Posted by Phillip Richards

Living a healthier lifestyle encompasses many areas of your life. It’s easier to achieve your goals if you take small steps. If you clearly set out to do one thing and achieve it, you will find it easier to achieve the next and so on. As you slowly improve one area of your life, you will become more confident in improving another and will begin naturally to progress towards a healthier lifestyle.

There is no rush – you should eradicate any thoughts of time frames on this from your mind. You will just add more pressure to yourself. You have all the time in the world.

The first thing is to have clearly in your mind the intention of living a healthier lifestyle. Wake up every morning and affirm to yourself (in the present tense) ‘I am very happy being healthy and living a healthier lifestyle’. This might perhaps seem ludicrous especially if this is the opposite extreme to your current situation, but it’s important you have this intention firmly set in your mind. You want to live a healthier lifestyle and so you have to believe you can do that. If you don’t believe you can do that, you won’t ever achieve it. Tell yourself this every morning, every evening and whenever you think about it. Always think positive thoughts around your health, weight, lifestyle etc and whenever you feel the negatives creeping in, replace it with a positive thought.

Weight is a good place to start.

Begin by establishing what exactly it is you want to achieve. Just telling yourself you want to lose weight is not enough. You may have found in the past you have lost weight only to then put the weight back on or be forever on and off diets.

Step 1 then is to sit down and think about what you really want. If you have a photograph of yourself at the weight you would like to be, put this in a very prominent place, on your fridge door for example, bedroom ceiling (so you can see it every morning!) etc.

Have a clear image of yourself in your mind as you want to be. You may find this difficult if you are extremely overweight but it is VERY important you have the image of how you want to be in your mind. Having a photograph of yourself makes this easier because if you study yourself in the photograph for 10 minutes and then close your eyes you can picture yourself easily in the photograph. Hang on to that and keep it in your mind. Give lots of positive energy towards that image and you will begin to notice when you do, it makes you feel good. Why wouldn’t it, after all being that person is who you want to be. Find yourself some clothing items in the size you once were or want to be and have them in a prominent place.. Whenever you look at them DO NOT feel bad at all, in any way. Look at them and visualise yourself in them, feel great when you imagine how good you look in them.

Step 2 Lose all thoughts you have around weight, weight loss, diets, fat free, calories or whatever else you can think of. One of the main reasons people don’t achieve what they want to is because they spend all their time focusing on the negative. If you take the word ‘ losing weight ’ if you are forever giving thoughts to this i.e. ‘I really need to lose weight’ then you can pretty much guarantee (and I would guarantee this) that you will continue to think those thoughts because all you are focusing on is the weight. Take your focus away from the weight and focus on the opposite i.e. ‘I am really happy now I am so slim, toned and healthy’. As ridiculous as this may sound, physicists have proved that our lives mirror our thoughts. What we think of most we actually manifest in our lives. Quite simply if you are thinking ‘I really need to lose weight’ you are going to get pretty much more of the same. Turn every thought into the positive outcome you want to achieve, as though it was now.

If you have scales, throw them away! You know what you look like, it’s in your head, why does it matter what you weigh..? If you don’t lose X amount of pounds one week it will make you feel bad and if you do it will put pressure on your for the following week … lose the scales !!!!

Step 3 By giving such positive thoughts to the way you perceive yourself i.e. your weight you will soon notice your mindset on achieving this shifts. The next step is to start considering what you eat. I can sum up the biggest problem with diets in one word and that is SACRIFICE. Whenever you go on a diet you feel instantly like you are sacrificing something. You can’t eat that because it contains X amount of fat or you can’t have that because you will have had way too many carbs today, or that has too many points, or too much sugar and after a couple of days you are miserable. MODERATION, think moderation. Here’s a very simple equation.

CAKES + MCDONALDS + ALCOHOL + ALCOHOL + SWEETS + CHOCOLATE + CRISPS + FIZZY DRINKS + COFFEE + COFFEE + COFFEE + COFFEE + COFFEE + TEA + CHOCOLATE + TAKE AWAY + TAKE AWAY + MICROWAVE MEAL + CHIPS = OVERWEIGHT & UNHEALTHY

Unless there is a severe medical disorder causing your weight gain, it is physically impossible for you not to lose weight. You might say ah well I work all day and don’t have time for anything but takeaway or a microwave dinner. You might say ah well I have kids and have to put them to bed and by the time I am done I am so tired that I don’t have time to eat properly. You might come up with a gazillion and one reasons for being what you look at in the mirror but at the end of the day the big thing to remember is the word YOU!

Only YOU can make any impact on becoming the person YOU want to be. Making a start on how you think will have a huge impact on your progress. It is impossible not feel good when you are thinking positive thoughts. Try it…. Have that image in your head of you looking slim, toned and healthy….. How does that make you feel? Every time you get a negative thought, think that and feel good. Be conscious at all times of how you think about yourself and when you think negatively, replace it with a positive. Affirm positives to yourself in the present tense i.e. ‘I love being healthy and looking slim and toned’ or words around what you decided in step one you wanted.

Think about what you eat and think moderation. Don’t starve yourself of something you enjoy. Continue with the positive thoughts and slowly begin to replace unhealthy foods with healthy foods. Still allow yourself the things you enjoy but know that over eating unhealthy foods will result in unhealthy you.

Make a conscious decision to replace fizzy drinks and coffee with water . This is really hard in the beginning. I can speak from experience and say that I never EVER drank water because I just didn’t like to drink it AT ALL. I now drink 2 to 3 litres of water every single day to the point where if I don’t drink water frequently, I feel the need to. I simply started out with a clear intention I wanted to drink more water and kept telling myself, I just love water. I slowly started drinking it and when I became healthier I drank more and more and slowly after weeks of drinking water every day I realised I just drank it without thinking. Your body needs water like it needs air and if you don’t drink lots, you will notice a massive difference in just a week. Drinking water will also make you feel more full up ! (and the constant trips to the toilet cease after a couple of weeks).

Don’t put pressure on yourself with the 5 a day theory. That is the recommended amount but again think moderation. Take small steps and introduce healthier foods where you can. Do it slowly and you won’t feel like you are suddenly trying to change so many things at once.

Take NO notice on those low fat foods that say FAT FREE … they are often filled with enormous amounts of sugar.

Something simple I always keep in mind…. the closer the food is to its natural state, the healthier it will be. It is extremely difficult to eat every meal like this and I am not suggesting you do so but it is helpful to keep this in mind.

At first it will seem like you are conscious of not only your thoughts but everything you eat as well. This will get easier after a few weeks.

Make it a clear intention you eat three meals a day (even if you don’t at the moment) and drink water in between. Eat fruit as much as possible and include vegetables whenever possible! Make it your intention to shop healthier.

This is about you, not me and me giving you a whole list of foods to eat just won’t work. You decide what you eat and you live with the consequences. Think about what you eat now and how you can introduce healthier foods to that, think about what you can replace and how you can do that. Surprisingly when you eat healthier your mind becomes a lot sharper, you sleep better and you feel far more energised. Junk food is quite addictive and once you get your head around the fact that eating healthier is not a sacrifice you will enjoy it and enjoy the benefits even more!

REMEMBER the most important thing of all is the thoughts you have around becoming healthier. If you keep firm in your mind the intention you want to achieve and visualise that as though it is here now, you will soon take steps closer to it. It is impossible for you not to.

The single reason anyone fails at anything is that they lose sight of what it is they want or in this case they return to eating and living the unhealthy lifestyle they did before. SMALL STEPS, keep taking small steps towards what you want to achieve and you will achieve it.

The next step is to consider regular exercise in some form or another but for now start with the above.

By Shelley Costello