By the time I see a client for help with weight loss they’ve tortmented themselves endlessly with the above question. As a result they’re feeling helpless and clueless as to how to stop the madness and just lose weight.

If you tackle the task of change by constantly asking yourself the above kind of question a sensible answer will never come. That’s because you’re posing too big a question and as such it makes your mind go blank and not so useful state.

By way of an example do you remember at school getting floored by the teacher when she picked on you in front of everyone? It’s like that for your mind when you ask: “Why can’t I change the way I eat? Or; Why can’t I stop eating too much of the wrong stuff?” There is no simple answer to this kind of question. So you mentally go into the dark and then fearful and uncomfortable responses come back at you.

There is a way to avoid getting stuck like this and recently I helped a client do just that so that she could at last lose weight effectively.

This client said she was hopeless with food and always on a yo-yo with dieting. Yet in many other areas of her life she was superwoman. She had three gorgeous children, a beautiful house and a high-powered job that she thrived on. Tight deadlines and being a team leader demanded quick decisions with oodles of confidence.

Yet staying on a sensible diet threw her into uncertainty and panic. Making the slightest deviation from her diet and exercise plan meant total disaster and failure. To stay on track seemed impossible.

There had to be an answer to the problem. To find it we looked at how she managed to keep all the other aspects of her life together. How did she decide in an instant the right course of action? How did she know not to dwell on mistakes but learn from them? These skills and abilities are exactly what she needed to break free from her diet treadmill.

Exploring further she realised a specific skill and that was keeping her focus on what was needed in the moment whilst keeping the big picture in the back of her mind at the same time.
This meant that she could now apply that to her desire to reach a goal weight as the big picture whenever she was in front of instant temptation.

After some more discussion, we worked out five simple principles to adopt and act on. I’ll share them with you now.