Do your supporters outnumber the saboteurs in your life?

Because you live in a culture that’s unfavorable toward weight control, the people you live and work with are very important to the success of your weight management efforts. There are three roles they’ll play:

1. A positive influence—supportive
2. A negative influence—a saboteur (either consciously, or not)
3. A neutral influence—not actively supportive, but also not a saboteur

The purpose of developing a support network is to ensure that you have more people on the positive side of the ledger than on the negative side. Weight Loss Mastery Skill #5 is Support. The people most likely to sustain new behaviors (in this case healthy eating and an active lifestyle) are the ones who have social support in doing them.

I’ll be posting a more detailed discussion on 1) how to create your support network, 2) using support to prevent lapses from becoming relapse, and 3) sabotage, and handling saboteurs.

Stay tuned!

If you don't have a plan, the world has a plan for you... and it's high in fat and calories!

What you eat and how much you eat is largely a function of what is available in your environment. When is it more difficult to avoid eating cookies? When there's a plate of fresh baked cookies on your kitchen counter? Or, when the nearest cookie is at the bakery two miles from the comfort of your living room?

Most people have a simple relationship with food, the "see food, eat food" relationship! If you don't have a plan, the world has a plan for you! And the world's plan is high in fat and calories, and low in physical activity--a guaranteed recipe for weight gain. Successful weight control in modern America has never been more challenging.

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10 Reasons Why Record Keeping is Invaluable in Weight Management

1. Success requires self-management. Record keeping is the basis of this.
2. It keeps the focus on relevant behaviors, which translates to more success with those behaviors.
3. You learn calorie and portion information.
4. You learn the consequences (caloric cost) of various food choices and environments.
5. You learn where you consistently have trouble (difficult/impossible places to be and not also overeat).

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We know cake isn't diet food--but 1,600 calories in a slice!?!

Aside from burning off more calories through physical activity, the only other control you have over calories lies in the food you eat and the beverages you drink.  

Amazingly, most of the thousands of books and programs on weight loss do a very good job of avoiding teaching you anything useful about calories. Most don’t address the subject at all. Worse yet, some tell you that calories don’t matter… that some special combination of foods, nutrients, etc., is the secret to weight loss. Understanding the calories in food however, is fundamental to weight management.

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What would you guess is the #1 predictor of keeping the weight you lose off?

That would be Physical Activity. I know, I can almost hear all the groaning! Here’s the deal. No sugar coating. You can fight gravity all you want, but that won’t change it. There are a few Weight-Loss-Mastery-Skills that do indeed need to be mastered to get and keep weight off. We know that you need to burn a minimum of 2,000 calories a week in physical activity. The good news is that physical activity is like a magnet behavior. When you’re active you will tend to also follow your healthy eating plans and do better with the other factors that support your weight loss.

For more see: How much physical activity is needed for successful weight management?