and challenges with improved confidence and vigour.
ACTION POINT 7: BE AN EARLY BIRD
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO
Each day, aim to do the things you least want to do, but have to do that day, first. It’s like a child who leaves their favourite food on the plate till last and then eats it. If you tackle things in this way, you won’t need to nag yourself all day about not getting it done – instead you will be able to deal with it and your positive action will empower you through the other activities in your day.
THE LOGIC
As well as avoiding the negative situation of having something unpleasant looming all day long, research shows that we are better able to deal with challenging situations in the morning, as levels of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline are naturally higher at this time. So make the most of your biochemicals!
THE BOTTOM LINE
Acknowledge that sadness, fear and other negative emotions can help you learn and heal, as well as helping you to celebrate and get the most out of life. Once you have made friends with the enemy you are ready for step five.
Case Study: Nikki’s Story
Nikki, who was a victim of physical abuse, put weight on as a protective mechanism, a way of hiding behind the pain. She felt that if she made herself larger then the pain would be less and if she made herself, in her eyes, less attractive, then the physical abuse would stop. Repeatedly Nikki used this strategy whenever she hit difficult times in her life – when she was unhappy in her job, in her other personal relationships, had a row with her family or felt depressed from a family bereavement. Only when Nikki began to acknowledge what had happened to her, could she begin to see that overeating was her way of dealing with it. In this way she began the process of understanding her feelings and building her self-esteem. By mastering this step, Nikki went on to lose 18 pounds and drop 3 dress sizes.
Case Study: Elaine’s Story
Elaine had always been slim and sporty as a teenager and in the early stages of her relationship with Chris. When Chris was asked to move to a new town with his job, he assumed Elaine would go with him and threatened to end the relationship if she didn’t. As a result, Elaine gave up her own job and moved. However, with no social circle of her own and no work, her confidence suffered and she soon began taking comfort in food. Having gained nearly 13kg/2 stone, she found Chris was constantly criticizing her appearance and their sex life became nonexistent. To make matters worse, he hardly included her in his own social life. It wasn’t until Elaine had to move back to her home town to look after her mother, who was ill, that she was able to look at the situation calmly and see that her eating was a way of hiding her fear that without Chris she was nothing. She began exercising again and joined a slimming club and is now restarting her life without Chris.
There are two phases to this strategy: the first is establishing where you are and the second is doing a reality check.
You may have an event in the not too distant future that you want to lose weight for – perhaps it’s a wedding or a beach holiday. You know what you want to achieve – where you want to get to – but, before you embark on any plan, you need to establish where you are right here, right now. Losing weight and keeping it off is about what you do in the future, but it is also what you can do at this very moment, right here, right now. Yes, long-term weight loss is about what you carry on doing, but many people live in a twilight zone of not appreciating what they can do now, in this actual moment, to improve their health, feel better about themselves and lose weight.
Focusing too much on the future causes unhappiness because it prevents us from enjoying the moment. The brain is whirling ahead, thinking about dinner that night or worrying about little Johnny’s report at the parents’ evening next week, or your appraisal with your boss at the end of the month. All this chatter going on in the brain can dull your experience and enjoyment of what is happening now. It builds to create a toxic thought process that blocks your enjoyment of the moment and masks your perception of what you could do right now to help you towards your goal.
Once you have mastered the here and now skill, dropping a size becomes a sequence of ‘now’ moments that act as building blocks to successful long-term weight loss. When you have accepted that life is a series of ‘nows’, all joined up, you need to do a reality check and think about what is possible right now in terms of your weight loss efforts. Losing weight and keeping it off is a journey. It may be that life is very hectic for you at the current time – perhaps you’re starting a new job and you’ve got the builders in – and you’re not in the right ‘space’ to lose weight with as much effort or as fast as you would like. That’s all right – don’t beat yourself up about it. While I don’t want to give you an excuse to put off what you can do today until tomorrow, there are many situations that can make it difficult to drop that size as quickly as you would like. That’s just life – you need to do what you can when you can. In fact, perhaps you need to simply accept that staying the same size, rather than gaining a size, is a more realistic interim goal.
If you’re trying to lose weight in a specific time frame and your life is not in the right space to allow you to achieve it, you need to change the time span you set yourself to lose that size.
Step five action aims are about learning to live in the NOW.
ACTION POINT 1: FORGIVE YOURSELF
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO
Start right now by saying sorry to yourself. Say sorry for the way you have given yourself a hard time over an issue in your life, no matter how big or small. For example, perhaps you feel that your lack of time and effort led to the breakdown of your relationship or you feel bad that you got caught up at work and were late picking up your child. Stop beating yourself up over it – acknowledge why it happened and forgive yourself for it. Then move forward.
THE LOGIC
Criticizing and blaming yourself is like telling your subconscious mind that you are a bad human being – and it will believe you. Everyone screws up sometimes, but the important thing is to acknowledge the error or mishap and move on. The scary fact is that giving yourself a hard time and getting stressed over it can, in the long term, make you fat. Negative emotions, such as depression, guilt and cynicism, are associated with higher levels of abdominal fat according to a study from Pennsylvania State University. Harbouring negative feelings won’t help you achieve anything, but building and nurturing your selfesteem will.
Feeling guilty or angry with yourself about small things or day-to-day events is one thing, but if your whole life is dominated by negative emotions related to something that has taken place in your life, you may need the help of a counsellor or therapist in addressing these issues. However, remember one thing; whatever you did then, and whatever you do now, you have a responsibility to yourself to do the best you can – with the resources available to you – to boost your self-worth.
ACTION POINT 2: EMBRACE REALITY
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO
This is about doing a reality check to see where you are in your life right now. Perhaps you want to drop a size in two weeks, but since you have a major report to write for work, your tax return to do, and oh – you forgot – the in-laws are coming to stay …. it really isn’t a realistic