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According to a recent study by the weight-loss company Atkins many women put more effort into dieting than into their relationships and think about food more than sex. This study also found that one in ten women would feel guiltier straying from their diet than being unfaithful to their partner!

This survey asked 1,290 female dieters in the UK about their attitudes to food and dieting and how it impacted on their relationships. Over a third said they thought about food and dieting more than they thought about their partner and more than half said they thought about food more than sex. It would have been interesting to ask men the same question!

The main reason cited for starting a diet was trying to attain a perfect ‘beach body’ (whatever that is) whilst one in seven women said they were motivated to diet after receiving cruel comments about their weight. It is estimated that at least three quarters of the UK adult female population have been on a diet at least once.

I have news for you ladies; diets don’t work!

Why diets don’t usually work

How many times have you started a new diet with a determination to maintain it in order to achieve your goal of a slimmer you and then lost your motivation soon after? How many times have you lost weight by following the latest celebrity diet and then put it all back on within a few months? How many times have you joined your local health club in January and found your commitment and resolve ebb away within weeks? Why do we keep on repeating the same pattern of behaviour and then be surprised that we keep on getting the same results?

In order to understand why diets don’t usually work perhaps we should start with the word DIET and here you can see the first clue, which is that the first 3 letters spell die. Obviously most people don’t want to die and we are all pre-programmed to attempt to survive as long as possible. So what tends to happen is that when you ‘diet’ you attempt to eat less than you usually do. The logical part of the brain and/or the conscious part of the mind suggests that you eat less and move more often in order to achieve your goal of losing weight. However, one of the responsibilities of the subconscious part of your mind is self-preservation along with the functioning of the various systems within your body.

In other words it will put self-preservation as a higher priority than losing weight so that when you eat less your body thinks that you are starving it which leads to a slowing down effect on the body’s metabolism and the storage of energy in the form of body fat which can result in the opposite effect to what you intended.

Another factor with dieting is that it is usually associated with deprivation. Most human beings will prefer pleasure over pain and discomfort and therefore depriving yourself of foods that you enjoy does not satisfy the emotional part of your brain which is another function of the subconscious part of the mind.

Thirdly you are likely to see the diet as something you do in the short term in order to achieve your goal but then what happens when you achieve your goal, after all you would not want to live on cabbage soup for the rest of your life would you? So what then happens is that you achieve your weight loss goal and then return to the way that you used to eat before you started the diet, which is what caused the problem in the first place.

Instead of focusing on dieting I would suggest that you adopt a plan to eat healthy nutritious food on an ongoing basis. It is also important to focus on the right balance between protein, carbohydrates and fat instead of counting calories. Your focus needs to be on keeping yourself energised and feeling good instead of on trying to lose weight.

How about having sex more often to burn off those calories instead of thinking and obsessing about food and dieting!

How many times have you heard people say that losing weight is not complicated; “it’s  simple, just eat less and be more active”! There is some truth in this statement because the majority of us in the western world eat far too much and are not active enough. This explains the mounting health problems we face as a result of obesity but doesn’t offer the complete solution when it comes to losing weight and getting back in shape. That’s because the attitudes and behaviours we have learnt, in relation to lifestyle, have been programmed into us over many years.

 If you always do what you have always done don’t be surprised when you always get what you always got! When your thoughts turn towards losing weight it is very likely that you will have been programmed to think about going on a diet and/or following a strict exercise regime, in order to achieve your goal. The reason this method fails most of the time is because most people don’t fully engage their minds, fail to set clear goals, fail to plan a long-term strategy for change and fail to motivate themselves to remain committed to achieving it.

When it comes to goal setting and motivation you can learn a lot from professional sports people who have to be in peak condition in order to perform at the top level. They have exercise regimes and nutritional guidelines to follow; not because they want to lose weight, but because they want to win or gain something; perhaps a gold medal at the next Olympics for example.

Along with a strong desire to achieve their goals athletes need great determination and commitment and be able to perform under pressure. To get to the very top in sport you need emotional resilience, which is often referred to as ‘mental toughness’, in addition to training and eating the right foods to build muscle and produce energy.

One of my favourite sports is Tennis. The most successful tennis players over the last 50 years; Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer & Rafael Nadal have one thing in common (in addition to their tennis ability) and that is the ability to remain calm under intense pressure along with an immense desire and motivation to keep on winning.

I am not saying that you need this level of ‘mental toughness’ to succeed in losing weight but, by utilising some of their strategies and techniques you can get your mind to work for you instead of continually sabotaging your success. If you follow the tips and ideas in my blogs over the next few weeks and months you will make it so much easier to be successful in losing weight and more importantly be able maintain your new size and shape.

Read how Neil successfully turned things around when his weight ‘ballooned’ out of control.

My next blog on the subject of losing weight will be on the subject of ‘diets’ and dieting and why they don’t work!

I was interviewed by Helen Pengelly of Gluten free foodies last week for Blog Talk radio http://www.blogtalkradio.com/glutenfreefoodies, about the consequences of not being consciously aware when we eat. What I mean by this, is not being focused on what you are eating because you are engaged in another activity at the same time.

When you are mindful and conscious of what you are eating you can engage all of your senses, especially your taste buds. There are thousands of taste buds on your tongue so you will enjoy your food much more when you are mindful of eating. This will also help you to slow down your eating, chew your food properly, enjoy the flavours and digest it properly. To help you fully engage in being mindful you could imagine that you are a gourmet or professional food taster.

From the moment you get the signal from your brain that you are hungry it then takes 20 minutes from then to get the signal from your brain that you are satisfied regardless of how much you eat. So when you eat quickly with no thought about what you are doing you can eat a lot of food in those 20 minutes. Another useful tip is that when you first get the hunger signal just wait 20 minutes before you choose to eat and if you are still hungry 20 minutes later then you can choose to eat.

When you put food on your plate do you think about how much food you need or how big your stomach is or are you just looking to fill your plate? Another useful tip when filling your plate, is to consider your portion size to that of a large orange, which is the size of your stomach.

Finally, when you decide to eat, switch off the TV, the computer and mobile phone etc, put away any reading material  and any other distractions, sit at the table and make it your goal to enjoy your food and to take time over eating small portions of food.

If you are having problems with controlling how much you eat please don’t hesitate to contact us to see if we might be able to help you find a solution.

We don’t have a set of scales in our house and I don’t weigh myself. Whenever I visit a Doctor or a Nurse they always want to know what my weight is or ask me to stand on the scales. I mentioned this to someone recently and expressed my opinion that it wasn’t necessary for me to know my weight or for anyone else to know their weight. The response I got was “how do you know if you are healthy if you don’t know what you weigh”?

Traditionally, Doctors have looked to a body mass index (BMI) score to measure obesity. BMI is a height -to-weight ratio which classifies people as either; ideal, over-weight, obese or clinically obese. Critics argue that BMI on its own is not a good measure of health. The BMI score does not take into account body composition, including muscle and bone mass. Muscle weighs more than fat, but fat takes up a bigger surface area than muscle so an athlete could have a high BMI score without having any fat and being overweight. Some experts believe that waist and hip measurements are a better indicator of potential health risk.

For someone trying to lose weight, using scales as a measurement can be misleading, because an increase in exercise and protein, for example, may have increased their muscle and reduced fat resulting in a healthier body but the scales might not reflect the improvement leading to despondency and a “whats the point” attitude.

So if you know of anyone who is obsessed by weight, diets and/or calorie counting The Spence Practice weight control programme may be the solution. No diets, no scales and no calorie counting. See http://www.thespencepractice.co.uk/lose-weight.html for more information.

Do you have a problem in controlling your weight? Are you always on a diet? Do you eat for emotional reasons? It’s an easy trap to fall into. We believe there is a way out of this trap. Your brain is a learning machine and if you continue to do what you have always done it is likely that you will continue to get the same results. If you want to find out How to think yourself thin you can contact thespencepractice today and book a free initial consultation or you can visit The Feel Good Show at Brighton Racecourse on Saturday 6 th October and attend Andrew Spence’s one hour workshop where you will learn 10 things you must do to lose weight and keep it off permanently.

The workshop is FREE and starts at 4 pm. Places are limited so make sure you contact us now to reserve your place. Freedom could be just a phone call away. Call 01273 509793 now!