Habit Change Archives - Page 3 of 7

Motivation tips for exercise

February 23, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

We all know that exercise is one of the single best things you can do to lose weight, stay at a healthy weight, boost your mood, reduce stress and even sleep better. Exercise is also the best preventive medicine to ward off the life- style induced diseases that are now treated with prescription drugs…high blood pressure, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome and adult onset diabetes. This list goes on and on as to how beneficial exercise is to be healthy happy. Why do so many people resist exercise?

The first reason is that when you get out of shape, overweight, or have not exercised in a while it does not feel good when you exercise. So people resist it. The key is never to let yourself go, never to let more than two days go by without at least going for a walk.

Once people are out of shape, they tend to overdo getting back into shape and this creates negative stored memories or associations with exercise. This is also the key of how you get back in. Build positive stored memories and let that work for you and not against you. This can be done using visualization and while lying in bed.

Athletes use visualization to rehearse their movements. Research has proven that the brain doesn’t make different between an imagined event and a real one, providing that you are able to visualize things with clarity and intensity. What you have imagined or visualized in your mind can have the same value as a real experience. This why you can mentally train for any ability and even for physical changes in the body, it was demonstrated by studies at the Manchester University that people were able to have muscles growth during one week of sessions of hypnosis, during hypnosis sessions the group were asked to visualize themselves having bigger muscles.

For sports performance enhancement, an athlete will use visualization to correct his weaknesses, improve his game and increase his motivation. Dr. Murray who wrote “The Essence of Imagery in Tennis says “Imagery, also called visualization, is described as a mental technique that programs the human mind to respond as programmed, by using all the senses to recreate or create an experience. Imagery has also been described as one of four categories of cognitive skills important in athletic performance.”

So here’s how to start getting motivated to exercise. Wake up each morning and before you get out of bed imagine yourself doing some form of exercise you have chosen that you will enjoy. Focus on the immediate payoffs of not only how you will feel after exercising, but all the benefits you will receive as a result of incorporating exercise into you life on a daily basis. That is the key… doing some form of exercise every day.

To get started I recommend walking. You can download my E-Book The Key to Successful Weight Loss for a great plan to start walking every. Once you start doing it I guarantee you will feel so much better you will want to continue. The visualizations will make it easier and have been proven to have a physical effect on the body. Why not give it a try and let me know what you think? You can also download my MP3 hypnosis on motivation for exercise. Here’s to your health and well-being.

6 Tips that take off the weight and keep it off

February 9, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

It’s really important that we strike word diet from our vocabulary unless we use it the right way. Your diet means your manner of living, how you live, not a short term fix to lose weight. It is really a disservice to look at losing weight as going on a diet. Once you are on this diet you never go off. That is why you really have to avoid quick weight loss strategies and the diet mentality.

Here are some behaviors you can change that will really help take and keep off the weight. In creating this I was inspired by the article in Bazaar: Lose the last 5 Pounds for Good. I would say the tips given in this article are not just for the last five pounds but for any pound you want to lose and keep off.

1^st tip that helps you lose and keep weight off: It really helps to understand that when you eat real food it is a natural appetite suppressant. The more you eat packaged processed foods which are foods that contain sugar, flour and other addictive ingredients, the more you will think about food and feel hungry. Salad and green vegetables are something you want to grow to love.

2nd tip that helps you lose and keep weight off: Foods that say diet or fat free usually contain artificial sweeteners that act on your body just like sugar. It is not so much about taking out the fat or looking at the calories, if you eat real food there is not a lot of fat. It is about focusing on the amount of sugar and calories the food has. This is once again mostly only a problem is you eat packaged food. Real food has the micronutrients that balance each other out and naturally suppress your appetite. Don’t be fooled by focusing on calories alone.

3rd tip that helps you lose and keep weight off: Yes it is true, by taking out or cutting back the alcohol and caffeine you will be surprised how much of a difference it makes. Now I am not saying you have to live like this but consider going on a three week cleanse. This will give your liver a rest and make you more efficient metabolically. Alcohol and caffeine can cause you to eat more, alcohol lowers your guard and contains a lot of sugar, and coffee can make you hungrier. So yes, if you stop for three weeks you may drop a few pounds but that means you have to mindful going forward when you resume.

4th tip that helps you lose and keep weight off: We’ve all heard this time again; you have to stay hydrated, get off the diet soda and other sugar laden drinks. Instead you can think about incorporating a regimen of hot water with lemon at least once a day. This works wonders for flushing out the system.

5th tip that helps you lose and keep weight off: Do something about your sleep if you have sleep issues. There is a lot of research that shows if you are sleep deprived your body produces more ghrelin the hormone that makes you feel hungry and less leptin the one that keeps you feeling sated. Getting enough sleep and dreaming helps keep us healthy, smart, and affects weight loss.

6th tip that helps you lose and keep weight off: Learn a self-motivation technique. Why not wake up every morning and before getting out of bed tell yourself how much you like to exercise and see yourself doing it. This is called autosuggestion and yes it works but you have to do it.

You can also download one of my hypnosis MP3’s and give yourself a head start. If you really get serious and want to make progress order the Nirvana Diet™ for weight loss. You will have all the structure and support you need to succeed.

How hypnosis can help you break unwanted habits

January 31, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

Hypnosis is oftentimes misunderstood, but more and more people are coming to now understand how hypnosis works and how hypnosis can help to break unwanted habits. Joyce Frye, an assistant professor at University of Maryland’s Center for Integrative Medicine explains how hypnosis helps: “ a hypnotherapist can help guide a person therapeutically by making suggestions such as how great it would be to smoke-free and breathing easily.” Suggestions however are just suggestions. A hypnotist cannot get you to do anything you do not want to do, but it can help to grease the wheels, or add some oomph to your willpower. Ultimately you still have to consciously choose not to smoke, overeat and break the unwanted habit.

To learn more about how hypnosis works , you should down-load my E-Book, The Key to Successful Weight Loss .

Lynne Harris wrote about her experience an article for Glamour magazine about with how hypnosis helped her to stop biting her nails. She said: “Hypnosis appears to circumvent the part of the brain that says, there’s no way this will help. If someone said to you right now, ‘The next time you see a cheesecake, you’ll want a carrot instead,’ you’d laugh (and dig in). But if someone makes that kind of suggestion when you’re under hypnosis, it sneaks past your rational mind and into the part of your brain that influences action.”

It has been my experience, especially when we are dealing with deeply rooted behaviors that are almost unconscious, such as nail-biting, or with habits that deal with addictive substances from sugar to nicotine, we change when we are finally fed up enough with it. There has to be a strong desire to stop. You have to really be on board with the awareness that the negatives are outweighing the positives. Once you stop doing the behavior for a week, it gets easier because you begin to see that you can do without it. When you doing the behavior regularly you are battling the cravings that are real. Hypnosis can help to make this process easier. I have also found that if you take up exercise and can get the exercise up to a level where it is creating a positive effect on your brain chemistry, this can also help to make you feel stronger which can strengthen your resolve to break unhealthy habits.

If you are curious you can download a hypnosis MP3. This will give you a good idea of how hypnosis works and if it is for you.

More Diet Myths Debunked

January 20, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

Not seeing enough results is apparently a common reason why people give up on their weight loss plan and avoid achieving their weight loss and health goals. This is exactly the mindset you have to change if you want to lose weight and keep it off. Yes keeping the weight off is harder to do than losing weight.

Recent research done by Patricia Bannan, who wrote Eat Right When Time is Tight, claims that “not seeing results soon enough is the number-one reason women give up on their weight loss plans.” That may be the case, but following a lose weight fast strategy is sure to fail in the long run because it misses the point. Diet comes from the Greek word that means manner of living. That means you have to make the way you lose weight become your manner of living, or else you will never keep off the weight. I no longer have to lose weight, but I maintain my ideal weight because I eat in a similar way to how I lost weight.

It really is so simple and yet also confusing. Here is the simple part. The best way to lose weight and I might add be healthy is to eat real food. The hard part is that means you have to go food shopping, cook and put some planning into your meals. There is also lot of misleading information that makes losing weight confusing. You have been told for example to eat whole grains; the problem is there are very little whole grains that qualify as whole. Most have the valuable endosperm taken out to create shelf life and therefore have very little fiber, but lots of carbohydrates.

So the confusing part or the diet myth that needs to be debunked is that losing weight is not just about calories in. Calories matter, but the more important thing is the nutrient makeup of the calorie and how the nutrients are balanced in a meal. If you want more fiber, eat vegetables and you also get protein that balances off the carbohydrates with very little calories.

I understand why people feel that losing weight quickly especially in the beginning is motivating, but that is because they have fallen prey to the number one diet myth which is the word diet itself. Make you so called diet become your manner of living and you will not only lose weight, but you will keep it off. The only other thing I would add to that is exercise. Yes you have to make friends with moving. Find a form of exercise you want to do every day. My favorite is walking out side in nature. What is yours? Watching TV does not qualify.

Six tips to improve your body and self- image so you can be happier and healthier

January 17, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

Let’s face it, in this culture how much you weigh is as important as how much you earn. I am not saying I agree with this, but there are things you can do to boost your body and your self- image that might be the key to unlocking your inner power.

Focus on how you feel not how much you weigh. A negative body/self- image colors every aspect of your life. Research shows that long term successful weight loss requires you change the way you see yourself to keep your weight in check. Your weight is not the only thing that defines you. When you eat in a healthy way and do some form of exercise daily you will feel better.
“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” This was said by Kahlil Gibran, an inspirational writer and philosopher. People respond to your inner light. So try cultivating inner beauty which has to do with making eye contact, seeing the beauty in another, giving people the gift of your presence and smiling at people even if you do not know them.
Know that you are good enough just as you are even if you have to lose weight. People respond to you in accordance with how you see yourself. Make friends with your “inner critic.”
Become a more interesting person. Take up a new hobby, something you feel passionate about and cut back on the TV time. Haven’t you had enough of reality?
Cultivate self- love and compassion. As hard as it may be to believe, recent research is showing that self-compassion can be your greatest source of strength trumping so called willpower which is based on discipline and negative self-talk. If you are kinder to yourself and treat your set-backs as learning experiences with compassion you will find it easier to change.
Become the observer of you in a non-judgmental way. If you overeat or over indulge, these are distractions that keep us from dealing with what is really going on underneath. Instead of feeling bad because you think you have no self-control, ask yourself what need the action was trying to fill or feed? Acknowledge that perhaps you were looking for happiness or comfort in the wrong place.

If you want to make change easier, be healthier, lose weight successfully or whatever, understand change is a process and has a lot to do with how you see and view yourself than just deploying discipline and willpower. I would also suggest down-loading one of my guided hypnotic meditations such as Unlock your potential. This is a great way to start changing how you think.