Happy New Year

What’s Your New Years Resolutions
What do you want to achieve or change this year? Stopping smoking; get slimmer; get fitter; get healthier; learn more; do more of this – more of that; get happy.

Barriers to change
Whatever your goal, for most the good intentions last until little more than January 7th. Why might this be? Below is listed some of the reasons why:

Lack of motivation
For some there is no real motivation to change because it is not they who want the change, it is their partner/parent/teacher/child or so. The driving person may use the label – lazy. There is no such thing as laziness, that is just a emotive word used to try and shock a person into change. You, the person who is meant to change cannot see why you need to. Therefore no change.

So how to get the motivation to change. Focus on what YOU will gain out of the results. These need to be tangible, i.e. you can SEE how it will make your life so much better. And what you see must mean a lot to you. It is no use having some vague notion that passing a GCSE in English will help you become a landscape gardener. It is also difficult for some, especially young, to equate money with success. So what is it that £100,000 will give you that £10,000 wont? All of this needs to be made visual. Get pictures and other visual reminders of reminders of your goals and make a wish board of them i.e. paste them to it. Then put the board where you will see it every day.

Remember- No motivation = no change

Wrong motivation
There are two basic kinds of resolution; to stop doing something or to start doing something. If it is to stop doing something then how do you sell yourself the wonderful way your life will be when it’s stopped? Lets take an example – smoking. I personally have now stopped hundreds of people to stop smoking. Most in one easy session although some might need a back up session (inclusive).

Smoking
With smokers there are a few (very few) who just cannot stop. Often it is because it is others who want them to stop or they just think it’s a good idea without any real desire. This I have looked at under lack of motivation.

For many people stopping smoking, the problem is willpower. Not the lack of it but misunderstanding it. Only 20% of people who want to stop using willpower alone succeed. The person who fails gets very embarrassed and usual start to think of themselves as inferior. This is not so. It is just the way our minds work. Tell it not to do something and it will do its utmost to make you do it. Some will proclaim loudly how they are ‘contrary’ – well it is the case that we all are, its just some of us use the pull – not the push. So what will you gain by stopping smoking.

You will also need to change the language you use. Stopping – Cessing – Quitting – Giving up – are all negative. So, how can you make the language positive? Well, when a person stops smoking they are indeed freeing themselves from a very addictive group of drugs (including nicotine), so why not use that? Therefore words like freedom, liberation, proud, and so on.

Just in time for resolutions there are a few articles in the newspapers to guide you.

Weight
We, over the Christmas do our best to eat and drink as many calories as we can. Well, this was the original purpose. There are two traditional methods for controlling weight; dieting and exercise.

Why is dieting one of the worse methods for controlling weight?
Often people who want to slim will often cut down on food drastically or just cut down. They often loose weight rapidly. This give them an ego boost and means they can look good for the summer.
Unfortunately this sends a message to the body telling it that you that there is a famine. The body responds by storing more fat as soon as you return to normal eating patterns.
Because of the nature of diets you have to come off and start to eat normally at sometime. This means returning to the patterns which put the weight on in the first place.
Dieting also gives a psychological message that YOU are FAT. The problem is not you but your behaviour. So it is important to tackle behaviour.
Eating problems are often triggered by a period of dieting or a stressful phase in which you have too many demands on your time and feel helpless.

The limits of exercise for controlling weight
Scientific evidence shows that exercise is one of the best methods for loosing weight. It stimulates the body to use up the unnecessary reserves of energy, it develops a good shape, it helps with self esteem and there are good health reasons for it too.
So why is it that people who use exercise as a method often fail to keep their weight under control. There are several reasons:
For some people exercise = eat
If you are doing exercise just to lose weight then you might have very negative feelings about it.
Exercise is often seen as chore
You will probably stop
Americans spend 33 billion dollars a year on products to help lose weight. Also a fortune on sport and gym facilities. YET the percentage of Americans considered overweight increases annually!!!

A helpful article:
Why the gym won't fix it
Rushing into exercise after festive overindulgence is the worst thing you can do, says Dr Simon Atkins

Thursday December 22, 2005
The Guardian

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/experts/drsimonatkins/0,,1683248,00.html

Plenty of good suggestions for introducing exercise

There is another way:
New magic bullet - Pill that tricks you into losing weight
By JULIE WHELDON Last updated at 22:27pm on 26th December 2006, The Guardian

Interesting - however, people become fat not because of the lack of exercise or eating the wrong food or eating too much but because of the attitudes to each of them.

Happier solutions
Over the last few years I have been assisting Paul McKenna in his weight control programme (http://www.paulmckenna.com/ ). This is very effective and a load more fun. The basic principle is simply helping the body do its job. It knows what you need to weight and will correct itself when you listen to what it says. In his book, (I Can Make You Thin, (Bantam Press)£9.99) he outlines the 4 simple rules and give guidance on how to put them into practice. The rest of the book is all about making yourself happy. This is because most people over eat because they are unhappy.

Other Changes
There may be other changes, like more confidence, working harder, greater success that you want. Well do look up my web site for more information.

Terry Westwood website