The second great reason to lose weight is because it will make you become more healthy. Here’s how.

Less chance of disease

Diseases such as cancers, diabetes and heart disease are preventable. There are countless studies into the effects of obesity on health. The NHS website lists the following risks of obesity on health.

• Type 2 diabetes or insulin resistant diabetes.
• Heart disease.
• Some types of cancer, such as breast and colon.
• Stroke
• Depression
• High blood pressure
• Osteo-arthritis
• Liver disease
• Kidney disease
• Problems with sleep due to sleep apnoea

Less chance of injuries

Slim fit people are less susceptible to getting injuries.

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If you’ve reading this, then the chances are you are serious about losing weight. What better reason than to feel good? Firstly let’s be more accurate – lose fat; when people say they want to lose weight what they are really saying is they want to lose fat. I want to reassure you that losing fat is a good idea. As you know, there are many important reasons to lose fat.

TO FEEL GOOD

Haven’t you noticed that life is better when you feel good? Even the Government wants you to feel good; they actually have a happiness index and unbelievably want us to feel good. (Office of National Statistics:GB)

Endorphins

Endorphins are hormones that the body produces as a reward system to encourage you to do good things. That’s why you feel good after exercise. It’s also why you feel temporarily good after eating sugary food. Evolutionary it was a good idea for us to like sugary foods as they are high in energy; great if you live on the edge of starvation but terrible in our abundant world. I will show you later how you can feel good without resorting to eating comfort foods.

Self-esteem

If you’ve ever lost a certain amount of weight you will know the effect it has on your self-esteem. This is your self-view, how you judge yourself. Rightly or wrongly we tend to view ourselves by comparing ourselves to some ideal and when we move closer to it, we get a boost in self-esteem. When we move away from it, we feel bad. This is why yo-yo dieting can be so disheartening.

How this affects the rest of your life

It doesn’t end with just how you look and feel. Feeling good, having high self-esteem and more energy will help in all areas of your life: career, relationships, finances, how you contribute. The bottom line is when you lose weight, it helps you in all areas.

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Yesterday we looked at how losing weight can reduce the risk of the disease. Losing weight can also help you live longer. There is  also a lot of evidence that reducing calories will actually increase your life expectancy. You can read more about this in this article from Scientific America.




Restricting the amount of calories whilst maintaining good nutrition will increase the life expectancy in many species. These are as diverse as yeast cells and dogs. More and more evidence is suggesting that this is the same in humans.

So, as your weight comes down, your life expectancy is going up. Cool.

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Let’s examine your motives, why do you want to lose weight. We saw in the last few posts some great reasons for losing weight, but unfortunately some motives can be less clear. Really examine your motives; you might want to pause here. Go somewhere quiet and reflect. It’s very important to understand why you want to do it.

Turn it into a positive

Quite a lot of people chose to embark on a fat loss programme for reasons, which are actually negative, such as the effects of negative comments by others. For example when someone offers a throwaway remark like “You look well, have you put some weight on?”

Comparing yourself unfavourably with others

This is especially true with celebrities in magazines, on TV or the internet. We are bombarded with images of young waif-like models all of the time.
Because you heard the latest scare story on the TV, radio or internet
These are all valid starting points, which will often be the kick we need to take action. It’s essential now for you to convert your motivation into a positive one. Positive motivations would be health, feeling good or higher esteem. The reason for this is that you want to stay motivated. If you have a negative (moving away from) motivation, you will abandon your new lifestyle when you reach your target weight. Remember this is about permanent change, so choose a positive motivation to keep you slim and healthy forever.
Imagine what you will feel like and the things you will do. Focus on these. What will really get your juices flowing, what will get you moving on a cold morning? Really add emotion to it. What will you feel like wearing the new clothes? What will the buzz feel like when you step on the scales and they show you that you are at your target weight?

Overeating

Overeating is usually an effect of other issues, such as low self-esteem, stress, boredom etc. Be honest with yourself, is there something else that needs addressing? Is it on a deeper level? Is the overeating just a symptom of something else? The last thing I want is for you to be thin and depressed. Losing weight may help as part of an over-all look at your lifestyle.

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The fourth reason to lose weight is that you will get a better quality of life. What do we mean be quality of life? We only notice our good health when we lose it. When you are ill, this clouds your whole outlook on life. As you know, a life free from disease and illness means you will get more out of life. You will also achieve more in your life.


As you will have more energy you will be more productive. Whatever it is you choose to do, you will do it better and to a higher standard. Ultimately you will enjoy life more.

There is a life energy in you and it has only one purpose, to help you reach your potential as a person. As you lose weight and become healthier, you will become more and more aware of this life energy. You will feel it coursing through your veins and even in your cells.

You will become more enthusiastic and positive about yourself.
Ok now let’s start. Watch out for the next post on how to get motivated.

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Being congruent means how your fat loss relates to all the other areas of your life. To nail this fat loss thing down so that you are permanently successful, you need to tackle from many different angles.

Environment

Firstly, is there anything in your environment that needs to change? Do you have a cupboard full of tempting foods? Does the fridge beckon you in when you walk past it? A very simple start could be to throw out all the fatty, sugary treats from where you can be tempted. Bin them. Is there a specific time you are at your weakest? Take a shopping list on the weekly trip to the supermarket. Better still, do your shopping on-line so you are not tempted. Retailers are extremely adept at the dark arts of influence. Supermarket owners design their stores specifically to tempt you into impulse buying. Remove yourself from this. The same goes for TV adverts again, where brain-washing techniques abound. These days, with the ability to fast-forward the ads – why watch them? Better still, don’t watch TV at all (but that’s another EBook).

Behaviours

Do you have any unconscious rituals that are causing you harm? The very fact that they are unconscious means you don’t know you are doing them. Think about how you learned to drive a car. Now you can drive a car without thinking about it. It’’s the same with eating. We often eat without thinking about it. Can you bring your eating habits into conscious awareness? This means not eating whilst you are distracted. For a week try to ‘eat when you eat’, instead of eating whilst watching TV, checking your smart phone or reading! Be totally present when you eat; Do you chew the food properly or eat too quickly? Chew slowly to let your brain have the chance to register when you are full. This habit alone can often help people to lose weight. Use a food journal to record everything you eat & drink for a week. This can be a real revelation; (How many cups of coffee did I drink at 100 calories each? It will all add up, so start to become aware of it.

Capability

Can you do it? Do you believe you can do it? Have you ever lost weight before, what did you do? What changed? Do you know anyone who lost weight and kept it off – what did they do? Could you do it? Success leaves clues, which brings us on to the next area.

Beliefs and Values

A belief is a conviction that you hold to be true and it is only a habit of thought. This is your view of the world. However, I would like to suggest to you that your beliefs are not necessarily true. Beliefs can be supportive or they can hold you back. The beliefs that hold you back are called limiting beliefs. Do you believe deep down that you can lose the fat for good? What kind of things do you say to yourself? It is possible to change beliefs, with dedication. I will show you later how to do this. Examine your beliefs around health and fitness; do you place any value on this? Could you raise your awareness and focus on this?

Identity

Can you see yourself being the slim, fit and healthy person you want to be? One reason that some diets fail is that the fat loss is so quick that the unconscious mind doesn’t have the chance to acclimatise to the new you. Your unconscious mind will do anything to protect you especially if it things you are starving. It’s a bit like when a lottery winner blows all their newly acquired wealth and returns to the level they were at before. What we will show you is a way for you to change at a core level, so that the unconscious mind doesn’t scupper your plans.

Connection

This is another way of describing how you relate to other people. How will the ‘new you’ affect those around you. Will those nearest and dearest to you unconsciously try to sabotage your efforts, because it threatens them? This can be common. Think about whether you can bring them on the same journey. We will talk about support in a later post because getting good positive support can be very powerful in helping you lose weight.

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Here are a couple of tricks to help in staying motivated on your weight loss journey. In the early stages of any new endeavour, it’s easy to stay motivated. But what will you do when it gets tough, to keep you on the straight and narrow?  Motivation is a tricky thing, here are a couple of tips.

Self-Photo

Take a before photo of yourself before starting the program. What this will do is remind you of where you have come from, how far you have progressed.

Measuring

There is a saying that if you measure something, you can manage it. Keep a written record of you weight and measurements once a week. I will tell you more about this later. This is also very powerful in motivating you to carry on. You just need to look at your records to see how far you have progressed.

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How do you start to change your limiting beliefs? If there is only one post in this series you take away and learn, it is this. We have known for thousands of years how to form new beliefs in ourselves and others. From early childhood we believe what our parents and teachers tell us. Then throughout our lives we believe what we are told. The media, TV and politicians all want us to believe what they tell us. Some of these beliefs are useful. Some of them are not. Here is a simple guide on how to change these beliefs. It works.

Affirmations

If you think about it, we come into the world as babies with no beliefs, we are a blank page so to speak. We form our beliefs by experience, repetition, indoctrination or suggestion. There are a thousand-and-one ways; such as throw-away comments by well-meaning relatives such as:

“You’ll get fat if you eat that” (not necessarily)
“Clear your plate so you grow up big and strong” (what even when my stomach is full already?)
If you repeat something often enough it becomes a strong belief. Therein lays the solution. If you have thoroughly gone through the exercise in identifying your limiting beliefs, then the next stage is to write out an opposing positive belief, in the form of an affirmation. For example if you identified a belief such as “I don’’t like the way I look” the opposite would be “I love and value my body, I am perfect as I am”. Write out your positive affirmations on a card and read them out aloud as soon as you get up and just before bed. Read them throughout the day, as much as you can. It may feel awkward at first, you may not really belief what you say, yet. You will believe soon, though. So how long should you do it for? You do it for as long as it takes.

Visualisation techniques

Stop now and just think – ‘what does a tiger look like’. Did you see one in your mind’s eye? If you did you can visualise. It has been proved, scientifically, that visualisation techniques work – powerfully. Athletes know this, that’s why the very best will visualise exactly what they want to happen. There was one study with a group of students. The students were asked to take free throw basketball penalty shots. They took 10 shots each; the number of baskets they scored was recorded. They were then split into three groups. The first group was then asked to go and practice shots for a week. The second group were just asked to return the following week (no practice). The third group were asked to visualise taking practice shots every night before sleep, but no physical practice. When they returned the following week and repeated the test, the first group had improved the most and the second group hadn’t improved at all. No surprises there then.
Here’s the thing though, what they found was that the group who just sat and visualised taking the shots improved their scores considerably.

Visualisation works.

When you do visualise make sure you see yourself doing the things that will make you lose weight, such as eating healthy foods or enjoying exercise. Flood you mind with positive images. Brain scanning techniques have also showed that when we see with our eyes, a certain part of the brain becomes active. When we close our eyes and visualise something, the same area of the brain is again active. Your unconscious brain cannot tell the difference between what is real or what is imagined. Is that scary or what?

Similar to visualising is actually looking at images of healthy people exercising or healthy food. Cut out pictures from magazines etc.

The power of influence

Be around thin healthy people as much as you can. Like it or not the people we are around the most, influence us the most. Are the people you are around slim and healthy? We tend to share the same beliefs as those around us, so that we fit in. If you associate with thin healthy people, you will come to believe what thin, healthy people believe and therefore do what thin, healthy people do. You will then become slim.

Hypnotherapy

Hypnosis is a safe, natural state that produces real results. It is also a state of relaxation and heightened awareness induced by suggestion. The hypnotherapist’s job is to facilitate a positive change in the behaviour of the client by conversing directly with the unconscious mind. If you would like to find out more about how hypnosis can help you lose weight email me directly.

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We talked about beliefs in the last section, so how do you actually identify what your current beliefs are?

Journaling

Writing down your thoughts at the end of the day in a journal,  in free-flow mode. Just write down what comes naturally, don’t edit. Then read it back and highlight anything that stands out.
Draw a mind map of single words around health, nutrition, food and weight. Don’t edit just write. It can be very revealing, especially when you just write and don’t think.
Start to observe what your think and say, especially when you say “I can, I can’t, I must, I always”




Answer these questions with the very first thing that comes into your head.

Thin people are…
Food is…
My health is…
Exercise is…

What words did you fill in the gaps with? These words will highlight what your beliefs are. They may be holding you back, but we can change them.

The post 7. IDENTIFY YOUR CURRENT BELIEFS appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

Goal setting and weight loss are almost made for each other.
In this section I will share with you how all successful people achieve their goals, so you can adapt it to your weight loss plan.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING A GOAL (OUTCOMES)

How can you hit a target you can’t see? Luck might get you there but you stand more of a chance if you have a clear written down outcome or goal. In fact, the human brain is one of the most effective goal seekers in the world. Give it a proper target to aim for and just like a laser guided missile, it will hit the target.

HOW TO PROGRAM YOUR MIND TO ACHIEVE ANY GOAL

So how can you really program your mind to help you achieve your goal. I will now share with you the steps to achieve any goal. They must be done in this order for it to work. I suggest reading these through first, then scheduling an hour or two to quietly write out the answers in your journal.

Have a purpose

The first stage of formulating a goal is to find your motives, as we described before. I would suggest that you go no further until you have a clear positive WHY for your goal. For example living a healthy long life. The longer the time frame the better.

State the goal in a positive way

State the actual weight, percentage fat and/or size you will become by what date. For example, by 14th December 2014 I will weigh 11 stone and 7 pounds exactly. Write it down somewhere. This gives the unconscious mind a clear command.

What will it look like when you have achieved the goal

Similar to the above question, but this is to get you to steer towards what the actual evidence will be, when you reach the goal. For example on 14th of December 2014 I will weigh myself and the scales will read 11’7”.

What is your present situation

What is your current weight, measurement or percentage fat. It is so important to know where you are now.

Specify the goal as if it’s happening now

What can you see, hear or feel? Make it compelling. “I can feel the cold scales on my feet as I stand on them, I hear the click of the dial and as I look down I am delighted to see that the reading is 11’7’’ I punch the air with delight’’.

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