Healthy Weight for Life: The 5 stages of lifestyle change
Michael Hallinan

So youre determined youre going to do something about your weight. But what? Losing weight is not in itself a behavior. Releasing fat pounds is an outcome of many behaviors that add up to consuming more calories than your expending. (Yes, theres a genetic component too, but you cant change that.)

The good thing is that this gives you lots of places to start moving toward your goal of losing weight. The challenge is sorting through them all and finding what will work best for you. So heres the question: What are you most ready to change?

Behavioral researchers have identified five stages in behavior change:

1. Precontemplation: Youre not even considering it. No way youre gonna give up your pizza and beer. Gym-going is not for you. Why walk when you can ride?

2. Contemplation: Well, maybe you could live without pizza and beer *every* week. Gym is out, but you always liked swimming, maybe a pool. The walk in the park with your friend was pleasant last weekend, maybe you could do it again.

3. Preparation: Next week youre going to skip that pizza. You found out the local Y has a pool and their family rates are affordable. You talked to your friend about doing more walks sometime.

4. Action: Two weeks and no pizza. You joined the Y and youve swum laps there a couple times. You and your friend have gone walking the past three Saturday mornings.

5. Maintenance: The weekly pizza has been a thing of the past for six months. Swimming is so much a part of your daily routine that you dont feel right if you skip it. Those Saturday walks are dont-miss tradition.

In fact, this readiness to change model is behavior-specific. That is, you might be in the action stage with the pizza but still in precontemplation on that exercise stuff. Youre not likely to be very successful if you flog yourself for not swimming laps every day, what you want to do is move yourself to the next stage: List the pros and cons of regular exercise and guess what, youre thinking about it and that means contemplation.

So think about the behaviors you can change to lose weight. What stage are you in for each of those behaviors? In each case, what can you do to move yourself to the next stage? What are you most ready to change.

We explore readiness to change in my free teleclass, The Real Skinny on Weight Loss: Dont Diet, Do It. You can get details and register at www.teleclassinternational.com/catalog.phtml?keywords=MH-RS

About the Author

Michael Hallinan overcame a lifelong obesity, and the midlife discovery of health and fitness so changed his life that he established a coaching practice specializing in helping others find their own healthy way to a healthy weight. For more helpful tips, subscribe to the Healthy Weight Newsletter. For past issues and to subscribe see
www.healthyweightcoaching.com/Ezine.htm

Tags: Action Stage, Author, Behavior Change, Behavioral Researchers, Calories, Contemplation, Couple Times, Daily Routine, Exercise, Genetic Component, lifelong obesity, Lifestyle Change, Losing Weight, Maintenance, Michael Hallinan, Pizza, Pool, Saturday Mornings, Six Months, Swimming Laps, Tradition, Walk In The Park, Walks, www.healthyweightcoaching.com/Ezine.htm, www.teleclassinternational.com/catalog.phtml?keywords=MH-RS —

Swimming is a gentle but effective exercise for improve ones health. Although not too strenuous, swimming does work all the muscles in your body and it is also an exercise that is enjoyable to do. If you are looking to introduce an exercise into your routine but don’t want something too strenuous then swimming is a great choice.

If you want to maintain good health, be fit and look and feel younger then it is important that you have an exercise routine. Staying active will keep you active as you grow older and help you to maintain a healthy weight. Not everyone enjoys exercising though and not everyone is able to do strenuous exercise. Swimming is one exercise that many people do enjoy and that people can do without worrying about it being too difficult or too strenuous.

Many gyms now have swimming pools that people can use specifically for exercising. You can do regular swimming laps or you could even attend an aqua aerobics class. When you use a pool at a gym you don’t need to worry about the weather being perfect for swimming as an indoor pool is perfect to swim in all year round.

YMCA’s will usually have indoor swimming pools available for their members to use. They tend to have Olympic size pools which are perfect for those who want a good workout by swimming laps of the pool. There are a number of different swimming strokes that you can try and each one will exercise different muscles in the body. Swimming is a sport that really does give you a good workout and tone up your muscles even though you don’t really feel like you are exercising.

You don’t have to limit your exercise routine to just swimming, in fact swimming is good to include in part of a varied exercise routine. You can do swimming perhaps twice a week while on other days do some other sort of exercise such as cycling, aerobics, running or weight training. Varying your exercise routine will help you to stay motivated and enjoy exercising instead of doing the same routine each day and becoming bored with it.

If you join a gym with a swimming pool then your gym membership may also include using other areas of the gym. You can use the treadmills, rowing machines, cross trainers and other gym equipment to get a varied workout. Different exercises will give different benefits, work different muscles and burn off different amounts of calories so a varied regime is very beneficial.

Swimming is one exercise that is great for those who suffer from join problems as it is low impact and is not damaging to the joints. Swimming is a great way for seniors to stay fit and active, particularly if they do suffer from arthritis or other joint ailments. So if you are looking for a low impact exercise then why not try swimming and swim your way to being fit and healthy.

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