Categories
Uncategorized

Memory, Alzheimer’s and Meditation

Meditation itself is well-known to have beneficial effects: like slowing down the physiological effects of ageing, lowering blood pressure, and reducing stress. It was thought to be a slow process, but some new research has found a marked benefit in a group that only meditated for the 8 week duration of the study.

The study was to test the impact of meditation on age-related cognitive impairment. 15 people were enrolled in the study with ages from 52-77. All were suffering from some form of memory impairment, cognitive dysfunction, or Alzheimer’s. None of them had any prior experience with meditation or yoga.

At the end of the study all the participants reported improved memory or cognitive function. This was supported by brain scans, taken before and after, which showed significant changes. The study itself was over an 8 week period and the participants were asked to meditate daily for just 12 minutes. So results are produced fairly rapidly.

This study was a small-scale preliminary study, consequently it isn’t possible to draw definite conclusions or start to make amazing claims about the power of meditation, but they used a form of meditation, Kirtan Kriya that I hadn’t come across before, so I checked it out and thought I’d give it a go and see if I noticed any effects.

One of the problems with regular meditation is that it isn’t much fun. This is one of the reasons why I have started to create meditation CDs to make the process much more enjoyable. The boredom factor is also another of the reasons why it’s difficult to notice any benefits you may gain from meditating. It’s easy to do something when your body gives you immediate positive feedback. Not so easy when all you get is 10 minutes relaxation and during that time you have to focus on something like a mantra or your breathing, rather than on your much more interesting thought world.

Now when I checked out the details of Kirtan Kriya meditation I found it was quite different from anything I had done before, but I was immediately presented with a problem.

Kirtan Kriya is a Kundalini yoga meditation based around a chant consisting of four sounds: Sa Ta Na Ma voiced with long a’s at a pace of around one sound per second.

Here are the rules:

  • Sit cross-legged, or in a straight-backed chair.
  • As you chant Sa, touch tips of thumbs and forefingers.
  • As you chant Ta, touch tips of thumbs and middle fingers.
  • As you chant Na, touch tips of thumbs and ring fingers.
  • As you chant Ma, touch tips of thumbs and little fingers.
  • Repeat this chant in a normal voice for 2 minutes.
  • Repeat this chant in a whisper for 2 minutes.
  • Repeat this chant in silence (as thoughts) for 4 minutes.
  • Repeat this chant in a whisper for 2 minutes.
  • Repeat this chant in a normal voice for 2 minutes.

You can see that this is a cycle within a cycle. The cycle of finger/thumb contact moving round the fingers, and the cycle of loud, quiet, silence, quiet, loud. The sounds themselves are another cycle. Sa represents the beginning, Ta is life, Na is death, Ma is rebirth & regeneration.

My problem was how I time the minutes without breaking my concentration to open my eyes to look at a clock, or set and reset a timer. One possibility was simply to meditate eyes open and watch the clock. That was a possibility and I was going to see if that would work when I found this amazing recording by Wahe Guru Kaur. So I made myself comfortable in front of my computer and started listening.

I think I have a pretty good sense of time and I thought I must have got something wrong, or this wasn’t what I needed, because loud seemed to be going on for an awful lot longer than two minutes. I was just about to stop and turn it off when it changed to a whisper, so I closed my eyes and continued listening.

It turned out that this was a 30 minute version of a Kirtan Kriya meditation. 5 minutes out loud, 5 minutes whisper, 10 minutes silent, 5 minutes whisper and 5 minutes out loud. And it was really good.

The first thing I did this morning, before starting work, was to listen again. It has left me with a feeling that I want to do it, rather than I should. Why this audio track works so brilliantly and makes the meditation so easy is that for the out loud parts you have Wahe Guru Kaur’s beautiful voice to speak along with. So any embarrassment about muttering weird sounds to yourself is gone completely. There is also a really pleasant background track to listen to. The beat in this is synchronised with the sounds so you don’t lose track of the timing when it gets to the silent bit.

My own feeling is that this meditation is bringing body and mind back into balance. The finger-thumb touching with both hands is activating both brain hemispheres. The chant forces your breath into new rhythms – and breath is powerfully connected to emotional states and the releasing of negative emotions. So you can see that even physiologically it has the potential to be beneficial without needing to subscribe to any mystical beliefs about the power of meditation – though you can do that too if you want.

A quick search around the internet reveals many other beneficial claims made for the benefits of this particular meditation, so why not try it out.

Let me know how you get on.

Michael

Categories
Uncategorized

Does Anxiety Make You Older?

At least that’s what recent research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston suggests. They have found evidence for a mechanism that connects physiological signs of aging, like skin condition, with chromosome characteristics.

Apparently the molecules (telomeres) that protect chromosomes from damage and deterioration are less well-developed in women who worry and they match the condition of telomeres in much older women.

Now the fact that chronic worrying accelerates aging is not news, but what this research does is to provide a mechanism, a reason why that might be the case. However, as is often the case with scientific breakthroughs, all that has been shown is a correlation – a connection. What has not been demonstrated is cause and effect.

It could equally well be that worrying is genetically predetermined and that shortened telomeres are simply an indicator that you are predisposed to worry and there’s nothing you can do about it. Though I have to say from my own experience that if anyone was genetically predetermined to be a chronic worrier it’s me, and that’s something I changed quite dramatically, so although I have to accept genetic predisposition as a possibility, I don’t actually believe it to be the truth. Unless, of course, we accept the possibility that genes can be changed, or maybe switched on or off. This is something that I am quite happy to accept because it would certainly go a long way to explain how the mind can have such a powerful impact in the body.

Interestingly this same characteristic is associated with heart disease, cancer, dementia and low income. Now that last one is really interesting. Are some people genetically predisposed to be poor, age quickly and die of some horrible disease? I have to say that I am more inclined to believe that poverty makes it much more difficult for an individual to lead a healthy lifestyle, or create a vibrant environment around them in which to thrive.

So we have at least two possibilities here. Worrying wears away the ends of your chromosomes and this ages your skin and reduces general health and vitality, making you more likely to suffer from diseases. Or, you arrive in this world with short chromosome ends and are, therefore, condemned to a short life filled with worry.

My personal view is that worry is a learned skill. This stress takes its toll on immune system function, which then leaves you open to cardio-vascular problems and diseases like cancer. I was able to change my ‘worry’ style of thinking, so that makes me think that it was something learned rather than something that was a part of me.

That’s good news. You see, if it’s part of your biological make-up then the chances are that nothing you do will work, and then the tendency will be to just accept it and carry on suffering unnecessarily. But if it’s just a habit, just a style of thinking that you learned, then you can learn something new. The sooner you learn a new style of thinking and dealing with life’s challenges, the sooner you can have an impact on your body’s physiological, rather than chronological, age.

Who knows, if you learn to stop worrying and cultivate a sense of peace and contentment within your mind, you may even be able to reverse any skin damage that’s already been done.

 

Michael

Categories
Uncategorized

Snacks, Weight Loss, and Catching Dinner.

The trouble with good-looking food is that it just wants to be eaten, and it’s such a shame to disappoint it. And why shouldn’t you eat it? I mean if you are fit, healthy, getting plenty of exercise and your BMI is in the healthy range there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t eat anything you fancy.

There is only a problem when you want to eat it; you are overweight; exercise is picking up the tv remote; and you really want to be slim, but not until right after you’ve eaten that luscious big heap of gooey, sweet cream cake, and washed it down with several pints of sugar-filled soda.

This is a serious problem. How to continue to consume without any of the negative side-effects – like fat?

I’ve not found a way to do it, but I have found ways to cut down on the consumption without suffering and without feeling hungry.

The problem is not the food, it’s our bodies. Our bodies evolved to eat a large variety of food, but they evolved without supermarkets. Food had to be picked, dug, or chased and caught. Sometimes there wasn’t too much of it around, so we evolved a way to keep us alive when it was in short supply. We evolved the conversion of fats and sugars into body fat that would be stored in case of shortage. But because body-fat is the last resort in the survival game it’s also the last energy source to be consumed. Muscle goes first when we experience famine.

This is how we developed a taste for sweet and fat, and why our regulation mechanisms come a bit unstuck when we eat sugars and fats. Our bodies don’t know about supermarkets and the fact that we don’t really have a food supply problem any more. It’s not the whole story by any means, but it’s certainly a significant part of it. Mind you when food was in short supply, exercise would be increased in the search for it. So a balance was struck. Plenty was never so plentiful that there was a problem. Food was never within easy arms reach and so always required energy expenditure in the search for it.

So, unless you want to go back to flint tools and running down the road after some meat, we have to find another solution. We can’t really change the way our body works – but we can start to treat it with the respect it deserves, and we can also use our intelligence to make losing weight just that little bit easier.

Snacks are one of the biggest sources of excess calories in the diet. When we open the packet we tend to eat all of it no matter how much it contains, or how much we want. The quantity of food supplied in snack packs and snack bars is designed with only one purpose in mind. That purpose is to sell you more. Profit is the only thing that motivates the food industry. You can be their pawn, or choose to make your own choices.

Buy food and dispense into your own bags to take to work, so you take just what you want with you. This way you’ll save money. Stop seeing the packet it comes in as the portion size. It isn’t. What satisfies you is the portion size.

Tell yourself that you’ll have some later. Research has proven that this technique is brilliant and removes craving.

Intend to eat only at meal times, but don’t beat yourself up on the odd occasion when you give in to the urge.

Rather than buying ready packaged snacks, make your own. An apple will last all day in your bag and if you end up not eating it, it isn’t wasted. Mix up some dried fruit and nuts and take that with you. This is a good energy boost, but the sugars are not instantly available so they will satisfy you for much longer than a chocolate bar or biscuit. Because you only need to eat a handful, you’ll find that your calorie intake will drop because while they leave you feeling satisfied there is none of the desire to continue grazing that you get with high fat and sugary snacks and beverages.

Look around for other enjoyable, but healthy, alternatives. Foods that don’t give up their energy instantly are what you want. It’s that instant blood sugar high from things like sweet beverages and chocolate that causes the craving. When you keep your blood sugar levels stable you don’t get the cravings, so you don’t eat as much. That way you lose weight without really trying.

Always monitor your internal sensations and stop eating either the minute you feel full, or when the pleasure is gone i.e. taste buds are saturated. If you are eating for enjoyment and pleasure rather than for nourishment and fuel then it makes sense to monitor your enjoyment levels. You will probably find that the pleasure disappears after a mouthful or two. Focus totally on the taste sensations with no distractions next time you eat some chocolate and you will see what I mean.

If you want to be slimmer then you need to eat a little less and exercise a little more. Small changes are easy and sustainable. Diets don’t work. Make weight loss easy by taking it easy.

Michael

Categories
Uncategorized

Fix Stress Quickly And Easily

Worry seems to be normal. At least worry seems to be normal if you class normal as what most people do. Natural is not the same as normal and worry is not natural. It’s not natural because worry is something we learn to do.

As tiny humans we are ‘engineered’ to learn rapidly by observing and emulating those around us. This is a survival trait. The sooner we learn what’s safe in our world; the sooner we learn what to steer clear of in our world; the greater our chances of survival.

What we observe most adults do is worry.

Now watch the news.

There must be a channel with news on. Go and watch it for 30 minutes.

Now tell me there is nothing in the world to be concerned about.

Are there crazy gunmen randomly killing people? Do tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanoes wipe out the lives of thousands as if they were of no more value than the ant you probably accidentally squished when you were out yesterday? Are the finances of your country in a total shambles with meltdown, and the devaluing of all your hard earned savings and investments, just around the corner? Are jobs scarce, difficult to get and harder to hang on to? Do you now know how many million unemployed there are, and just how serious this is – for you? Do you know now just how bad the weather is (again?) this year and the adverse affect it’s going to have on crop yields and food prices? Do you know where all the floods and droughts are? Are you fully clued up on all the infidelities and dishonesties of your favourite politicians?

And talking of politicians – do you know how the war is going? There’s always a war, politicians arrange wars to provide an external distraction from the internal problems they are not dealing with and don’t really want you to pay too much attention to.

Go pick up your daily paper.

Isn’t it full of the same stuff?

There is plenty to worry about. But, most of it is brought to you from outside agencies. Consider for a moment that you are away on holiday, perhaps in some isolated place, maybe camping away from people; maybe somewhere quiet and peaceful with a nice beach where you can just relax, read a good book and generally chill out. This is a holiday where you’ve left your phone at home. Now who would do such a crazy thing as that– I mean what if the world couldn’t go on without me?  What if something bad happened and no one could let me know? You’ve also decided that the only reading you are going to do is enjoyable books, and you’ve come to a place with no tv, and no internet.

It sounds like Hell I know. No tv, no papers, no phone, no facebook, just sunshine, sea and sand, or maybe trees, lakes, open spaces, beautiful mountains, and amazing wildlife.

Could you survive this hell for a couple of weeks?

The truth is the world does what the world does and it does it whether you are paying attention or not. Worrying about volcanoes, earthquakes, and other tragic events, doesn’t stop them doing what they do. If there is a real danger then take whatever action you can to protect yourself and then forget about it. I‘m not suggesting for a minute that you shouldn’t take precautions, just that you should do it or not do it and then get on with your life. If you choose not to take sensible precautions then recognise that that’s a choice you’ve made, don’t keep worrying about what might happen because you’ve not done the sensible thing.

In my part of the world it’s usual to lock up your doors and windows when you go out even though there isn’t a lot of crime. It also makes sense to lock your car when you leave it. What doesn’t make sense is spending the time away from home, or car, worrying about what would happen if someone broke in.

I have a simple solution to the worry problem. I don’t watch news on tv. And yes that means I sometimes don’t hear about disasters and serious crimes until two or three days, or maybe a week or two after they’ve happened. Oddly, I’ve found that makes absolutely no difference to me – other than my mind is freer of worry than a lot of people I know. I haven’t read a newspaper regularly since 1975. I find there is so much more interesting and inspirational stuff to read that newspapers are just a waste of my mindtime.

Of course as soon as I got interested in hypnosis, for use as a therapeutic tool, I realised that newspapers are just a way to hypnotise and control the masses.

No I’m not a conspiracy nut, but when you step back from this stuff you can see what’s going on. While it’s important to you and you are in the middle of it, you will defend it against criticism.

I value my own opinion. Newspapers tell you your opinion.

So, if you haven’t guessed it already, the first step on the way to fix stress quickly and easily is to try out an experiment.

For just one 24 hour period, watch something more fun than the news, and read something more interesting than a newspaper.

And see what happens.

It’s just a day. Anyone, no matter how addicted, can survive a day without the negative input of tv news and newspapers. Yes you may miss the world’s biggest disaster and have no idea what’s going on when everyone else is talking about it, but then if it isn’t in your immediate neck of the woods isn’t it just voyeuristic anyway?

If there’s a serious problem in the world, then if you can take action to help – take action; if you can’t then forget about it. Your thinking or worrying or stressing about it all day will not change one tiny aspect of what’s going on.

The only place true freedom exists is within your own mind.

You cannot experience that freedom while your emotional state is being manipulated by others.

Take that first step towards Freedom and give yourself a taste – just for a day.

If this resonates with you then please leave a comment below.

Michael

Categories
Uncategorized

Overweight – Then It Must Be Your Fault, Mustn’t It?

Blame is one of the big failings of society. This is the idea that if something is wrong, then there just has to be somebody to point the finger at. We seem to need someone to carry the can and take the blame.

It’s nonsense of course, but the whole structure of society and its justice system (which I prefer to think of as a legalised revenge system) is based around the idea that we are responsible for our actions.

I’ve watched myself, not even a little hungry, get up, go to the fridge, get out a couple of my favourite chocolate biscuits, thoroughly enjoy them and then feel that bloated feeling that says I’ve eaten too much, with a consequent discomfort that followed for several hours. The problem is I know all this because this isn’t the first time in my life this has happened and it won’t be the last.

Was I responsible for the couple of ounces of fat those biscuits will have added to my waist?

Well that depends.

You see in a way I was and in a way I wasn’t. But there are times when that kind of thing can happen and there is no responsibility – no blame.

Before I explain about me, I want to digress a little.

There are two types of behaviour: conscious and unconscious. Let me give you an example that, if you are a driver, you can probably relate to. If you drive a regular route, to work say, you have probably experienced, on occasion, suddenly finding yourself at a certain point in the journey, without any recollection of the part of the journey immediately preceding it.

On other occasions you may have intended to go to a particular place and find yourself missing the turn off and continuing along a more familiar route.

When this happens you are unconscious. Not in the strictly medical sense, but in a sense that you are not in conscious control of your actions.

What the brain is primarily designed for is survival. So it is very good at noticing threats in its immediate environment. Threat tends to come from something different. The stuff that’s around everyday hasn’t killed or damaged us yet so it’s probably ok. Now the brain needs fuel, it actually needs a lot of fuel, so it isn’t go to waste any unnecessarily by paying attention where it isn’t needed. One way it has of conserving its energy is to push into the background (unconsciousness) anything that it has decided poses no threat and can be safely ignored. If there is a clock ticking in a room you spend a lot of time in, you may have to work quite hard to hear that tick. The tick is switched out of conscious awareness.

Familiar routes pose no threat. Only when some idiot in another car threatens your safety will full awareness i.e. consciousness immediately switch back in so you can take the necessary avoiding action.

Of course because familiar routes are already programmed in if we have switched into unconscious driving mode when we pass the turning we need today, then we will drive straight past it.

Is that our fault for not paying attention?

No.

It’s the nature of our BodyMind that wants to take away the drudgery from our lives and leave us to concentrate on what’s important – like coming up with new and more efficient ways to catch dinner.

Back to the chocolate biscuits.

I was fully aware of what I was doing, but I have made a prior decision to allow myself to have what I want when I want it. But I have it fully aware of what I’m doing and the impact it will have on my waist. This is not an excuse, but I fully believe that resisting temptation just causes suffering and suffering causes over-eating. In the long run, allowing yourself, consciously, to have what you want, reduces desire and promotes health. Full awareness of the subsequent discomfort is an essential part of this process. I ate fully aware that I was being inconsistent with my intentions – but that’s okay too.

My intention is to make all eating fully conscious.

The vast majority of excess weight is born from unconscious eating. Research supports this idea, because dieters who keep a food diary and log everything they eat, lose more weight than those who don’t. People who are overweight, and don’t record what they eat, actually have the idea they are eating much less food than they actually do. The reason for this is unconscious, automatic eating behaviour. Like in the missing part of the car journey, we don’t remember what we do when we have switched into unconscious automatic behaviour.

It isn’t delusion.

It isn’t lying.

It isn’t deliberate.

It’s because we are human.

…and I just have to add that hypnosis is a great way to change unconscious behaviour.

Michael

Categories
Uncategorized

Learned Helplessness – Can You Fix It?

Learned helplessness could be all that’s stopping you from reaching your potential in life. You might not even realise that’s what the problem is. It might just seem as if the World is against you; you are just one of the unlucky ones; or you don’t have what it takes.

I was reading this morning about an experiment that took place back in the 50’s. They took a couple of dogs and put them in cages which had a floor through which could be delivered a mild electric shock. One of the cages had a switch. When this switch was pressed the shocks stopped. The dog in this cage very quickly learned to stop the shocks.

The other cage had no method of preventing the shocks so the other dog had to get used to it.

The second part of the experiment involved placing the dogs in cages where half of the floor was safe and half the floor delivered random, mild electric shocks. A low barrier separated the two halves. The dog that learned to use the switch very quickly jumped over the barrier and stayed in the safe half. The dog from the cage where no control was possible stayed in electrified part – it had given up on trying to prevent itself from experiencing pain. It had learned, in a very short space of time, how to be helpless in the face of adversity.

In a way you can see the sense of this, while the environment remains constant. I mean if there’s nothing you can do to change the situation, why not just accept it? Anything else is going to cause more stress. But it seems that having made this switch it’s difficult for an animal to subsequently make the switch back to normal operations where curiosity and a desire for self-preservation still function.

While this is very simplistic, it does correlate to human behaviour. Depression, anxiety, and stress are all linked to having learned that control of outcomes is impossible. Children who are set tasks that are too difficult for them (perhaps by parents who want them to excel) can learn that giving up early on saves hours of anguish and struggle trying to solve an impossible puzzle. Having discovered that failure is normal, a child may well go on to perform poorly at academic subjects in school, and then fail to reach their true potential in life.

If you feel shy in social situations, perhaps because you are a perfectly normal introvert, you can quickly learn that it’s safer to stay at home, or to spend time on your own. But that way nothing ever changes.

Depressed people tend to blame themselves when things go wrong. A failed exam would be their fault where others might be able to see that the teacher was a dead loss and really shouldn’t be allowed near students. Because of the length of time that depression tends to last it’s a great way to learn helplessness and give up because you appear to have no control over how you feel. Because you feel low all the time, you have no motivation, no drive, and no energy, so life just doesn’t work. That’s when you give up and it gets even worse. But, because you’ve given up, it’s not so easy to keep looking for a solution.

You don’t have to be depressed to be in a state of learned helplessness. All you need to do is to have given up on your dreams, accepted an unacceptable life situation, or settled for things being the way they are forever.

There is a very simple way to begin to leave this state.

Because it is learned behaviour, you still have the capacity to learn a new behaviour. So if you take into account your lack of motivation and belief that nothing makes any difference, there really should be no harm in doing something simple.

All you have to do is rediscover that you can control your destiny.

The easiest way to do that is to make simple choices.

Choose to watch something on tv that makes you laugh rather than something that makes you cry.

Choose to read one paragraph in a book by an inspirational author each day.

Choose to have tea or coffee. Have it black if you like white, have it without sugar if you like sugar – not to make yourself suffer more, but to demonstrate that when you have things the way you like them you are actually making choices and not simply accepting things the way they are.

Choose to go for a walk in the sun or in the rain.

Choose to stop reading this and go and do something more interesting instead.

Make simple small choices.

Become aware of all the choices that you make every day that seem normal. Choosing the same thing all the time is still choosing. It’s not the same as having no choice.

Set yourself small tasks that you can complete. Create easy challenges so that you can enjoy small successes. Once you reconnect with the good feelings that come with even small accomplishments, you are on the road to living a happier more fulfilling life.

Michael

Categories
Uncategorized

Weigh Loss and the Real World

I read a lot of studies and reports about weight loss. A quick browse through this blog will find my comments on some of them. What happens when a new weight loss study is announced is that the media jump on it and you get headlines like:

How to lose weight while chowing down at work

Team sports help teens stay fit

The secret to weight loss? Pen and Paper

Weight-loss keys: Food journals, eating in, not skipping meals

Artificial sweeteners no silver bullet for losing weight

And the whole thing, whether or not it’s valuable information, is hyped up and made into something much more than it really is. I’ve also noticed that much of the research merely provides evidence for what I’ve known and been teaching for many years now, so I’m not often surprised by the findings.

But let me tell you why this study information sometimes needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

There are four main areas that we need to be concerned with for weight loss:

  1. Non-pharmaceutical weight loss products
  2. Pharmaceutical weight loss products
  3. Behaviour i.e. eating patterns & activity
  4. Fat clubs e.g. Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig…

Non-pharmaceutical Weight loss products

This is the likes of Acai, Hoodia, teas, slimming drinks, patches, and all of the incredibly expensive products provided for people who think the solution to eating too much and not exercising enough is a tablet or a magic drink. This is the territory of the Health-Food shop/web site. Now I have to say I have absolutely no experience with any of these products, so if you’ve had good results using them, and you’ve kept the weight off, then let me know below. My gut feeling is that they are a waste of money and sales owe more to the skill of the advertisers than to any efficacy they possess.

Pharmaceutical weight loss products

There are not a lot of pharmaceutical weight loss products around but two are about to receive FDA approval: Belviq and Qnexa. They are both, in my opinion, attempts by the manufacturers to make $ billions rather than any serious attempt at providing a safe weight loss product. The stock of both the manufacturing companies went up through the roof as soon as they passed the first stage of FDA approval. Qnexa was originally rejected by the FDA two years ago, but I understand that the manufacturer spent a lot of money to convince the FDA panel that they should reconsider.

Both drugs contain components from an earlier weight loss drug that was withdrawn for safety reasons, and so they should be causing serious concern about the side-effects. But it seems the FDA is happy for the long-term safety trials to take place after approval. The benefit of using the drugs (in terms of weight lost) is so small when compared with known safe methods that they are just not worth the risk. Nevertheless as soon as they pass the final FDA hurdle (which they undoubtedly will) they will be prescribed in their billions by overworked doctors who will be grateful that they can spend two minutes printing a prescription, rather than providing counselling, education, and advice; alongside real help, support and encouragement.

Behaviour

Behaviour is the area of interest of most of the studies. Psychological studies (and that’s what they are) require volunteers. Volunteers need to be informed about the subject area of the study. So you know you are signing up for a weight loss study. In order to do that you have probably given up trying to lose weight without help, and you are probably quite motivated because they are going to ask you to do stuff and you are going to have to comply – because that’s what you agree with when you sign up. You are also in it with quite a few other people. You get the attention of the researchers. You get to feel that you are doing something worthwhile and helping others.

All of these things are motivational.

They are also not normal and not found in the real world of people struggling desperately to lose weight.

So, in part, studies are always studying themselves.

They create some circumstances and then test them out.

When you are given a diet plan and told to stick to it for 16 weeks as part of a study – most people will succeed. But give 100 people that same diet plan and never plan to contact them again and you’ll find almost no one stuck to the diet for the full 16 weeks, because that’s human nature. We behave differently when we know no one is watching and no one is checking up on us.

It doesn’t matter what is being studied, we behave differently when we know we are being watched. The most interesting studies are when the participants are lied to. For instance one study pretended to be about testing the flavour of different cookies and that’s what the participants thought they were doing, but they were actually being tested on how much they ate based on a drink they’d been given earlier to fill them up. Participants on a diet ate more cookies than those who were eating normally.

The real question that needs to be asked is ‘does this work in the real world’.

What seems to work in the real world is eating a little less, exercising a little more, and re-learning to listen to your body.

Fat Clubs

Fat clubs are the socially acceptable places where you go when you want company in your attempts to lose weight. They provide a social environment. Everyone has the same problem. They give you solutions. If you follow their guidelines you lose weight. But I get a lot of clients who’ve tried these places and they still come to me for help. Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Slimming World and the like do help you lose weight, but they use a dieting model, and dieting just doesn’t work long-term. You don’t sign up to these places for life. You sign up and stay until you either get fed-up with the classes, or reach your goal weight. Then you revert to your old-style eating patterns and before very long you are overweight again – only this time it’s much harder to shift the weight.

If you really want to know why it’s so much harder to shift the weight regained after a diet, and how you can lose it then read my book How to Lose Weight Easily and Free Yourself from Diets Forever to find out.

Michael

Categories
Uncategorized

If You Really Want To Count Calories Then This Will Help

I know that counting calories is a popular way to lose weight – even though I don’t agree with it. What I do agree with is actually cutting down on the number of calories you eat. Now that might seem like the same thing but it isn’t and I’ll get to why it’s different in a little while, because I want to tell you about some interesting news first.

Anne McTiernan from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre ran a 12-month study, with over 120 women, looking at what helped participants to lose more weight. What she found was that women, who kept a food diary over the period of the trial, lost about 6lbs more than people who didn’t. Skipping meals was also a significant factor. Those women who skipped meals ended up 8lbs heavier than those who ate regularly. This fits in quite nicely with what I was saying in my article It’s True… You Can Eat Cake For Breakfast And Still Lose Weight  a few days ago.

Those who went out for lunch just once a week ended up 5lbs heavier than those who didn’t. The more you eat out the heavier you get – even when you are on a calorie controlled diet. But this is because of the I’ve Eaten Too Much – So I’d Better Eat Some More factor.

“For individuals who are trying to lose weight, the No. 1 piece of advice based on these study results would be to keep a food journal to help meet daily calorie goals”

Anne McTiernan, director of the Hutchinson Centre.

Of course keeping a Food Diary only works when you are honest and record everything you eat. So you need to carry it with you. I’ve designed a Food Diary page you can download for free and either print copies or use as a basis to design your own.

So their advice is pretty much: vigilant self-monitoring of what you eat; cook all your own food; and eat regular meals. That’s good advice, but I need to get back to why counting calories and cutting down on calorie intake are not the same thing.

When you count calories you have a daily limit so you have to monitor absolutely everything you eat. You need to obsess over food labels. You need to engage in a constant battle with yourself over whether or not to have something delicious, that you really fancy, but which is high in calories, or lots and lots of much lower calorie stuff. Hunger is a frequent accompaniment to this process, along with a perpetual thinking about food and the next meal. Willpower, that is mental force, is what is essential to succeed and willpower never works when you are tired, fed-up, emotionally exhausted, or just plain feeling sorry for yourself. So this method is bound to fail – or at least take very much longer to attain the target weight. Around half of people give up on their diet in less than 12 months.

 “You can initially lose 5 to 10% of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back.”

Traci Mann, Psychologist, University of California, Los Angeles

Cutting down on calories, at least if you follow the guidelines laid out in my book, is very different. You get to enjoy whatever you fancy, but that’s not a recipe for crazy eating, nor a suggestion that you can binge constantly and lose weight. It’s a suggestion that shifts the focus away from food so the obsessive thoughts and cravings have no reason to be there.

It’s a way to lose weight and enjoy life at the same time. I mean, if you can have what you want how can you crave it? Knowing you can have it actually reduces the desire for it, so although you still have it, you eat less of it. In my book How to Lose Weight Easily and Free Yourself from Diets Forever I also show you other ways to consume less while still having what you want. I know it sounds contradictory, but it works and is all based on sound research and my own years of experience with weight loss clients.

Michael

Categories
Uncategorized

I’ve Eaten Too Much – So I’d Better Eat Some More

I’ve been promoting the idea of no-diet weight loss for some years now, so I’m always pleased when a bit of research comes my way that supports my ideas. It’s been obvious to me for a long time that diets don’t work, you’ve only got to listen to dieters talking about weight loss to realise that. In fact whenever I need to lose weight I never diet – and I always lose weight. But for most people, when they feel bad about their body shape, they want to do something about it and the world mind-set (encouraged massively by the multi-billion dollar weight loss industry) is that you diet when you want to lose weight.

So that’s what you do.

I mean the whole world, and all those celebrities can’t be wrong – can they?

Yes they can.

And yes they are.

One crucial piece of research is about the way people on diets think about over-eating. When people are attempting to lose weight by restricting certain types of foods or limiting themselves to a certain number of calories – everything is fine until something causes them to go over the limit. They may be offered some cake and feel it impolite to refuse; there may be a packet of biscuits being handed around the office and they don’t want to stand out by being the only one to refuse; it may have been a tough week emotionally – it doesn’t matter what the reason is, but they pass the limit for the day.

What the dieter typically does then is think that they’ve failed for the day so they might as well just forget about the diet and start afresh in the morning – and then they binge.

The reason is all about how self-control and willpower work.

Restricting food intake, whether you are counting calories or following some other method, requires monitoring what you eat. Dieters tend to be very good at this. They know exactly what is left out of the daily allowance and what they can have and what they can’t have. This feedback mechanism is essential to the success of this process.

But what happens, once the daily allowance is exceeded, is that dieters stop monitoring their food intake. They stop keeping track of what they eat and they forget about how much they’ve eaten. Once that decision is made to get back on the diet tomorrow – the body has been starved and so, like a thirsty camel in the dessert… the empty hump is filled to overflowing so that when she starts to starve me again I’ll have a little in reserve… until the next hiccup.

The body has its own intelligence and it is an intelligence based around survival. When you threaten it by severely restricting food intake it retaliates. It retaliates by pushing the possibilityof death by starvation as far away as possible. This is one of the reasons your body even has the ability to store excess fat. Back in the early days of mankind, you ate well when you killed something big. You needed to store the excess in your body because you probably wouldn’t manage to catch another one tomorrow and supermarkets wouldn’t be invented for another 100,000 years.

You can exercise your will power for only so long and then the body wins. And once the body gets control, you can’t stop eating even when you are full.

This is one of the many reasons why dieting is such a struggle.

One of the many reasons why diets don’t work – long-term.

There is an easy way out. Just read my book How to Lose Weight Easily and Free Yourself from Diets Forever

 

Michael

Categories
Uncategorized

You Don’t Have To Gain Weight When You Quit Smoking

A recent study, based on 62 other pieces of research, found evidence that one of the fears of smokers is true. The fear is that of gaining weight when they quit smoking. The average weight gain was around 10lbs after 12 months of abstinence from smoking.

But that’s just the averages. The initial gain was about 2lbs a month slowly dropping to the 10lbs at twelve months. But there was actually huge variation within the study. Some smokers lost weight. About 1 in 4 gained under 2lbs over the twelve month study period, and 1 in 5 had lost weight at the end of the twelve months.

Worth noting is that people who sign up for clinical trials are not necessarily representative – they may not be an ‘average’ smoker, and so the findings of clinical trials like these may not relate well to real life.

“Quitting smoking at age 40 increases life expectancy by nine years, even taking into account the possible post-cessation weight gain.”

Henri-Jean Aubin, professor of psychiatry

Methods of quitting included in the trial were: nicotine replacement therapy, bupropion (Zyban, Wellbutrin, Voxra, Budeprion, Aplenzin), varenicline (Chantix, Champix), and exercise. As usual, hypnotherapy was not one of the tested stop-smoking therapies. Hypnotherapy tends not to get tested because there’s no money in it for the Pharmaceutical companies who make $ millons by convincing smokers that giving up is really difficult and they need help. The truth is that the vast majority of smokers who successfully stop smoking do so without any help and without any drugs.

The next most effective method is hypnosis.

Bupropion was originally tested and marketed as an anti-depressant, but it wasn’t very good so they’re now passing it off as if it were the bee’s knees in smoking cessation drugs.

Varenicline has had suicidal ideation and occasional suicidal behavior, erratic behavior, and drowsiness reported as side-effects. The manufacturer, Pfizer, have added “some patients have reported changes in behavior, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal thoughts or actions” to the drug’s safety information.

The majority of clients, coming to see me for help to stop smoking, do not express any concerns about putting on weight. But after reading this research it could well be that the smokers who are concerned about weight gain do not seek help to quit.

Still, in my quit smoking treatment, I talk about weight gain and how it isn’t going to happen. In the hypnosis I reinforce this and weight gain just doesn’t seem to be a problem with clients that I help to stop smoking.

Michael

 

The Study:

http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4439