This Time I Mean It

Getting Past What Holds You Back with Baby Boomer Weight Loss Expert Scott 'Q' Marcus

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When Stuck, Look to Your WHY NOTs

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stuck-man

“Stuck” does not just happen.

There’s a reason.

  •     If you keep taking off and putting on the same few pounds no matter what you do, there’s a reason.
  •     If you keep “trying” to change a habit and it never seems to work, there’s a reason.
  •     If you’re always making promises to yourself but you’re not keeping them, there’s a reason.

If you want to understand the reason, it’s important to know your “WHY NOTs.”

We usually know why we want to change our habits (health, happiness, success) but we rarely pay attention to why we DO NOT, referred to as our “WHY NOTs.”

Understanding your WHY NOTs will move you forward.

[Read more…]

The Road from “Never” to “Now”

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never-land-&-now-road

Changing a bad habit can be messy, frustrating, and unpleasant.

After all, if it was easy, we’d all be dropping bad habits willy-nilly, wouldn’t we?

It becomes easier if, instead of looking at it like, “One moment I’m here. The next minute I have to be all the way over there,” we understand it more as a series of stages.

I’ll assume one has left the initial stage of denial, and decided to — for example — lose a few pounds; accepting that either forever gaining weight or making a change are his only options.

He lands firmly in stage one: “Never.”

Here thoughts and feelings are extremely negative, perception being an excessive, laborious amount of work and discomfort for what appears to be a pipe dream result. Internal dialog is, “I will never be able to do that” with the obvious coda being, “…so why bother to try?”

In our example, the thought of sweaty, painful exercise; a starvation-level diet; anal-retentive tracking of calories; tasteless recipes; extensive shopping pattern adjustments; and – in general – being forever, always, never-ending conscious; triggers our synapses to scream, “No way! Can’t be done, ain’t gonna happen.” Crossing our arms, scowling, and firmly planting our feet, we refuse to budge.

Or so we think.

You see; the problem is that once consciousness has been raised it cannot never again be buried.

[Read more…]

Six Simple Steps to Stay on Your Diet While Traveling or Vacationing

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bar-cartoon

I actually lost weight while on the road for a month.

Please don’t hate me.

Having surveyed thousands of people about what is the biggest difficulty in keeping their weight under control, that which ranks highest is staying in control while traveling; not a shock I’m sure. However, for a few of us, it’s the opposite; I lose weight easier while on the road. So, although I usually don’t use this space as an “advice” or “how-to” column, since we are entering the “vacation and travel season;” I share my simple and easy techniques to avoid coming home with “extra baggage.” [Read more…]

Identify Your 20%

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There are two laws in the universe: Gravity, and the “80/20 Rule.”

newton-hit-on-head-by-apple

In case you’re not familiar with the 80/20 Rule, it states that “Eighty percent of all results will come from 20% of all the effort.” In other words, if you have ever worked on a committee with 10 people, 80% of the work was done by 2 of the people.

How does this apply to habit change?

Habits are triggered by events, such as we eat (habit) because we’re stressed (event). To change your habits, you need to change how you handle the event. To change how you handle the event, you need to identify your triggers.

Here’s the good news.

The 80/20 rule tells us that we do not need to identify every single triggering event in our lives. If we identify the 20% of triggers that cause us the most trouble, we’ll fix our habit 80% of the time.

Fix your habit 80% of the time and you’re moving forward at incredible speed!

If you’re serious about changing your habits… [Read more…]

Creatures of Habit

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Have you ever really truly analyzed how much of what we do is by rote?

habit-creature

Paying for groceries, the clerk asks,
“How are you?”

Our expected reply, stated without thought:
“Fine, how are you?”

Continuing the script she responds, “Great,” and upon finishing the transaction, adds the obligatory, “Have a nice day.”

Did she really care?

Should we opt to spill our guts about the problems we’re having with aging, would she request the other shoppers stand elsewhere while she counseled, consoled, and cajoled us? Survey says: Not a chance. The brief exchange near the cash register is a pre-ordained, almost-required, nicety; it’s just “what we do.”

That just scratches the surface; dig deeper and discover how much of our lives are run by autopilot.

Picture a typical weekday; we either arise with the help of an alarm — that pushes us to consciousness at the exact same moment as every other weekday — or we don’t use one at all. Upon rising, patterns control everything from the order of our morning constitutional to the clothes we choose. We are either “breakfast eaters” — or not. It’s not “I am” one day and “I’m not” the next. The average grocery store stocks over 40,000 items; yet even those of us who opt for breakfast choose from fewer than a handful of items every morning, the same selections we had yesterday and will eat tomorrow.

[Read more…]

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Scott "Q" Marcus
707 834.4090
scottq@thistimeimeanit.com
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