Lifestyle Change, What is it exactly?

You’ve heard it on Oprah.  You read it in a book by Dr. Oz.  You’ve seen it thrown around year after year like a rag doll.  Let’s just stop the b.s.  Is it a real lifestyle change that you can live with, or just a perpetual diet, based on the premise that you’d rather be miserable than overweight?  Like the woman I know who works at the weight loss clinic I used to go to, who only eats 10 foods, all low carb fruits and vegetables all week long only to “treat” herself with pancakes on the weekends?  She’s shaped like a skeleton and rarely smiles.  Or like the gung-ho gym guy who told me that if I wanted to slim down and maintain it I’d never be able to eat another cookie again for the rest of my life?

Stop Stop Stop!!!

Lifestyle change is perpetual, ongoing, forever.  But it’s not a diet!

Lifestyle change, in the context of LifeBliss Solutions, means making  fundamental changes in the way you do things so that they support, not sabotage your efforts at being healthy and happy.

For example, take Marita.  She’s a single suburban mom with 3 children.  She’s also a busy professional with a lengthy commute and thinks she doesn’t have enough time to prepare nutritious meals that her children will eat for dinner on weeknights.  She ended up going through a fast food drive thru twice a week, which was sabotaging her efforts at maintaining a healthy weight because she was eating  junky food too late in the evening.  To solve the problem she began doing basic food prep for dinners on the weekend and mid-week, and packing larger lunches and making dinner the lightest meal of the day.  She also incorporated some raw dishes to cut down on prep time and her children loved it, especially because they got to help make the meals.  With her lifestyle change, she was able to drop that 15 lbs of fat and she kept it off.  As the children got older, things got even easier.  She made a few more practical changes but NO DIET, NO CONTRIVED WORKOUTS.

In order to make effective lifestyle changes, you have to first identify your current lifestyle problems.  Then, you have to keep a wide open mind for solutions.  The key element of lifestyle change is to be honest about what changes you are able and willing to cope with for the rest of your life, that won’t make you miserable in the process.