The Slim Habit Blog

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

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.

Popularity: 6% [?]

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

New Year is a time for reflection on what might have been, and a time to look forward and plan. It’s always a good opportunity to take stock of your life and to try and put right some of the mistakes you have made in the past year.

Examining our errors is something we try to avoid. We don’t like to be reminded of where we have gone wrong. We don’t like to be faced with our weaknesses. Most of us have very low levels of self-awareness purely because we do not confront things in our life. The result is that we allow things to build from being something manageable, to something that mushrooms into a big problem.

We are the way we are because we have accumulated lots and lots of bad habits. A habit is just a learned response, something we carry out automatically. We have good habits and bad habits, but it is the bad habits which, if allowed to go unchecked, start to rule our lives.

We run our lives on habits, things we do automatically, without thinking. Habits make our lives easier to live. We don’t have to constantly think what we are doing. All very useful, but if we don’t audit our habits and weed out the bad ones we lose control of our lives. Things start to happen to us over which we have no control. If we have become overweight because we have lapsed into bad eating habits we lose control of our ability to control our health and well-being.

This New Year you have an opportunity to really examine your habits – particularly your bad ones. Why don’t you make a list of all your bad habits? It will pay you to be honest with yourself. What do you think you need to change?

Having made your list, you need to make change. You can’t change a habit, but you can learn a new one. Learning new habits is the key to changing your behavior. If you want to lose weight permanently you need to learn new habits – slim habits. Wouldn’t it be great next New Year not to be able to say that you have said goodbye to diets forever?

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