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 —

If you really want to lose belly fat you need to get something through your head, you cannot possibly lose weight in only one area of your body. You can exercise til you are blue in the face and eat healthy and you will lose weight all over, not just in one area.

You can concentrate different exercises to the area of your belly and these exercises will help tone the area more than other areas so it may look like you can just lose belly fat but that is not the case. Weight comes off from every where because it is everywhere. You did not just put the weight on around your belly and no where else, you put it on all over.

Start with easy walks around the block then build up to more intense walking. When you get good at that, walk with weights around your ankles and wrists. If your joints bother you, do your walking in a pool. The water will take the load off of your joints and give you some resistance, too.

I read in a magazine about these four women who walked off a lot of weight, one of them walked off 250 pounds in two and a half years. It is possible to walk off any amount of extra weight that you are carrying.

There are those who will tell you walking is the best exercise you can do, I tend to agree. There are others who will tell you that intense workouts are the best, and maybe they have a point but I would rather walk than try to do something I wasn’t sure of and end up hurting myself.

I do have bad knees so I am doing my walking in a pool. I just started but last week and with diet as part of this whole regimen, I lost four pounds. Now, I’m not going to lose four pounds every week but to start off, that is pretty normal.

In a couple of weeks when I am stronger I will probably get on the stationary bike for twenty to thirty minutes before I walk in the pool for twenty to thirty minutes. That would be a nice hour long workout and then I can treat myself to ten minutes in the hot tub to keep things loose.

Losing weight may take a while if you have a lot to lose but I keep saying it doesn’t have to be difficult. Human beings are inherently lazy and that is the main reason that pretty much everywhere you look you see someone who is overweight. I am not saying that people do not work hard for what they have it is just that the things that used to help us stay fit and trim have today become motorized or roboticized or can be run by remote control.

Have you seen the new automatic vacuum? There is a round one that has been around for a long time but there is a new one one the market that has it’s own navigation system and can tell where it has been. I am thinking about getting one, how pathetic is that?

I think we all deserve to be fat if we cannot even get off our butts to vacuum every couple of days. We make things easier for ourselves but that doesn’t mean we make things better for ourselves and when you want to lose belly fat better is easier.

Tags: Ankles, Bad Knees, Best Exercise, Blue In The Face, Case Weight, Diet, Exercises, Four Women, Healthy Diet, Hot Tub, Intense Workouts, Joints, Losing Weight, Pool, Regimen, Resistance, Stationary Bike, Two And A Half Years, Walks, Weights, Workout —