key2weight

Introduction to changing your behaviour

Thoughts are extremely powerful and can lead you to do all sorts of things that you do not really want to do, like overeat, ignore exercise, etc. Changing unhelpful thoughts can make you feel and act better.

An important key to ensuring that you keep your weight stable and manage your weight in the future is to examine your past eating behaviours and identify your triggers to overeating. Once you have gained awareness around these issues, you can apply simple techniques to change your behaviour around food to prevent a return to your old habits.

Believe in Yourself

This is paramount. If something goes wrong, don’t panic. Learning new habits takes time and you are not expected to get everything right straight away. You will make mistakes along the way, which is part of the learning process – pick yourself up and continue the journey.

REMEMBER – How you think affects how you feel and, in turn, the actions you take. So believe in yourself and focus on what you want. If you do stray from your weight loss programme, don’t give up! Don’t allow yourself those unhelpful thoughts, which can lead to overeating. You have not failed but have had a temporary lapse. Learn from this and remind yourself of what you have achieved. Talk to yourself positively about your achievements and get back on track.

Look after yourself by learning to say no to others – by refusing certain foods whilst on your Key2weight diet programme you are taking care of your own needs.

Set realistic goals every day related to your health and happiness. This is the key to success.

Check Key2weight’s regular motivational statements online.

Setting Goals

To keep yourself motivated set yourself activity goals

SMARTER activity goals:

• Specific – Be clear what you’re aiming for: measurable – minutes done, speed achieved, distance etc
• Acceptable - Set yourself a target of something you enjoy doing
• Realistic - Set yourself achievable targets, and build up slowly
• Time Specific - Set a time frame such as next week, next month or next year (short or long term goals)
• Exciting - You’re far more likely to achieve goals that excite or interest you
• Recorded - Record your results to track your progress

Writing down a list of things that you would like to achieve each day makes them more powerful and easier to stick to.

Your goals do not have to be just around weight loss but could be something that you would really like to do as you start losing weight e.g. dancing, horse riding, bungee jumping!

Food and Mood Diary

Whilst eating, keep a daily food and mood diary to help you gain awareness of your thoughts, feelings and behaviour, which can cause you to overeat. You can download an example template for a food and mood diary here: downloaded from the Key2weight website.

When completing a Food and Mood Diary, it is useful to ask yourself the following questions to help you identify any common themes associated with your eating patterns:

• Where was I, who was I with and what time of day was it?
• Was I actually physically hungry?
• What was I thinking and feeling before I had something to eat?
• What did I think and feel afterwards, did I feel satisfied with the food I had eaten?

It’s a good idea to try and review your food and mood diary at the end of each day, making notes of any unhelpful behaviour patterns. Also make notes of any positive actions that prevented you from over eating or making unhelpful choices. Use this tool to learn more about yourself and begin to establish healthy balanced eating!

Thought Record

Different situations can lead to irrational thinking, which can cause intense feelings and lead us to behave in ways not in line with our goals. Everyone uses this kind of ‘crooked thinking’ but the key is to interrupt this thinking process and change the crooked thoughts to more balanced thoughts. Remember, balanced thinking means more stable feelings so you can make healthier choices. A key tool to help you in this process is a ‘Thought Record’.

Once you’ve discovered the situations which led you to overeat, the next step is to change those repeated patterns of behaviour. The principle tool to use to help you achieve more balanced thinking is a thought record as below:

Here’s how to complete a thought record:

• 1. Identify a situation when your behaviour was not in line with your goals or a situation that caused extreme feelings or reactions.
• 2. List all the automatic thoughts that you had related to the situation. Like a domino effect, one thought leads to another.
• 3. Identify the resulting feelings and list! Tip – feelings tend to be one word variations of sad, happy, angry and anxious.
• 4. Jot down your behaviour in the identified situation.
• 5. Identify your strongest feeling or emotion and underline it.
• 6. Ask yourself, ‘Which thought, from my thoughts column, is most closely connected to the strongest feeling?’ This is the Hot Thought; the juiciest thought that drives your behaviour. Write it in the box!
• 7. Examine evidence (however trivial it may seem) for and against this Hot Thought. The idea is to stack up the evidence against this unrealistic thought.
• 8. Using your evidence against the Hot Thought, identify a more useful balanced thought.
• 9. Intense feelings should now be reduced. Are there any new feelings or changed feelings?
• 10. Write down new preferred ways of behaving.

Practice thought records regularly (in any situation when you have a strong feeling/reaction or when you do something not in line with your goals). This will help you to become more adept at using them as a tool to help you change your behaviour for the long term and reduce ‘crooked’ or unhelpful thoughts.

Achievements, Affirmations and Support

At the end of every day, make a note of three things that you have achieved that day and do not dwell on those things that you have not achieved.

Use motivational statements to interrupt crooked thinking – write a statement and place it where you can see it throughout the day, e.g. I am important and I can stick to my eating plan, or, visualise yourself achieving a goal.

Support could really help you to succeed. Ask family, friends, loved ones, etc to help you. They could, for example, text you when things are difficult or send you motivational comments.