Good Advice from Dr. Phil

[FergieTCat]

Dr. Phil's program yesterday was about keeping New Year's Resolutions -- giving up smoking, losing weight, etc. Here's some of his advice that I found intriguing:

1. You need to make a reasonable goal, BUT your goal shouldn't be to lose a specific number of pounds by a specific time because you don't have any control over how much weight your body ultimately loses. Think of it, haven't you thought you were wonderful over the week, and then get on the scale to discover you haven't lost any weight? Your goals should be, for example, to excercise 20 minutes a day, or replace junk food with fruit.

2. You need to replace a bad habit with a good habit. If you don't learn a good habit to replace the bad one, you will fall back to your bad habit.

3. You need to be held accountable for your actions. This means you should make someone else aware of how much weight you lose or gain.

Here's a link:

http://www.drphil.com/advice/advice...tions_1103_010603.xml&section=Life Strategies

(You'll probably have to retype it to make sure the whole thing is in your browser).

 

[MaryAnnDVC]

The link works fine. Thank you!

 

[believe]

Making yourself accountable is a big key to success. In addition to accountable my exercise partner and I have decided that in order to use our massage gift certificates we received as gifts at Christmas we have to reach our goal. A reward is a wonderful thing also. There is not time limit with this. Time limits can get too frustrating.

 

[Dopeygirl]

That was a good episode! I think it was in that one that he also the following (sorry, just copying and pasting from an e-mail I sent to a friend about it...)

"In response to someone who had made the resolution to
lose weight (but never did) for the last several years, he said that the next year would pass, whether we did anything to change ourselves or not. And that we could either be better off or worse off in a year but the year was still going to happen. The lady had 70+ pounds to lose and thought that sounded like an impossible thing. But his comment, which was such a simple
truth, was so dead-on. The year will pass and she can be heavier or lighter when it was up. And it didn't really matter if she lost all that weight in a year, because she'd still be better off than she is today. And that after this year, there will be another one and the same circumstance will apply. And then there will be another and another and so on..."

Such a simple truth but it really had a big impact on me. As overwhelming as losing weight (or a million other tasks) seem, there truly is no better time to start than NOW since time will pass no matter what.

 

[Buckalew]

DopeyGirl,
That had such an impact on me too!
I was blown away at how simple that thought was but how true. And I decided that next year, in 2004, I'd be smaller.