INTRODUCTION

Many Americans are trying to shed unwanted and unhealthy excess weight, as a thirty-three-billion-dollar weight-loss industry can attest. A quick look in the bookstore will remind you that there is no shortage of prescriptive, "do this, don’t do that" plans for weight loss and exercise. Some are based on a solid foundation of well-studied methods, while others are based on myths and fads, both old and new. Unfortunately, research studies have repeatedly shown that most dieters have similar results, regardless of the method they choose an initial weight loss, followed by an eventual return to baseline weight.

We aren’t going to offer you yet another weight-loss plan, and we won’t be describing new exercise techniques either. That’s because for many people, the path to success is straightforward; you need to understand and change the key behaviors and thought patterns that relate to successful weight loss and exercise. This book will describe these and show you how to apply them to your own life. We will assume your knowledge, past experience, and common sense tell you a good deal about what a sensible weight-loss and exercise plan looks like. While we will briefly review some of the more tried-and-true basics of what you should do in your weight-loss and exercise plan, the primary focus of this book is to teach you how to identify and overcome hidden barriers that keep you from success.

top

YOUR CHALLENGE Staying on Track

Making the decision to exercise regularly and eat healthy foods often leads to a frustrating cycle of good intentions and not-so-good follow through. Odds are that you could do a reasonably good job of telling a friend or neighbor what they should do to lose weight and exercise regularly. Unfortunately, telling someone else what to do in infinitely easier than guiding yourself. (Maybe this is why being told what you should do by others is often unappreciated and a bit irritating.) Why is this so? Changes you want to make must happen within the context of your many other priorities and influences, such as pangs of hunger, desire for comfort, unpleasant emotions, expectations of others, and home and work responsibilities. Once you add in a lifetime of past learning and experiences, it becomes clear that losing weight and exercising are far from the only things on your plate. Our goal is to help you understand what to do and how to guide yourself in doing it, within the context of your unique life.

How do you make sense of why you weren’t able to change habits successfully in the past? You might be inclined to chalk it up to laziness, tiredness, or just being too busy. Unfortunately, these explanations are overly simplistic and often derogatory. Besides that, they don’t offer much guidance about what you might do differently. Depending on your style, maybe you just skip any kind of explanation and go right to being angry or simply giving up. It’s as if you have some hidden barrier that prevents you from reaching your goals if only you could find it. This book aims to help you find accurate explanations for your past difficulties and to teach you the basics of habit change that are so essential to weight loss and exercise.

With each chapter, you will find insights and strategies to identify your particular reasons for getting off track from your plan, and you will be guided to understand why and how this happens. You’ll find out about various reasons you end up getting off track,

including not believing you can really do it, impulsively responding to uncomfortable emotions, reacting to your mistakes in a harsh manner, or finding your attention and energy being directed toward meeting others’ expectations. By identifying the barriers that cause you to get off track and looking at them in a nonjudgmental way, you will be in a position to address the issue directly and effectively, rather than letting it hide safely buried beneath your frustration and repeated disappointments.

top

Turning Barriers into Solutions

Managing a project, any project, toward successful completion requires a person to do a number of things well. You must know what needs to be done, motivate yourself to do it, keep your focus on your goal, manage distractions, and maintain morale, among other factors. This book describes ten similar skills and resources that will help you achieve your weight loss and exercise goals. A barrier occurs when you are having difficulty with one of these ten areas and it is causing you to get off track. While you may be very aware of not reaching your healthy goals, your particular barriers to success often remain "hidden."

Each barrier highlights an important ingredient needed for successful change. Difficulty in each area can be frustrating, especially if it is not identified or well understood. We encourage you to think of each barrier as an opportunity to understand, learn, confront, and overcome. We know it can be done, and we’ll offer you advice about how to do it.

top

Using This Book

You may want to use this book to get a comprehensive understanding of the many important components to making lasting change. The strategies offered here will help you practice and incorporate the solutions into your game plan. We also recommend using this book to help you identify your particular challenges and difficulties. Once the difficulty is identified, you may find you already have the resources to focus on and resolve the problem. However, you may also need to use the book to identify the problem and then go on to get more in-depth attention and assistance to address the issue.

One final note We encourage you to read this book with a sense of optimism and hope. It may not come easily, so you may have to fake it at first. Why? First, it’s just a good idea. A positive outlook and expectation are very helpful in creating change. Second, you have good reason to be optimistic. You have taken on challenges before and accomplished them. And when you haven’t been able to accomplish your goals, there was a reason. Now, you will be armed with a better understanding of what is getting you off track and with more tools and strategies than ever before.

Click Here to order.

top