Tag Archives: psychological

Bio-hack Past Your Plateau (Start Losing Weight Again)!

Calories don’t matter. Right? One of the reasons I failed at dieting so many times in the past was due to the fact that I went on calorie restrictive diets. I was hungry most of the time and the only options to fill my stomach was bland and tasteless food.

To compound the problem further, the food I was allowed to eat to fill my stomach was very unsatisfying. Most of the time, I’d be hungry again in less than an hour.

And those were not the only problems! Also, the food I was allowed to eat was making me fat! One diet recommended that I eat a potato whenever I feel hungry. A coach I had once told me to only eat noodles after 8:00 PM. No wonder these diets failed me.

A Better Way

That is why I was so impressed with the low-carb diet. I could eat great food and eat a lot of it! I was not counting calories, but eating until I was full. And I’ll be honest, there were times when I stuffed myself. But that did not seem to matter–until I stopped losing weight.

Hitting Plateaus 

In my weight-loss journey, I have hit my share of plateaus. I would stop losing weight and have to figure out a way to get my metabolic engine fired up again. On one occasion, I increased my exercise. Then I hit another plateau. Next, I gave up diet soda. Then, I hit another one. Every time I hit one, I would try to find a way to bio-hack past it. What I’m going to share with you is one awesome bio-hack that allowed me to push past another wall!

One Great Way To Lose Weight

Calories don’t count? Well, if you are gorging yourself at every meal, they can start to add up and interfere with your weight-loss goals. And cutting back on your food intake can be a great way to lose a few pounds.

But you don’t want to be hungry and miserable. That only leads to feeling deprived and over eating. Often that feeling can also lead you to eat the wrong kinds of food. So how can you eat less, still eat all the right food that you love and not be hungry?

Here is the secret. Eat slow. Yes, it’s that simple. Eat slow! In fact, I don’t like to think of it as eating slow but enjoying my food. I savor every mouthful, chewing my food about 20 times before swallowing. Also, putting down my fork between bites helps too.

This hack allows your satiety signal to set in with less food. Because you are eating slower, you feel just as satisfied without eating as much as you usually would.

I have found the results of this to be amazing. I am eating less, and as a result I have lost four more pounds and now am only 2 pounds away from my goal weight. I’m still full after every feeding, and I don’t feel deprived in the slightest.

Let me know how it works for you. And if you are feeling good about what we are doing here, then you can help by sharing this article on your social media. And you are always welcome to buy my book for only $1 by following the link below.

New Book Available!

Hey everyone. The new book is out! And I’m excited. If you would like to help please buy a copy and share the link on your social media. Thanks.

Advanced Weightloss 6-week Diet Booklet

http://www.amazon.com/First-Weeks-Rest-Your-Life-ebook/dp/B00O885EA6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412725350&sr=8-1&keywords=Ean+Carlin

My new book(let)!

Hey, the cover design for my new booklet is done and I’m so excited about it that I wanted to share it with you.

Advanced Weightloss 6-week Diet Booklet

I am only a few paragraphs away from finishing it. Then it will go though some editing and then to publishing. It will be available on Kindle for a very low cost.

Update

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Hey everyone. I just wanted to let you know what has been going on lately. Here is the scoop. As many of you can tell, we have updated the site. We upgraded this sight from a free blog to an actual web sight. My hope is that this will bring more of a professional look to this new business.

Also, I (Ean) am working on a small booklet which will cover the first six weeks of the diet/lifestyle we promote here at Advanced Weight Loss. This will be a digital download that will be available for a very low price.

In addition, I will be starting a pod-cast shortly called: A Mind For Fitness. My hope is that the pod-cast will be up and running within the month.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for following this blog. It really means a lot to us here.

Are You Really Ready to Change (Why Your Diet is Failing)?

How do you know if you are really ready to change? The answer is quite simple. It is when you have reached what motivators call threshold. Threshold is when you can say these three things consistently:

1. My weight has got to change.

2. I have to be the one to change it.

3. It has to be now.

If you cannot say the above phrases with confidence, you are not ready to change.

Of course if you ask people, most often they will say they want to change their weight. This is true to a point. They do want to change. They do not like being fat and they want the perceived pleasure of being in shape. But wanting these things is not enough. And we know it is not enough because many people want these things and still do not make long-term progress toward being fit.

So What is Going Wrong? 

The problem is people want more than the pleasure of being in shape. They also want the pleasure of eating the foods that will make them fat. They also want to avoid the pain of working out. There are, in fact, many pleasurable things related to being overweight. Likewise, there are many painful aspects of doing what it takes to be in shape.

It is these two pain and pleasure realities tied to dieting and exercise that are competing for your behavior. There is pleasure in exercise and as a results of exercise and there is pain in exercise. There is pleasure in dieting and the results of dieting and there is pain in dieting. There is pain in being overweight and there is pleasure also. Again, these two conflicting principles are driving your behavior. This is the real reason people go on and off diets.

The real change is going to come when the pain of being overweight is greater than the pleasure of being overweight. And/or the pleasure of being fit is greater than the pain of doing what it takes to be fit. It will not happen a moment sooner. But when it does happen you will have hit threshold.

In a book I am writing, I will take you though a process that will help you to get to threshold. In it I offer a mental exercise that has helped many people reach the point where they can say:

1. I need to change my weight.

2. I have to be the one to do it.

3. It has to be now.

If you just cannot weight for the book, I am always available for sessions though Skype. Just fill out the contact for. I hope to be seeing you soon. 

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Success Questions for Weight Loss

Many times the reason we fail at our weight-loss goals has to do with the questions we ask ourselves. For example, many people ask themselves a question like: Why can’t I lose weight? Our brain is like a computer. If we ask it a question it will search for the answer. So if we ask a question like the one above, we will come up with the answer. It will be something like: Because you fail at everything so you fail at your diet too. Your brain must find the answer to the questions you ask even if the answer is untrue.

On the other hand, if we ask the right set of questions our brains will also come up with the answers. Below are three questions that will help you reach your weight loss goals.

What Do You Want?

The key to this question is to answer in the positive. Too often people will answer what they want in negative terms. For example someone might say, “I don’t want to be fat.” But what does not being fat mean? To compel yourself toward your goals, answer this question in the positive.

Personally speaking, I would answer this question this way, “I want to weigh 220.” By saying what I do want instead of what I do not want I now know that I need to lose about six more pounds. Putting your answer in the positive gives you a better mental attitude.

What Is the First or Next Step? 

If you are just starting out, you may want to ask yourself what is the first step. However, if you have been on the weight-loss wagon for sometime, you might ask yourself what is the next step.

Another key here is to be specific. What precisely do you need to do in order to take that next or first step?

I’m in the “next step” camp. So for me to lose six more pounds, I will either need to workout more or adjust my eating habits in some way. But more specifically, I could say something like, “I need to increase my workouts by twenty minutes,” or “I need to experiment with my cheat days.”

How Can You Take This Step and Enjoy the Process?

Remember, your brain will find an answer to what you ask. For example, I need to increase my exercise by twenty minutes a day. But now I’m asking the question: How can I enjoy that process? My brain is already coming up with answers. I could take a walk with my dogs. I could add an extra Martial Arts workout to my day. I love Martial Arts. The list could go on. Now my next step is fun and not something I have to do to lose six more pounds.

In closing, I would encouraging you to ask yourself these questions. It’s exciting to see exactly what you want, what you need to get it, and how to make getting it fun!

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Getting Past Your Plateaus (Making Your Diet Work)

In a past article, I mentioned that I have hit many Plateaus during my weight loss journey.  I would like to take the time and share with you precisely what I did in order to beat everyone of those plateaus. I do this in the hopes that this will help you get past your weight-loss plateau as well.

First off I must admit that this is extremely autobiographical. In other words, these are the things did. This is to say that these things may or may not work for you.

I started my weight-loss journey at around 286 pounds. I probably weighed more but I cannot be sure. The first wall I hit was 250 pounds. Honestly, I was still feeling pretty good at this time, but I noticed that the weight was not coming off like it was when I first started. However, because I was still feeling good, I did not quit my diet nor my workout scheduled. And that is the first thing I did to get past my weight-loss wall. I kept going!

After this, I lost 8 more pounds. Now I was down to 242ish and I hit another wall. This one was severe. My weight loss did not just slow down, it stopped altogether! I was very upset. I was still dieting and working out, but the scale was not moving at all! What I had done to lose weight so far was now no longer working for me. I do not remember how long this phase lasted, but I’m going to guess that it was a few mounts.

So what did I do to get past this wall? Well, basically I increased my workouts. I did not do this on purpose. What happened is I was hired on to a second job. Both my jobs at that time required that I was on me feet all day. But my new job was much more labor intensive. In addition to this, I was still doing my regular workouts and I stuck to my diet plan. Within just a few weeks, I lost another 10 pounds.

So I was at 232 and I hit another wall. It was just as bad as the last one. The scale was not moving even though I was exercising like crazy and maintaining a low-carbohydrate diet.

It was at this point I started learning more about dieting and exercise. I started learning about how and why the belly fat is so hard to lose. I learned that belly fat is more like an organ, and one thing it does is store toxins.

One of the people who I look up to recommended that people who are having a hard time getting rid of those last few pounds switch from regular Diet Coke to Diet Coke with splenda. The sweetener in regular Diet Coke is a toxin, and I was ingesting that toxin by the gallons. So I switched. And guess what? It worked! I got down to about 225-227. That is a total loss of 60 pounds off my original weight.

In closing, I have one more way way of getting past this very last wall that I have hit. However, I will share that with you when I reach my goal weight of 220!

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Don’t Let One Failure Become a Habit (Why Diets Fail)

One of the reason why diets fail has to do with mental attitude. Of course there are many mental attitudes that can either help or hinder your weight-loss experience. In this post, I would like to cover one of those attitudes. I call it the “Letting One Failure Turn into a Habit” attitude.

So what is this mindset? Perhaps you can relate. It goes something like this. You failed to keep you diet program. For one reason or another you simply fell off the wagon. Your cravings got the better of you, and you indulged in high-carbohydrate foods. But instead of stopping at that one feeding, you say to your self something like, “I already blew it for this meal. I might as well just make a day out of it.” Now the whole day is ruined instead of just one feeding.

Often this one day extends to several. Let’s say you had your slip up on Thursday. Then you say something like, “Well it’s Thursday and I have already messed up. Tomorrow is Friday and that is doughnut day at work, and Monday is a holiday, and I was already planning to make compromises.” This process can repeat itself so often that one is more off their diet than on it.

In the recent past, I had to correct this problem in my own behavior. It was one of those weeks where I was working very hard. My wife and I were out for brunch, and I was craving carbs like crazy. I had an inner dialogue with myself over whether or not my cravings were emotional or my body really needed the carbs. I eventually decided to order some high-carbohydrate food. Whether or not I cheated or my body simply needed the carbs I cannot tell. But the smells in that restaurant and the look of all those high-carb foods being taken to other tables was just too much.

Going off the wagon for that meal was not my biggest problem. That came later in the day. I noticed another inner dialogue starting up. While visions of pizza and ice cream flashed through my mind, I said to myself, “Hey, I already had a high-carb meal today. I might as well just make a day out of it.”

When I realized what was happening, I had to  make a choice. I chose not to let one failure turn into a habit. First, I let myself off he hook for cheating earlier. Next, I told myself to not to ruin the day over one meal. I reminded myself of how far I had come. And that I only had a very few more pounds to lose before I reached my goal weight and falling into this trap would be a major set back in my progress. That pizza and ice-cream was not worth it and it never will be.

In closing please remember that you will have failures. You are not perfect. Don’t beat yourself up for falling off the wagon. Just get right back on it and keep heading toward your goals.

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Goal Setting For Weight Loss.

One of the things that I have found enormously helpful for myself and my clients is setting goals. In fact setting goals is a requirement for those who secure Advanced Weight-loss Resources as a training or coaching agency. What follows are a few simple steps that will help you set goals and in turn help you lose weight.

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Step one is be specific. Too often I hear people say something like, “I need to lose a few pounds.” But what is a few pounds? Is it ten or one hundred? The reason you need to be specific is so you have an objective criterion in which to measure your success. Without an objective standard, it is easier let up on your weight-loss program sooner than you should. So, if you would like to lose fifty pounds write down fifty pounds.

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Step two is give yourself a dead line. Deadlines create motivation. If you know you have to lose twenty pounds by the end of the month, then you know you have to get working on your goals right away.

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Finally, put your goals in a place where you can see them every day preferably put them in a place where you can see them every morning.  This will set a positive mental attitude at the beginning of each day.

If you want to go the extra mile, you can read your goals out loud at least once a day. This also gives you psychological inspiration for keeping you on track.

Keep Moving Forward

If you do not hit your desired goals, do not panic. I would almost guarantee that if you followed the steps above you will be much closer to your goals than if you hadn’t. Don’t be afraid to adjust and re-adjust as necessary. The important part is to keep moving toward you weight-loss goals!  

A Personal Request

If you enjoy the information that is on this blog, please consider re-posting it or sharing it on your favorite social media. It would mean a lot to me. Thanks.

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