Joanna Hall - Drop a Size for Life - Fat Loss Fast and Forever!

So, if you’re ready, let’s make a start and prepare to drop a size.

SECTION ONE CONTENTS Introduction Getting Started How the book works Section One: Preparing to Drop a Size Step 1 Train your brain Step 2 Befriend the mirror Step 3 Think, say and do as one Step 4 Make friends with the enemy Step 5 Establishing the here and now Step 6 Get on that pedestal Step 7 Finding the elusive G spot Section Two: Dropping that Size The 10 Fundamentals Follow the Carb Curfew Eat more fibre Cut your sodium intake Fit in some exercise – with and without your trainers Get savvy about fats Don’t skimp on the protein Beware of alcohol – the hidden pound piler Keep up your water intake Get to grips with portion control Follow the 80-20 rule The drop a size eating plans The Recipes Drop a size for life foods Troubleshooting some commonly asked questions and problems Section Three: Keeping Your New Size for Life The child-bearing years Pregnancy Reclaiming your body after pregnancy Midlife Perimenopause Menopause Growing older by the same author Copyright JOANNA HALL About the Publisher

Many people want to lose weight. What’s the first step? I guess you’d expect to hear something about reducing calories and getting down the gym, however, my experience with the thousands of people I’ve helped over the years suggests that the first step should have nothing to do with diet or exercise – instead it should involve sorting out your state of mind. Getting in the right ‘head space’ – being mentally ready – is something you’ll need to master for successful long-term weight management. Why? I see many clients with the keenness to achieve their weight loss goals, but they set off with false ideas – about how much they need to lose, how quickly it can be lost and how easy it will be. Attempting to achieve unrealistic goals means you are more likely to fail – either by not getting the result you wanted or by finding the plan too difficult to stick to and giving up. Either way, setting yourself up for failure in this way is bad for your self-esteem and confidence.

In contrast to those who are very keen, are the clients who have been through the weight loss mill so many times that despite saying, ‘I really want to lose weight this time’, at the back of their mind they are in fact saying ‘here we go again – don’t expect this will work but I’m desperate, so I’ll give it a go’. In effect, they are setting themselves up to fail. The subconscious mind is a very subtle but persuasive thing and you only need to suggest failure for it to become a likely part of reality.

Many individuals report feelings of great self-esteem once they have lost weight. Why is that? Does being thinner make you a better person? Or is it more to do with the good feelings associated with achieving what you set out to do? Obviously losing weight doesn’t make you a better person but whatever you think, I believe that building self-esteem initially is pivotal to successful weight loss. Self-esteem is not a productof weight loss but the foundationfor it. After all, you have to believe you are worth the time, effort and work involved in achieving and then maintaining your goal size and weight.

Take your clothes off – go on, take them off right now. I’m absolutely serious! Go and take them off and stand in front of a full length mirror completely naked. Take a good look. Look at yourself from the front and then from the side and back. What do you see?

The chances are, what you see and the body you have are two completely different things. How you see yourself is described as your ‘body image’. This isn’t something fixed in concrete and it isn’t necessarily grounded in reality. In fact, body image can be affected by all kinds of things. For example, in one interesting study, subjects who were made to consume a bowl of ice cream before having to choose a body silhouette most like their own opted for a larger outline than the women who ate nothing. It’s as if those women felt they’d done something wrong by eating the ice cream and therefore judged themselves more negatively.

If you’re anything like the average woman, you aren’t at all happy with what you see in the mirror. A recent survey showed 95 per cent of women are unhappy with their body shape. What’s more, we think that our inability to look as slim and fit as we want to is down to our own failures. Most disturbingly, ‘failing’ in one area of life (i.e. not having the ‘perfect’ body) has a knock-on effect on confidence and self-esteem in other areas of life. A negative body image is closely linked to poor self-esteem. The point here is that deciding to accept your body, right here, right now, how it is, is crucial to your success. Okay, so you might want to make some changes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t think positive about some aspects of yourself.

See if you can guess which of these percentages goes with which question.

Such widespread dissatisfaction with our bodies makes shocking reading, doesn’t it? You are more than what you see in the mirror and to move beyond the crash diet–weight gain cycle, you need to accept yourself and value yourself enough to instigate some positive changes. Making an enemy of your body is a losing battle, as you will only be fighting yourself.

So, before we even begin to look at diet and exercise, we’re going to work on getting you into the right mental space to drop a size for life. This section is literally about stripping things back to the bare bones and then building back your self-esteem, layer by layer, in order to give you the appropriate foundation for dropping a size. And the great thing is, layering these simple skills and techniques will not only get you dropping a size, it will also have a knock-on effect in other aspects of your life, too.