If you haven’t been able to lose weight and keep it off here are 5 reasons why.….

One:  You don’t know why you can’t/aren’t losing weight: despite your good intentions. 

Having tried many different diets, plans and programs. (You continue to put in a lot of effort for very little return and you don’t have a solution – YET!)

Two:  You can’t get yourself motivated and into action to actually do what’s required;  Even though you know you should and have the very best of intentions

Three: You can’t stick to a diet/plan or programme:  well enough or long enough to get any significant results

Four:  You don’t know what to do after your diet/program:  So you end up putting weight back on.

Five:  You don’t know how to get yourself to the point that you can have the results you want without it being a major ongoing effort: which leads you back to number one doesn’t it

What am i missing here?

(Where do you fit on the above ‘frustration continuum’?  Leave a comment – out of the five things above what is your main stumbling block?)

  Now keep in mind that pretty much anything you are experiencing as to why you’re not losing  weight will either directly or indirectly fall into one of these categories – which is why they  are  also bench marks and milestones – meaning; you solve these issues and by implication you  cover off the keys to successfully losing weight and keeping it off.    

  Where do you fall down? – Got cravings, do you emotionally eat? Well that falls under the 3^rd   milestone of not being able to follow an eating plan, programme or diet right? Whether you  self-sabotage, procrastinate, yo yo diet or just find it hard to make the right food choices we must address that all in order to get you through the milestones right?

Part 2 of 2 parts

This post runs off the one below it so if you haven’t read part 1 already then do that now so you can get the most out of this post and understand the awesome power of counting what counts 1^st  Here are 8 things that have been really effective in helping my previous clients to make a committed decision, develop an empowering motivation and get into action on the things they know they need to – TO LOSE WEIGHT Note: These are also useful in adding Urgency, which is often the critical missing ingredient in people’s attempts to get motivated and inspired.  That is what the U Represents.

U Count the consequences

This is basically saying; what will happen if you don’t change. You can really utilize the ‘inevitable outcomes’ that you can for-see by thinking ahead – projecting forward in your mind 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years and even 10 years and imagining that you haven’t changed anything (which more than likely means your habits, your weight, your health have gotten worse) so ask yourself seriously because you can’t deny or avoid the consequences – where will you be then? Do you like what you see? And what if you could avoid those consequences by making a change NOW! So that you don’t have to look back and say “if only I had done something while I could – before it was too late. This leads nicely into the next universal counter which is …..  

Count the long term 

Those who are most successful no matter what their field or endeavour stay aware of and utilize the concept of ‘long term perspective and results versus instant gratification’. Essentially, as with most things, if there is a disconnect in that you are not really counting where your short term actions and choices are taking you in the long run – then you are likely to be heading for trouble. It may seemingly feel good to eat the cheesecake at the time but over time many pieces of cheesecake aren’t going to help you feel good are they. Often the short term fix is going to produce the opposite results in the long run. You are going to have to start counting the longer term before it’s too late! Count your future and the future of those that care about and need you. Count where your short term choices are taking you because it is inevitable that they will catch up with you. Note; by going through the infuser process in the book you will realize that your short term choices can’t be separated from the long term result you want because one leads to the other so they are intimately related.

U Count your health

This should go without saying because without your health you have NOTHING! – Go and ask someone who has lost their health or remember the last time you were sick or injured to fully grasp this. Will you wait until you’re really suffering and in danger or until there is no turning back no matter how much you want to, or will you act now?  Focus on health and a healthy lifestyle for you personally, one that enables you to live the life-style you want because what it comes back to is having a quality of life, or the health, mobility, energy and freedom to live the life you want to; unrestricted. So it should be a key focus (it’s synonymous with weight loss anyway) but a focus on health actually puts the focus in more productive, controllable and useful places plus it avoids many of the pitfalls that an excessive focus on losing weight brings. Note; this will likely be one of the things you say you value or count but may not be acting consistently in line with – so bring it up the counting scale NOW!  

You really should have done something about this alot earlier!

U Count the unseen internal issues

What if the visible fat on your body was really the last evidential sign  of changes that are going on internally? As with most things what      appears on the surface is usually evidence of things being worse  underneath. I once saw Anatomy of a fat person which was a T.V  documentary run by the chef Jaime Oliver. This Sounds a bit  gruesome but it makes a good point – on this  documentary they had  cut open a person that was overweight and  exposed what was  happening inside, crucial organs (liver, lungs, and  heart) squashed  and distorted undersized or oversized and smothered  in layers of  hideous looking yellow, jelly like thick fat. That’s only  part of the  visible story not to mention the unseen factors such as the  state of  their blood, the clogging and rampant bacteria thriving in an  acid  atmosphere – I’ll let your imagination fill in the rest and  conclude by  saying YOU NEED TO COUNT THE UNSEEN! ….

Especially if you are  beginning to notice signs that are seen!

Part 1 of 2

To lose weight – you must count what really counts TO YOU! – That’s it…

 Let me ask you a few relevant and important questions to give you some perspective on how counting what counts can revolutionize your quest to lose weight.…  

 Are you living your life in line with what matters most and what’s most important to you? (Or in other words are you counting what really counts)? 

 Do you know why you really, really want to lose weight and are you using that to empower and motivate yourself into full-on consistent and joyful daily action?   

 Is what you are currently counting (and therefore acting on) going to take you to the outcomes you want? – is it delivering you the results, body, health and quality of life you desire? 

 What aren’t you currently counting that you should be?  

(If you don’t know the answer to this one you need to find that out)

 If you were to zoom out and look at your life from a distance could you genuinely say and feel that you are doing what’s best for you, your future and what’s best for those that you care about? – If not then you need to bring the difference into focus, you need to count what counts before it is too late! 

If you are ever going to get to losing weight (and keeping it off) you are going to have to start counting the things that will lead you there! That’s it, that’s the bottom line.   

For example; do you count your health? – does that count to you?   Do you count your future?   You might say that these things count (are important) to you yet are you demonstrating that in your day to day choices and actions?

If you’re not doing it then you don’t really count it – because you are counting the fish and chips or the taste of the cheesecake more than your health, and your future and effectively even your loved ones.   We are constantly counting and discounting (not counting) one thing over another.  At the time that you are eating the pizza you certainly aren’t counting your desire to lose weight are you?  It’s slipped away – but what if there was a way to keep that to the fore, so it ruled and you felt good about that.

What if I told you you could capitalize on this inherent phenomenon of counting one thing over another to lose weight in a way that gave it a feeling of ease and certainty.

The power to move and to change lies in the areas of your life (the gaps) where you are not acting in line with your own values or in line with the outcomes you want.   It’s the gap between what’s important to you and what you are doing

It’s easy to harness and bring that into alignment because the seed is already there, there is discomfort or a sense of incompleteness or incongruence. 

So it’s these areas; where your actions aren’t lining up with what you count, where something that is important to you is being neglected, where the outcomes you are creating aren’t what you want, or where you have certain desires and results that you have not yet made real in your life – that’s the stuff we want to change and use to get you into action to lose weight.

These are the SEEDS that once you know how to capitalize on and leverage will get you moving.

The crux of the matter

So this is the crux of the matter – If you are overweight, unhealthy and dissatisfied with your life it is likely that you are counting many things that don’t truly count (that don’t and won’t ultimately matter to you) When you do that you are also simultaneously and by implication NOT counting many of the more important things that ultimately do or will count. 

But you can reverse this and use that very same principle to GET WHAT YOU WANT.

“What do YOU need to start counting in order to start taking action and producing the results you want” (Put that in the context of losing weight or whatever your personal goal is) in the next blog post i’m going to give you some proven effective things to count from which you can devise your own too.

This is the theme of my new book and it uses the idea of counting what counts along with practical tools and techniques that harness this power and get you to a place where what you count facilitates you getting the results you want.

In a nutshell you want to be able to get the things that will move you to easy weight loss operating as high level values – so you act on them without trying or even having to think about it. So as you can probably sense – this goes way beyond motivation and enters into the realm of what i call a strategic alignment.

One of the paradigm shifts needed is a move from the old idea of motivation to the new concept of a strategic alignment which you’ll learn more about soon.  The reason we are spending a bit of time on so called “motivation” in this way is because it’s the first, necesary step in this process – get this right and the rest of the journey is easier, more certain and built to last.

Within the book there are also 24 ‘universal counters’ that are proven effective things to count that have made the difference for clients.

In the next post – I’ll share 7 of these with you.  I’ve selected these few because they also have an element of URGENCY within them which is something else you need to get into action.  It’s one of a host of powerful ‘motivation boosters’ you’ll find in the book too. 

 Here is the link to the book if you want all the peices of the puzzle now >>COUNT WHAT COUNTS BEFORE ITS TOO LATE<<

Hey welcome to the wlf2f blog – if you want to know more about myself and/or the development of the wlf2f solution then click on the ‘wlf2f story’ tab above after reading this post.

Amongst other things there you will find that I am personally going to be taking on the same challenges (at least) as you to shape up and attack your personal weight loss or health and fitness goals in 2014 – and it all starts now.

(Just a heads up too – at the bottom of this post you’ll be able to get a pdf of a presentation that i’ve done up to around weight loss motivation to kick things off.)

It’s time to get moving!

I was talking with a colleague recently and he was saying  how in his business it seemed as if a lot of people were setting up for change as 2013 came to a close. He then went on to talk about how in the Chinese culture that it was the year of the snake and at the end of that year the idea and urge is to shed your skin. So in effect, this is a time for change and transformation and many people he talked to and worked with (including myself) were preparing for that.

Whether you believe in that or not – you may have felt a change coming on and been preparing yourself for that, whether consciously or not, or if you are just at the point now that you want to make this year count –  here is the cool part which I think you’re gonna like;

He also said that the Chinese New Year actually begins at the end of January or I guess the start of February.

So it’s all good, you can stop beating yourself up and breathe a sigh of relief because I’ve just let you off the hook.

If you haven’t knuckled down, got yourself ‘motivated’ to lose weight and got started yet its ok because NOW is actually a great time to do so. I understand and I actually planned to get focussed and going around this time as it makes more sense to get the xmas / New Year hangover (and I’m not just relating to alcohol) out of the way. There is the festive part, the holidays and being completely out of routine, dealing with kids and getting them back to school, getting back into the work mind-set and so on. All of this actually makes early January probably the worst time to get started. Not to mention that it requires an abrupt turn-around and change which is also the worst way to do it both from a physical and mental standpoint.

That’s part of the problem – there is no strategy when it comes to  weight loss motivation accept brute force and determination. Massive amounts of ‘so called’ will-power and self-discipline are required to even give it the time and priority status it needs which feels like hard work right from the start because you’ve already got a busy life – right?

Plus; you’ve probably proven that THAT APPROACH DOESN’T WORK or not for long. (and it doesn’t work for good reason) as you’ll see from the presentation that stuff is NOT what motivation for weight loss is made of – it’s innefective and it’s the hard way.

So the big questions are;

why hasn’t it worked or what’s been missing the previous years and most importantly WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO BE DOING DIFFERENTLY THIS YEAR to make sure it does work?

Well I’ve got a new weight loss motivation formula for you to follow and it begins NOW – my promise was to give you all you need to set up right going into 2014. We are going to be working smarter rather than harder and taking a strategic approach vs the usual one mentioned – I bet you’ve never thought of it that way before let alone had a proven strategy to follow.

What I’ve got for you initially is a small Presentation that will act as an overview and food for thought initially, it will give you key insights into this strategic approach plus some proven questions to get started on.  Then over the coming days we will be breaking this stuff down starting at the start.

You’ll be able to access all this info for free via videos, blog posts and emails if you are on the list ….(if you are not on the email list then you can do that by entering your name and email in the blue box above or there will also be a link you can go to at the end of the presentation)

The presentation will also act as a prompter for your questions and getting some productive conversation going with those that are keen to take this on. Plus I’m eager to answer any questions it sparks – to get some interaction going on the blog, facebook page and via email.

To leave a comment on the blog just do so in the space provided under this post or if you are a facebook person and prefer to do it there just click on the FB link provided, ‘like’ the wlf2f fanpage and you are good to go.
If it’s something more personal you can shoot me an email at craig@weightlossfrustrationtofreedom.com and I’ll make sure it remains confidential.

I have provided the presentation to kick things off in pdf format here – Mega-Motivation for weight loss
go check it out, wait for next notification via email and stay tuned to the blog and I’ll begin to walk you through getting super inspired and genuinely, positively motivated to eat healthy, lose weight (or whatever your personal focus is) so that you are actually turned on to what you need to DO and do it willingly to the point that you’ll be wondering where the resistance went.

“The goal in brief is more weight loss with less effort – the exciting thing for you is that; that’s the only way it can be because it’s the effort that is the problem. Anyhow, that’s a little secret out of the bag now and there is plenty more ‘game changers’ where that came from so hang around”