The Seven Deadly Sins of Dieting
The Seven Deadly Sins of Dieting
What are the seven deadly sins'?
The seven deadly sins are a set of beliefs which you may hold, not realising that they can stop you achieving the best from your diet or weight management programme. These beliefs are often taken for granted, but actually can have a dramatic impact on the success of your diet. If you find yourself agreeing with any of these sins, you might be making your life much more difficult than it needs to be, and are stopping yourself from achieving the best results from your programme.
How do I know whether I hold these beliefs?
Read each of the seven statements below. If you find you agree with any of them, you are holding on to some beliefs that are affecting your success, and you may want to take action to change this.
How can I change these beliefs to improve the results I get?
If you are already on a weight management programme, think about what you really believe and how this might be affecting your success. If you are planning to start, being aware of these sins will help you get the most from your programme, because awareness is the first step.
The second step is to take action to change the beliefs that are holding you back. For each sin there is an action that you need to take to start this change. These actions are called My commitment to myself' because you need to make these commitments if you are going to make the changes you need.
Sin 1 - I want to lose weight.
This is the first and most common sin. Wanting to lose weight is not enough. It means there's a choice, and if there is a choice you will find reasons to stop when the going gets tough. "Want" makes it too easy to quit. It has to be "must". Until you can truthfully say "I MUST lose weight", you are going to find it difficult to keep the motivation going.
So how do you change "I want to" into "I must"?
Have you ever had to lose weight for an event - maybe a wedding or a special party? Experience shows that having a deadline really helps. But it takes more than just a deadline. You need to know with absolutely certainty that it has to happen, and that takes a change in your belief system.
To believe it is going to happen you need to know exactly what success means - how it feels, what it looks like, what it sounds like. You need to visualise being that person, using all the resources you have - your senses, your physiology and your emotions. In your mind you become the new you', and when you know how good that feels, you know you simply have to be that person.
My commitment to myself:
I will use visualisation to imagine the new me feel it, see it, hear it, be it and I know I will do whatever it takes to make it happen.
Sin 2 - I've got a target weight and keep an eye on the scales so I know how I'm doing.
It's great to have a target, but you need more than that because a target weight is just a number. It's what the number represents that really matters. Often it is a time in your past when you felt good, or could wear the clothes you liked, or felt more confident. You need to focus less on today's number and more on the end goal - how being your target weight will make you feel, or allow you to be. If you want to look at the scales everyday don't treat it as daily battle, but as a measure towards achieving your real goal the one that really matters.
If your current goal is to lose a particular number of lbs, try changing your goal around so that you focus on what you will gain from being that weight health, confidence, the ability to look and feel how you really want. A positive goal is much more exciting and motivating than a goal based on losing something.
My commitment to myself:
I will create a positively stated goal about what I want to gain from being my target weight and focus on that end goal every day.
Sin 3 - I know how to lose weight; I just need to have better discipline.
Here is the bad news - discipline doesn't work. Ok, it works for a while, but at some point it will start to fail, and the old habits will win through. Because discipline requires energy and habits don't. There is nothing inherently bad about habits in fact they always serve a purpose. They fulfil a need that existed at the time. The problem is they often remain after the original need has gone. A bad habit is a habit that is inappropriate for your needs right now. There is only one effective way to deal with habits that are no longer working for you, and that is to replace them with other habits that do work for you.
So if you have habits that are stopping you getting what you want, don't rely on discipline to resist them. Put this energy into consciously creating new habits to replace the old ones. Habits that work for your current needs.
My commitment to myself:
Rather than try to stop my bad habits I will write down what they are and what triggers them, and then replace them with other habits that are good for me.
Sin 4 - Sometimes I'm too tired to exercise, but it's ok to give myself a day off occasionally.
A day off from what? If you have the mindset that says you need to have a "day off" then you have a mindset that says "this is not really me". To make significant and lasting change you need to change your beliefs about yourself who you really are. If you are thinking of this as a battle then in the end you are going to lose because it is not the real you.
So if your body is saying you need a break, rather than treating it as a day off', think of it as a day of rest so that you can be even better tomorrow. Stay focused on the end goal, and make sure everything you do is taking you nearer to that.
Make this easier by revisiting your goal every day. Think about how you will feel when you have reached your goal. Stand up and move your body around as if you are that person now. You have to use all your senses and your physiology to make that person become alive. Once you know that is who you are, the idea of having a "day off" will simply not make sense.
My commitment to myself:
If I feel like I need a day of rest, I'll check with myself that it is for the right reasons and that it will take me closer to my goal.
Sin 5 - I'm trying to eat healthy food rather than the food I love.
If this sounds familiar, you are going to have to rethink what you mean by "the food I love".
Trying not to do something you love is hard and destined to fail. Even if you manage it for a while, you will subconsciously resent it. But imagine how much easier it would be if you realised that you didn't enjoy eating a bad diet after all.
So how do can you change the way you feel about food?
Whenever there is a contest between gaining pleasure and avoiding pain, the avoidance of pain always wins. So you need to get clear on what the poor diet is doing to your ability to achieve your goal. By now you should have a good idea of what success means to you, and how it will feel, look and sound. Take a moment to put yourself there, so you know how good it feels. Think about how much energy you have, the clothes you are wearing, what your friends are saying.
Now use your visualisation skills to imagine this future if you continue to eat badly. Imagine how that will feel, how you will look, what you will be hearing. Create that negative image in your head, and then associate it with the food that you want to stop eating. Finish with the positive image again so that you end with a high.
Building a picture of what will happen to you if you continue to eat poorly will help you lose your love of that food, and you will start to make better choices about what you are eating.
My commitment to myself:
I will visualise how I will look and feel if I continue to eat poorly, so that I can be aware of the pain it is causing.
Sin 6 - I tend to put weight on easily.
People naturally tend to lower their expectations of themselves over time. It's not just in weight loss it's in everything. No one likes to fail, so we give ourselves some comfort by not demanding too much from ourselves. We want to convince ourselves that we're doing ok, and we do this by lowering our standards.
However by doing this you are giving yourself the perfect excuse to fail by pretending it is not really failing. You need to be really honest with yourself - are you finding excuses to avoid putting in the effort that you need?
One of the fundamental keys to any success is being totally honest about the current situation. You don't need to be pessimistic, but you do need to be truthful. Only when you are truthful to yourself do you become aware of your actions and beliefs, and only when there is awareness can anything change.
My commitment to myself:
I will write down my goal and then be honest with myself about what I'm going to do, because putting it in writing is a great way to make a commitment to myself that is much harder to break.
Sin 7 - Exercise is boring but I do it because I need to.
If you are doing something boring, it's not going to work. You have two choices you can change to something you enjoy that gets the same results, or you can make what you are doing fun.
Any form of exercise can be fun if you do it with the right mindset. The biggest motivation is being successful at something, so find a way to measure success in what you are doing. Give yourself benchmarks, and challenge yourself to beat them. You need to get used to winning, because winning is addictive.
The more you see yourself achieving the small goals you have set yourself, the more enjoyable it becomes. Success is never boring, so find ways to make yourself successful, and soon you've be finding excuses to get out there and exercise!
My commitment to myself:
I know that success is fun, so I will set myself lots of small goals and enjoy the challenge of beating myself!
Congratulations! By reading this far, you have already started to think about what you believe, and may have new insights into how these beliefs can help or hinder you in your success.
Remember, achieving what you want is not about having a daily battle. It's about being absolutely clear on what success means to you, and using all the skills and resources that you already have to make it happen. Good luck!
Find out how to Shop for Clip-in Hair Extensions by:Dean Cane Are You Unemployed? There Are Online Job Opportunities Available Controlling Wisely Your Short Term Investment Could Make You Earn More Money Than You Imagine Make Your Woman Reach An Orgasm Buying A Property In Spain Online College Degree Distance Learning for those who do not have the Privilege of Attending a Traditional University Weight Loss Pills Are Effective Forex Trading Made Simple - How To Earn A Triple Digit Income In 30 Minutes A Day Finding Tremendous Camping Experience in North by:Vibhav Gaur Lady Antebellum Tickets - Lady Antebellum Ready For First Headlining Tour Hair Color Correction Is A Bit Tricky Measurements of various bed styles Colorado Springs Dermatology Guide