Weight gain isn’t just about what you eat. It’s about how you eat. Do you sit in front of the laptop to eat your lunch and the TV to eat your dinner? And do you shove a piece of toast in your mouth while your making a packed lunch for the kids every morning? If so, it’s time to stop start eating like you mean it.

We all love food, it’s one of the greatest pleasures in life, so why do we treat it like a necessary evil? In our time-starved day, we rush through every experience without relishing its innate pleasure. How often have you walked along a street without looking up? Or had a conversation that you later couldn’t recall? Or eaten a meal and not been able to recall the flavours? So often we’re not really present in our own lives, we’re too busy fretting about something that happened earlier or worrying about what will happen later.

So how about trying this – next time you walk down the street take time to look up at the sky. Next time you hold a conversation, listen with intent and try to recall it later. Next time you eat a meal. Sit at the table, eat slowly.

You will feel less stressed and be less likely to overeat and it will be a much more enjoyable experience.

 

 

One of my friends always describes herself as having “the breaking strain of a KitKat” when it comes to resisting unhealthy food. But weight-loss shouldn’t be about having wrought-iron willpower. It should be about wanting the healthy option because you understand what your eating and how it affects you.

Sure, in the beginning there needs to be an element of self discipline, but rest assured, that doesn’t have to last forever. If you have big changes to make, then early on you will have steel yourself to stay away from the biscuit tin, but over time it will become easier. You might be wondering why that should be and how you are going to develop this magical power of resisting temptation without effort?

The answer lies in the difference between temporary dieting and permanent healthy living. Think of it this way, if you’re dieting, it’s usually a measure designed for you to lose weight for a specific occasion, such as a wedding or a summer holiday. Even if you’re weight loss journey is successful, after the event you’ll go back to eating how you did before. Whereas, if you live healthily, it’s how you eat all of the time and you wouldn’t choose to change it. You’re happy with it because you know it makes you feel better.

When your dieting, you’re living with a sense of deprivation. You’re constantly thinking about the things you can’t have and so you’re constantly have to use up all your mental energy just resisting the ‘bad stuff’.

But when you live healthily, you truly understand the harm that unhealthy foods do to your body and how bad they make you feel. Once you know that, there’s no going back to putting the bad stuff in your body, and so resisting it doesn’t take willpower. it just takes a different mindset.

Whether you want to lose weight, run a marathon, write a book or learn a language, the one thing that will bring you success is not willpower, talent or intelligence. It’s consistency. It’s the things that you do 99% of the time that make you who you are. So how do you introduce the magical property of consistency into your life? Here are three tips…

 

1. Form healthy habits

Most of what we do in life is habit. If we really had to make a decision about every tiny little thing we did every day we’d soon end up in a bit of a mess. That’s why most things happen automatically. We take a shower, we brush our teeth, we put clothes on, yes it’s just a habit – and imagine if wasn’t?! (I’m really sorry, I just forget to put my clothes on today!) So, lots of our habits are there for good reason, but some just aren’t that helpful. Like the hitting the snooze button, not looking after your keys, not getting your clothes ready the night before an important event, not watching what you eat or how much you drink. Losing bad habits and forming healthy habits, is a really good habit to get into.

 

2. The habit of consistency

Habits are such powerful things that they can be relatively easy to form – for some reason the bad ones seem to be easier! But if you want to live a healthy life you have to consistently live like a healthy person. Even if it’s just a pretense to begin with. Next time you find yourself following your usual pattern of eating a second helping, or scoffing a packet a biscuits ask yourself this question, “would a healthy person do that?” Do what the healthy person would do and soon enough, you’ll find that you have become that ‘healthy person’ yourself. If you find yourself skipping your planned exercise, again ask, “would a healthy person do that?” If you do what a healthy person does all the time, you will become a healthy person yourself. Why? Because of consistency.

 

3. Ask yourself who you want to be – and start being that person consistently

If you go rock climbing once in a blue moon, you wouldn’t describe yourself as a rock climber. If you went every weekend though, you’d soon start to describe yourself as one. Take the time to work out exactly what kind of person you want to be. It’s a simple idea, but how many of us actually do it? So, do you want to be a slim person, a healthy person, a runner, a rock climber? Whoever you want to be, start behaving like that person consistently and before you know it, that’s who you’ll become.