Tips For The Path To Successful Weight Loss

Weight-loss goals can mean the difference between success and failure. Realistic, well-planned weight-loss goals keep you focused and motivated. They provide a plan for change as you think about and transition into your healthy lifestyle.

But not all weight-loss goals are helpful. Unrealistic and overly aggressive weight-loss goals — for example, losing 10 pounds each week or fitting into your high school jeans from 20 years back — can undermine your efforts. They’re difficult, if not impossible, to meet. And if your weight-loss goals are beyond reach, you’re more likely to feel frustrated and discouraged and give up on your dieting plans. It’s OK to dream big. Just use these tips for creating weight-loss goals that will help you achieve your big dreams.

Personalize your goals. Set goals that are within your capabilities and that take into account your limitations. Also, consider your personal fitness level, health concerns, available time and motivation. Tailoring your expectations to your personal situation helps you set achievable goals.

Aim for realistic weight loss. Healthy weight loss usually occurs slowly and steadily. In general, plan to lose 1 to 2 pounds a week (0.5 to 1 kilogram) — even if your initial weight loss is a little faster in the first week or two. To do this, you need to burn 500 to 1,000 calories more than you consume each day. Also, don’t expect to lose more of your body weight than is realistic. For instance, set a goal of losing 10 percent of your current weight, rather than 30 percent.

Focus on the process. Make most of your goals process goals, rather than outcome goals. “Exercise regularly” is an example of a process goal, while “weigh 145 pounds” is an example of an outcome goal. It’s changing your processes — your daily behaviors and habits — that’s key to weight loss, not necessarily focusing on a specific number on the scale. Just make sure that your process goals are specific, measurable and realistic, too.

Think short term and long term. Short-term goals keep you engaged on a daily basis, but long-term goals motivate you over the long haul. Your short-term goals can become stepping stones to reaching long-term goals. Because healthy, permanent weight loss can be a long process, your goals need to be feasible for the long term.

Write it down. When planning your goals, write down everything and go through all the details. When and where will you do it? How will you fit a walk into your schedule? What do you need to get started? What snacks can you cut out each day? Then track your progress to see if you’re meeting your goals.

Start small. It’s helpful to plan a series of small goals that build on each other instead of one big, all-encompassing goal. Remember that you’re in this for the long haul. Anything you undertake too intensely or too vigorously will quickly become uncomfortable, and you’re more likely to give it up.

Plan for setbacks. Setbacks are a natural part of behavior change. Everyone who successfully makes changes in his or her life has experienced setbacks. Identifying potential roadblocks — a big holiday meal or office party, for example — and brainstorming specific strategies to overcome them can help you stay on course or get back on course.

Reassess and adjust your goals as needed. Be willing to change your goals as you make progress in your weight-loss plan. If you started small, you might be ready to take on larger challenges. Or, you might find that you need to adjust your goals to better fit your new lifestyle. If you find that you have to make frequent adjustments downward or constantly scale back, you may not be setting realistic weight-loss goals in the first place — head back to tip No. 1.

The Simplest Path To Success

Let’s imagine a person whose life is in a mess. We’ll call him Kevin. Everyone around Kevin can see how bad his lifestyle is. It’s making him miserable. Here’s the problem: Kevin can’t see it himself. He goes on feeling wretched, but is completely unconscious of the cause—the mess in his life.

Of course, so long as Kevin remains unconscious of the cause of the problem, he’ll be unable to help himself. No one else can help him either, since pointing to the way his life is means pointing to something he cannot see. He rejects such advice and say there’s nothing wrong with the way he lives. His problem is something else; something outside his control, like his bad family background and upbringing, his poverty, and the prejudice against people like him who weren’t born in the right place or with the right color of skin. Because Kevin also spends many hours watching TV (he’s frequently out of work or feeling sick), he’s now become a connoisseur of medical terminology. He’s sure he’s suffering from ADHD, Restless Legs Syndrome, and probably undiagnosed emotional problems. But he’s too poor to get treatment, so he’s condemned to lifetime illness, as well as poverty and unhappiness. How could changing his actions do any good against such overwhelming problems?

This sad fellow has a sister, Kathy. She’s also miserable and her life is as much of a mess as his is. But Kathy can see the problem. She knows her way of life is making her wretched. She sees the causes of her unhappiness clearly enough, but does nothing about them. Why? Kathy is convinced she has to “get herself straightened out inside” before she can tackle the mess and muddle of her life. So she avidly consults self-help books and magazines . She’s always analyzing her emotions, reviewing her past mistakes, and delving into her family history—which is, of course, as dysfunctional as Kevin’s. She too blames the external world for much of her misery, noting all the neuroses and traumas it’s left her with: problems that prevent her from moving forward until she can finally discover how to make them go away. Kevin tells her about his medical problems, and she agrees she shares most of them. Once she can get herself sorted out mentally and get some money, she plans to go to a suitable specialist. In the meantime, she takes vitamins and herbal remedies, since they’re all she can afford.

Kevin and Kathy are becoming Mr. and Ms. Normal in our world today. They’re unhappy and they know it, but they either blame it all on problems outside their control (like Kevin); or have become convinced they must first sort out their emotions and thoughts (like Kathy) before they can do anything about the mess they’ve made of their lives.

Let’s look as Mary instead. Mary’s life is just as much of a mess and she’s at least as miserable as Kevin and Kathy. She can list a string of handicaps, from poverty, through an abusive parent, to boyfriends who beat her and the last one who made her pregnant, then disappeared. One morning, just after the birth of her daughter, Amy, Mary wakes up and decides—seemingly for no reason—she has to stop her life being such a disaster area. She’s miserable, she’s poor, she has no confidence in herself and her emotions are a nightmare. She’s certain she won’t be able to cope with anything complicated, so she looks at her life and seizes on the simplest, most obvious thing to do—and she does it.

That’s how it goes on. Each day, Mary does the next most obvious thing she can see to improve her life. She has no plan; no long-term objective or vision of a better future. If you ask her what she’s doing, she’ll tell you she has no idea and it’ll probably be a mistake anyway. But, rain or shine, feeling good or feeling wretched, Mary plods on, doing whatever she can and whatever is most obvious to her.

Months pass. Mary still feels bad much of the time. She’s still poor. When she has time to consider her emotions, she can see they’re just as volatile as they always were. Still, her baby is well fed, properly clothed and healthy. They live in a small apartment. It’s not a wonderful neighborhood, but the place is clean, the rent is paid and they have food, warmth and basic security.

After a year, Mary can look back and notice how far she’s come. It makes her feel good. After two years, she has a job she likes, enough money to ensure Amy has a comfortable childhood, and she’s attending the local college to better her education. That makes her feel even better.

Five years pass. One morning, Mary wakes up with a jolt. Her mind is in turmoil. She doesn’t know what to do. It’s just dawned on her that she’s happy. What’s more, her life is no longer a mess. She has a happy, healthy daughter. She has a great job. She even has a boyfriend who cherishes her and Amy and has never offered either of them anything but love and respect.

At work that day, Mary confesses her confusion to her closest friend, Juanita. Juanita is fascinated and wants to know Mary’ secret for real lifestyle improvement.

“I don’t have one,” Mary tells her. “I never did. I’m as puzzled as you are. I just kept doing things. Most were really small, dumb actions. The kind of things anyone with half a brain would have seen needed to be done. I’m not clever enough to come up with proper plans. I guess they worked out.”

Too many of us swallow the prevailing myths of our society: that our problems all lie outside ourselves; and we have to spend time getting our minds and emotions in order—or motivating ourselves—before we can tackle the problems in our lives. Believe either of them and you’ll never advance much beyond where you are today. Actions alone make a difference. Not necessarily big, dramatic ones either.

You don’t need a life plan. You don’t need motivation, self-confidence, peer support or even luck. All you need is the willingness to take the next most obvious step—then repeat the process again and again, regardless of how you feel. Try it. Happiness comes from seeing the results of your efforts. You don’t need it before you start.

Tips For Success In Relationships

A ‘good relationship’ means different things to different people. However, good adult relationships generally involve two people who respect each other, can communicate, and have equal rights, opportunities and responsibilities. Most of us would also expect our relationship with our partner to include love, intimacy and sexual expression, commitment, compatibility and companionship.

Working at a relationship
All couples want to have a successful and rewarding relationship, yet it is normal for couples to have ups and downs. To meet these challenges, and to keep your relationship healthy and happy, you need to work at it. Relationships are like bank accounts – if there are less deposits than withdrawals, you will run into difficulties.

Tips for a good relationship
Tips that may help you improve your relationship and to be better prepared to meet the challenges along the way include:

Spend time together – make your relationship a priority and make time for each other – even if you have to book it in. Regular ‘deposits in your relationship bank account’ will help protect your relationship. It has been found that you need to deposit five positive experiences as a couple to counteract the impact of one negative experience (such as an argument).

Enjoy yourself – have fun and celebrate your life together. Rituals are a really useful way of enhancing your relationship. It’s also important to try new things as a couple.

Talk to each other – just because you love each other doesn’t mean you will be able to communicate well or can read your partner’s mind, or that they can read yours. Communicate your needs – don’t wait for your partner to try to guess what is going on with you. If you have something to bring up, do it gently. Going on the attack rarely gets you what you want. It is also important to listen to each other. Often we are so busy defending ourselves that we don’t actually hear what our partner is saying. Focus on letting your partner know that you have heard them before you give them your response.

Make repair attempts – if your attempts to talk about an issue don’t go as planned, try not to let the situation become even more negative (such as not talking for extended periods or ignoring the other person’s attempts). Saying sorry or touching your partner in a caring manner shows you care even though you disagree.

Be flexible – let your relationship grow and adapt as you both change.

Work on feeling good about yourself – this will help the way you feel about your relationship.

Everyone is different – accept and value differences in others, including your partner. We often choose people who have qualities and abilities we would like more of. This is one of the reasons why our relationships offer us significant opportunities to grow and develop as people. Remind yourself of this.

Learn from arguments – accept that arguments will happen and try to resolve them with respect. The strongest predictor of divorce is ‘contempt’ which is any action whereby your partner feels ‘put down’ by you, whether it is the tone of your voice or what you say. Often in arguments, we become overwhelmed and this can often lead to behaviours that harm our relationship. It is important to stay calm during disagreements or, if this is not possible, to take time out.

Be attentive – demonstrate your commitment to the relationship. It is what you do for someone that tells them that you love them.

Make plans – set goals for your relationship and plan for your future. This shows that you are both in the relationship for the long term.

Be supportive – try not to judge, criticise or blame each other; we are all human. Remind yourself that you are a team, and in order for the team to be successful, you each have to cheer the other on.

Long-term relationships
In a long-term relationship, it’s easy to assume you know all there is to know about your partner. But people change. Try to be aware of what is happening in your relationship and understand who your partner is and where they are at.

Stay curious about, but respectful of, each other. It is really important to stay up to date about your partner. Friendship is at the basis of all successful long-term relationships. It has also been shown that successful couples tend to be realists who recognise that a relationship will go through ‘ups and downs’.

Seeking help for relationship issues
If there are issues in your relationship that are difficult or painful to talk to each other about, consider seeing a counsellor. A counsellor can be of great value to help you talk things through.