WEEKLY COACHING TIP #193                                                                                             

GET FIT FOR XMAS

Christmas is coming so will you do the ‘normal’ routine of pigging out, feeling terrible, getting drunk and starting the whole thing again the next day?

Are you going to put weight on, despair and begin the whole fitness diet cycle in January?

Is that your normal pattern and if so, do you want to change that for the better this year?

If so what about doing things the opposite way round this Xmas?

Instead of losing weight, exercising, etc after the damage is done, why not think it out in advance and lose the weight, get fit and feel great so that when the festive season starts, you do everything in moderation, because you feel so good.  Then come January you may only have a very few pounds to drop, now wouldn’t that be nice?

I thought today we could look at the psychological aspect of fitness although it applies equally to weight reduction too.

Generally speaking I find that people who have lost weight and/or gotten themselves fit, will only maintain it if they have looked at their values and arranged them to support their new goals and lifestyle.

So for instance making health one of the top values makes it much easier to make decisions around food, i.e. how much food you eat when and what types of food you eat. The same goes for exercise. 

One question I like to use is: “How do you want to look/feel when you are 60 and how much energy do you want?”

Then break down the goal more so it becomes 5 yrs from now, 1 yr, 6 month, etc. This can really help a person to make good decisions around exercise right now.  Obviously, if someone doesn’t care about their future or health, it won’t do the slightest bit of good.  Let’s presume you’re not one of those people.

CASE STUDY

There can be great resistance or conflicts around wanting to get fit.  I was once working with an obese woman, let’s call her Mary.  Mary wanted to lose just under 3 stone for her engagement party.   She had been on many diets in the past and lost weight then put it back on and had virtually given up on diets.  She ate mostly processed food and her fitness regime was practically non existent apart from walking to and from the bus stop for work (about 6 minutes each way.)

Some of the resistance that came up in her about losing weight was very much about overwhelm when she thought of how many pounds she had to lose.  So we ‘chunked’ it down and we talked about losing the first 12 lbs, which suddenly felt achievable to Mary. Regarding her fitness, going to a gym was out of the question.  She was too afraid that people would be talking about her behind her back.  She used to like dancing but again that wasn’t on the agenda just yet.  So we set up a regime for walking 20 minutes 5 days per week, which meant she left her office after lunch and walked.

MENTAL PROGRAMME

Another interesting thing that came up that was preventing her getting fit was that both her parents had died of heart related diseases and sub-consciously she felt that the same fate would happen to her, no matter what she did, therefore why not eating the foods she liked and forget exercising. This had been a mental programme she had been running for many years and she wasn’t even aware of it.  We worked on that and I explained to her how we can change the messages the genes receive.  This has been scientifically proved by Dr Bruce Lipton.  This had quite a positive effect on her so we used that positivity to visualise what she would feel like having achieved her fitness goals and weight. 

INNER TALK

We also had to reframe her inner talk from “I feel like a beached whale” (not very empowering) to “I feel as if I can achieve a fitter/healthier body, just by doing a little exercise and eating slightly healthier each day”.  She could even visualise herself doing a 5K fun run which some of her friends regularly did.

The thing about getting fit or reducing weight is that you have to know yourself very well and why you may be sabotaging yourself.  If you’ve ever found yourself thinking that you really do want to get fit, yet don’t take any real actions towards this, instead you beat yourself up for not being ‘stronger’ then read on to discover how to do an NLP technique to help identify what you can do to help yourself out of this unwanted behaviour.

REFRAMING PROCESS

The reframing process involves understanding and communicating with yourself, rather than blaming or punishing yourself. The basic steps involve:

1.      Identifying the problematic feeling, response or behavior.

What behavior or response is getting in the way of achieving your fitness goals?

2.      Discover the source of the problematic feeling, response or behavior in your past.

When did this pattern of behavior begin and what were the conditions under which it began?

3.      Finding the positive intention or motive for the response or behavior.

What is that behavior getting for you or trying to do positively for you?

4.      Identifying alternatives and resources that address the positive intention, but without the negative consequences.

What other ways can you get that benefit? What resources and understandings do you have now that you did not have at the time that this pattern started? (Find as many as you can.)

5.      Enlisting the cooperation of all of your inner parts to try a new choice.

Which new alternatives and resources would you be willing to try? (Choose at least three)

COMMITMENT

So now you must begin living your life with awareness. Every time you think of going to the gym/exercise but it just happens to be raining that morning, before you have a chance to slip into ‘lazy’ mode.  STOP, stand up and ask out loud “If I don’t go how will I feel later on today, what will this mean tomorrow.” 

Does this mean that a bit of rain prevents me achieving my goal is that how easy I give up, what does this mean for the rest of my life? By interrupting your normal pattern you become aware of your behaviours and self sabotage programmes.

The same thing goes for food, you must think before you react.  Next time you reach out for that bit of cake or fries, ask yourself: “Am I really hungry or just greedy”?  “Is this fulfilling some other need in me?”  "How else could I get that need fulfilled?”. Begin to change how you think; instead of thinking you are depriving yourself, think in terms of how you are enhancing your life. It’s crucial you think past this moment, into the future a little way to help you adjust your behaviours for the better.

Until next week Onwards and Upwards and keep on taking those small steps to your long term fitness!