Make A Decision And Focus

Keep your focus on things that are useful

The things that you dwell on in your conscious mind, grow in your experience, so the key to success is to focus your conscious mind on the things you desire, not the things you may fear. This is very important and sometimes clients do not grasp the full extent of it. When your focus is split and you fill your mind with a normal amount of negativity or dwell on times that you slipped up with your Eating Plan, you are using up valuable time, energy and available focus to pull yourself backwards and to make mountains out of molehills. Problems will seem to become even bigger in your mind than they actually are, because you are dwelling on them.
However, opportunities and gratitude work in the same way if you dwell on them. What you focus on is what you will see in your reality (opportunities vs more reasons why “you are never going to get there”). What you dwell on becomes bigger and bigger in your mind and what you think about is what you will act upon. That is why it is so important to keep your focus and your thoughts in the right place and on the positive and useful things in your life as much as you can. If you focus on the negative and irrelevant stuff it is quite likely that you never will reach your goal.

Ask yourself helpful questions

It can be helpful to ask yourself two questions after every difficult situation you face: "What did I do that was right?" and "What would I do differently next time?" The questions you ask yourself in life will determine much of your outlook and success. If you ask negative questions like "What is bad about this situation?" then you are creating a lot of unhappiness and victim thinking. If you on the other hand keep it to useful and empowering questions, then your chances of succeeding and reaching your goal will go up.

Focus on the activities that bring you results 

There are a lot of people who perform activities that are tension relieving, rather than goal achieving. You may like to just take it easy or relieve tension, but you end up creating more of it by procrastinating and complaining instead of doing. It seems easier on the surface but in the long run it tends to cause you more disappointment. Of course, you must take time to relax, but find a good and helpful balance for the two aspects of life and the best ways and most positive ways to relieve tension. You could take up meditation in some form or watch a good movie or just read a magazine or newspaper.

Make a decision and do something

Decisiveness is a great characteristic and usually any decision is better than no decision at all. It is one of the most fundamental things that hold clients back. Sitting on your hands and hoping that someone else will do something for you usually results in a lot of waiting. Just make a decision and take the first step. The sky will most likely not fall if you fail or have a few hick ups along the way - You may just feel bad for a short while and learn a few things by asking some simple questions. Then you make a new decision based on what you have learned and take action again!



Source: Cohen's Lifestyle Clinic

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A Little Loss Weighs Up to a Lot

Personal note from Margaret:- I am getting a lot of people comparing their weigh loss to mine and they are becoming very disappointed that they are not losing the same amount of weight. People shouldn't be comparing their weight loss. When I was a bigger girl I would do the same. The weeks I had lost 500grams, I had lost a heap in measurements and the weeks I had lost a heap of weight my measurements didn't really shift. So appreciate all weight loss and get in the habit of measuring yourself weekly.

A little loss weighs up to a lot and when it comes to losing weight, a little bit can mean a lot. A modest weight loss of 5% to 10% of body weight can lower blood pressure and provide other health benefits even to very obese  people, according to an article in the journal Obesity Research.

However, patients don't always listen when their doctors try to give them that message. If a patient weighs 130kg and then loses 13kg, their doctor says "That's great. You've lost 10% of your weight and reduced your blood pressure", says Arthur Frank, MD, medical director of the weight management program at George Washington University in Washington. But the patient says, "I still weigh 117kg!" In the article, Ilse L. Mertens and Luc F. Van Gaal, of the department of endocrinology at the University Hospital of Antwerp in Belgium, examined a number of studies that looked at the effect of modest weight loss on blood pressure and other health problems.

In one such study, a group of high blood pressure patients all discontinued their medication; one group made no other changes while the other group lost nearly 3.6kg. At the end of the study, nearly two-thirds of the high blood pressure patients who lost weight still had normal blood pressure. "A modest weight loss significantly reduced the risk for high blood pressure", the authors write. "These results suggest that, in adults and in the elderly, modest weight loss is an effective therapy for the treatment of hypertension. That's a message that more doctors need to spread," says Frank. "We have to reinforce the value of a modest weight loss". Cultural pressures have prevented many obese patients from considering the value of even a small weight loss, according to the authors of the study.

The authors point out that patients often have unrealistic expectations about their ideal weights. Even losing 5% to 10% of your body weight and maintaining the loss, will have a continuing positive effect on one's health and wellbeing!

Source: Cohen's Lifestyle Clinic

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