Lifestyle Therapy

A hokey title for an important aspect of your weight loss journey. What you have been doing up to this point hasn’t been working. If it was working, then you wouldn’t need to lose weight. You need to change your current behavior, you need lifestyle therapy.

It is easy for me to suggest that instead of drinking a soda you do burpees. Every time you have a craving for a soda you do 10 burpees instead. This seems like an easy suggestion, it’s definitely doable. There is no equipment required, not much space is required, but the likelihood that you are going to do 10 burpees instead of drinking the soda is slim to none.

This is why you need lifestyle therapy. You need to evaluate WHY you are drinking the soda over doing the burpees when you know you need to lose weight, you know that doing burpees will help you lose weight, and drinking soda will not help you lose weight. It may in fact cause you to gain additional weight.

Lifestyle therapy should be the number one focus if you are setting a goal to lose weight. You need to assess that if your boozing habits are causing you to chub up so you decide that you are going to stop drinking for a few months to lose weight. You go to a friend’s house and they crack open a bottle of wine, all the sudden you lose your resolve and rationalize to yourself…I’ll start tomorrow. This happens a few times, maybe not at a friend’s house, but you come home from a stressful day of work and habit has you reaching for a drink to unwind. After a few times doing this, you finally lose your will to even try to cut booze out for a few months. It’s just too hard.

This is where lifestyle therapy comes into play. For instance, sitting down and writing a letter to yourself on all the reasons you want to quit drinking for a few months in great detail will help. Not only will you explain to yourself that you want to lose weight but explain to yourself how the day after you drink you don’t feel good, you don’t want to work out, do house chores, play with the kids, you are irritable from not feeling well, you decide to eat greasy, starchy foods to feel better, you don’t feel good about yourself. Ask yourself why you feel the need to be self-destructive.

If you go to your friend’s house and succeed at not drinking or you skip that unwind drink several days in a row, reward yourself. Go to a mirror, look yourself in the eyes and tell you how proud you are of your accomplishment. This is essential! You have to have self-approval!! Have to! If you don’t like yourself you won’t care what you think of yourself. When you love yourself, you will seek ways to be good to yourself and nurture that good attitude. Rewards are an important part of succeeding at Lifestyle Therapy. Plan rewards. Set goals and if you reach them reward yourself. It doesn’t have to be monetary, but if you can fit that into your budget, go for it! Just don’t forget to TELL yourself that you are proud that you obtained that goal, but remind yourself there is more work to do!

Build a confidence board. This is a great place to keep track of your rewards. Place it in a place you look at frequently and put anything that makes you feel good and reminds you of what an awesome person you are. A congratulatory letter from your boss, a note from your mom, a picture from a vacation, a loving card from your spouse, anything that reminds you that you are worth this effort. And make sure you update it frequently. And if you put your confidence board at your desk at work and someone inquires about it TELL THEM! There is no reason to be shy as to why you are proud of yourself and have confidence in your own abilities. Your number one fan should always be the person staring back at you in the mirror because that is the only person you can ALWAYS count on. Build that relationship, strengthen that relationship… the effects of that nurturing are well worth it!

Lifestyle therapy is absolutely free to everyone and it is not invasive; however it is the hardest therapy. This is a proven fact, otherwise we would have many more weight loss success stories.

One of the key factors in Lifestyle Therapy is assessing your influences. The company you keep, the television shows you watch, the magazines you read and the values you hold. Think about the three to five closest people to you. Describe each person using three adjectives. Sum up those three to five people’s adjectives and you will see a similar pattern. Are they good adjectives? Are they adjectives you would want to describe yourself? If not, you need to make a decision. Surrounding yourself with people that you would describe as the way you want to be described is important. Birds of a feather flock together. The company you keep will have you striving to be stronger or pushing you down into the gutter. Choose your friends wisely.

How about the television shows you watch and the magazines you read? Do you find yourself mostly watching the History channel or reading through the National Geographic? Is what you are watching and reading teaching you something new or giving you a new perspective on an issue? If it’s reality TV and smut magazines then you are filling your brain with junk. Don’t try and justify it any other way. That’s what it is. Junk. Watching and reading junk will cloud your judgment and make you automatically feel inadequate. Idolizing people you don’t know is time, money and energy poorly spent. Choose better options to fill your mind. Try becoming fluent in a different language, reading a book about a different culture, take a college course in something you find interesting. Educate and nurture your mind. Don’t feed it things that will make it sick and shrink.

Your values; what are they? Write them down. What is important to you? Write it down and why it is important to you. Now explain how you are holding yourself accountable and achieving that value. For example, one of your values is being a good parent. It is important to you because you love your children and want them to be good, productive citizens. How are you honoring this value? Are you showing them that you are never too old to learn by continuing to educate yourself? Are you showing them that taking care of their body is important to being productive, by choosing healthy food and getting exercise each day? Do you only offer them healthy foods and make sure they are getting exercise? Assess your values and work to honor them.

A key factor in Lifestyle Therapy is talking to you. Get in touch with you. Keeping a journal is the easiest, and most efficient way to do this. When you are sitting at your desk at work and you want a soda and you now have to decide between burpees or the soda. Have a discussion with yourself. Talk about the consequences of having the soda over doing the burpees. When you have to rationalize your actions you should automatically know you are doing wrong by yourself. That’s right, you are doing yourself wrong. And why would you treat yourself so poorly? Aren’t you worth better than rationalizing why you can’t lose weight??

Get a journal....get started. You are worth it, just ask yourself, they'll tell you so.