Every change, including losing weight, comes with a price tag.
It is not always easy. It is not always pleasant. If it would be easy and pleasant we would all be perfectly healthy and slim. But changing habits is certainly necessary if you want to enjoy a long and healthy life with as little pain as possible and with a beautiful slim body. Just think about the rewards you will get. Imagine how you will look and feel like once you will be slim. This vision will help you to hold firm through your habit changing process.
Brain scientists say that if we want to eliminate a negative habit, then we will have to leave it out for at least 21 days without fail. After three weeks it will become easier to apply it, and soon after it will be normal and easy to do, and you will have formed a new habit. All you have to do is just getting over the first 21 days. Once you have passed those successfully, the rest will be easy and it will not cost you any energy to keep the new positive habit or to do without the negative, fattening habit.
The longer you do without a negative behavior the easier and more automatic it will become. After a few months you will not have to think about it anymore and you will hardly miss the old habit. And soon you will start feeling a difference in your weight even if you didn’t do anything else for your weight loss.
Sometimes it’s easier to get rid of a bad habit when we replace it by a positive one. For instance, if you want to eliminate soda pop, you can replace it by good-quality water. Or, if you want to quit smoking, you could jog every day, and with each day you will be happier that you don’t smoke because you’ll realize how much easier breathing is.
My client Nancy had a big problem with potato chips. Every evening she and her husband ate a large bag of chips (or probably more than one). Nancy was ready to stop that fattening behavior, but her husband wasn’t, although both were obese. He didn’t mind being so fat that he could hardly move, and he didn’t mind his wife being fat. He just insisted to have his potato chips while watching TV. And that is already more than a habit – it is an addiction.
Nancy was willing and ready to change that terrible habit, but she didn’t know how to be strong enough to let her husband eat all the chips alone. So I recommended her to make healthy chips for herself until she’d be ready to be completely without. And that helped. The steps were to replace the fattening habit with a very similar but a healthy version firsst. Then in a second step she learned through some behavioral modifications not to eat between the meals at all, and then she began to lose weight even without a diet.
No matter how hard such a habit-change may be at the beginning, being in such a stressful habit costs much more time, energy and most of the time also money.
In my first article of this Weight Loss Habit trilogy I promised you to share with you an under-used habit-hack for easier weight loss. Earlier I mentioned the 21-day rule. That rule says that whatever we do for 21 consecutive days without fail will become a habit within these 3 weeks. I tried it many times and it works.
One of the biggest problems regarding habit change is that most people go on a diet and are supposed to eliminate ALL their bad habits at once. And soon they develop withdrawal symptoms because many of these foods contain addictive substances. And because nobody has such a strong willpower they soon give up.
But what if I told you that it’s easier by simply eliminating or replacing one fattening habit after the other? You may argue that you want to lose your weight faster. But how is losing weight faster if you will fall back into your old habits very soon and then gain your lost weight back? Since when is going 1 step forward and 2 steps back faster?
Using the 21-Day principle requires much less will power than any diet. You decide to simply change 1 single habit and consequently stick to it for the following 21 days. This simple step reduces the required willpower drastically.
21 days are a relatively short time during which even a person with lessittle will power can stay on track. It’s forseeable. It’s long enough to make a significant difference and short enough to follow through with it.
Like promised in my first article of this series I have created a tool for you, the Weight Loss Habit Power Tool: A Simple Way To Turn Fattening Habits Into SlimmingHabits(available on Amazon soon). In the meantime you can check out my free report about Habit Transformation. Free Download below, by clicking on the image:
In my first of this 3-part article series I talked about will power and how habits occur. Today we are going to talk about the 9 most common fattening habits. Some of them you may not even realize as contributing factors.
9 Fattening Habits To Get Rid Of First For The Sake Of Your Slim Body
One of the very most important and crucial things you want to avoid when you are overweight is:
adding more acidity and toxins to the load that you already have.
The real culprits are toxins and acidity. We have talked about this topic very in-depth in other occasions. So for today I don’t want to talk about acid and toxins. I just want to mention it because that’s what leads to weight gain. The poor habits lead to an accumulation of more acids and toxins – toxins and acid inevitably lead to weight gain and prevent you from losing it for good.
By avoiding the following 9 things you can be sure that you won’t make things worse than they already are through your bad habits. And eliminating them leads to direct and to indirect weight loss.
Many times weight gain goes along with toxic stress and mental stress (negative thinking). The good news is that we can get a handle on both. Both are entirely in your own hands and your own responsibility and thus also in your own power.
Weight issues therefore are always in your own hands. Being overweight calls for a change of your habits – ALWAYS.
The 9 most important negative habits to eliminate for the sake of a slim, healthy, and vibrant body are:
Weighing
Counting Calories
Soft drinks
White flour
Refined sugar
Artificial sweeteners
Low fat and ‘lite’ products
Smoking
Fighting your weight
1.) Weighing
It’s a natural law that the more we focus on weight, the more our weight will stubbornly remain or even increase. Whatever you focus on, you will attract AND increase. If you focus on your extra weight, you will get more extra weight. If you focus on what you’re not allowed to eat, you will find yourself craving more of exactly that food.
If you want to not only lose a few pounds but also keep your weight off, you have to stop focusing on what you don’t want and, instead, start focusing on what you do want. Therefore one of the first negative habits to quit is weighing. In my courses and workshops my participants are not allowed to weigh. This is a crucial part of your long-term weight loss success. I know most overweight people are afraid that if they don’t weigh, their weight will go through the roof. This can only happen, if you continue with your old poor habits. And without changing some of the habits the weight will go up anyway, whether or not you weigh. And it will bounce back after each diet.
2.) Counting Calories
In several of my videos I talked about why counting calories is nonsense. So I don’t want to get into detail here. All I want to say is, please consider that calories are not equal. Calories only show how fast a particular food can be burned in a pot. But your body is not a pot. Your body needs a lot of vital nutrients.
It should be obvious to you that the quality factor regarding food is much, much more important than the quantity factor. For example, it’s impossible to get fat if you eat too much salad.
Counting calories puts your focus on weight gain and not on your goal. Therefore it has the same effect on your brain like weighing.
So stop counting calories. This alone can save you a lot of time – time you can use to go for a walk, for instance. Instead simply follow your common sense and eat healthy.
3.) Soft Drinks
Soda drinks are TOXIC! If you have any form of rheumatism, arthritis, weight problems, cellulite, stiffness, or disease (or if you simply want to remain healthy) then you cannot afford to drink anysoft drinks, because they are very acidic and loaded with toxins. And it doesn’t matter whether they contain sugar or not, not even when they contain so-called natural sweeteners. You really should strictly avoid them. If I were you, I would not allow any exceptions here. Soft drinks make your body more acidic and this is exactly what you absolutely cannot afford to have. As long as you drink any kind of pop it’s close to impossible to lose weight. In fact, you may continue to gain weight. And diet pop has been proven to be worse than regular pop. I know dozens of people who only lost weight by simply following this one recommendation and nothing else. Ignore this point to your own peril.
White flour and any product that contains some of it are acid-forming and thus force your body to create fat in order to store the acid away in your soft tissue where it can do the least harm. By avoiding it and any bakery goods containing white flour, you help your body tremendously. Although we need carbohydrates, we do not need these kinds of carbs, and we don’t need as much as we have been told.
Also, we do not need any cereals at all. Actually our stomach is not even made for digesting cereal. We don’t have a four-chamber stomach like cows and horses do. Especially avoid all boxed cereals. They are made with a process called “extrusion” which creates toxic byproducts.
My suggestion: If you absolutely have to have bread, buy products made of buchwheat or organic whole grain rye flour such as European-style rye bread. Rye bread has a higher nutritional value, and although it’s more expensive, you need less of it, and therefore save money. Eat that in moderation.
5.) Refined Sugars
White refined sugar is something our body can hardly deal with and we really do not need any of it. It’s highly acidic and very detrimental. When we eat sugar we are literally asking for trouble. Our body is constructed to build sugars from healthy, untreated carbohydrates (fruits and vegetables). Give your body enough of them and you will not miss refined sugar at all. If you want to, you can replace white sugar with stevia, xylothol, local raw honey or pure maple syrup. They are not only healthier, but also taste much better.
Now, avoiding white sugar also means to avoid any prepared foods that contain it. Don’t eat any prepared and processed food at all. That way you will not only eat healthier but also save a lot of money at the same time.
6.) Artificial Sweeteners
Although artificial sweeteners do not have any calories; that does not mean that they are harmless or helpful for your weight loss. They are highly toxic and our body has very difficult time getting rid of them. They simply add up in our body. So just in case, while reading our last paragraph, you thought that you are smart and use artificial sweeteners, stop and think again.
The toxicity of aspartame is not the only problem.
Did you know that artificial sweeteners are used to fatten pigs before they are slaughtered? Probably not. Yes, they are used for pigs because – are you sitting down? – because they increase the appetite. It’s been proven in scientific studies that the people who used artificial sweetener in lemonade ended up eating more food than those who drank sugar-sweetened lemonade, because it stimulated their appetites. Unless you want to gain weight, I do not think that this would be desirable for you. If you want to sweeten anything there are plenty of healthy and tasty natural alternatives available. I personally prefer xylothol as number one choice.
7.) Low-Fat and ‘Lite’ Products
I have already said earlier that we should only eat products that are not prepared in anyway. That means fresh. Any products that are low-fat contain sugar, artificial sweeteners, or some other artificial substances that pollute your body. They are not harmless. Some can affect your health badly. Plus they add to the acidity and therefore force the body to gain weight instead of losing it.
If you’re serious about losing your weight for good, for you the ‘diet‘ really is to only use fresh food: organic vegetables, herbs, vegetables juices, and fruits; whole grain cereals you cook yourself (in moderation and only if you’re not gluten intolerant); meat and eggs from grass-fed, free-range, organically fed animals; wild caught fresh water fish; organic virgin coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil and water. As soon as food goes through any preparation process it is not as valuable anymore and in many cases “enriched” with substances your body cannot deal with at all. It stores these substances primarily in your fat cells. A very welcome extra benefit of cooking from scratch is that it will save you a lot of money.
I know it’s very convenient and once or twice a month I buy some ravioli in bags, but they just don’t taste good anymore. I found out that cooking healthy and from scratch can take as little as 5-15 minutes. Besides, you can cook large quantities and freeze some portions for a later use. It’s really all about changing habits.
8.) Smoking
If you’re a smoker, I believe that to quit smoking is the greatest favor you could do yourself and your body and especially when your body is already so acidic that you are overweight.
If you are a smoker you have no idea how much this harms your body, otherwise you would not do it. When you are overweight your body is already too acidic and loaded with toxins, waste, fat, heavy metals, and old stored-up water. There are enough toxins and heavy metals in the air, in the soil, in the water and in the food. You really don’t need or want any more of them through anything avoidable like smoking.
I was a chain smoker over 20 years ago, and my biggest fear was to gain weight after quitting, but I didn’t. So that fear was completely useless.
9.) Fighting Your Weight
Fighting against something has the exact same effect like focusing on the negative – it IS a form of focusing on the negative. And whatever you focus on you increase.
By fighting against your weight you’re losing precious energy you would otherwise need for your weight loss success – for what you really want. By fighting against the current situation you give up your power and make yourself feel weak and powerless. And worst of all, it’s getting you nowhere.
So these are 9 of some of the most detrimental fattening habits I want to encourage you to eliminate or replace by positive habits. We are going to eliminate more of them in my upcoming 30-Day Triple Power Weight Loss Challenge – Habits.
In my third and final article of this trilogy I’m going to talk about how to eliminate bad, fattening habits in an easier and faster way – a way that requires far less will power than any diet you may have followed. In that article I’m going to give you a link where you can download my Weight Loss Habit Hack Tool.
Part 3 of this Weight Loss Habits Trilogy will follow soon. Please watch out.
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Will power is not the solution to lasting weight loss. But how could thate myth that losing weight requires tons of will power occur?
In my 31 years of coaching overweight women I can tell you that overweight women have more will power than they believe. They go on a diet two to three times a year, they fast, they starve, they crave, they weigh every day, they follow pretty much every advice they can get (no matter how much sense it makes), they lose weight and gain it back, they try again, count calories, weigh their food, purchase expensive diet products, cook two different meals, one for them and one for their families…and after they have gained the lost weight back they start all over again, year after year, until they are so disappointed that they stop trying.
So what is this? Will power. Tremendous will power.
Diets require insane will power. The sad truth is that you only need a lot of will power when you’re on the wrong weight loss path and when you don’t know how to use your inner power to achieve your goal.
But how about changing some really bad habits?
I don’t have to tell you how sticky bad habits can be and how bad habits can completely sabotage your weight loss success. So I have decided to show you a simple yet little used trick to replace fattening habits with positive and slimming habits easier. You CAN change poor habits without a ton of willpower. More about that in one of my next parts of this series.
The topics we are going to cover in this 3-part article series are:
…how you can eliminate the worst fattening habits and easily overcome some of the major stumbling blocks
…how to easily implement some very strong slimming habits that make losing weight easier and faster
…how to reduce the required willpower to achieve your desired weight goal easier and faster
…the 9 most common fattening habits
…and all that WITHOUT dieting 😉
So the topic of this 3-part article series is how to replace fattening habits with slimming habits without a lot of willpower…and without a diet.
Is being overweight really the result of bad habits or is it a habit in itself?
I’m going to answer that in a minute. First I want to share how bad habits can become bad habits.
Every day we make choices in our lives and they are not always helpful or beneficial. We make choices without even realizing that they are not the best for us. And when we get sick and overweight after a while we often wonder why. It may seem like undeserved or without a good reason. But it never is. Every condition in our life we have attracted through thousands and thousands of conscious or subconscious choices we have made in the past.
When we start looking at our habits honestly we suddenly realize that not all of them are good and helpful. But first let us look at how habits can occur: the good ones as well as the negative ones.
Whenever we see, hear, experience, say, think, feel or imagine something, our brain immediately registers that information and it will be stored in our subconscious mind as a FACT, no matter whether it’s true or not. The more such information is repeated, the more it becomes a pattern, then a habit and finally reality…without fail. This is true for negative as well as for positive habits.
This is a very important function of the brain, because your subconscious mind takes over and does the things you do repeatedly so that your brain is free to deal with new and unexpected situations. If we would have to think about everything we do during any given day we would get crazy or at least have a nervous breakdown.
The same is true with our thoughts and feelings. When we repeat the same thoughts and feelings over and over again, the subconscious mind will take over after a while and bring the outer results automatically without us realizing how this could happen. This is a great mechanism, but also has consequences for us we do not really want nor appreciate.
For instance, if you think mainly about being overweight, diets, how food can make you fat, how much you hate your body as it is, you will eventually gain more weight. You then think again about being overweight and you will experience the symptoms accordingly. This thinking and feeling and remembering about your weight becomes so automated after a certain time that you do not even realize what you are actually doing and creating for your life. And the more often you repeat certain thoughts and behaviors, the more your thinking just gets on “auto-pilot” and several aspects are repeated like a CD that is played over and over again without you even noticing because it became so normal.
As a matter of fact overweight people think about their weight all the time. They just have become so used to it that they do not even realize their thinking anymore. And the thinking and feeling about their weight moves to a more subconscious level. If you think mainly about your weight, you will eventually have weight issues…and more and more of them.
It also works pretty much the same with the food we eat, just on the physical level. Our body creates enzymes to digest the food we eat regularly, and it stops creating enzymes for food we never or seldom eat. That’s why we often tend to think that the unhealthy food we so like were better for our body than the healthy alternatives. Of course, it’s not, but our bodies simply found a way to deal with these unhealthy or toxic substances. And when we change our poor eating habits to healthy eating, it takes our body a while to get used to food it never had before and start creating those digestive enzymes again.
So we can really say that being overweight in itself is a bad habit – it has become a habit of our thinking, feeling, acting and even the body. That’s one big reason why losing weight and keeping it off can be so darn hard. It has become automated.
The bad habit of being overweight is not only in the eating, drinking and exercising, but also in the thinking, behaving, and feeling. One of my former participants used to enter her gate of the yard side-wise even long after she had lost all her excess weight what, of course, created a new reality for her.
The good news is that habits can be changed. And that process is quite simple, not always easy yet simple. Some habits can be changed quickly and easily, and for other habits it takes longer and more determination.
In one of my next parts of this article series I’m going to talk about a habit hack that makes changing bad habits and implementing new ones easy with much less will power. In the next part I’m going to talk about 9 of the worst fattening habits.
My client Nancy had a big problem with potato chips. Every evening she and her husband ate a large bag of chips (or probably more than one). Nancy was ready to stop that fattening behavior, but her husband wasn’t, although both were obese. He didn’t mind being so fat that he could hardly move, and he didn’t mind his wife being fat. He just insisted to have his potato chips while watching TV. And that is already more than a habit – it is an addiction.
One of the biggest problems regarding habit change is that most people go on a diet and are supposed to eliminate ALL their bad habits at once. And soon they develop withdrawal symptoms because many of these foods contain addictive substances. And because nobody has such a strong willpower they soon give up.
https://www.sheslimeasy.com/7_weight_loss_habits_lm1a
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Fighting against something has the exact same effect like focusing on the negative – it IS a form of focusing on the negative. And whatever you focus on you increase.
