Be the Weight You Want - Part 2

Hello and welcome back after the Easter Break.  I hope you had a wonderful time.

In my last post I said that I would let you into the secrets of naturally thin people ...

Basically, naturally thin people eat what they want.  They don’t deny themselves.  If they want something whether it’s chocolate, crisps, and chips they have it.  They don’t count calories and they don’t feel guilty when they’ve eaten something.  So what’s the difference between them being able to that and not put weight on and you “only have to look at a cream cake and you put pounds on”?  The difference is the amount that they eat.

Naturally slim people eat whatever they want but the main difference is THEY DON’T EAT AS MUCH AS THEY CAN POSSIBLY FORCE DOWN!  Because they aren’t denying themselves anything, their subconscious mind doesn’t tell them to “each as much as you can of this, because you don’t know when you’re going to have it again!”  Sound familiar?  Is that how you react around your ‘forbidden foods’?

As I said in the previous post, as soon as you cut something out of your diet and don’t allow yourself to have it, you begin to almost have an obsession about that food.  You can’t stop thinking about it and when you finally give in (because you always will), you can’t stop eating it.  Undoubtedly you don’t need it and actually if you ate it consciously instead of cramming it into your mouth, you’d find that you really didn’t need that much of it to feel satisfied.

Back to naturally think people ... because they don’t deny themselves anything, they don’t have the cravings around any foods and therefore don’t have the urge to cram as much of that particular food into their mouths as they can possible eat.  They eat whatever they want, just in moderation.  They enjoy the food that they eat and because they aren’t putting any emphasis on their even being ‘forbidden foods’ they don’t have any unhealthy obsessions around them.

So, if you really want to eat something that you’ve considered ‘forbidden’ have it, but eat it consciously, don’t just cram it in until you can’t eat anymore (I’ll be talking much more about this in my next post) and you’ll find that you actually won’t eat as much of it as you might have done previously and may even wonder why you put such emphasis and obsessiveness around it!

Water and Weight Loss

Nine times out of 10, when we feel that we are hungry we aren’t – we are actually thirsty but our bodies just can’t tell the difference between us being thirsty or hungry.  Before our mouths go dry through lack of water (you should never get to this point because when your mouth goes dry it shows that you are already dehydrated) we experience a feeling of mild hunger ... it doesn’t mean that we are hungry, it can quite often mean that we’re thirsty!

So when you get that feeling of mild hunger, have a drink before you head for something to eat.  If, after having a big glass of water (preferably) you are still hungry – not emotionally hungry – then have something to eat.

I know you hear over and over that we should drink more water but really, if you can drink 1.5 to 2 litres of water a day, it really will help you lose weight because you won’t be eating when you think you’re hungry but you actually are thirsty.


Exercise and Weight Loss

I can almost hear you a lot of you groan as you read that, but exercise really doesn’t have to be doing 3 hours in the gym every day.  You’re setting yourself up for failure if you expect to achieve that kind of goal.  All I’m talking about is doing a bit more than you would usually do.  That could be:

• Getting off a bus two stops earlier and walking
• Walking up stairs rather than taking the lift
• Walking to your kids school to pick them up
• Walking for 15 minutes each day (you don’t have to do a full on ‘run’ – although you may find that you build up to that)

Just moving your body a bit more each day will make a massive difference.  Not only will you feel healthier and burn more calories but you will be releasing the ‘feel good’ endorphins which are proven to give us the ‘feel good factor’.  There are recent studies that have shown that the release of endorphins after exercise can be a massive factor in overcoming physiological issues such as mild/moderate depression and stress as it lifts the mood, burns off any unwanted chemicals (eg adrenalin that we release when we’re stressed) and generally makes us feel much better.

So, get your trainers on, put some good music on your iPod and get walking.  Everyone can fit in 15 minutes a day ... find a friend to do it with and that way you’ll encourage each other and will be far less likely to let other things get in the way.

In my next post I’ll give you the full details of the weight loss programme.  What to do and how to do it.  So keep tuned.  Until then, have a fantastic day.  I hope the weather is as good where you are as it is here!

Jo