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Take Boomer Baby Steps for Weight Loss That Lasts

I hear people talking about the frustrations of losing weight and keeping it off almost daily. The key is to look at your lifestyle and see where you can make little changes to empower your goals and sustain the body weight you desire. Baby boomers can take charge of their lives with baby steps toward healthier food and exercise choices. Let’s look at a few tools that can help.

The first thing I suggest is to buy a notebook that will be your own personal health journal. Take a day to record what you consider to be your successes and your challenges. Buy some star stickers and put a star near the successes to reward yourself for them. They can be drinking more water, or a 10 minute walk to start getting your body moving. Maybe you switched from your usual mashed potatoes to a small portion of brown rice. If you drink a lot of caffeine, maybe you’ve decided to drink decaffeinated tea or coffee. These are baby steps that will take you far if you acknowledge them and let them give you confidence to make more small changes.

Now let’s look at the challenges. If you wrote down that you ate 4 cookies in the office kitchen or you drank a big soda at lunch, don’t give yourself grief. Look at this as discovery and a way to make change. So in your health journal, write each challenge on the left side of the page and on the right side put down what you consider to be a healthier option. So for example, if you wrote down 4 cookies, an example of a healthier option you can write is a red delicious apple or 1/2 of a granola bar with a tall glass of water with fruit slices in it. If you wrote down that you sat on a couch and watched television while eating chips, a healthier choice you could write is a 10 minute walk around the neighborhood breathing in fresh air and enjoying the time to think about people you love.

It’s all about making healthy choices. Before you grab something to eat or drink that will bring you pleasure for about 5 or 10 minutes, think about how you’ll feel afterwards. Now before you eat or drink that item, think of a substitute for that which will taste good but make you feel good about yourself for a much longer period of time. It’s all about decisions. If you don’t make a good decision, learn from it. Remember how you felt when you did it and let it be a helper for you to make a better choice next time. Give yourself credit for the successes. Write them in your journal each night and go to sleep with that feeling of victory. This will permeate your subconscious mind with success thoughts that will breed more success.

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