The root to losing weight

Whether you have an extra 15 pounds or 100 pounds to lose, often it's not as simple as exercise and diet. Yes, exercise and diet are key to losing weight but what is the root of why you are overweight.

Getting to the root of answering the "why" to being over weight is harder that is seems. Discovering why you over eat or refuse to exercise can reveal some uncomfortable truths about your past. Too often food becomes a crutch or a distraction that hides the true problem.

How do you confront your issues? The first step is to commit to being honest with yourself and courageous in discovering the truth.

You need to determine what your "bad" habits are, what your "crutches" are. When you are stressed do you go a soda? When you are upset and lonely do you turn to a carton of ice cream? In the winter do you become a hermit and avoid getting out and doing anything remotely active? When you are depressed do you turn to alcohol? If you can recognize a pattern in your life you have hit gold! By seeing a pattern, you will know your weaknesses, you will be more prepared to stop next time you begin down that road to no success.

Once you have determined the pattern related to your bad habits you can begin arming yourself with tools to overcome the bad habit by creating good habits. These are the steps you need to take to be successful in retraining your mind and developing new habits that will propel you forward;

1. Recognize your pattern that leads you to making "bad" or "wrong" health choices
2. Realize that your bad habit i.e eating chocolate is not the direct answer to your problem
3. Determine what you can do to improve the situation
4. Take action

Apply these principles to the following situation; being lonely makes you want to eat chocolate at night time. It's night time you are tired and alone, feelings of loneliness are swelling within you and you desperately want to feel loved. Will eating chocolate make you feel loved? No! Eating chocolate will distract you from feeling of need to feel loved but ultimately it will pull you away from feeling loved. Feeling loved really means to feel happy. So what will make you feel loved or be happy?

When you enter a situation like this have a couple of options available; call a family member or friend for a chat, look at photos that remind you of uplifting people and times, listen to music that makes you happy, listen to a motivational speaker, show love towards someone else through an act of service...As soon as you head for the cupboard to open that chocolate bar change your focus and choose one of your prepared options.

These steps help you retain yourself to address the actual problem rather than the distraction.