DRBPHAN.COM

Modern lifestyles that pile on the stress, and shrink down the sleep might just be making us fat! How many of us today try to take on far too much? We rush around from pillar to post, in reality struggling to do anything really well. The tension rises as we bounce from one challenge to the next! And so we turn to eating, to counteract the pressure.

But now it seems there’s a scientific reason why we reach for the most fattening foods at times high stress and exhaustion. Weight gain can occur through stress. Exactly how that happens can be explained as follows – At times of extreme on-going pressure, the human body secretes the stress hormone cortisol.

As a result, this stimulates the release of insulin in an effort to make our blood-sugar level stable. This insulin release makes us feel hungry- particularly for carbohydrate and fat-rich foods. So we eat carbs and fats, and pretty quickly feel more energised.

Our stress levels stabilise and we feel more at one. But our energy level takes a nose dive a short time later. This is due to the insulin taking the glucose from the blood, and storing it in fatty parts of the body such as the waist and thighs.

Therefore we should aim to simplify our lives first if we’re planning a weight loss program. Alongside this concept, think about how much sleep you’re getting. We used to get around 8 hours of sleep a night, but it’s over an hour less than that now on average.

Respectively, the level of obesity in our society has risen. There could be a hormonal link to the two factors. If we’re not sleeping for long enough, we develop an appetite for more food. This is because our body thinks it must be daytime when we’re awake, so it’s time to eat.

Clearly the more tired we feel, the greater our desire to re-fuel. Yet again, this leads to a craving for high fat and carbohydrate food. Weight gain problems therefore could be helped by simply taking a full eight hours sleep.

And so to our conclusion. If we aim to reduce the tension in our lives, we might just find it easier to reduce our weight as well. We might try delegating more family and work responsibilities and say no to people’s requests sometimes. And then at the close of the day, instead of grabbing another bite to eat, simply play some relaxing music and snuggle up in bed…

When you decide to change something in your life, setting goals and making a plan is vital. If you’re aiming to lose weight, targets and goals must be incorporated into the plan. Successful people from all walks of life don’t just wake up one morning as high achievers!

The most successful people on any diet programme are those who set themselves realistic, achievable goals to get them from A to B. Spending a little time planning these goals will pay dividends down the road. To have a chance of reaching your goals, they should always be S.M.A.R.T. – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Targeted.

To really get involved at an emotional level with the successful completion of your weight loss regime, compose a contract for yourself using the following headings: Defining the new ‘you’ is the first criteria. Write down a list of exactly what you want from losing weight. Have a clear-cut picture of who you will be and the lifestyle you’ll enjoy when the excess weight has gone.

Desire (why you’re doing it). This needs to be something that stirs an emotion within you. For instance is it because you want to gain the approval of another person, have more fun or feel less restricted?

Moving on now to Dedication: Set aside ‘official’ working-out times to help you commit to them. This prevents you from thinking about other things that you could be doing.

When your friends see how committed you are, they won’t expect anything else from you. Other people will understand your priorities better when you stick to a commitment. You’re mentally focused on weight loss when your diary shows it’s an exercise hour.

The purpose of a contract is to have written evidence of your Determination. It helps having a physical document that is there for all to see. Finally, a Disciplined individual will have the strength to cope with set-backs. Obviously there will be knocks along the way, but a well planned regime will bring structure to your weight loss efforts.

Your written document is the beginning of your new life – refer to it often. Expectation of good things, along with planning and goal-setting, have proven time after time to bring the desired results to fruition. In a year’s time, both the way you look and your life in general could be unrecognisable to those who know you now.

There are some people who seem to breeze through life, rejoicing from one triumph to the next. And yet there are others who fail at just about anything they have a go at – but can always tell you why it wasn’t their fault. Society is made up of victors and victims, and the difference can very often be boiled down to one key factor – attitude.

To realise your target weight on a diet program, you must assume the attitude of a victor. A piece-meal attempt at dieting without the belief is why the ‘victim’ will never win. And yet for a victor it’s all in the bag from the beginning.

Take two tennis players about to play for a championship. One man claims he’s done his practice so he can do no more. The other man claims he’s done his preparation so he knows exactly how to win. Which player do you think will be triumphant?

If we split up the word OAR we have the definition of a victor – someone who takes Ownership of his/her task, is Accountable for their actions and assumes Responsibility for getting it done. The victim can be defined by the term BED – one who stays in bed and gives up. BED = Blame, Excuses and Denial.

The victor doesn’t expect someone else to lead the way – and takes ownership of his or her tasks. He’s accountable for his actions, and so takes them seriously, seeing things through by tackling problems not creating them. Ultimately, he is very responsible.

The victim can always come up with a reason for not accomplishing something, and it’s hardly ever to do with him. Everything is always somebody else’s mistake – he doesn’t feel in control so places the fault at somebody else’s door. He makes excuses for under-performing, not realising the only person he’s convincing is himself. With this continual pattern of blame and excuses, the victim lives a life of complete denial, certain that he’s completely unable to do anything about where he is in life.

A mental overhaul is no bad thing for anyone looking to address weight management issues. To really embrace the health-enhancing program, any traces of the victim syndrome have to be wiped out.

Both sets of attitudes are just habits, and with constant repetition, habits can be changed. When you’re alone with your thoughts, are you thinking like a victim? If the answer is yes, then take control right away. Achievers are just like the rest of us – except they’ve conquered their demons and taken control.

People aren’t born with winning attitudes; they work on them throughout their lives. In order to maintain successful weight management, we first have to maintain a successful attitude.

Look at any Best Seller list in bookshops today, and it will be full of works about the rich and famous. We learn that it’s not that they didn’t experience tough times, but that they didn’t allow the tough times to dominate their thought processes. That’s how it is; life’s achievers allow positive reasons why ‘they can’ to fill their minds, and ignore negative reasons why they can’t.

So if you’re dieting, develop a positive approach to losing the pounds. Tell yourself how good you are at healthy eating. Thinking positively opens up a wealth of solutions to any problem. A pessimistic approach though does the opposite.

This is because we have a mechanism, called the Reticular Activation System. It tells the brain what to think about. We become familiar with many things over time that don’t continue to stay in the forefront of our minds – as we store all our previous experiences in the sub conscious bit, or the back so to speak.

Then, when we have a need to refer to something, our automatic RAS (reticular activation system) goes through our sub conscious to check if we’re holding anything relevant. So when we’re strolling down a road, things that have meaning to us come to our attention, but everything else doesn’t.

Consequently, if we’ve been in the habit of generating positive thoughts and experiences that got fed into our sub conscious mind, those same vibes will be returned. But the sub-conscious can only return what it originally was given. So if it received negative information, it will send negative back.

We have an element of control over this. Successful people have generally worked on their attitude and restricted the amount of negative being stored. And so the reticular activation system emerges as a brilliant mechanism for fulfilling our dreams. The sub conscious has no way of knowing whether information sent to it is imaginary or not.

In other words, as it believes what it’s told, we need to create a very specific picture of our goal in our conscious mind. The RAS will then pass this on to our sub-conscious – which will then help us achieve the goal. It does this by bringing to our attention all the relevant information which otherwise might have remained as ‘background noise’.

Napoleon Hill once wrote that we can attain any reasonable goal if we keep it clearly in our mind. That’s as long as we don’t allow any negative thoughts about it. Of course, if we keep thinking that we can’t achieve a goal, our subconscious will help us not to achieve it.