat less, and they can help. Resist being bullied or pressured into eating more than you want.

As you become more successful with your weight loss program, everyone will start to notice the ‘new you’ emerging. You’ll look better and you’ll have a much more positive attitude. This will not go unnoticed.  The reaction you get may be surprising. Some of your friends will rejoice in your success and offer encouragement. Others who don’t have your motivation and resolve (but wish they did), might be jealous of your success. Just be aware of this. Their comments could be quite hurtful and negative – if you allowed them to be.

Don’t be put off by people who want to sabotage your weight loss efforts. Some people will be totally unaware of what they are doing, innocent of any bad intention, but others will have a less than helpful purpose. Stay strong!

If you want to lose weight permanently, staying strong is probably one of the best weight loss tips you will ever get. Permanent weight loss is a challenge, but it is one you can overcome if you keep your wits about you.

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Did you know that your body talks to you? It supplies you with a constant stream of vital information, but are you listening? How good are you at listening to your body? Can you now recognize the difference between a hunger signal and a thirst signal? You may have discovered that most of them are thirst signals – over 70% of them are. If you can tune-in to your body, it is such a useful thing to be able to do. There is so much information for you to use – but you have to learn to access it.

There is absolutely no doubt that every day you will be faced with temptation when you are trying to lose weight. To eat or not to eat the slice of cake, to use a convenient excuse for not taking exercise – there’ll be many other similar dilemmas. When you’re faced with a set of positive and negative options, how do you come to your decision? Do you use your ‘gut feeling’?

 Do you know what ‘gut feeling’ is? Gut feeling is a sense of intuition that you can’t rationally account for. It’s emotional wisdom which you’ve gathered from past experiences. It flags up positive and negative alternatives which you are then able to consider with your reasoned thought. ‘Gut feeling’ and reason should actually work in parallel. When you learn to work with both, you start to make smart decisions.  For example: Your gut feeling might tell you that the three-mile run you are about to start will be hard work – disagreeable even – and that you’d prefer to avoid it. Reason tells you that it will do you good and help you to lose weight. You err on the side of reason, but it could easily have gone the other way.

 Gut feeling is an example of information that is available to you from within yourself. You have an ‘inner wisdom’ which you need to learn to understand, interpret and manage. Realize that you have these sources of wisdom, and you’ll take better and more informed decisions.

 Mobilizing your gut feeling and really understanding how it works is hugely useful when you’re trying to lose weight permanently. The more you are conscious of your powers of reason and your gut feeling, the more you will be able to mobilize them to help you succeed in losing weight.

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It’s always difficult at the beginning. Whenever you begin a new task or a new challenge like trying to lose weight, you’re almost certain to have a little self-doubt. Self-doubt can be quite sneaky – it creeps in and quietly undermines your efforts to succeed.

If you want to prepare yourself for a new challenge, like losing weight for example, you need to consider your actions and your reactions. Inevitably, negative thoughts surface, particularly when there’s uncertainty and when the outcome is unclear. If you allow these negative thoughts to grow unchecked, your chances of achieving any degree of success will be reduced significantly.

Have you already experienced self-doubt about losing weight?  There’ll always be doubt somewhere in the back of your mind – but try to notice when you start to have ‘self-doubting’ thoughts. Make sure you don’t allow your negative thoughts to take over your thinking. Remember, you’re predisposed to think negatively.  If you allow your negative thoughts to go unchecked, they will multiply. Notice the way you think, and manage your thinking process.

The next time you feel self-doubt creeping into your thinking, try the following:

Take three slow, deep breaths.

Ask yourself:

·         What’s the reason behind my self-doubt?

·         What was the trigger that started my self-doubt?

·         What do I want the outcome to be?

Concentrate on making that outcome a positive one. If you want to lose weight permanently you have to try and banish self-doubt, because you can succeed. Getting out of the habit of self-doubt will definitely make your weight loss efforts much easier. The more you practice the easier it will become. Learning new habits is the only sure fire way to lose weight and for it not to return. Never doubt that you can succeed. Make the effort and you will win through.

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Okay, this is a raid! Go to the kitchen and open all your food cupboards, and take a good look at what you’ve got hiding there.

What have you found? Doughnuts…potato chips…candy bars…it’s a proper Aladdin’s cave of goodies!

Now, it’s time to be brave! Remove anything which know is going to work against you losing weight. Take out everything you would no longer buy if you went to the supermarket today. Put them on one side.

Let’s move on to the fridge and the freezer. What have we got here? Coke…a stable of Ben & Jerry’s cartons…a stack of ready meals…very revealing! It’s time for you to be brave. Take out anything you know will work against your weight loss efforts.  Have courage, put them on one side. Don’t be tempted to keep anything back.

Have a good look at what you’ve unearthed. Is it a bit embarrassing? If it is, here’s a way to make yourself feel much better about your little transgression… Get rid of everything. Difficult as it might be, give everything away, and don’t be tempted to buy any of those items again.

From now on, your cupboards, your fridge and your freezer need to take on a new look. A ‘new look’, designed by you. Before you go shopping again, sit down and make a list of the food you want to eat. Draw up a simple meal plan for the coming week. You should be thinking of foods with a low sugar content, and eating as much fresh food as possible.

Losing weight can be a bit of a rollercoaster ride if you allow it to be. By clearing out the food and drink that you should be avoiding, you’re doing yourself a great favour. By removing temptation life is going to become a whole lot easier. When you open the fridge door you’re not going to destroy all your efforts by one weak impulse. Out of sight is definitely out of mind.

If you want to lose weight permanently you have to make a real effort. You have to get out of the habit of eating bad foods. If you do, weight loss will become so much easier. Your new habits will gradually support you and help you to say ‘no’. Temptation will never disappear, but you will be in a far better position to resist it.  

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How good are you at listening to your body? Can you now recognize the difference between a hunger signal and a thirst signal? You may have discovered that most of them are thirst signals – over 70% of them are. Tuning-in to your body is such a useful thing to be able to do. There is so much information available to you – all you have to do is to learn to access it.

Every day you will be faced with temptation when you are trying to lose weight. To eat or not to eat the slice of cake, to use a convenient excuse for not taking exercise – there’ll be many other similar dilemmas. When you’re faced with a set of positive and negative options, how do you come to your decision? Do you use your ‘gut feeling’?

What is ‘gut feeling’? Gut feeling is a sense of intuition that you can’t rationally account for. It’s emotional wisdom which you’ve gathered from past experiences. It flags up positive and negative alternatives which you are then able to consider with your reasoned thought. ‘Gut feeling’ and reason should actually work in parallel. When you learn to work with both, you start to make smart decisions.  For example: Your gut feeling might tell you that the three-mile run you are about to start will be hard work – disagreeable even – and that you’d prefer to avoid it. Reason tells you that it will do you good and help you to lose weight. You err on the side of reason, but it could easily have gone the other way.

Gut feeling is an example of information that is available to you from within yourself. You have an ‘inner wisdom’ which you need to learn to understand, interpret and manage. Realize that you have these sources of wisdom, and you’ll take better and more informed decisions and find losing weight much easier

Mobilizing your gut feeling and really understanding how it works is hugely useful when you’re trying to lose weight permanently. The more you are conscious of your powers of reason and your gut feeling, the more you will be able to mobilize them to help you succeed.

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Technorati Tags: how to lose weight, how to lose weight permanently, lose weight, say goodbye to diets forever

Getting a good night’s sleep is very important. As your eating habits improve and you continue to work through your exercise program, you may find the thought of an early night increasingly attractive. After a good night’s sleep you’ll feel more alert, better able to deal with the things the coming day will throw at you. Most important of all, it’ll help you in your efforts to lose weight.

How good a sleep do you have? Do you sleep all the way through the night, or do you have an interrupted sleep? It’s important you get a good uninterrupted sleep. Why? Because of the way we sleep. When we go to sleep, we experience five different stages of sleep in what is called a sleep cycle. Each cycle lasts for approximately 1½ hours. In a normal night we will probably go through five cycles. You get most benefit when you can complete five full, uninterrupted cycles. Interrupting a cycle significantly reduces the benefit you get.

Here are some tips to help you have a better sleep.

·        Eat early, not late.

·        Make your evening meal a small one

·        Keep your alcohol consumption low. Alcohol is a stimulant. You might fall asleep easily, but you’ll be wide awake in no time.

·        Don’t have anything to drink that contains caffeine. Caffeine blocks the production of an enzyme that helps to produce the hormone melatonin. Melatonin helps to bring on sleep, and has a positive effect on sleep patterns.

·        Give your brain a rest. Let it stop buzzing before you turn in.  Don’t go straight from the computer screen to the pillow.

·        Try some stretching exercises before you get into bed.

If you want to lose weight permanently and say goodbye to diets, the sleep habit is a very important slim habit to learn. It will help make permanent weight loss a reality.

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When you decide to lose weight there are many other topics that come to mind. You need to think about your behavior and the behaviors that helped you to become overweight in the first place. You need to become aware of all your bad habits and the effect they have on you and those around you.

When you live your life on autopilot, you get out of the habit of noticing. Life passes you by in a blur, and one week fades seamlessly into another. When you stop paying attention to yourself, you put on weight ounce by ounce, pound by pound, until one day you realize your weight is starting to seriously affect your life. By not being aware, you’re unconsciously building up a mass of bad habits. Try to notice your bad habits – particularly in relation to what you eat and your general health. Over the next few days, start to make a ‘bad habit’ list, and take time to study it.

Underline those that you’d most like to do something about.

Learning new habits is all about repetition and practice. You can learn a new habit very easily indeed. It will be of enormous help is you are trying to lose weight permanently

Remember: if you practice your new habit for 10 minutes each day for 21 days, you’ll have completed 3½ hours’ worth of practice! Before you know it, your new habits will become automatic.

Learn new habits that will transform your life and you can say goodbye to diets forever.

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Here’s an alarming fact. We lose between 0.5 and 2% of our muscle mass every year over the age of 40. That means by the time we are 70 we could have lost anything between 15 and 60% of our muscle mass. It’s a pretty amazing statistic.

Can you imagine yourself having lost 60% of your muscle mass? It’s frightening to think how it would be possible to cope with everyday life. Unfortunately, this is what happens to millions of people.

There’s a further problem. Your vanishing muscle mass reduces the effectiveness of your metabolism. Why? Because muscles are very effective at burning calories. Lose muscle and the consequence is weight gain. Couple increased weight with a low muscle mass and you have a recipe for disaster.

Old age for hundreds of millions of people across the world is blighted by being unable to perform some very basic functions without great difficulty. It leads to great unhappiness and puts an enormous strain on health care services. But it needn’t be the case.

Until recently it was thought that it was impossible to reverse the process of age related muscle loss, but recent trials have found that this is not the case. By doing regular resistance exercises you can significantly reduce muscle loss.

There is also an added bonus because it has also been found that having healthy muscles helps to strengthen you bones too. There’s another plus. Healthy, well exercised muscles will keep your metabolism functioning properly and you’ll be able to keep any weight gain in check.

Does this just apply to ‘old’ people? Certainly not, it applies to everybody. It’s essential that we keep our muscles in trim if we are to ‘fire on all six cylinders’, be able to operate to our optimum efficiency look forward to a fun, healthy old age. It’s not difficult, it just takes effort.

If you’re overweight it’s a good idea to tackle this as early as possible. If you carry too much weight with you as you get older, you’ll find it more and more difficult to get rid of it, but get rid of it you must. To lose weight permanently you need to make personal change. The best way to do this is to find a program that will help you to make change by learning new habits – slim habits. Ideally it should also include a personal exercise plan. If you think you need to take action, don’t delay. Look after that body of yours, it’s the only one you’ll ever have!

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What do you imagine Barak Obama’s greatest problem might be when he sits down in the Oval office? Is it going to be the worst financial crisis in 100 years, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel/Palestine, Iran, recession….? The list is long and very, very daunting. It’s difficult to know why he ever wanted the job – he’ll probably ask himself the same question frequently over the next four years.

One of his greatest problems probably won’t even feature on his list, and yet it is one of the most pressing problems the nation faces. It is the obesity crisis. Whether he is aware of it or not he has the weight of the nation on his shoulders.

Why should it be such a problem? Why does he need to give it any attention? Surely personal weight is very much a personal thing? Well, it is and it isn’t. The facts though are scary. With over 64% of the population overweight and a third obese, it is shaping up to be the one thing that is going to literally bring the nation to its knees.

A nation that is overweight and unfit is never going to be able to operate at its optimum and in the coming years we’re going to have to step up to the mark as never before. Are we going to be able to do so? It’s questionable.

The tsunami that is going to hit the health care system in the next few years because of  obesity related diseases hitting unprecedented levels, is going to be devastating for the country. It is going to struggle to cope. The misery that this will cause will be enormous and be a huge sap on the morale of the nation.

What can Barak Obama do about it? Well, while he has the nation’s attention he needs to be brave and say a few things that some folks don’t want to hear. He needs to shock the nation into adopting healthier lifestyles. He needs to talk change in personal behavior.

The real way to cure the obesity problem is for people to change. Permanent weight loss can only be achieved by making personal change. New behaviors can be learnt by adopting new habits – slim habits. It’s not about diets, it’s what Barak Obama fought the election on – it’s about change.

Let’s hope the new President can persuade the nation to change its ways!

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