Weight Loss Guru

Our member of the month is Ian Williams.

Ian has done exceptionally well. Not only has he overcome his alcoholism and given up smoking but also lost weight and has become a great advert for fitness health and well being.

Please listen to the inspirational podcast below where I interview Ian about what you has achieved. Please make any comments below and I will pass them onto Ian.

Hi there Check out the people who I am working with on my Live On-Line weight loss programme.

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE LIVE ONLINE PROGRAMME

What precedes all behaviours, actions and performances?

 

The Power of Choice

 What turns dreams into reality?

The answer is decisions: your decisions. They determine what you think, how you feel, what you do and what you become.

Why are some people successful at becoming slimmer, fitter and healthier? Because they make better decisions. Because they make decisions full stop.

Most of us just hope, wish and, eventually, regret: ‘I’m not good enough…I’m too old…. I haven’t had the right opportunities……I’m jus a fat person…’

Successful slimmers give up hope and make a decision.  How can you tell a decision from a hope, a wish – or even a fear?

We’ve seen a lot of hopes and wishes and vague intentions cunningly disguised as decisions: decisions to take regular exercise, decisions to eat a healthy diet, decisions to change jobs… but there so-called decisions never lead anywhere.  So how do you know when you’ve go the real thing, when you’ve made a real decision?

Real decisions trigger instant action.  Hoping and wishing on the other hand are states of inactivity – almost paralysis.

When do you think a thought and it changes everything, that thought was a decision.

We can give you the information you need to reach your goal, but the missing ingredient that only you can supply is the crucial decision that puts you onto the road to change.

Of course, you are already taking action based on the last decision you made about your weight and it’s producing the results you’ve got now.  Eating to change the way you feel, constantly dieting and thinking about food, trying to stick to hard, damaging exercise routines are all actions which have produced results.  But they probably weren’t the results you wanted.

So why not make a new decision: one that will give you a happier, healthier lifestyle? The only discomfort you’ll feel is a moment’s anxiety about stepping outside your comfort zone.

 Take It Easy

Being overweight is a vicious circle because your body chemistry favours stability.  Overweight people tend to take less exercise than thin ones because it’s harder for them- they don’t build as much muscle as thin people do and it’s muscle that burns fat.  So when the muscle gives way to fat through inactivity, they burn less of the fat when they do exercise.

It takes far more calories to maintain a pound of muscle in your body than to maintain a pound of fat.  Even when muscles are inactive, they burn more calories than fat does.

Unfortunately, the sad truth is that dieting slows down the metabolism and, after dieting for two weeks, your metabolic rate can drop by 20 per cent.  So being fat makes you even fatter (because fat people don’t have enough muscle to burn the calories) and dieting makes it worse by slowing down your metabolism.

Fat people get exhausted and breathless when they exercise too hard because their bodies are trying to maintain status quo by saving fat and burning sugar (glucose).  The outcome is painful, disheartening and doesn’t result in fat reduction.  That’s why I’m telling you to take it very gently first. Forget the sweat lycra, and just do as much exercise as you enjoy.

As you become more active, your shape will begin to change, you’ll feel healthier – and you might start to wonder how you managed without those good feelings you get from gentle, steady regular exercise.

What do you think?

 Hi there 

Please have a look at my latest new video post about how to deal with the pressures at Christmas. 

Beginning to Break Those Habits

If you don’t like exercise, if you eat popcorn instead of proper meals, if you give yourself a hard time most of the time, these are just things you’ve taught yourself to do with a bit of encouragement from your family and friends.  You’ve trained yourself to be the person you are, you’ve practised for it and you’ve succeeded.  But now it’s time to put in the same effort, energy and dedication into being something else.

It probably took you long time to build up the complex pattern of habitat you make up in your life.  In the case of good ones (like cleaning your teeth) it’s time well spent.  But it actually takes more time and dedication to be consistently, destructively dysfunctional than it does to be a winner.  After all, good habits are often reinforcing.  You smile at someone and they smile back.  But being a consistent grouch (for example) takes a bit more effort.

Take Time to Change

The third step is to accept that it took you a long time to be such an accomplished couch potato/negative thinker/junk food addict and give yourself the time you need to change.

If something you do has really got a hold on you (like being seriously inactive, for example) don’t expect it to disappear over night.  Just start chipping away, habit by habit, and keep your eye on the goal of becoming slimmer, fitter and healthier.

Take a Break Without the Kitkat

Every habit starts for a reason.  And the reason maybe a good one at the time, but perhaps it doesn’t make sense anymore.

Babies only eat when they are hungry but most of us have gradually been persuaded to eat for other reasons.  It’s no wonder that food holds a vice-like grip on our emotions and that our relationship with it is complicated.  And often the food we eat in non-hunger situations is sweet and fattening and leaves us feeling miserable and bloated.  What ever we eat when we aren’t hungry gets turned into fat and stored for later.

You were probably trained to abuse your digestive system from an early age.  Perhaps your mother was worried about you not eating, or your teacher tried to comfort you with a smartie when you grazed your knee, or you were given chocolate as a reward fro doing something well.  None of those agendas is relevant to you now.  Perhaps they never were.  But are you still living them to the letter?

And it’s not only personal problems that produce negative patterns.  Although it ended half a centaury ago, a lot of our eating habits have been influenced by the war.  Our parents or grandparents can remember rationing, even if we can’t.  food was short, anything sweet was in great demand and for years afterwards children were taught to empty plates if they wanted pudding.  Of course, I’m not suggesting we blame our excessive weight on Hitler or anyone else, just pointing out that if we’re still living by somebody else’s rules it’s time to ditch them and live by your own,

I have made a short film which follows me through a working week in my life.

Sit back and enjoy 

 Pressure to be Perfect

Everybody’s worried.  We are constantly reminded that being beautiful is more important than anything else in the world.  We are told that in order to be happy, successful respected and to have good relationships, we have to look good.  And, sadly, the desire to be beautiful undermines our self-esteem because it values us by standards we can’t control.  Age catches up with everybody in the end – although if you’re wealthy you can hold it at bay for a bit longer than everybody else.

Here are some alarming facts;

• • Over a twenty year period, the Playboy centrefold lost 25 pounds until she weighed 18 per cent less that the medical ideal for her age and height.  The weight of fashion models plummeted even further to 23 per cent below that of ordinary women.  In the Miss World contest a few years ago, the average contestant was below the US standard weight for anorexia according to height.

• • Recent BMA research found that many currently popular models and actresses only have 10-15 per cent of their body composition as fat compared with 22-26 per cent for a normal, healthy women.

• • It’s estimated that 85 per cent of Americans have dieted.  Hundreds of thousands of other women are undergoing cosmetic surgery, stomach stapling and liposuction.

• • In the 1994 Glamour survey of 33,000 women, three-quarters of the respondents regardless of age, income and education, reported feeling overweight, although only one quarter could be classified as truly overweight.

• • In a study done in a hall of distorting mirrors it was found that women were much more likely to believe the mirror that made them look fatter than the mirror that accurately reflected their size or made them thinner.

And the tragic part of it is ideal women get smaller, real women get bigger, so the dissatisfaction gap is widening all the time.

Winners and Losers

The reason why some people succeed and some people don’t is less to do with luck or talent than how they think.  Obviously, in sport, some people have more potential than others, but at the top, the physical gap between the champions and the also-rans is very small.  It’s the mindset that makes the difference. Small changes in the way we think can trigger big behaviour changes.

So what’s the difference that makes the difference between success and failure? Well, there isn’t one, there are quite a few.

Successful Slimmers know when they’ve had Enough

A lot of successful slimmers finally win their battle when they eventually get fed up with feeling fat and guilty.  They’ve had enough so they are left with no choice but to change.

Successful slimmers are willing to take responsibility for what they eat and how they live.  They don’t need external rules; they eat and exercise accordingly to how they feel.  And they can do that because they are back in touch with what their bodies need.

What do you think?

HI everyone 

There can only be one member of the month for this month and that's Mandie. She is an inspiration and goes from strength to strength.

Mandie has done so well on the programme and has given her words of wisdom and support to so many people on our blog weightlossjournals.petecohen.tv/.

You can hear Mandie in her words by listening to a pod-cast I recored with her recently.

Please make any comments for Mandie below