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Change

and Weight Loss

Successful Lifestyle Change

In order for a person to experience permanent weight loss there is the need for a lifestyle change to take place.

Lifestyle changes are hard to make and maintain. Habit drags us back. Our friends, family and colleagues interfere. Emergencies interrupt us before our new routine has become an ingrained habit. How we cope is the difference between success and failure. The purpose of this report is to help you experience success, not failure.Are You Ready To Change?
People change their behaviors because of intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is doing something because you want to. People that are intrinsically motivated change for the benefit of themselves. You are reading this because you want to! You are ready to change!

Lifestyle is a person's pattern of living as expressed in his or her activities, interests, and opinions. Lifestyle is the sum of your habits of eating, exercising, confronting stress, how you handle change, dealing with others, and how you see God. Your lifestyle is important for what it allows you to do and what it keeps you from doing. Most likely there will be changes that need to take place in all areas of your life: physical, intellectual, emotional, relational, and spiritual. When the necessary changes take place in each of these aspects of a person’s being, there will be an overall lifestyle change which leads to permanent weight loss. This is the whole-person approach to weight loss.

Too many times individuals just focus on one or two areas of their life. When this happens there is the lack of change in other areas of their life and so they gain back the weight they lost―there was not a lifestyle change. The other thing that can happen is that there was not a true change that took place in any of the aspects of life. There was only temporary change for the moment. For permanent change to change to take place there must be more than behavioral change. There must be a change in the way a person thinks.

Stinkin Thinkin and Self-Sabotage
Those who need to lose weight (more than a few pounds) normally have what is routinely called ‘stinkin thinkin’. The way they think is unhealthy, not based upon facts, is negative, counterproductive, and has a self-sabotage theme to it. Self-sabotage is when a person does things that will destroy any success they have experienced. This is done because a person does not know how to handle success because of the lies they believe from the past. Many times they are afraid that persons, places, or things are going to rob them of their success, so they subconsciously decide “All my life people, places, or things have robbed me of my success, so I will have control over my life.” This in itself is ok, but here is the next level a person goes who self-sabotages:
Because they do not believe they can experience success, they start personally sabotaging their success. It makes them feel like they are in control of their life (they choose their failures instead of others choosing for them). As crazy as this sounds, many who desire to lose weight actively practice self-sabotage thinking and actions.
Read our Special Report on Self-Sabotage and Weight Loss.

Change our Thinking
We need to change the way we think if we are going to change our behavior and make lifestyle changes.

Here are just a few ways of changing how we think:

Change and Pain
In order for change to take place in our life there are going to be times of pain. There may be some pain physically as our body gets use to more physical movement if we have not been exercising. There may be some stomach pain as we eat less or drink more water. There may be emotional pain as we look at what we are feeling instead of trying to prevent feelings by using food for our comfort. There may be pain as we start the journey of growing intellectually regarding permanent weight loss. We may learn things that remove excuses for not being able to lose weight. It may be painful to see our wrong attitudes. As we change the way we eat and see food, our spouse may not understand why we want to eat differently. Their can be fear that as we change our eating habits, our spouse will not understand the change in lifestyle and our spouse will reject us. Or we have to change the “going out to eat” with our friends. Many of us need to change our perspective on who God is. It can be painful to acknowledge the fact that we have had a wrong concept of God, especially if we have believed a lie all our life. None of us like to be wrong.

Many are not willing to go through the “pain and suffering” of permanent change. They want to maintain the same thinking and behavior hoping for different results. This is one of the definitions of being insane.

Many have a wrong concept of pain. They believe that pain is always something bad. Pain can be good for us. If we stick our hand in the fire, pain keeps us from burning our hand off. Pain is a reminder that we are alive. Many who have used food for comfort have become numb. They may feel like they are not living life. The pain of change can be comfort. It helps us to be in touch with life again. The more we embrace the pain of change the quicker the change comes. If we continuously run from the pain of change, change is delayed and may never take place. If we want to experience positive changes in our life, so we may live a different lifestyle, permanent weight loss, we need to embrace the pain of change. We will find out the pain was more than worth it and not as bad as we thought.

Trusting Others
In order for permanent lifestyle changes to take place, a person needs to learn to trust others who have experienced permanent lifestyle changes and who are on the same journey as themselves. Many times individuals can get stuck, because they are trying to do things on their own. It is easy to believe the lies of the past when we are ‘lone rangers’. When we are on the road to recovery, weight loss, or changing a lifestyle, we need others to share their observations, to hold us accountable, and to learn from their successes.

Just because we have been hurt in the past by those who we may have trusted, nothing says that we will be hurt again. Of course, unless we are quick to be hurt. Also, many times we interpret a person who challenges us as being against us because we really do not want to pay the price to change. So, we “shoot the messenger” who is there to help bring change in our life. This is where self-sabotage can come in. A person may be in our life who exposes the lies we believe and we get hurt, offended, defensive, and instead of facing the lies, we believe the lies all over again and then attack the person who is there to help us in our recovery-permanent weight loss. Many times we want people to ignore our excuses instead of confront our excuses. However, for real change to take place we need to trust the guidance of those who are walking in success and recovery, realizing that they also fall short at times. In other words we do not put them on a pedestal because we will then easily get offended when they are not ‘perfect’.

Here is something to think about. Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto and Silver.
Read the Special Report titled  Exercising Your Trust Muscles.

Slow, but Steady Change
For most people, slow but steady change is much more effective than something that happens quickly. Drastic lifestyle changes normally do not last. The reason why they do not last is that it takes more than the change of behavior for lasting change to occur. We need to also change how we think and see things. Otherwise in time, we will fall back to the old ways of living because of what we believe. If you believe you will always be fat, you will ultimately quit any diet no matter how stringent and serious you were about losing weight and how quickly you lost the weight.

By setting realistic goals that are specific and taking small steps, you have to adjust what you believe as you take the steps to permanent weight loss. You don't have to do everything at once. For successful lifestyle change, small changes lead to bigger changes.

However, here is a caution. Don’t use the concept of slow and steady to justify not doing all you can to make right choices, to use the resources available to you and making every effort to lose weight. Here is what many will do. They will use the concept of slow and steady to justify laziness, lack of motivation, stubbornness, and unwillingness to change. Some will ignore the very resources that are available for them to change because they are just plain lazy or don’t want to pay the price for change to take place. It is always wrong to find excuses for not making the proper lifestyle change.

Will Power
Ultimately for long lasting change to take place is that a person must have will power and pure determination. When it seems like everything is against them losing weight they must make the decision that no matter what they are going to make right choices. For some this is much easier to do than it is for others. Here is the key. The more a person applies the principles above, the easier it is going to be to make right choices regarding lifestyle changes.

For many who struggle with weight loss it is not a matter of they do not have will power or determination. It is just that they need to refocus that will power. Here is an example of what we mean. The person has a struggle with overeating on cookies. Their spouse decides to hide the cookies. The person will do anything to find the cookies. If they can’t find them they will go to the store in the middle of the night. They will do whatever it takes to eat some cookies. Do they not have will power? Yes and no. They may not have the will power to resist the cookies, but they have the will power to do whatever it takes to get the cookies. So, they do have a strong will. They just need to take that pure determination to get some cookies and turn it around to be determined to do right.

On a regular basis we speak of being desperate, but not disciplined. If the energy that is spent on being desperate is redirected to being disciplined, then an individual can start experiencing success in their goal to see long lasting change in their life.

Change, Weight Loss, and Thin for Life
Thin for Life was designed to help each member to lose weight permanently. Thin for Life is not another diet. It is about changing your lifestyle to be in alignment with Healthy Eating, Physical Movement, Nutritional Support, Curative Sleep and Rest, and Proper Hydration. Thin for Life is based upon a whole-person approach to weight loss, taking care of the physical, intellectual, emotional, relational, and spiritual aspects of your life. If you will use all the benefits that we provide you will see permanent weight loss.

Instead of finding excuses why the benefits will not work for you (don’t have enough time-we have time for what is important to us, too hard-there is always help available, won’t work-don’t know until you try), trust those who have developed the benefits and make full use of all the tools that have been made available for you.

Are you ready to make changes in your lifestyle? If so, take the time to read other Special Reports to help you to grow intellectually and spiritually-change the way you think so you can make long lasting lifestyle changes. To grow spiritually also be sure to read the quotes in the Inspirational Calendar. Share with others through the web blog, discussion board, and chat rooms so that you can grow emotionally and relationally. Add photos to the photo gallery to make Thin for Life more personable. Be sure to participate in Teleseminars. Take of your body physically by using PTO and taking supplements.