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Sports psychologist, Pete Cohen, of the Lighten Up slimming
programme explains how losing weight could be all in the mind.
People often ask me why I run a slimming programme when I’ve
never had a weight problem. My answer is that I know how to be slim
without subscribing to a popular diet and I can teach you how to
be slim too.
When I first started working as a personal trainer 12 years ago,
I noticed that a lot of my clients didn’t care very much about
being fit and healthy and they certainly weren’t exercising
for fun. All they wanted to do was lose weight. I’d start
by designing the perfect exercise programme for them and, when they
failed to stick to it, I’d turn my attention to nutrition
and give them diet sheets. Of course, they didn’t stick to
those either and that was when I realised that the answer must be
somewhere else.
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I began to study the habits of all the slim and healthy
people I knew. After all, if you want to find out how to do something
it’s best to learn from people who do it best.
In my opinion dieting doesn’t work. All it does is make you
more anxious about food and disrupt your metabolism. So, let’s
assume that you’re ready to suspend your belief in dieting
for a while and think like a slim person. How do you go about it?
1. Change your focus
The most important thing of all – and it’s something
that slim people take for granted – is belief in yourself
as a slim person. If you think of yourself as overweight you’ll
find it difficult to lose weight and keep it off. We all live up
to our self-images. When I ask a group of people on the first week
of the Lighten Up course what it is that they want, they usually
say something like, ‘I want to lose weight.’
When they say that, I know they are actually picturing the weight
they want to lose, right there and then. They are seeing the thighs
or the beer belly or the bum or whichever bit of them they like
the least – and what you see tends to be what you get. What
they should be focusing on is how they actually want to look, rather
than the weight they want to lose. Slim people have a much better
self-image and getting slimmer involves having a more positive picture
of yourself. If you imagine yourself looking gorgeous in a bathing
suit, you’re much more likely to behave like that person.
It will encourage you to stop overeating or eating unhealthy foods
in much the same way as an inspirational photograph on the fridge
door might stop you from snacking.
2. Understand your hunger
Slim people eat based on how hungry they are and when lunch time
or tea time or dinner time comes around they don’t just fill
up their plate because the food is there. Subconsciously, they judge
how hungry they are before they start eating. Similarly, if they
feel full during a meal they stop eating.
The next time hunger pangs strike, imagine you have a scale in your
mind from one to ten. One means you’re not hungry, ten means
you’re starving. Check where you are on that scale before
you put anything into your mouth. Only eat if you’re registering
six or above – but don’t let yourself get up to nine
or ten because then you’ll be so hungry that you might risk
overeating. You can also use the scale to judge how full you’re
getting.
3. Think about what you eat
Now imagine you’ve registered above six on the hunger scale
and you’re ready to eat. Don’t just stuff the nearest
hamburger into your mouth. Stop and ask yourself how the food you
want to eat will make you feel half an hour or so after you’ve
eaten it. Will it give you energy or will it make you feel heavy
and sluggish? Think about a couple of different things you might
eat, how they’d make you feel, what they’d smell and
taste like, then make your choice.
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