Why Walk?

Exercising hard is not necessary nor is it an effective tool for permanent weight loss.

Low to moderate intensity exercise however has all the benefits that are needed to achieve living longer.

Health professionals all agree that including exercise as part of a “lifestyle change weight loss program” gives fives times the probability of success.
Walking was the exercise program adopted by over 90% of people who have ever successfully achieved permanent weight loss. Walking can be added by almost everyone to your own schedule instead of changing your schedule to fit in a gym,cardio, or dance class program schedule. You can adopt as many small sessions as you want broken up throughout the day, before work, at lunchtime, after work, alone or walk with friends, family,children, and pets. Walking is the most readily available and least costly program that anyone can use to achieve a permanent life change.

Getting Started.

• Wear comfortable walking shoes, with good fit and low heel.
• Choose a safe, well lit route especially if walking alone. (Ideally always walk with an exercise buddy).

Motivation.

Most people like to challenge themselves. Using a pedometer to track your daily step count will motivate you to walk further and you will see your progress.
Setting yourself a step goal for each day will push you to do a little bit more until you eventually hit your step goal. Walk with friends and plan scheduled walking dates to encourage you to walk more often and regularly.

How To Reach 10,000 Steps a Day?

10,000 steps a day is a good daily target to set as a goal. If you have a desk job 10,000 steps may seem daunting. A daily step count target can start at less than 2,000 steps.

Follow this guide to steadily build up your step count.

•Step 1: Determine how many steps you take in a normal day by wearing a pedometer for 3 days.

•Step 2: Calculate your base line, divide total number of steps by the number of days measured.

•Step 3: Read your first goal from Col B. that corresponds to your starting baseline.

Cols C and D give recommendations for reasonable rates of step increase and time to increase.

•Step 4: Circle the number of steps on the Step Table closest to your ultimate goal, 10,000 for most people.

•Step 5: After you reach your first goal set that number of steps as a new baseline and repeat the cycle.

If you find you do not have time to add more steps focus on going faster and or including more hills.

Pre-emptive Actions

These Pre-emptive action suggestions will help you increase your daily step count.

•Put on your pedometer immediately you get dressed in the morning – every step counts.
•Have a quick walk before work, use the time to plan out your day.
•Check your step count during the day, do not leave a large amount to make up after work.
•Get up and walk periodically during the day. Plan to have half your days total done by 3 pm.
•Wherever you are going, take the long way round and use the stairs!
•When grocery shopping walk around every aisle.
•Make a walking date with a friend instead of calling them on the phone, window shopping will easily add 2000 steps to your step count .

Homework

Buy a pedometer if you do not have one.

Start your 10,000 steps a day walking target.

Use the guide above to increase your step count.

Call a buddy and invite them to walk with you! Enjoy the walk.

Why is goal setting hard?

We celebrate exceptional results people have achieved. This is what receives all the publicity in our world.  The result is that some of us tend to always see success only if we ourselves are doing the same. We tend to aim high with our goals. Later we beat ourselves up for not hitting them when we fail, or we can excuse ourselves because we set an unrealistic goal.

Some of us set goals for ourselves that are so low that achieving them is guaranteed and safe. These require little effort, and usually result in little improvement or change. Neither approach is very smart and neither approach leads to success.

Real success comes when we set “smart goals” for ourselves. These goals push us to achieve realistically achievable irreversible small positive  steps to the new healthier lifestyle that we are seeking.

“Smart”Goals.

MTP makes goal setting easy for everyone by giving everyone some simple clearly defined goal to meet as a homework each week.Read more

Why exercise?

When I exercise I get hungrier afterwards which makes me eat more. I know I must satisfy my hunger and replace the calories I have burned until my blood sugar gets back up to normal. So, why should I exercise if it makes me eat more when I want to lose weight ?

Research has shown that people adopting a scheduled exercise program as part of their weight loss program are 5 times more likely to succeed and achieve a weight loss goal. Further, maintaining exercise as part of a life change program supports making any weight loss permanent. If we are overweight usually we do need to MOVE MORE.

Body Atrophy

If we do not exercise our body muscles atrophy. They become less functional and weaker,worst case, not capable of meeting our daily activity demands and supporting our everyday life activities. As we age we lose muscle mass anyway and have lower strength. We accelerate this if we do not keep active.
It creeps up on us without our knowing until the day we realize we are no longer fit. Eventually basic functions like getting up off the floor and getting in and out of the car, carrying our shopping, carrying a laundry basket can start to be affected. Worse still we may start to injure ourselves doing any of our heavier load daily tasks.
We need to use our muscles regularly to avoid this and if possible work our muscles harder than just at our daily norm.
It is never too late to halt or reverse this trend. We all need to take stock of our situation and adopt and implement a plan to “Move More” while we can. We do not have to run marathons or pump iron.

Combined Exercise and Weight Loss

As we lose weight we will regain functional capability. This is amplified when combined with improvement in our strength, flexibility and endurance produced by exercise. As our level of activity increases, our physical fitness normally will increase with it and we find we feel better about ourselves.
We get the feeling of improved health. If not then we should see a doctor and get checked out just in case.
You will enjoy your day more and deal with life challenges and stress more easily, have more freedom of movement, have more stamina to do much more than just go to work and do the home chores as you get in better physical shape.

How to enjoy exercise

1. Choose an exercise program featuring exercise that suits you preferably with an exercise “buddy”.
   2. Make it a habit, exercise 30 – 40 minutes at least 3 times per week, daily if possible.
   3. Give yourself the time to create a regular routine and exercise around the same time each day.
   4. The key is to build exercise into your life style so that it is not disruptive and chose times of the day that work best for you.
   5. If you miss a day don’t worry about it. Just get back at it the next day.

Homework

If you are not doing it already, start a daily exercise program (or at least 30 minutes 3 times a week.)

A daily walk is easy, can be done without equipment, is free and has been used as the go to exercise used by over 85% of all people who achieve permanent weight loss.

Below is a list of steps adopted taken so far in your life change journey. Check off your progress and see how you are doing in adopting life change step by step.

Posting such a list and checking off progress is a simple tool we can all use to keep ourselves motivated. Re read a particular talk if you need to refresh your memory.

The Team of Friends Culture.

Members of a team or group following common goals and sharing achievements, live longer happier lives than those living alone. We know a key to extending our lives is to improve our lifestyle especially if we are also overweight. We must eat healthier and add more exercise and activity. Life experience has proven that a group culture is supportive of this and will encourage us to adopt and then keep to our new improved ways of living.

(Over time we usually become what our 4 or 5 closest family and friends are.)

We believe the importance of having a “team of friends” in our MTP groups cannot be overstated. It is critical to the success of each and every team and the success of the program. MTP is as much a way of life and social and networking enterprise as it is an exercise class.

Most fitness programs don’t give much attention to this “team culture”. They are usually based on one on one, trainer to client, personal trainer model or are group classes with many solo people interacting with the trainer. MTP is about interacting with each other and working as a team guided by the trainer. Everyone helps each other to boost attendance, to energize the classes, empower the talks , be successful at the weekly homeworks , keep at it , and to support success of all.

We need to experience the value of sharing the life rewards, and the achievement felt within a team as one by one we hit our life change goals. For those overweight it is visible and unmistakable. Smiles are hard to hide.

The influence that each of us as individuals have on our team, healthy or even at times toxic, is important in overall “team’s success” but at the same time the team’s success has significant effect on the success of its individual members. We all probably have been members of downer groups, ones that permeate negativity, unhealthy competition, and conflict. It sure doesn’t feel good and it can interfere with reaching our personal intentions.

Everyone including the coach, will have a big impact on how your group gets along, functions, and performs. It effects if your team’s membership grows and the group lasts or if the membership declines and the group falls apart. We must all try and create new norms of what we all need to do to support building our team. Each one of us must try a relationship to our MTP community more representative of a religious group than a sports team when it comes to adding members to keep a local group healthy and prosperous.

The MTP team culture must energize a positive atmosphere that permeates every aspect of our MTP experience. We can make it whatever we want it to be. In the end an MTP groups culture will be an expression of our values, attitudes, and beliefs about life.

MTP management try to ensure the focus is on fun, improvement, and change to promote and support each other to accomplish success. Our culture is grounded in an identified sense of mission and shared goals. We are all seeking and needing life change and are willing to work with everyone else in the MTP team for the common good. This must be our culture.

MTP must be also be relaxed and never intense, light-hearted, with only friendly competition, all-inclusive and supportive.

These support happiness. All support improved longevity.

Everyone on a team will with time understand and feel that its in their own and the whole teams interest to feel some implicit pressure (in the good sense) to support the MTP culture.

Summing it Up

Each MTPs team will adopt the Team of Friend’s culture to some extent as an expression of its individual members. This “organic” approach will hopefully lead to all team members feeling a sense of ownership. Members will create their own team’s version of it. There is always a risk that this Team of Friends Culture will not be adopted by some teams. These teams I am afraid will not last.We know from years of experience a team needs a minimum of 10 and 20 is a better number.

Through good coach mentorship and leadership and open discussion within your team, of the values, attitudes, and beliefs that you all want to introduce as your groups foundation, your flavor of the “team of friends” culture will emerge.

All team members are encouraged to discuss openly what you feel is important to the  atmosphere you want to create, what your expectations are, and the ways in which your team will best communicate socially.

This collaborative approach will produce a sense of ownership of your MTP teams culture. As a result, you are more likely to live by it, stay with it , change your life, and succeed by it.

Homework (Coaches included)

• What values do you want to act as the foundation for your team’s culture?
• What attitudes and beliefs do you want to hold?
• What are the goals that the team wants to pursue?
• How do your team want to treat each other?
• What kind of atmosphere do you want in your team ?

Use the blog comments area or Facebook to discuss this week.

Posting the positive benefits of MTP on your personal facebook pages will help build your MTP Team.

The SCALE

Why are so many seeking weight loss terrified of the scale? Easy answer. No one likes bad news . It is almost certain that on some days, our standing on the scale will be showing weight gain and not weight loss. The reaction can be instant depression, a panic attack , feelings of failure , extreme upset, or any and all of these. No wonder weighings can trigger the search for comfort in food if it has been our remedy for all things challenging our comfort zone.

Choice HERE IS NOT an OPTION

In MTP we coach everyone to find their own solution of choice for most things. Daily weighing however is one of the few exceptions where MTP take a strict and rigid position.

DAILY WEIGHING IS AN ABSOLUTE NECESSITY !

We must be aware of how our own bodies are developing with respect to bodyweight. The only real way to do that is daily weighing. Self responsibility is required to be mastered.
Our weighing scale weight fluctuates up and down over the course of a day far more than our “True Weight”.

True Weight = Weighing Scale Weight – Fluids, Food and Food Waste

The amount of fluids , food and and waste matter in our system can vary several pounds over a 24 hour period depending on what we have been consuming, what we have been passing out and what we have been burning to support our body functions and during exercise and activity.

The most reliable time for weighing is normally first thing on a morning after we have relieved ourselves, preferably wearing the same clothes each weigh in. (After a shower with hair dried is the ideal.) This will give the minimum of fluctuation. After a couple of weeks we will see what is really happening. Reviewing weight fluctuations at the same time as looking at our food diary will soon show what if anything is challenging our weight loss. Once we know what that is, it is just a matter of making an adjustment.

Life Change

As we change our habits towards our new “changed lifestyle” we will see how each change has improved or degraded our weight loss. It is seeing the positive effects continuously step by step that provides the most motivation and encouragement. This is in contrast to the opposite view that supports fear of weigh scales by preaching numbers don’t matter. They do! It is true however that life change is all about habit modification, not numbers.

Additional Weighing

Taking some weighings before and after exercise sessions, meals, and other significant events during a day are useful to show us what the immediate effects of these activities are.
Comparing the effect of these activities with the daily loss rate we are trying to achieve, 0.1-1lb a week, will quickly show why daily morning weighing is so useful and important.

TeamWork

Having a weight loss buddy to share and discuss the results we are achieving is highly beneficial to help us overcome any shyness about what our weight is and what our level of achievement is. Accepting we are overweight but at the same time advertising we are doing something about it is all positive.

Experts View

The self-monitoring strategy of daily self-weighing improves weight loss and adoption of weight control behaviors. It allows for better self-regulation of body weight as small changes in body weight can be identified on a daily basis and changes in diet and exercise behaviors initiated as a result.

Homework

If you have not already adopted daily weighing you need to start now.

Reduce food intake until a steady weight loss is achieved.

If you find you are in a plateau and staying steady,reduce food intake by a little more and then hold your food quantity the same for a few days.You should find you will see a steady weight loss.

Review your results after 1 week with your coach.

It Is the Party Season?

So here we are here again. It’s the party season. It is a time to enjoy and that means eating more than we normally would. But how can we enjoy it if we are thinking of how much extra weight we are going to gain at every party? We need to keep our minds upbeat and festive and avoid thinking “this is not good”? Fun and a parties keep us young and help us live longer !

BALANCE.
Balance is the key as always. We have started to live our “changed life” .This, we should be finding, has not been that hard. To party with a smaller plate or a plate that is not piled high in one hand and not holding a full wine glass in the other makes it easier. This keeps food under moderate control especially when we are eating standing up.
Standing up instead of sitting to eat at a party works a treat. That is as long as we are not standing next to and in arms reach of the goodies, the favorite place for grazing.

Always hit a party with one thing in mind. We have arrived to have fun. It is the season to be merry. Being merry on occasion is just as important if not more so than keeping calories down when it comes to longevity.
Building some “partying room “ in advance by reduction in our food intake, or adding extra exercise prior is a good stategy. Nothing is worse than being miserable not enjoying ourselves when we are out.

Read more

60% of the developed world adult population are overweight. 98% of people attempting weight loss take it too fast and so fail to lose weight permanently due to triggering their body’s famine response. Reducing food intake to just below that needed to satisfy your bodies energy demands while keeping your hunger forces, as driven by Ghrelin and Leptin hormones, manageable is the key. Mission Thin Possible have a unique approach to this which is based on the latest medical research that is critical for permanent weight loss success.Read more