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Achieving Optimum Health
"Optimum health is not just the absence of disease but the presence of wellness in mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and social areas. Some would also include financial health." Introduction Optimum health is essential at all levels,...
Healthy Eating Summed Up
Eat food that is: 1. Fresh 2. Pure. The benefits of junk food are not worth the hidden price you have to pay. Remind yourself "why" you are eating healthy daily These Myths are NOT true: Eating Cholesterol does not increase your cholesterol...
Heartworms Alert - Know The Warning Signs To Save Your Pets Health!
Has your pet recently been coughing, eating less, or being more lethargic than usual? If so, it is possible that your pet is infected with heartworms and may need immediate help and attention. Heartworms may infect a host for up to 2 years...
Natural Health -- The First Law
Health is a measure of how well your cells function. To be at your best means that each cell must be functioning at its best. Do you know what it takes to have all your cells fully operational? There is a direct connection between the vitality of...
The Unadulterated Truth About Black Mold: What You Don’t Know Is Destroying Your Home And Your Health
With today’s new building procedures, our homes are more dangerous than ever before! Scientific evidence now shows that the air inside our homes is 2-5 times more polluted than the air outside. And because we spend about 90 percent of our...
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Healthy Weight for Life: The 5 stages of lifestyle change
So you’re determined you’re going to do something about your weight. But what? Losing weight is not in itself a behavior. Releasing fat pounds is an outcome of many behaviors that add up to consuming more calories than your expending. (Yes, there’s a genetic component too, but you can’t change that.)
The good thing is that this gives you lots of places to start moving toward your goal of losing weight. The challenge is sorting through them all and finding what will work best for you. So here’s the question: What are you most ready to change?
Behavioral researchers have identified five stages in behavior change:
1. Precontemplation: You’re not even considering it. No way you’re gonna give up your pizza and beer. Gym-going is not for you. Why walk when you can ride?
2. Contemplation: Well, maybe you could live without pizza and beer *every* week. Gym is out, but you always liked swimming, maybe a pool. The walk in the park with your friend was pleasant last weekend, maybe you could do it again.
3. Preparation: Next week you’re going to skip that pizza. You found out the local Y has a pool and their family rates are affordable. You talked to your friend about doing more walks sometime.
4. Action: Two weeks and no pizza. You joined the Y and you’ve swum laps there a couple times. You and your friend have gone walking the past three Saturday mornings.
5. Maintenance: The weekly pizza has
been a thing of the past for six months. Swimming is so much a part of your daily routine that you don’t feel right if you skip it. Those Saturday walks are don’t-miss tradition.
In fact, this readiness to change model is behavior-specific. That is, you might be in the action stage with the pizza but still in precontemplation on that exercise stuff. You’re not likely to be very successful if you flog yourself for not swimming laps every day, what you want to do is move yourself to the next stage: List the pros and cons of regular exercise and guess what, you’re thinking about it and that means contemplation.
So think about the behaviors you can change to lose weight. What stage are you in for each of those behaviors? In each case, what can you do to move yourself to the next stage? What are you most ready to change.
We explore readiness to change in my free teleclass, “The Real Skinny on Weight Loss: Don’t Diet, Do It.” You can get details and register at www.teleclassinternational.com/catalog.phtml?keywords=MH-RS
About the Author
Michael Hallinan overcame a lifelong obesity, and the midlife discovery of health and fitness so changed his life that he established a coaching practice specializing in helping others find their own healthy way to a healthy weight. For more helpful tips, subscribe to the Healthy Weight Newsletter. For past issues and to subscribe see
www.healthyweightcoaching.com/Ezine.htm
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