Weight Loss: The Key to Discipline

Recently, two co-workers of mine were discussing their weight loss efforts and part of that conversation stuck with me. One of them said, "It sure is a lot harder to lose weight than it is to gain it." The other one answered, "Yeah, thats because gaining weight is fun." I laughed with them, because there is some truth to that statement.

Yes, it can be fun to eat with abandonment and not think about whether what you are eating is healthy or not; it is only the consequences that are painful. Examples of shorter term consequences are pain in your stomach, indigestion, and sluggishness. The longer term consequences are high blood pressure, heart disease, and shortness of breath. Seeing your appearance change for the worse is painful too. Focusing on these consequences is key to developing self-discipline.

Discipline is necessary to achieve your weight loss goals and any goal that you want to achieve in life. After all, you dont have to employ discipline to do those things that you enjoy. For example, I wouldnt have to discipline myself to eat chocolate bars because I enjoy them, however I do have to discipline myself to limit them in my life. How do I do it? Discipline requires two skills: Desire and diversion.

Desire means that you have to want the goal that your discipline will help you achieve more than anything. For example, I wanted to lose weight and get healthy more than I wanted the chocolate bars. Each time I desired the chocolate bar, I had to remind myself of the alternate goal and make it real and vivid. I had to see myself with that goal already achieved and experience the pleasure of it. I had to make that pleasure more intense than the pleasure I imagined I would receive from eating the chocolate bar.

The second skill is diversion, which is simply engaging in an activity that diverted my attention away from the undesirable activity. In the chocolate bar example, I had to either give myself something that I would enjoy eating that was healthier for me or perform an alternate activity that would help me better meet my needs. For example, if I was angry, eating a chocolate bar would not help me, but taking a long walk to cool off likely would.

My co-worker was right: For many of us, losing weight is harder than gaining it. But we need to remind ourselves that, although it is harder to lose weight, it is not impossible. It is also worth the effort. Then we use our key of discipline to help us achieve what we want. It is the only way to get the body that we deserve.

A Registered Nurse for many years, Kimberly Floyd battled obesity for much of her adult life. She achieved her ideal weight and has written a new book entitled 'Moneywise Weight Loss' which teaches others how to lose weight and save money--at the same time.

Kim has written articles for the Georgia Nurses Association publication and Nursing Spectrum Online. Now a technical writer, she has written training programs for corporate clients, including IBM, U.S. Bank, and Cingular.

Kim also teaches an online course called 'Goodbye to Shy'. This course is distributed to over 1100 colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, and Australia through Thomson Learning. An accomplished speaker and trainer, she delivers presentations on health-related topics to enthusiastic audiences.

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Hypnotize the Pounds Away: Weight Loss Motivation Through Hypnosis

Many individuals these days, male or female, young or old, are struggling with weight management. Concerns with rising cases obesity are no longer based upon a Hollywood conception of what is the appropriate body size. Instead of doctors wanting their patients to be "thinner", they want them to be healthier. The patients, however, are not necessarily discerning the difference.

What Has This Lead To?

Both women and men alike are becoming hooked on yo-yo diets. What is a yo-yo diet? Yo-yo dieting describes the process of going on a diet, losing a few pounds and then going off the diet. When the pounds come back, the dieter then begins another diet and the process continues. Repetitive weight loss and gain is hard on the body, especially the heart and of course, it is hard on the emotional state of the dieter as well.

In addition to this, many dieters are using unhealthy methods of losing weight. Many take dieting pills which are often just glorified caffeine pills claiming to be the miracle cure for obesity. Then, there are those who dive into the "fad diets". Whether it is the cabbage or grapefruit diets, many of these do not give individuals the nutrition they need to live healthily. In addition, low carb diets such as Atkins often create abnormally high levels of protein in the body for the liver to digest. After all, man cannot live on meat and cheese alone.

What To Do?

Sometimes, good old diet and exercise is just not enough. Maybe its the genes. Maybe it is behavioral choices that we make everyday without realizing how they are undermining our health. So how do we change these behaviors? One method is through weight loss motivation hypnosis. You may have visions of a creepy soul dangling a pocket watch in front of your face and your eyes beginning to spin. However, this is not what hypnosis is.

The goal of hypnosis is to access the subconscious mind. Under normal circumstances, you control your conscious level of thought while your subconscious takes care of the automatic stuff, like tying your shoes or starting the dishwasher, things that do not require conscious thought. Still, your subconscious is like the driving force that works with our conscious brain to control our actions. Sleeping is the time when consciousness is put on the back burner and the subconscious mind can take control.

Dieting Motivation through Hypnosis

Hypnotism works on relaxing the conscious level of the mind. Although your conscious mind is subdued and the subconscious mind is allowed the front seat, you are still knowledgeable about what is going on. You and your hypnotist will work to "reprogram" the subconscious side of you. If chocolate, for example, is your weakness, your hypnotist may associate chocolate with nausea so that thinking of chocolate makes you feel nauseous.

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