The Diet Guy

New Year, New You ?

2012-01-31T13:00:08+00:00

So today is the end of January, it's a month since all those New Years resolution were made.

So how did yours go ?

Do you remember what you resolutions were and are they still being adhered to ?

I set a New Year's resolution of cutting back on caffeine as I drink a lot of coffee because I have a coffee machine near my desk and got into a routine of grabbing a coffee when I went to a meeting.

The more meetings I had the more coffee I drank but I noticed last year that on Saturday's I was getting headaches from the lack of caffeine so decided in January to cut back on the coffee instead.

So anyway job done ! Didn't have any caffeine in January and didn't miss it at all, instead of not having coffee and depriving myself I simply cut to decaf tea and coffee and haven't missed the caffeine at all.

I get asked a lot about how I sometimes am so determined and how do you find the 'willpower' to do things like lose weight, stop smoking, stop gambling etc.

The answer is I don't need willpower to do any of it because I am happy to do it ! And that's the key with weight and dieting, as soon as you are happy to not overeat anymore then you will be slim for years without having to diet and try.

If you dread dieting then you'll never be slim long term, as soon as you love dieting as it means you get slim and healthy then you'll get the results you want.

The secret is there is no secret...

I haven't dieted now for over 6 years in anyway, shape or form. I don't eat diet bars or shakes or soups or count points or anything like that, I just eat like a slim person and don't need food anymore to cheer myself up, celebrate, commiserate or get myself over a bad day at work.

Break the emotional link you have with food and the results are astonishing.

Six Years On

2011-09-19T14:32:20+01:00

Well it has now been six years since I decided that I needed to trim some weight off and be slim forever. The last six years have been a real roller coaster for me, I have split with my wife, moved house, got a completely new career, climbed a mountain, won a gameshow, done a naked photo shoot and generally had loads of good times and bad times.

But here I am six years on still at goal weight, the reason is that I no longer use food to celebrate the good times and I no longer use food to help me when times get tough.

I remember reading an article that said statistically it is impossible for someone who loses large amounts of weight to keep it off long term, but that's the point ! I don't keep it off as I got rid of it back in 2005, now I am just normal slim Mike !

I spent last night chatting to someone who was telling me how much they love food and love being on the sofa eating etc etc. But then they were doing a diet for a few months to trim the weight off and then they hoped to maintain.

But I have never met any maintaner who didn't change their mental relationship with food, sure you can try any old fad diet on the market, you can do Lighterlife, Cambridge, Weightwatchers or Slimming World and while you do those diets properly you will trim down but it's what you do afterwards that really counts.

And no diet really educates you in how to think differently about food and how to value your health and self esteem above eating too many calories. Most diets want you to go on their maintenance programs which basically means it is still about the food, I haven't dieted or thought about dieting since I finished back then and will never do another diet as the more I dieted the bigger I got !

So here is to the next six years ! Am sure it will be a bumpy ride but I shall be doing it with the same positivity I used for the past six years.

Healthy Snacks

2011-08-18T15:36:48+01:00

I was chatting with someone last night about healthy eating, they were asking whether I ever allowed myself now to eat chocolate and cakes. It made me smile as apart from when I was dieting strictly back in 2005 I have eaten chocolate and cakes almost every day.

A few months ago though I found a great site called Graze.Com

They do healthy snacks delivered to your door every week, they are only a couple of pounds and are a great snack in the cupboard for when you are watching a film or just something to tide you over to you main meal.

You get everything from olives, to chilli peanuts to oriental rice crackers and I have yet to get a pack I didn't think were yummy ! They also do coeliac version and a super healthy version if you really don't like your peanuts coated in chocolate...

If you use code VTXNT4N then you get a week for nothing and the next two weeks half price so I recommend strongly you give them a go ! The snacks are really yummy and a lot fresher than supermarket preserved rubbish.

How Do You Label Yourself ?

2011-07-06T13:18:26+01:00

Are you a mother, daughter, son, or father?

Are you a nurse, plumber, secretary or shop worker?

Are you a dieter, maintainer, ex-dieter, counsellor?

Are you a smoker, gambler, shopaholic, drinker or over eater?

Are you male or female?

Are you a Norwich City Fan or do you support some other football team...

My point is that people accept labels very easily and then tend to live to the expectation of that label.

I think the label of male works well for me, and I will even accept Norwich City fan, but some of the old labels I used to call myself such as failure, useless, fat, chunky, chubby and big Mike did very little for my self-esteem and by constantly putting myself down to others, excusing my weight by calling myself big boned and generally focussing on just how useless I was at weight management, I didn't get anywhere fast!

The reason I mention it is that I was chatting with a diet consultant who was quick to tell me all the negative things about himself and it reminded me of me. He told me he was fat (which he actually wasn't) and that he gambled too much...

Now when he said he was fat I asked 'Is that all you are?'

Of course, he said no, the conversation opened up and we moved it on until we agreed that he was great at his job and that I needed him to help me fix some problems and we got on and did it.

So what labels do you choose to accept, what labels do you let others give to you and also what labels do you call yourself...

Everytime you give yourself a negative label, then just think to yourself 'Is that all I am?' and then see if you can rephrase it to a positive.

Because you can change a label in the blink of a decision...I can become an Ipswich fan tonight if I want to...but the key is I choose not to as I now like the labels I have for myself and I know which ones I accept when other people call me them.
P.S. You are fantastic! (hope you accept that one!)

Don't Think Of A White Bear

2011-06-23T19:46:40+01:00

I have just been away on holiday and unfortunately sustained a serious knee injury on the first day of my holiday and hence instead of looking around Europe I spent the whole holiday sitting and reading! But never one to dwell anymore on the bad stuff I used it as an opportunity to read some new material and found a fantastic study by David Schneider about not thinking about white bears.

In the 1980's David Schneider did an experiment where he asked people to actively not think about a white polar bear but to ring a bell everytime they did, it turned out that people who were asked not to think about the white bar rang the bell twice as much as people who were allowed to think about it.

As David Schneider put it 'These observations suggest that attempted thought suppression has paradoxical effects as a self control strategy, perhaps even producing the very obsession or preoccupation that it is direct against.'

Now you are probably think what has this go to with weight management and a healthy lifestyle, well in reality most people on a diet are trying to not think about food, they are trying to ignore the foods they like the most and concentrate on anything but food. But like not thinking of a white bear the more they try and not think about a glass of wine, a chocolate bar or a bag of crisps the more they think about it.

I have said for years now that the best way to be slim long term is not to diet as I believe the more you diet and 'not diet' then you become obsessed with dieting and living the diet lifestyle and it was nice to see some studies which supported what I already knew.

More information on the study can be found at Don't Think Of A White Bear

Why Do You Want To Be Slim ?

2011-05-03T09:33:24+01:00

It's The Key To Success

The "Why do you want to be slim?" question is one of those questions where, as a counsellor, the answer will tell you an amazing amount about someone. Just the next ten seconds of their answer will give away whether or not it is a well formed goal, or whether or not it is likely to fail.

I will always remember asking a question to someone at work a couple of years ago who was moaning his career was going nowhere, which was "What do you want to do with your life?" He replied that he had no idea. He sat there for about thirty seconds and just kept saying he had no idea. He actually went off to think about it.

Therefore, I ask you again,

Why Do You Want To Be Slim?

What is your first instinct, is it because you think you should? Because others have been pressuring you to? Because your doctor said so? Because you are getting married? Because you have a holiday? Because you think it will make you happy? Because you don't want to be the big parent in the playground anymore? Because you saw a holiday photo and was horrified? Because you don't want to be the biggest of your friends ?

etc etc

Whatever your answer is, that is absolutely fine! If it works for you, then fantastic. If you actually can't think of an answer, my advice is to go away and really think it through. You must have a really good reason to do something, otherwise you are unlikely to do it.

The reason I asked is that if, for example, you said "I want to be slim for my holiday in March", then you go and reduce your weight and achieve that. The day you get back, if you were asked the question again, your reason has just disappeared. This is a large part of why so many people put weight back on after things like weddings or holidays. The original reason for reducing their weight was a good short term goal but gave no reason for long term maintenance.

I was talking to someone who had maintained her weight for about a year longer than I have. I asked her the same question to see her response, "Why did you want to be slim?" and she replied "Because that's who I am". That was exactly my answer! I didn't want to be slim for an event. I wanted to be slim because that is who I am. I am just me now. I am not "keeping the weight off", or jumping on and off diets. If you can really create a great answer, buy into that answer, and truly believe it, then the results will be totally different.

Product Review - Shut Up, Stop Whining And Get A Life

2011-04-26T18:13:06+01:00

Tough Love?

This book recommendation is from a subscriber to my newsletter, her name is Helen Jay and she is a good friend of mine.

Helen reduced her weight by an amazing eight stone some five years ago now and has totally got the mindset of just being slim! Helen is a diet counsellor in Bournemouth so if you are looking for a true inspiration to help you help yourself then mail me for her details!

This book by Larry Winget is a "no nonsense" approach to having what you want in life, this book is certainly not for the shrinking violets as it "tells it like it is" but if you prefer a punchy style to your reading that is honest and to the point then this is the book for you.

The thing I like with this is that Larry doesn't mind whether you like him or not, he just wants you to be happier and move on with your life and if you really ask yourself the questions he asks then you can make big footsteps in your life.

Anyway to grab a copy then get it from Amazon.co.uk at this link

Shut Up, Stop Whining & Get A Life

Overall Diet Guy Rating 8.5 Out Of 10

My First Diet

2011-04-24T19:22:13+01:00

I was chatting to someone yesterday and they asked me the first time I can remember dieting, I thought back and I think I was around twelve years old, I can remember it was a summer holiday and I was staying with my gran. My mum had found a diet that was doing the rounds at work which involved eating spinach on one day and steak on the next day for a week to supposedly drop half a stone.

I can remember seeing it as a prison sentence for a week and spent each day obsessing over when my next bowl of spinach or steak was coming. I would dive on the scales on an almost hourly basis to see whether I had lost an ounce or two.

And from that week I was hooked into the dieting lifestyle, I was either on a diet or not on a diet but both ways it was about dieting. When on a diet I would be struggling to hang in there and keep to the plan and when not on a diet I would be eating as much as I could because I was always a few days off starting the next diet, and everytime I dieted and ate again I was a few pounds heavier than I was the time before. I can remember doing a famous diet for 2 years and being two pounds heavier at the end of it than at the start.

Because dieting grabs you like that, it becomes a lifestyle, you start bonding with your friends talking about dieting, you start planning your meals hours and days in advance, you buy books on dieting, download fact sheets, join weight loss forums, go to gyms, cook special red day meals etc etc. You end up so in the dieting lifestyle that you actually gain out of being overweight because it is a hobby to diet and without needing to diet then what else would you do? I mean if you went to work and everyone was chatting about the latest diet and what foods were good/bad and you didn't need to diet then what would you talk about ?

So forget about your weight for a few minutes and just look at your lifestyle, just how many hours a week do you work on your dieting, how much time do you talk about food and weight, how much time you really invest in the dieting lifestyle and what could you do instead ?

I Don't Want To Die

2011-04-17T10:25:26+01:00

Focus On What You Want And Not What You Don't Want

Most dieters actually perceive themselves to be quite positive about their weight and their lives. They are taking action and moving on but what they say will very much dictate the results they will get.

What they think is a positive mindset is actually based on fear and what they don't want, as opposed to optimism and what they do want.

Let me give you some examples.

How many times have you said or heard other people say

1. I don't want to die

2. I don't want to be the fat mum in the playground

3. I don't want people to laugh at me

4. I don't want to wear big clothes

5. I don't want to go to a wedding looking like I do now

6. I don't want to get on a plane when I can't fit in the seat

7. I don't want to go on holiday looking like this

etc etc etc

But all of these require you to feel bad! They all require you to think about the thing that upsets you, hence you have to feel upset or uncomfortable. Therefore, if you desperately don't want people to laugh at you for being overweight, you then think about it, you then feel bad so you then use food to cheer yourself up. You then are in a vicious circle.

So what do you really want? Most dieters don't know, or won't allow themselves to think about it, dream it, imagine it and then do it.

So let's turn around those six points above, what if you said instead.

1. I want to live

2. I want to look great in the playground

3. I want people to wolf whistle me

4. I want to wear that new dress I saw in the shop window

5. I want to look fantastic at that wedding

6. I want to bounce about in my airline seat with room for three others

7. I want to have the holiday of a lifetime

It's just a decision to change what you don't want to what you do want. Even better of course is once you had decided what you do want is to make it even stronger by deciding to do it.

1. I will live my life and love it!

2. I will look amazing in that playground, in fact I'll look amazing wherever I am, and whatever I am doing.

3. I will have people say how great I look, and I'll know that I look great.

4. I will wear that dress I really want, and I will feel great in it.

5. I will look amazing on that wedding day.

6. I will get on that plane and make a point of sharing my seat with at least one of the cabin crew.

7. I will have the holiday of a lifetime

And then don't doubt it, go ahead and do it!

If you don't know what you want though then you will always be in neutral and not move forwards, let me give you another example of when most people know what they want!

When you sit down tonight in front of the TV then you are likely to make a decision on what you want to watch and not what you don't want to watch!

You may think, I want to relax and have a laugh so I'll watch X-Factor, or you might think I want to watch Brucie and the dancers on Strictly, and guess what! You will!

But would you sit there and think

I don't want to watch the shopping channels, I don't want to watch a documentary, or a quiz, I don't want to see a round of golf, and I definitely don't want to watch a movie, I don't want to view anything in black or white, or any programme with songs in it, I don't want to watch the news channels or anything with David Dickinson on it...

Of course not!!

Therefore if you know what you want to watch on the TV tonight and are happy to think of that, then what is stopping you think of what you want with one of the biggest things in your life! Your Health...

Strategy For Success

2011-04-16T11:40:00+01:00

People will always have a reason and a strategy for reducing their weight. The reason and hence the strategy is absolutely key to whether they are successful or not at getting to goal weight and more importantly being slim and healthy for the rest of their life.

From working with thousands of clients now I have realised that the difference in the strategies people run will usually dictate the result that they get.

A lady came to me back in 2008 with around 10 stone to lose (140 pounds), I asked her "Why she wanted to reduce her weight?" she said that she had been to the supermarket and was appalled by what she saw in the mirror in the changing room and hence that was the "kick up the bum" she needed to reduce her weight.

So she started to reduce her weight, she was incredibly determined, she had the absolute focus and started shrinking each week I saw her. After about 12 weeks she was around 3 stone (42 pounds) lighter and was starting to really see the results in that mirror....

But then it all started to go wrong, she started to eat too much again and spent the next 4 weeks without reducing her weight by a single pound.

Anyway we had a quiet chat one evening and she admitted that the motivation was not there anymore as she was no longer the person she saw in the mirror in the Supermarket and hence whereas she was trying to get away from that person she was now far enough away that she felt better and didn't value being slim as much as she did as that was never the original strategy.

So we talked again about what she wanted, she said she really did want to be slim, so we worked out a realistic weight goal in the future that she could aim at, we talked through possible hurdles, and the big goal for her is/was to fit in a particular dress that meant something to her.

By switching her mindset from getting away from something i.e. not wanting to be the person in the mirror to going towards something meant she suddenly was enthusiastic about what she was going to achieve in the future.

After that she was amazing, she went on to lose over 110 pounds in weight and reduced her BMI down to being overweight from morbidly obese. The closer she got to the target the more she could see,feel, touch and smell it and the more she wanted it and was a much better strategy for success. To this day she is still slim having seen her in town a couple of weeks ago.

So when you look at your own weight goals are you trying to get away from something or are you working towards a realistic goal in the future. The difference in results is huge!

Just to finish off today I met a lady once that I asked the same question of

"Why do you want to reduce weight?"

She replied in a quite common way "I don't want to die young"

I replied "That's what you don't want, so what do you want?"

She replied "I don't know actually"

Therefore if you don't know what you want then how can you achieve it? Remember to focus absolutely on what you want in terms of your weight and there is nothing in the world that can stop you.