Change and Weight Loss
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Successful
Lifestyle Change
In order for a person to experience permanent weight loss there is the need for
a lifestyle change to take place.
Lifestyle changes are hard to make and maintain. Habit drags us back. Our
friends, family and colleagues interfere. Emergencies interrupt us before our
new routine has become an ingrained habit. How we cope is the difference between
success and failure. The purpose of this report is to help you experience
success, not failure.
Are You Ready To Change?
People change their behaviors because of intrinsic or extrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation is doing something because you want to. People that are
intrinsically motivated change for the benefit of themselves. You are reading
this because you want to! You are ready to change!
Lifestyle is a person's pattern of living as expressed in his or her activities,
interests, and opinions. Lifestyle is the sum of your habits of eating,
exercising, confronting stress, how you handle change, dealing with others, and
how you see God. Your lifestyle is important for what it allows you to do and
what it keeps you from doing. Most likely there will be changes that need to
take place in all areas of your life: physical, intellectual, emotional,
relational, and spiritual. When the necessary changes take place in each of
these aspects of a person’s being, there will be an overall lifestyle change
which leads to permanent weight loss. This is the whole-person approach to
weight loss.
Too many
times individuals just focus on one or two areas of their life. When this
happens there is the lack of change in other areas of their life and so they
gain back the weight they lost―there was not a lifestyle change. The other thing that
can happen is that there was not a true change that took place in any of the
aspects of life. There was only temporary change for the moment. For permanent
change to change to take place there must be more than behavioral change. There
must be a change in the way a person thinks.
Stinkin
Thinkin and Self-Sabotage
Those who need to
lose weight (more than a few pounds) normally have what is routinely called
‘stinkin thinkin’. The way they think is unhealthy, not based upon facts, is
negative, counterproductive, and has a self-sabotage theme to it. Self-sabotage
is when a person does things that will destroy any success they have
experienced. This is done because a person does not know how to handle success
because of the lies they believe from the past. Many times they are afraid that
persons, places, or things are going to rob them of their success, so they
subconsciously decide “All my life people, places, or things have robbed me of
my success, so I will have control over my life.” This in itself is ok, but here
is the next level a person goes who self-sabotages:
Because they do not believe they can experience success, they start personally
sabotaging their success. It makes them feel like they are in control of their
life (they choose their failures instead of others choosing for them). As crazy
as this sounds, many who desire to lose weight actively practice self-sabotage
thinking and actions.
Read our Special Report on Self-Sabotage and Weight Loss.
Change
our Thinking
We need to change
the way we think if we are going to change our behavior and make lifestyle
changes.
Here are
just a few ways of changing how we think:
- Deal
with Stress-Learn how to deal with stress in an effective manner. If you are
living a life of stress you will not think clearly.
- Visualization- Practice in your head the end results you want to achieve-you
are reinforcing the positive instead of the negative
- Positive Attitude-Surround yourself with an atmosphere of hope instead of
defeat. Read material that lifts up your spirit.
- Positive Reinforcement and Support-Obtain support from others that are on the
same journey as you and from those who have achieved the goals you are
attempting to achieve. Don’t be resistant to receive help from those who may
not have the same experience as yours. A person living a life of success has
obviously learned principles that work even if they have not had your
experiences.
Change
and Pain
In order for change
to take place in our life there are going to be times of pain. There may be some
pain physically as our body gets use to more physical movement if we have not
been exercising. There may be some stomach pain as we eat less or drink more
water. There may be emotional pain as we look at what we are feeling instead of
trying to prevent feelings by using food for our comfort. There may be pain as
we start the journey of growing intellectually regarding permanent weight loss.
We may learn things that remove excuses for not being able to lose weight. It
may be painful to see our wrong attitudes. As we change the way we eat and see
food, our spouse may not understand why we want to eat differently. Their can be
fear that as we change our eating habits, our spouse will not understand the
change in lifestyle and our spouse will reject us. Or we have to change the
“going out to eat” with our friends. Many of us need to change our perspective
on who God is. It can be painful to acknowledge the fact that we have had a
wrong concept of God, especially if we have believed a lie all our life. None of
us like to be wrong.
Many are
not willing to go through the “pain and suffering” of permanent change. They
want to maintain the same thinking and behavior hoping for different results.
This is one of the definitions of being insane.
Many have
a wrong concept of pain. They believe that pain is always something bad. Pain
can be good for us. If we stick our hand in the fire, pain keeps us from burning
our hand off. Pain is a reminder that we are alive. Many who have used food for
comfort have become numb. They may feel like they are not living life. The pain
of change can be comfort. It helps us to be in touch with life again. The more
we embrace the pain of change the quicker the change comes. If we continuously
run from the pain of change, change is delayed and may never take place. If we
want to experience positive changes in our life, so we may live a different
lifestyle, permanent weight loss, we need to embrace the pain of change. We will
find out the pain was more than worth it and not as bad as we thought.
Trusting Others
In order for permanent lifestyle changes to take place, a person needs to learn
to trust others who have experienced permanent lifestyle changes and who are on
the same journey as themselves. Many times individuals can get stuck, because
they are trying to do things on their own. It is easy to believe the lies of the
past when we are ‘lone rangers’. When we are on the road to recovery, weight
loss, or changing a lifestyle, we need others to share their observations, to
hold us accountable, and to learn from their successes.
Just
because we have been hurt in the past by those who we may have trusted, nothing
says that we will be hurt again. Of course, unless we are quick to be hurt.
Also, many times we interpret a person who challenges us as being against us
because we really do not want to pay the price to change. So, we “shoot the
messenger” who is there to help bring change in our life. This is where
self-sabotage can come in. A person may be in our life who exposes the lies we
believe and we get hurt, offended, defensive, and instead of facing the lies, we
believe the lies all over again and then attack the person who is there to help
us in our recovery-permanent weight loss. Many times we want people to ignore
our excuses instead of confront our excuses. However, for real change to take
place we need to trust the guidance of those who are walking in success and
recovery, realizing that they also fall short at times. In other words we do not
put them on a pedestal because we will then easily get offended when they are
not ‘perfect’.
Here is
something to think about. Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto and Silver.
Read the Special Report titled Exercising Your Trust
Muscles.
Slow, but Steady Change
For most people,
slow but steady change is much more effective than something that happens
quickly. Drastic lifestyle changes normally do not last. The reason why they do
not last is that it takes more than the change of behavior for lasting change to
occur. We need to also change how we think and see things. Otherwise in time, we
will fall back to the old ways of living because of what we believe. If you
believe you will always be fat, you will ultimately quit any diet no matter how
stringent and serious you were about losing weight and how quickly you lost the
weight.
By setting realistic goals that are specific and taking small
steps, you have to adjust what you believe as you take the steps to permanent
weight loss. You don't have to do everything at once. For successful lifestyle
change, small changes lead to bigger changes.
However, here is a
caution. Don’t use the concept of slow and steady to justify not doing all you
can to make right choices, to use the resources available to you and making
every effort to lose weight. Here is what many will do. They will use the
concept of slow and steady to justify laziness, lack of motivation,
stubbornness, and unwillingness to change. Some will ignore the very resources
that are available for them to change because they are just plain lazy or don’t
want to pay the price for change to take place. It is always wrong to find
excuses for not making the proper lifestyle change.
Will Power
Ultimately for long lasting change to take place is that a person must have will
power and pure determination. When it seems like everything is against them
losing weight they must make the decision that no matter what they are going to
make right choices. For some this is much easier to do than it is for others.
Here is the key. The more a person applies the principles above, the easier it
is going to be to make right choices regarding lifestyle changes.
For many who
struggle with weight loss it is not a matter of they do not have will power or
determination. It is just that they need to refocus that will power. Here is an
example of what we mean. The person has a struggle with overeating on cookies.
Their spouse decides to hide the cookies. The person will do anything to find
the cookies. If they can’t find them they will go to the store in the middle of
the night. They will do whatever it takes to eat some cookies. Do they not have
will power? Yes and no. They may not have the will power to resist the cookies,
but they have the will power to do whatever it takes to get the cookies. So,
they do have a strong will. They just need to take that pure determination to
get some cookies and turn it around to be determined to do right.
On a regular basis
we speak of being desperate, but not disciplined. If the energy that is spent on
being desperate is redirected to being disciplined, then an individual can start
experiencing success in their goal to see long lasting change in their life.
Change, Weight
Loss, and Thin for Life
Thin for Life was designed to help each member to lose weight permanently. Thin for Life is not another diet. It is about changing your lifestyle to be in
alignment with Healthy Eating, Physical Movement, Nutritional Support, Curative
Sleep and Rest, and Proper Hydration. Thin for Life is based upon a whole-person
approach to weight loss, taking care of the physical, intellectual, emotional,
relational, and spiritual aspects of your life. If you will use all the benefits
that we provide you will see permanent weight loss.
Instead of finding
excuses why the benefits will not work for you (don’t have enough time-we have
time for what is important to us, too hard-there is always help available, won’t
work-don’t know until you try), trust those who have developed the benefits and
make full use of all the tools that have been made available for you.
Are you ready to
make changes in your lifestyle? If so, take the time to read other Special
Reports to help you to grow intellectually and spiritually-change the way you
think so you can make long lasting lifestyle changes. To grow spiritually also
be sure to read the quotes in the Inspirational Calendar. Share with
others through the web blog, discussion board, and chat rooms so that you can
grow emotionally and relationally. Add photos to the photo gallery to make Thin for Life more personable. Be sure to participate in Teleseminars. Take of your body
physically by using PTO and taking supplements.
As you work the
program you will be THIN FOR LIFE.
Do you need extra
help in making a lifestyle change of permanent weight loss? Then maybe our coaching program is for you.
Richard Dover
Thin for Life Administrator
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