The Diet Guy

Whats The Benefit Of Being Slim ?

So what's your answer?

What is your initial answer?

Now I have asked you this question loads of times over the past couple of years of doing these newsletters but do you ever actually go inside and answer it?

I talk to people all the time who say they can't understand themselves, they don't know why they eat too much, they don't know why they sabotage themselves, they don't understand why they can't get motivated, they are out of sync with themselves.

But the answers are in there! Remember you are the expert of you, you just need to spend some time, and effort, and work through with yourself what it really is all about.

Back in 2006 I fell to bits. I got to goal weight and I literally exploded my life, I was written off work, split up with my wife for a while, and basically went and hid in a barn in Lowestoft and just wanted the world to end. I couldn't cope with life without being able to use food to help me, I didn't realise just how much food was part of my life and how I used food inappropriately. But I was then sent to experts, I got a counsellor, I got a doctor, I was given loads of pills and everyone 'understood' how I felt.

I became a victim and I allowed myself to go down and down into a pit of despair, but then one day I decided to do something different. I decided to have a chat with myself, deal with the real stuff and then to move onwards and upwards. I threw away the pills, cancelled my appointment with the counsellor and decided to smile for a living.

I sat for an evening with my laptop and wrote out loads of question and answered them honestly. I have shared some of them with you before.

1. Stated in the positive, what specifically do you want? (Not what you don't want)

2. Where are you now in relation to that goal?

3. What will you see and hear when you have that goal?

4. What will you feel when you have that goal?

5. Do you truly believe you will ever have that goal?

6. What steps do you need to take to get to that goal?

7. How will you know when you have reached your goal?

8. What will getting to goal actually allow you to do?

9. Are you sure you want this?

10. Is this only for you?

11. Are you in charge of the result?

12. Where, when, how and with whom do you want this result?

13. Are there any drawbacks of getting this result?

14. What personal resources do you have that will allow you to achieve this result?

15. Do you know anyone else who has achieved the same goal?

16. What resources did they have that you can use?

17. Imagine you have that goal now, what resources did you use to get that goal?

18. Imagine you have that goal now, what advice can you give yourself now to make the journey as easy as possible?

19. What will happen if you get your goal?

20. What won't happen if you get your goal?

21. What will happen if you don't get your goal?

22. What won't happen if you don't get your goal?

Now for me the questions were more around what did I want to do with my life and where was I going but being honest with yourself is the key to all of this.

So what, for you, is the benefit of being slim long term? Are those benefits really strong enough that you won't overeat? I have always said it is hard to get excited about living to 95 when you are 35 and therefore apart from 'being healthy and living longer' then what else does it mean to you?

So my advice for this week is to get answering some questions, by putting some time aside and some honesty. Most people spend more time planning their shopping list for the supermarket than they do their lives so I recommend some 'me' time!

To Diet Or Not To Diet ?

I was talking with someone on Facebook last night about whether to diet or not!

Now normally when you need something then you just go and do it, so if you needed to fix a broken window then you would just put a new piece of glass in and job done.

But being overweight is different, because when you get slim there is no guarantee you will stay there. In fact, we all know that statistically you are more likely to end up bigger in the long term from dieting constantly.

Loads of research shows that, at best, 98% of people regain all their lost weight within 18 months. I was reading a study in the summer that says 75% of people are actually bigger 18 months later than they were before they started the diet.

So if you go with the statistics then the best thing to do is not to diet!

But the problem of course with that is that if you are overweight and someone says don't diet then you just look confused and say 'How will I get slim if I don't diet?'

So it's a catch 22, diet and get bigger in the long term, don't diet and stay big!

And it is this problem that most dieters battle with, they go from deciding to never diet again to going back on a diet and then back to never dieting again and then back on another fad diet.

I did it for 20 years!

And we all go in search of the magic cure and the secret to being like our slim friends who can eat whatever they want and still look amazing in their size 8 jeans.

Now my advice for anyone who really wants to be slim long term is to do it through healthy eating, cutting back a bit, getting more active and generally rebalancing their calorie intake...

But that's not very exciting and we live in a society of quick results, we all want to see the scales drop today and not over the next year or two!

The fact I dropped 160 pounds in 20 weeks was what I wanted. I didn't want to reduce weight over months, I wanted it within minutes, and if we don't get the results then the diet has failed (as have we) and we go in search of the next miracle.

But real results come from new behaviours and stopping old behaviours, it comes from stopping pulling the trigger on why you eat, it means dealing with your emotional baggage, it means stop beating yourself up and be nice to yourself.

You see the issue isn't whether to diet or not, the real issue is why do you eat too many calories? Because as soon as you are honest with yourself and the true reasons you got big in the first place and why you still use food or drink as an emotional sticky plaster then go and pick any safe diet and get slim and then do something far more interesting.

The miracle is in you, not some diet! Between now and Christmas you have loads of time to trim and slim down and tone up, loads of time to go exercising and toning, loads of time to achieve some amazing results. Just depends how important it is to you to go and do it.

What Are Your Priorities ?

If I asked you to go and get a sheet of A4, write down all the things going on in your life and put them in order of importance, it would take you a while!

We now live in a world that never sleeps, we are all busier than ever, we all try and keep plates, balls and everything else up in the air at the same time and what tends to happen is that things that aren't a priority get left to the side while we 'firefight' the daily lives we live.

As an example I bought some tester paint pots to put on the lounge wall back in mid August, everytime I have thought about getting a paint brush out the shed and putting them on the wall then something else has come up, the last time I walked to the shed the grass needed cutting so instead I got the mower out and did the lawn!

All the time your brain is working on what to do next, it tries and prioritises 'on the fly' and from experience most people prioritise on the 'he who shouts loudest' approach. In other words if I am standing in front of you demanding something then you are going to do what I want as opposed to something that maybe you wanted to do for yourself.

Now all this links back to your weight and diet journey, if I looked at your list now then where would your weight be on it? Even more importantly, where would you be on it? Are you on your own list of priorities? Or have you got everything and everybody else on the list but you seem not to be on there?

Most people will give up what they really want for what they really want right now and therefore when you are tired, upset, bored, needing comfort, or just hungry then you will prioritise that above long term weight maintenance.

I have always said it is quite hard to get excited about living for a few more years when somebody offers you a bit of cake! That is ultimately the choice and your job is to prioritise being slim above eating too many calories! If you are doing that then you will be slim long term, if you prioritise food above slim then you won't. There is no secret to this!

I did the A4 exercise above with a lady back in 2007 on a flip chat, she wrote down 65 things she had going on in her life from kids, husband, moving house, getting the car serviced through to finding a new job, and looking after her elderly mother. Of the 65 things she wrote she never put down getting slim! Even though she had come to me for that exact reason, it wasn't even on her radar compared to everything else and therefore was unlikely to happen.

I had someone at work this week telling me they would love to tone up but never get the time to do it, when I asked them why they didn't get up 20 minutes earlier each day and do it then they say they could never do that as they needed their sleep! So all they did was prioritise sleep above being toned!!

Now that sounds like a criticism but it isn't! It's just a choice but don't be surprised when you don't get toned up as did you really want it enough in the first place?

So turning this to you. Do you really know what your priorities are? Remember you can always change them, it's just a decision and then execute!