Mental Strength and Weight Loss

INSHAPE NEWS Q ‘n’ A

Reader Shane Williams asks:

“How do I stay mentally strong and win the weight loss battle?”

Nick Jack – CHEK Holistic Lifestyle Coach and Personal Trainer

This is a great question and if you are asking yourself this, then you are already halfway there.

Nick Jack is a qualified CHEK Exercise Coach, Level II Holistic Lifestyle Coach and personal trainer. He runs a personal training business called NO Regrets Personal Training.

Nick likes to lift weights, cycle, run and triathlon. He has played almost every sport at one time in his life. Now, he enjoys spending time walking his dog and relaxing with his wife and friends.

Dr Joann Lukin – Sport and Performance Psychologist

“How do I stay mentally strong and win the weight loss battle?”

Phil Owens – Leading Australian Hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner

Staying mentally strong to win the weight loss battle can sometimes seem hard to do.  Here are a seven simple tips and tricks that can give you the strength to win your battle.

1. Set a Positive Goal – Too often people want to ‘lose weight’, ‘stop being fat’ or ‘feel better about themself’.  The first step in winning the mental battle is to have a positively framed goal such as, “I want to be fit and healthy,  I want to look great in my size 12 jeans” or “I want to be a great role model for the kids.” This gives you something to strive towards, rather than to try and escape.

2. Understand Your Motivation –  Why is winning the battle important to you?  If you are doing it for somebody else, then expect to fail when the going gets tough.  When the goal is for you and the reason is compelling, then you will have the strength to win the battle.

3. Have Clear Skills and Strategies –  Having a clear ‘plan’ of how you will win the battle will help you stay on course.  Vague ideas like “I will eat better” are less helpful than a meal and exercise plan that is specific.

4. Understand the Obstacles – Life always throws up challenges.  If you want to win the battle, think about what obstacles might occur and what you will do to overcome them.  Such things as cakes at the office, being invited out to dinner, getting take-away with the family or even exercising when it’s raining are all things that can get in the way of your goal.  Work out how you will overcome these before they happen and you will sail right past them.

5. Line Up Your Supporters –  Ask yourself, “Who will be my cheer squad?  Who will you be accountable to?”  Often you can feel so alone, and yet, knowing your cheer squad and who you have to report to can help keep you be mentally strong.

6. Understand that Success is a Journey – If you know that success comes from a journey and not from the destination of perfection, then you can be mentally strong and ‘pick yourself up’ from any little slips and get right back on track.

7. Celebrate! – Set a timeframe for when you will celebrate.  Mark the calendar and reward your effort with something that gives you pleasure, and doesn’t work against your goal.  Having mini-milestone celebrations (for example, a nice massage). Milestones can help you stay strong and on the path to your goal.

Philip Owens is owner and director of Reflective Resolutions and is a leading Australian hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner based in Melbourne, Australia. Using scientifically validated and pragmatic approaches, Philip is a passionate about creating lasting change in and for his clients.

Working in his clinic with individuals and also with corporate clients, Philip’s international experience, state of the art training and processes have led to successful and happy clients all over the world.  Focusing on the issues of modern life, Philip routinely works with clients presenting with anxiety, fears and phobias, addictions, traumas, weight loss, insomnia and smoking cessation’.

Nikola Ellis – Yoga Instructor and Studio Owner

Before you can be mentally strong, you must learn how to relax. Sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? In actual fact, studies have shown that the kind of self control that you need to stick to your health regime is strengthened by relaxing the mind and the body.

Practices like yoga and meditation have been shown to change the way the brain works, for the better. These techniques activate the regions of the brain connected to awareness and concentration, allowing you to think and behave with greater strength of purpose. They also measurably reduce stress and increase levels of happiness, both of which are crucial in the fight against binge or comfort eating.

Yoga and meditation have the added benefit of teaching self-acceptance. That’s not the same as saying you shouldn’t bother trying to get in shape. It’s an important step along the way, getting rid of the negative self talk that can sabotage your best intentions. Learning simple techniques to calm the mind and relax the body also switches off the ‘flight or fright’ response, helping you to better digest the nutrients in your food and regulate your appetite.

When you are calm and relaxed, it’s easier to make the right choices. Think about the times when you let go of your fitness regime. It was often at times when you were really busy or under a lot of pressure, right? It only takes a few minutes a day to keep your body and mind balanced with a simple yoga routine and a short meditation. It’s a small investment that pays big rewards when it comes to staying mentally strong and physically fit.

Nikola Ellis is an experienced yoga teacher and studio owner that has an alternative take on the weight loss battle. She seeks to teach her clients a holistic approach to life and the battles that they encounter. Nikola is happiest when surrounded by her family and friends and when teaching yoga.

Sally Asher – Author, Health Scientist and Online Weight Loss Coach

I strongly believe that weight loss begins in the mind. We have to begin with a deep feeling of wanting to care for, respect and love our bodies. If we don’t value something, we don’t respect it and treat it well.

Ask yourself, “If I had a Ferrari, how would I treat it?” Then apply this notion to your body.

Our bodies are our temple. Believing that you are worthy of nutritious and delicious food and enjoyable exercise is a good place to start.

Wanting to lose weight for you, rather than to please others is important because at the end of the day, no-one else can do it for you. You are the one that organises when and what you are going to eat, and you are the one who decides when to put the fork down and push yourself away from the table. Only you can discover when enough-is-enough and become an expert at listening for that whisper of satiety (low carbohydrate way of eating).

Learning to put food into its proper perspective is crucial for life-long weight management. We need to learn to eat for physiological hunger, rather than turn to food for all sorts of emotional reasons. We all have needs such as relaxation, stress release, reward, and stimulation, as well as creativity, love and comfort. Food does not take care of these legitimate needs very well. You need to have a selection of ways you find joy in your life without eating. Knitting, scrapbooking, gardening, reading, and hiking are just a few possibilities. The possibilities are endless.

Staying mentally strong while you make changes to your eating and activity levels is about viewing the road ahead as a journey rather than a destination. We need to make changes we can live with and feel good about. So that we can sustain our good intentions. Eating to honour our health can truly be one of life’s great pleasures. When we view weight loss as a “battle”, we almost can’t wait for it to be over. Try to focus on improving your healthy behaviours every day, little-by-little, until eventually they become like second nature.

Change is never easy. But when the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change, you will find the mental strength you need to succeed at your weight loss goals, one step at a time.

Sally Asher is an author, health scientist and online weight loss coach who been featured in several radio shows, TV, blogs and magazines.

She wrote LOSING IT IN FRANCE: Les Secrets of the French Diet to share her story and help others discover the secret to living the good life while losing weight naturally.

Wendy Bentley – Body Pump and RPM Instructor, Public Speaker and Minset Specialist

Here’s a statement for you – the reason you are at your current weight and fitness level is because of your mind, not your body.

How does that sit with you?

Margi said it a number of times on ‘The Biggest Loser’ recently and Olympic gold medallist Kerry Pottharst agreed. It is the mind that is the hardest to conquer in the weight loss and fitness arena.
The actions you take on a daily basis all come down to the thoughts you think and the way those thoughts make you ‘feel’.

Here’s the Real Problem:

We all think in pictures. The famous line by mindset gurus like Tony Robbins the famous mindset guru said, “If I said, don’t think of a blue elephant, you would see an image of a blue elephant in your mind.”

When you have a thought,  for example, “I am overweight”, you will form an image in your mind of yourself as being overweight. As a result, the image centre of your brain sends a message to the hormonal centre of your brain called the limbic system. The limbic system sends all the messages from your brain out to every cell of your body through chemicals known as hormones.

Over time, the cells of your body grow what’s known as ‘receptors’ specifically designed for this ‘overweight’ chemical you are sending it so often. It works just like a lock and key. The receptors are the lock and the hormones are the key. The chemical (key) fits into the receptor (lock) and the message from the hormone enters your cell.

Once the hormones reach your cells, your cells receive the message that you are ‘overweight’ so they will reconfigure to work as though you are ‘overweight’. Soon enough you will be feeling really crappy about being overweight so your body sends a message back to your brain saying… “I’m feeling crappy, I must be overweight”.

Now guess what your brain does…

That’s right, it confirms that feeling all over again and produces an image of you being overweight, sends a message to the limbic system, and so the cycle goes on.

This is what’s otherwise known as the downward spiral.

To make matters worse, your brain continues to feed your body negative messages and as a result of feeding it the same message over and over again, your cells begin to become addicted to that hormonal message and it starts asking the brain for more of it. The result, is a habitual cyclic rotation between the brain and the body and an ingrained belief that you are ‘overweight’.

Once your thought becomes a belief, it is stored in the ‘subconscious’ part of your brain. This is the part of your brain that operates your heart beat, your breathing and all the other things you don’t have to think about. It’s also the reason why you can drive home from work and not even remember it as your subconscious brain knows what to do so well it took over while your conscious brain went elsewhere.

This is a little scary because once you have created a ‘belief’, you can run this ‘overweight’ program all day every day and not even be aware of it. You just keep on eating cream cakes wondering how it ever came to this.

Now let’s go back to that image of yourself when you were thinking about being overweight and let me ask you a question…

How do you expect to ever change the way you look and feel if the ‘image’ you hold of yourself stays the same? This is the very reason why so many people put weight straight back on after losing it all. They worked on the outside, but they paid no attention to the thoughts, images and feelings that were going on in their mind.

How to Fix It:

If you want to change the image you hold of yourself for good and become a lean, mean, motivated machine, you are going to have to work on your mind. It is not hard. As with everything, it simply takes commitment.

Now I know you have heard all this mumbo jumbo about ‘affirmations’ and telling yourself you are beautiful. This is all well and good, but you can say these words over and over again and if you don’t ‘feel’ it, it won’t do you any good. In fact, most of the time it just makes you feel worse.

The secret is you must attach a feeling to your words and thoughts.

Why create a feeling? Because it is the feeling that creates a new hormonal message to be sent out to the body so you can begin to automatically  or subconscious begin to behave like the fit, motivated machine that you want to be.

You want to stay mentally strong? Then change the way you think and feel.

Here’s some quick tips to help you:

1. Ask yourself, what is the greatest version of myself that I would like to be?
2. Now put on some nice music or just sit in silence and begin to think about that greatest version of you. What do you look like? How do you feel? What actions do you take every day?
3. Once you have really got in touch with this version of you, begin to really feel what it feels like to be that person now. Feeling so much you get goose bumps and tingle all over. If you can get to this point, you are literally changing the message being sent to your cells. But just remember, like trying anything new, it takes time, effort and consistency.

Continue practicing these 3 steps until you feel so in line with the new you that you start to get bored with the practice. Now, do it just for a little longer and you will successfully conquer your mind and created a whole new positive habit.

Wendy Bentley grew up in the fitness industry and did her first aerobics class with her mum at the age of seven. She has been a qualified personal trainer since 2005, and is a Body Pump and RPM instructor, an author, public speaker and a mindset specialist. Wendy is a qualified NLP practitioner and has completed the level 1-3 workshops with neuroscientist Dr Joe Dispenza. Her greatest passion is helping people to break out of their own thinking and create a new existence of health and wellbeing. In addition, as a result of a family tragedy Wendy created  a revolutionary product called Think for Fitness and she is studying a Bachelor of Health Science – Nutritional Medicine.

Mathew Skate – 2008 QLD Marathon Champion, Life Coach and Personal Trainer

Unfortunately there is no magic blue or red pill like in the Matrix that you can take and become your ideal you. The secret to remaining mentally strong and winning the weight loss battle is having complete awareness and accountability.

Sounds easy doesn’t it? For some people it is certainly easier than others.

How often have we heard about someone that is morbidly obese who has turned their life around and is now their ideal weight? Perhaps it was a photo that they saw of themselves or their doctor suggesting that their life expectancy has dramatically decreased.

What kick-starts them into action?

Firstly, many discover that they are highly leveraged to achieve a result. The likelihood of dying due to your weight is enough to kick-start many people to begin to develop healthy strategies in order to not only survive, but to also create a far greater quality of life. For others, the disgust of looking at themselves in a picture or home movie which is simply a visual representation of themselves can trigger a change in behaviour. For those who have amazing weight loss stories, those behavioural changes are often initiating contact with a healthcare professional or somebody they believe will help them achieve their goal.

Some great tips for you to remain mentally strong whilst losing weight are as follows:

1. Create goals that are measurable. We create goals for ourselves all the time but often forget to explore and write down the action steps we must take in order for those goals to become a reality.

2. Focus on being your ideal weight NOW. Many overweight and obese people focus on being fat all the time for most of the day. Shift your focus and visualise yourself as who you want to be when you have achieved your ideal weight.

3. Start a gratitude journal. A gratitude journal is a fantastic tool for you to raise awareness of what you are grateful for every single day. Rather than focusing on what you don’t like about yourself, instead focus on what you are grateful for.

4. Use positive self-talk. Positive self-talk is a fantastic way to reprogram how we think and believe about ourselves. Ditch the “it’s too hard” or “I can’t do that” statements and change them to “I can, I will, and I am” statements.

5. Remember that consistency is king. Consistency is the key as habits are created in around 21 days. Unfortunately, many people fail weight loss programs within one or two weeks. Just like we install new software on our computers, we can reprogram beliefs and behaviours which will create new action steps as long as we can commit to a routine for a period of time.

Finding a Life Coach who has experience with overweight clients is a great first step for anyone who needs to lose weight and has exhausted almost every diet plan or online program they can think of. Nutrition and exercise are simply tools that assist to maintain your weight and health. If you do not have the self-belief and self-love for yourself, then it doesn’t matter how good the nutrition or plan is or the exercise program. Your values and beliefs are the key element that will initiate action. Reprogram your mindset. This is step number one. A healthy diet and exercise routine will follow once you have reprogrammed those negative beliefs into empowering healthy behaviours.

Matt Skate is a life coach and personal trainer. He served in the Australian Army for 19 years as a physical training instructor and then started Weight to Life in 2011.

Matt assists people to lose weight and create a healthier lifestyle by helping them break through their negative beliefs, behaviours, and expectations. He loves to train in all forms and at all levels of fitness and was crowned the QLD Marathon champion in 2008.

Deborah Farrell – Coaching Psychologist

Losing weight is a journey, not just physically but mentally too. If it was as simple as just following a diet and exercising regularly you’d already be at your ideal weight. Starting with the right mental attitude will make a big difference.

Here are some useful tips for staying the distance:

1. Embrace Honesty – The first step in rectifying a problem is to admit that you have one. Stand naked in front of the mirror and make a decision. Then ask yourself, “Am I happy with the size I am?” Don’t sugar coat it. If you genuinely are comfortable, that’s great, then stop pretending you want to lose weight. If you’re not happy, own it, make a decision once and for all to do what it takes. We’re motivated away from pain or toward pleasure. If the pain of being overweight is less than the pleasure of chocolate cake, chocolate cake will win every time. So be honest with yourself. Being overweight not only affects your health, it impacts on every area of your life. Before eating that chocolate cake ask yourself, “How bad do you feel being overweight? What will losing that excess weight do for you? Is chocolate cake really better than all that? Really?”

2. Visualise the End Result – Make sure it’s realistically achievable. No matter how much I imagine it I’m never going to look like a 20-year-old goddess. Make the image powerful. Ask yourself, “How will I feel, what will I hear, what will I see?” Breathe it in and really feel it. Make the image big, bright and up close. Now imagine doing the actions along the way. If you can’t even imagine going for regular walks or saying no to that extra helping then you’re probably not going to do it in reality.

3. It’s a Marathon, not a Sprint and it will Take Time – Slow and steady wins the race. This is a long-term change in your life. Develop a lifestyle that’s supportive of your ideal weight. If you go off track – that’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up, it’s not the end of the game. Be kind to yourself and treat yourself as you would a friend. Ask yourself, “What can I do differently next time?” Learn from it and continue the journey.

4. It’s Actually the Journey that Counts, not the Destination – To successfully change yourself on the outside you have to change yourself on the inside. You need to break bad habits and sabotage patterns, develop new ways of thinking and reprogram your brain to make      conscious choices. E.g. Are you actually hungry? What do you really need right now?

5. Have a Good Support System – Whether it’s a friend, a weight-loss centre or personal coach it’s important to have someone to be  accountable to, who’ll empathise with the difficult times and cheer the successes.

6. Celebrate the Grams, and the Kilos will take care of themselves -Every kilo is a step closer and acknowledging the wins will keep you much more motivated than focusing on not having achieved the total result yet. See it getting closer. Celebrating the small wins will make the biggest difference to your mindset and your motivation to continue. Law of attraction – you get more of what you focus on.

Deborah Farrell is a Coaching Psychologist that works with clients who are feeling stuck, whether it be in regard to work, relationships or personal issues such as weight loss.

Deborah helps her clients focus on their goals, identify and clear the blocks and sabotage patterns, and develop an achievable plan to move forward into the life they dream of.

Jaime Morales – Manhattan Fitness Expert and Motivator

Staying mentally strong to win the weight loss battle requires a lot of self-love and self-respect for oneself. Start by digging deep inside and learning who you really are and who you want to be.

To achieve a state of balance between exercise, eating and daily life you must master self-control and controlling actions between the mouth and the mind. Every action, every word said and every thought that goes into the mind should be acknowledged and improved daily.

Always look for motivators and good influences in your life. Find things to do to take your mind off of the weight loss goals. Exercise daily. Eat smaller meals more often. And always start with the end goal in mind.

Jaime Morales is fun, hardworking and passionate today, but growing up as an overweight kid with low self-esteem wasn’t an easy challenge for him to overcome. Early on he found comfort in eating (a lot), watching too much television and isolating himself. But the world opened up for Jaime when his parents encouraged him to take on the sports of swimming and triathlon. After a few false starts, he found that exercise helped him to discover who he was…and who he could become.

Years later, Jaime decided to turn his personal passion into a professional one, and today he is a fitness expert and motivator at the top fitness club in Manhattan. Jaime works with motivated New Yorkers looking to improve their lives from the inside out and assists them to create new ways of thinking, behaving and exercising so that they reach a deeper personal satisfaction and better body and spirit. Jaime is always there with support, sound advice and positive reinforcement, and he enjoys figuring out what training style works best for each client. And it makes his day, every day.

Kris Etheridge –  Sports Movement, Strength Conditioning and, Balance and Agility Trainer

Winning the weight loss battle comes down to the reasons you have for wanting to get in shape and then making exercise and healthy eating a part of what you do each day, rather than something you do to lose weight. Take brushing your teeth for example. It isn’t exciting or fun to brush your teeth, but you never fail to do it. Why? Because you have made it a habit, and it is now just something you do each day.

Look at your exercise and eating in the same way. If you make exercise and healthy eating just a part of what you do each day, rather than something you do when you want to lose weight, you will have long term success and a healthier life.

Now ask yourself: Why do I want to lose weight? Is it because Your partner keeps nagging you to? Your doctor said you have to? Your jealous of someone else? You want to get revenge on an ex?If it’s any of the above reasons, then I’m sorry to tell you, but you’re never going to keep the weight off.

At the time, these reasons seem like great reasons to get healthy and lose the weight, but the thing is these motivators are short-lived and won’t be enough to motivate you when times get tough or over time, say six months from now.

Let’s face it, dieting sucks. It often means going months without your favorite foods, limiting your alcohol intake and working hard in the gym on a regular basis, week in and week out, to produce any kind of results. So, fleeting emotions such as gilt, revenge or jealousy are not going to keep you lean and healthy. We need to look deeper and find out why you really want to lose the weight.

Ask yourself these questions, do I want to live long enough to see your kids grow up? Play with your kids like the other parents do? Stop being a spectator and have the energy to do the things you want? Have the confidence to go out and meet your Mr. or Mrs. right? Be able to walk into a regular store and be able to wear anything off the rack and look great in it? These are the reasons that get people out of there rut, the reasons that change people’s lives.

Why do these reasons work? It’s simple, these motivators don’t go away until you get to your goal.

You have two options, you can either give in and fall in to a heap or you can start making changes to your life. It won’t be easy and at times you will want to throw in the towel, but nothing worth having in this life comes easy and this is no different. If you can pull it together and make healthy eating and exercise a part of your daily life you can become that person who changed their life, the one out of the millions that did it, the one that succeeded. And that tastes better than any food or beverage ever can.

Kris Etheridge is a Melbourne based health and fitness expert that has delivered over 20,000 personal training sessions in the last 10 years. Kris has worked with world champion athletes and numerous well known celebrities. He is currently working on his first female weight loss book, which is due out later in 2012.

As a fitness expert, Kris is always looking for ways to help more people live a healthier life. He is a certified personal trainer,  sports movement, strength conditioning and, balance and agility trainer,  a  level one and two boxing and Thump boxing trainer, level one and two kettle-bell instructor, a Rip 60 certified instructor and a certified Cirq instructor.

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Disclaimer: The information published in this column is based on each of the author’s own professional and personal knowledge and opinion. This information and opinion is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment of any manner. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding any medical condition and consult a qualified medical professional before beginning any nutritional or exercise program. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on InShape News.