I’ve been doing a lot of psychological work over the past year to help me make lifestyle changes. Its hard work!

I have felt myself slipping backwards in the last month or so and as I have said I went back to see a counsellor and have just started a course I took last year called Managing Your Weight and Changing Your Lifestyle. This is a free course offered by the local psychology unit. They run a range of courses and are fantastic. I have been on a few now and have liked most of them, except one where I just didn’t click with one of the women running it. But it is different people every time, so I plan to go back and try that one again.

So back to the Lifestyle course. I decided to go back on it to remind myself of what I have forgotten. I know I am still doing some of it, but I need to reaffirm those bits as well to be more successful at maintaining changes I want to make.

So last night was all about the cycle of change. They got us to think about where we are on the cycle and why we are at that stage. I feel I am currently caught between action and relapse and then also questioning my decisions. But it reminded me that this is normal. Often to make a change we have to go through the cycle a number of times before we are truly successful.

We then talked about motivation. I really liked this part as although willpower came up they kept away from it and focused on what goes into motivation. The key aspects of motivation are how important it is to us and how confident we are at achieving it. With weight loss most of us know it is important for any number of personal reasons, but confidence is where we are lacking. The frustrating part is that to build confidence we just have to keep trying. We need to think of it as being a beginner and learning something new.

So I have made a list of why losing weight is important for me. This ranged from the big things like health, to smaller ones that are very personal. It was easy and hard at the same time. This is something I am going to remind myself to do every so often as I think it will be a good exercise to reaffirm my motivations.

We then went onto SMART Goals. I like these, but I have realised I set too big goals and then get bored. I have been tracking my Goals weekly with Laura, but again they all relate to bigger goals. Last night we talked about very small goals. We used an example of increasing exercise from nothing to doing something 2 times a week. We also set it for just one week to be able to reward ourselves for making that change for that week. I found this very useful and have set myself a couple of goals for the next week.

• S – Track all the food I consume on my Ki Fit  iPhone App
• M- After every meal
• A – This will help me lose weight and make better food choices as I will be thinking more
• R – I have everything I need to do this
• T – For one week
• Reward – Tuesday evening face mask

• S – To be active everyday for 60 minutes
• M- I will monitor this using my Ki Fit
• A – It makes me feel better and will help me lose weight
• R – I have time in my lunch hour to go for a walk if nothing else
• T – For one week
• Reward – Tuesday evening foot scrub

These are simple goals. One that will be easy as I have my activity planned already and one I need to put the effort into working on as I find it too easy not to do it.  Some people might think making myself be active everyday is too much, but for me that could be as simple as walking at lunch. I know it makes me feel better and helps a great deal with my depression, so that is my goal.

I also have to remember that I am doing this for me. No one else. I’m not happy as I am now with my weight, so I need to make changes, but small changes over time. Right now it is about getting the right balance between diet and exercise