Someone asked me this the other day and I have been sitting here wracking my brain as to the perfect answer….

Firstly there is no such thing as perfect – even when we think there might be it is always an illusion – however you may not be interested in my pop philosophy so I shall reign myself in and simply answer the question.

The perfect NuBeginnings guest is the person who turns up ready to listen, learn and do. When you arrive it can be a bit daunting – who will you be staying at NuBeginnings with? What does your stay hold in store? Those kinds of things.

We simply ask that for the time you are with us you have a go at everything we suggest – the eating rules for example. Also that you enter into the therapies with an open mind – ready to see what positive effect they have on you. Finally of course is that you turn up to each and every exercise session – even on the day when you might not feel like it.

If you can do those things then you are indeed the perfect NuBeginnings guest.

And speaking of guests a big well done to last week’s guests who lost an impressive 9.8lbs each (on average). Well done ladies and keep up the good work!

At the risk of sounding a bit smug I wanted to let you know it is 32degrees and beautiful here at our weight loss boot camp in France today.

However summer seems to be well and truly over in the UK and Autumn seems to have taken up residence… the nights are already drawing in, the mornings duller and greyer… and before we know it, Winter will muscle its way in and take over.
And, if you’re like most people – me included – you can start to let it get you down a bit. It’s a proven malady, if you like, and entirely natural. And what makes it worse is it creeps up on us slowly and insidiously.

Worst of all, if you’re working hard to lose weight and it’s something you find a challenge at the best of times, even without realising it the onset of Winter and the fading of the light can lead us into the dreaded trinity of Comfort Eating, Laziness, and Procrastination.
In short, we get lackadaisical about out eating habits and exercise regimes and slowly but surely begin to put the pounds back on… and none of this is helped, of course, by us wrapping ourselves in heavy clothes so we can’t see the changes and then telling ourselves the New Year is just around the corner and we can start afresh then.

So NOW is the time to stop any backsliding dead in its tracks – we need to reaffirm our goals and aspirations and nip any bad-habits in the bud before they become a problem.

Here are some simple steps you can take to keep yourself on track (and I recommend you do them NOW and then repeat them at least once a week).
1. Go back over your goals and Journal and just do a “sanity check”. Make sure where you are headed is still where you want to end up.
2. Make sure you congratulate yourself for the progress you have made. You’ll tend to focus on any mistakes you’ve made. But you shouldn’t – you can’t change them. Just learn from them, accept them, and move on.
3. Write in your Journal every day – record everything. Over time there’s a tendency to let it slip. That’s not the best policy because in the same way anything measured improves… anything NOT measured tends to drift back to the mean (I’ll write about this in another post).
4. Re-state your goals to your friends, family and colleagues. If we commit to something publicly, it tends to make us more likely to see it through. Remember, everyone else is sliding back into Winter, too… and it’s too easy for you to follow along.
5. Promise yourself a real treat at Christmas. It’s not that far off, and as a treat promise yourself a week off your eating plan and exercise regime. It’s a rest you can look forward to and one you’ll certainly have earned.

Finally, think seriously, deeply, long and hard about joining us at NuBeginnings early in the New Year. It’s the perfect time to reconsolidate your position after Christmas and a fantastic prelude to Spring and next Summer (which will be here to greet the new slimmer and healthier you before you know it!).

I know from my own experience over many, many years that being overweight can leave you feeling miserable, angry and even… resentful.

Worse, this anger and resentment we often push onto other people, not only punishing them for how we are and how we feel, but also, over time, sometimes even blaming them for it.

Yet here’s something to think about: when you’re talking about how your weight and how you feel, my guess is you say something like, “It makes me feel really…”.

And the important word there is… makes.

Because in truth, it doesn’t make you at all. There is exactly one person responsible for the way you feel, and it’s the same person you see when you look in the mirror.

Now, I’m not suggesting you can always help the way you feel, at least in the very short term, but the fact is your feelings are always and only your own responsibility (this is something we’re really focusing on in the hypnotherapy sessions and mindset therapies at NuBeginnings France because it’s so important).

This truth is somewhat uncomfortable, I won’t deny, because it implicitly puts the onus firmly back on us for solving our problems. Not only can we not blame anyone else for our being overweight, but we can’t expect them to fix it for us, either. Blaming them for it is natural, easy, satisfying… but very, very unfair. It can and does destroy relationships, marriages and even people’s entire lives.

And this is tacitly what many of us do when we get angry and resentful of other people, turning our anger outwards rather than inwards which is really where it belongs (anger isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s bad only if you can’t control it, direct it or use its power for positive change… and then let it disappear as you take steps to change what you’re getting angry about).

I won’t pretend it’s easy, changing like this, especially if you’re stubborn and insist on doing it all by yourself.

You can, yes, because that’s just what I did.

But it took me many years and a lot of stumbling along into dead-ends, blind-alleys, traps and pitfalls before I really mastered the essential skills we need to make change happen for us (fortunately NuBeginnings’ Guests have a fast, effective and very simple shortcut because I’ve done all the hard work for you already!).

It’s been said of resentment that it’s like “drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die”. Meaning, it’s a destructive emotion we try to project onto others, yet the only person it hurts is ourselves.

One of the core principles of all our work at NuBeginnings is to help you take back control of and responsibility for your emotions and weight-loss goals and re-programme your subconscious mind so losing weight and achieving your goals becomes easy, almost effortless and a lot of fun.

An interesting observation made by psychologists is that most of us are stuck at the same level of happiness and satisfaction in our lives regardless of what’s going on around us or the circumstances we find ourselves in.

And if you think about it, you’ll see it’s true. I bet every woman has at one time or another secretly convinced herself that little outfit will change her life and make her sexier, more desirable and happier – and it does, for all of us… for about an hour after we first put it on. And the same is true for men and their cars. (I know I am over generalising but hang in there – I’m making a good point I promise).

And, counter-intuitively, the same is true for the money we earn, the houses we live in, the company we keep – pretty much everything. Once a surprisingly low minimum level of these things is reached, adding more to the pile doesn’t change how we feel beyond a short-lived “bump” when it’s all new and fresh to us.

So, what does this have to do with weight loss and reaching those all-important goals you have?

Well, none of this happens overnight. Your weight takes time to come off, and you reach your goals as the result of time and effort applied in the right direction. And after the original euphoria and excitement has worn off and real-life reasserts itself, it’s easy to fall back into that “don’t care, can’t be bothered, what’s the point?” attitude.

And it’s understanding this that makes our approach at NuBeginnings so very different and typically more effective than simply “dieting” alone.

Because we understand how your mindset drives everything else – and that’s why we put so much emphasis on it during your stay on our Residential Programme, as well as in the NuBeginnings Inner Circle home-study programme.

But even without these, there’s a lot you can do to reset your “happiness thermostat” to a higher level and keep the motivation going.

One of the simplest ways is to keep your Journal bang up-to-date, making sure you record everything, but especially your results as the weight comes off and you get closer to your goals.

This serves to remind you of why you’re doing what you’re doing and provides concrete evidence it’s actually working (because even at 2lb a week, if you have  lot to lose, progress can be painfully slow and difficult to discern).

Another trick you can play sounds very simple but takes some practice. And that is… to decide to be happy now.

The world around you is as it is. And it’s this way every day. The only difference between good days and bad days is your attitude to them – the environment around you is oblivious to you (and if truth be told, so are most of the people around you, too!).

You have a choice: be happy, or don’t be happy. It sounds silly, I know. But if you tell yourself “I’ll be happy when I…”, and then add some arbitrary criterion, like “… reach my goal weight”, or “…get that new car” or “…find a partner” I can practically guarantee you’re never going to be happy, simply because you’re relying on external circumstances or other people to furnish that happiness for you.

So what do you do when you’re feeling low or you wake up and something’s weighing on your mind and threatening to spoil your day.

Easy:

1. Find somewhere to stand where you’ve got some space (you’re going to need it).
2. Think about what’s bugging you and let the negative feelings wash over you. Really let them become strong… as strong and as miserable as they can be.
3. When they’re so bad you just want to find a hole to crawl into…
4. Crouch down, touch your fingers on the floor, and then leap up in the air as high as you can, waving your arms about and kicking your legs, pulling as silly a face as you can and making as silly “yodelling” sound.
5. That’s it.

Yes, people will think you’ve flipped, but I promise not only will you feel instantly better for the rest of the day, but the problem – whatever it is – won’t ever seem quite so important ever again.

Don’t knock it until you’ve done it. Go on….no time like the present!

One of the lessons I took a long time to learn (but which, fortunately, you can learn from me now without having to make all the mistakes I made or take so long to learn it), is our ultimate success with our weight-loss goals stems from our mindset.

Until this vital foundation is absolutely rock solid the rest is like a house built on shifting sand (this is one of the core things we cover on the Residential Programme here at a href=”http://www.nubeginnings.co.uk”>NuBeginnings, where we share with you different tools and strategies for forming this foundation to underpin your ultimate success).

It does take a little time and effort, and it’s something we need to keep a constant watch on, lest we allow our own negative little voices distract us from our goals and aspirations.

But here’s a quick exercise you can start doing now, right away, and it’ll being you rewards massively disproportionate to the effort you have to put into it.

It’s very simple: stop comparing yourself to others.

We all do it, I know, but it’s fundamentally pointless. We’ll open up a magazine and look at the models, then read the blurb telling us if we follow this diet or that plan, we’ll look like the improbably beautiful woman in the picture; yes, we all know she’s a model, but that doesn’t stop the fanciful hope at the back of our minds that perhaps this time it’s true.

Fact is, most of us aren’t models. And no amount of exercise is going to make us one. It’s perhaps not fair and an unkindness bestowed upon us by fate, but that’s life.

And you’ll find we do this all the time: we look at other people’s success and unconsciously compare our own results to theirs. That, too, is pointless.

Apart from anything else, you can’t know what it is they are doing to get their results. Not only do people lie, but they also sincerely get it wrong.

But even if what they told you is absolutely correct, there’s every chance you could do exactly the same things they’re doing – same exercise, same time, same food, same everything – and still you’d get different results.

Why?

Because we’re all different. Our bodies are built on the same plan and we have the same broad chemical processes going on, but we’re all different in the detail, and the detail, when it comes to losing weight, makes all the difference.

There’s nothing wrong with following an established Programme like the one we have at NuBeginnings, because it’s proven to work (we’re proud of the fact that everyone who has ever come to stay with us has gone away having lost weight. We have a 100% success rate).

But it works better for some people than for others. And if you don’t get the same results as someone else, it’s too easy to conclude you’ve done something “wrong” or there’s something more serious gone awry.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The true measure of success is internal to YOU, and the best thing you can do is compare yourself to… yourself.

Trying to live up to others’ expectations is a short-cut to unhappiness and suboptimal results.