Could you benefit from a bit of tough love?

I was speaking to someone the other day that had lost a lot of weight recently. Apart from the obvious change in her appearance, one of the other things I noticed was her renewed confidence, and enthusiasm for everything health and fitness.

Being interested in her story, I asked her what she thought the keys to her success were so far.

The first thing she mentioned was that she’d made a conscious decision to make this year the year about her, where she put herself and her health first, instead of putting the rest of the family’s needs first.

Secondly, she consulted a dietitian with a reputation for handing out tough love, holding people accountable and not accepting excuses.

Thirdly, she started to exercise, starting out gradually and progressing to jogging, participating infun runs with friends and work colleagues, and even joining the gym.

What I found most interesting about her story, was the bit about the tough love and how important that was to keeping her accountable and motivated at the beginning of her weight loss journey.

Recently I also read a post on our weight loss forum where one of the regular contributors dealt some tough love to a new member who wanted to call out her behaviour publicly and get open and honest feedback from people who had been there themselves and got the t-shirt.

What struck me about both examples was that the recipients of the tough love welcomed it and was motivated by it.

But not everyone responds positively to this type of feedback / encouragement, often to their own detriment.

Tough love is best served by those that have been where the recipient has been, or has helped lots of people to lose weight and keep it off.

At the end of the day, they know that it is the results that count, and sometimes something as challenging as losing 10kgs, 20kgs, 30kgs or more calls for drastic action and the putting aside of one’s feelings.

If you respond well to being challenged, maybe a little bit of tough love could help you to lose weight and start leading the healthy lifestyle you dream of.

If that’s the case, we encourage you to get it from wherever you can. That includes from our weight loss forum, which is free to join, or from health professionals like dietitians, personal trainers,weight loss program providers, naturopaths, etc.

Good luck with your weight loss

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The Golden Rules of Weight loss

The golden rules to leading a healthy lifestyle and successful weight loss are;

Keep it real
Keep it simple
Keep it going

A Simple Guide to Nutrition

When it comes to food, keep it real and simple! We want to eat foods that have not been (highly) processed and have reduced nutritional value. Food and its nutrients should be consumed in its whole complete form, wherever possible, enabling our body to acquire all the available nutrients from the food source.

Nature delivers food raw, not in colourful packaging! As a general rule of thumb, if it looks like it came from the ground or an animal (in its original state, or very close to it) then it’s probably better for you.

Portion control is a crucial element of weight loss and weight management. Aim for smaller portions spaced out over four to six meals per day (dietitians generally recommend three main meals and two snacks each day and we base our diet plans on three main meals and three snacks each day).

Consuming smaller portions over an extended period allows our bodies to stabilise our appetite, helping to reduce cravings. Eating regularly eases the feeling of hunger that can lead to overeating when we skip meals.

Be sure to sip water throughout the day, eat slowly (twenty minutes is a good target to have for a main meal) and remember to enjoy your food. This will improve digestion and your ability to manage portions effectively.

A Simple Guide to Exercise

Keeping it simple with exercise, simply means moving more.

Exercise is essential for optimum health. Regular exercise has been shown to decrease the risk of many serious health conditions including Heart Disease, Osteoporosis, Diabetes, Depression &Obesity. Moderate and high intensity exercise sessions are great for burning loads of energy fast, but we should never underestimate the power in simple activities like walking, stretching andlifting. Early morning walks and regular incidental exercise helps to speed up our metabolism, burn continuous energy throughout the day and will add years to our life…literally.

The key to keeping things interesting with a fitness routine is trying new types of exercise. And there are many different types of activities to try, including gym classes, swimming, bike riding, walking,running, Pilates, yoga or even dancing. The secret is to find something you enjoy. This will make it easier to turn an occasional exercise session into a healthy lifestyle built on a foundation of daily exercise.

A Simple Guide to Healthy Behaviour

Finally, good health and weight loss success are simply byproducts of healthy habits.

Our daily habits are the collection of little things that keep everything on track, even when we don’t ‘feel like doing it’. Focusing on two or three simple health tips each week and aiming to make them part of our daily routine before adding new ones is the key to changing our lives.

Lifestyle change comes with its challenges. Bad days are inevitable. Maintaining a positive attitudeand consciously changing our mindset will ensure such days occur less frequently and don’t derail our progress.

Essential this requires keeping our thoughts in check. It’s ok to want to push ourselves harder, but not to put ourselves down in the process. Negative self-talk is our enemy and won’t help any of us to achieve a healthy lifestyle balance.

Rather than seeing healthy food choices and exercising as something to be dreaded, instead see it as an opportunity and a necessity to achieving your health & lifestyle goals for a better future.



Good luck with your weight loss

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Weight Loss Tips: Powerful Tools To Shift Mindset for Weight Loss Success

Being able to cause an immediate shift in your mindset from negative to positive takes practice. Being a Master of deleting out negative thoughts, beliefs, conversations and actions as quickly as possible will greatly increase your weight loss success or any other success in your life.

Why these tools?

• Decrease "Noise" in your head
• Decrease/remove negative experience patterns
• Interrupt a habitual negative habit
• Decrease/remove fears
• Shift/expand your perception
• Increase/accelerate results
• Detox your emotions

GRATITUDE TOOL - If you are focused and sometimes obsessed with losing weight you may forget to be grateful for who you are right now.

There are several ways to practice gratitude daily in your life. One way is writing 1 to 3 things you are grateful for at the end of the day in a personal Gratitude Journal. A great time to do this is right before you
fall asleep. Gratitude is the last thing your brain remembers before falling into a deep restful sleep.

RECEIVING TOOL - Being able to receive in multiple ways is critical for allowing your new beautiful ideal body to show up. If you are not receiving in the smallest of ways you are not going to receive in big ways.
The most important receiving for weight loss success is: Completely embrace who you are right now. Notice when you are not and use the Reset Tool to re-program your mindset.

RESET TOOL - Use this tool right after you experience a negative thought, belief, conversation or action. Seconds after the negative moment say "RESET" aloud (or silently given the situation). Replace the negative with a powerful statement. A general statement you could say to RESET any moment would be, "I choose powerful thoughts and beliefs!"

Always remember that no one tool works the best or does everything. Begin with one and practice it for at least one week or more. Notice which tools work best for you.

Carry a 'how to' of the tool you are practicing. Why? It's a challenge to remember positive things to do when we are stuck. In fact, it is usually the last thing on our minds.

I prefer the portable and simple tools. I find I use them more often and they are always with me. You can keep that in mind as you learn about more and more tools.

Do not forget to add the things you already use that work.

It is really important to know that you may not notice immediate results in the beginning. Keep practicing and remember the results will start to accumulate exponentially.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8228114

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