Little Book of Mindset Weight Loss Guide

Little Book of Mindset

Welcome and thank you for reading our Little Book of Mindset.

The fact that you have downloaded this booklet indicates to us that you’re perhaps finding your willpower and mindset are struggling and you’re not doing as well as you would have hoped on your weight loss journey.

Well, we are here to tell you that you are in absolutely the right place and inside this booklet, you should find all you need to start building a strong, healthy mental foundation to support your weight loss.

With articles kindly written by our expert weight loss Mind Coach, Andrea, as well as supporting articles about learning to love yourself, finding your willpower and forming better habits, we are leaving no stone unturned when it comes to ensuring you know exactly what you need to feel better on the inside.

So, read on and find out how you can care for yourself and learn the coping techniques and tools you need to make your weight loss not only successful, but long lasting too.

Remember, caring for your mind is as important as caring for your body.

Andrea Rose, Mind Coach

HOW MUCH of your weight loss success depends on your mindset and thoughts? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot! We have asked our Mind Coach, Andrea, to answer your questions about mindset and how if we can change our thoughts, will it help our journey?

Your Weight Loss Mindset

How much of someone being successful on their weight loss journey is based on their mindset?

The success of your weight loss journey is really reliant on your mindset. The connection between your mind and your body is often really underestimated.

Although most of the solutions to weight loss are physical changes such as eating less and moving more, it is your mindset that will determine how successful you are and if you are able to maintain your weight loss.

” The connection between your mind and body is often really underestimated. “

How can we improve our mindset and turn it to ‘weight loss mode’?

The first way to adjust your mindset to ‘weight loss mode’ is to look at your goals and what you want to achieve from your weight loss. Are your goals and aims realistic, or are you making them overly ambitious or difficult?

Changing your mindset can sometimes be a simple as developing a new routine or structure to your day, to help break habits that are causing you to gain weight.

Secondly, and looking further into the psychology of our mind/body relationship, it is making connections of how food could be our ‘go to’ to replace loneliness, boredom, depression and stress etc.

When we explore these emotions, we are able to look into the causes and how we might overcome these. Next time you reach for a snack, or something you don’t necessarily ‘need’ to eat, question how you are feeling – is this an emotional reaction or craving, do you really ‘need’ what you are about to eat?

(find out more about this on page 8).

Often, we see great weight losses in the first month of a programme, but then the weight loss can slow or even plateau. What advice do you have for someone who might be thinking of giving up when the lbs aren’t dropping off as quickly?

If weight loss slows or plateaus during your weight loss programme and you feel like giving up, it’s important to realise that any decision is yours to make but it also helps to look at the bigger picture and what you want to achieve on a weight loss journey. When it comes to slowing or stopping weight loss, there are two routes you can take.

Route one is where you stay on your weight loss programme, receive the support and encouragement you need to overcome this small stumbling block in the road. By staying on the programme, you can learn ways to adapt your approach to weight loss that matches your current situation. It also gives you time to find the reasons for your weight loss slowing down and finding ways to tackle it. Route two is where you make the choice to leave your weight loss programme. If this becomes a realistic choice for you, try and reflect back on the reasons that you joined your weight loss programme in the first place. Why did you want to lose weight, and have you achieved that goal yet?

It is really important to remember when making a choice on which route to take, that you should not feel guilty about whatever decision you make. Perhaps, before making the decision, we could turn to our support network and speak honestly with them, to ensure you are definitely making the right decision for you.

If someone has tried weight loss programmes before and then regained the weight they have lost, how can they change their mindset to believing they can lose weight for good and they don’t need to continue to yo-yo diet?

If you have lost weight before, but it has been regained, then it is a simple question of reminding yourself that you are your own best expert.

When you lost weight before, what worked for you and what didn’t? What caused you to regain the weight and can you combat this if you were to lose weight again?

Very often, we look at diets as having an end goal. We see the goal weight as the end of the line, make drastic changes we cannot maintain once the weight is lost and don’t look at how we can make weight loss sustainable as well as successful.

Although you will have the intentions that your weight loss will be permanent once you have reached your goals, once you have hit your target, it’s all too easy to find yourself slipping back into old patterns of behaviour and finding rewards, often foods, for our achievements gained during the programme. In order to find a sustainable solution, we have to ensure whatever lifestyle changes that we make are realistic and maintainable long term.

FREE CALL WITH A WEIGHT LOSS EXPERT

For us at The Slimming Clinic, we think the most crucial part of a weight loss programme is the support you get from With The Slimming Clinic, we think it is really important that you know you will be getting tailored expert weight loss advice, with appointments led by GMC-Registered doctors - people who have dedicated years to knowing about the human body and finding the most effective ways to helping you lose weight.

To find out more about our services book a call with our Weight Loss Experts.

This FREE call will enable you to

1. Find out your BMI – this is an important starting point for your weight loss journey. The body mass index (BMI) is a measure that uses your height and weight to work out if your weight is healthy. The higher your BMI, the higher your risk for certain diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, gallstones, breathing problems, and certain cancers.

2. Calculate how long it will take you to get to your goal weight – this is one of our most frequently asked questions! How long will it take me to get to a healthy weight? Once we know your BMI, we can calculate this.

3. Weight Loss tracker – tracking your weight loss is just one way of tracking weight loss. Many of us just use the scale in order to track our weight loss progress. However, your weight alone (and even your BMI) doesn’t always tell the whole story. As you lose weight your body shape will also change. Our free tracker will allow you to celebrate all the successes of your weight loss journey

https://pages.theslimmingclinic.com/book-a-call-back.html

Expert Article

MINDFUL MINDLESS vs Eating

How often do you find yourself reaching for a snack, or craving, as an emotional support or reward?

If you’re not sure about the answer to that question, think about the last five instances that you have eaten. How many of those times have been due to true hunger and the need to nourish yourself, and how many of them have been just ‘because’?

A natural reaction for so many of us when we feel sad, low, or even happy and celebratory, is the feeling of needing to eat or snack more to fulfil our emotions. We call this mindless eating – eating our emotions, instead of eating when we’re actually hungry.

Mindless eating on frequent occasions mean we have form poorer eating habits, and develop a weaker willpower to saying no to the foods we know we should eat in moderation - comfort foods 0 such as foods that are high in saturated fats and calories. How can we manage the frequent snacking or poor eating habits, mindless eating, if they have become ingrained in our everyday routine?

The simple answer is to practice

Andrea Rose, Mind Coach

But what is mindful eating?

Mindful eating is quite simply engaging the senses and giving our full attention to the food we are eating.

It is savouring the taste, texture and aroma of what we eat rather than having a distraction of the tv on, or our mind being elsewhere. In this respect, mindful eating allows us to develop a healthier relationship with the food we eat whilst also becoming more aware of the nutrition within it.

By focusing more on what we eat, we are then able to develop a deeper appreciation of what goes into our body and what then gives us a further sense of wellbeing and health and what doesn’t. When focusing purely on the pleasure of eating, it allows us to simplify our thoughts, taking us away from the often-negative associations we have had with food and the guilt that often accompanies it.

We’re slowing down the pace whilst really appreciating and enjoying the food we are eating. This is fundamentally the difference between mindful eating and mindless eating.

Why should we try mindful eating?

Like many associations with mindfulness, it allows us to once again live in the ‘here and now’ appreciating the moments as they are happening instead of otherwise being distracted in complicated or negative thoughts.

Mindful eating has shown to help with binge eating and weight loss, allowing us to gain control over our eating habits rather than being controlled by an impulse created by negative thought patterns or habitual behaviour, for example, eating when stressed, depressed or nervous.

Slowing down our eating process, enjoying and chewing our food thoroughly before swallowing also ensures we are giving our stomach enough time to tell our brain that we are full. It isn’t until your food gets into your stomach that it starts to release satiety hormones which feed back to the brain to tell us we’ve eaten enough.

How many times have you felt full as you finished eating, and then got fuller and fuller and fuller and felt sluggish and bloated for a long while after you’ve eaten? This is because it takes anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes for your stomach to send the messages to your brain to indicate you are full. By slowing down our eating, we are able to allow that process to happen and really know when we are fully satiated. >

> As humans, we rarely eat because our brain says we need to. Our brain only tells us to eat when we are starving. This is a natural survival instinct we have. Most of us actually only eat because we are creatures of habit, who form routines of as and when to eat. We eat because we come home at a particular time and that is our cue to have dinner. We eat by time association, or by social situation.

How many times have you sat down to watch something on telly and had a craving for something to eat? Maybe you are full from dinner, but your ‘sweet belly’ is awake and just needs to eat something. Or perhaps over-eaten in a social situation? Your friends and family are having starters and desserts, so you have them too.

This is a consequence of mindless eating and not formed of necessity. Next time you feel like you are craving something, or are reaching for snacks, stop and think – Do I really need to eat this right now? Asking yourself this gives you a sense of mindfulness and ensures you are eating through necessity and not just habits.

It is also important to mention that mindful eating in itself is not a diet or associated with any diet plan. Mindful eating simply allows us to be present in the moment to enjoy the food we eat in every sense without distraction. Losing weight is just often a byproduct of this process as we are no longer mindlessly eating or eating when we are already full and, therefore, gaining weight in the process.

Start mindful eating with, perhaps, just one meal in the day and increase this throughout the day as you get a greater understanding of mindful eating.

See if it can improve your weight loss, or thoughts of snacking throughout the day.

GAIN BACK CONTROL

DO YOU EVER FEEL OUT OF CONTROL OF WEIGHT LOSS JOURNEY?

Do you find that you let your mind spiral out of control and just cannot get back on track when you’ve had a few days off programme and find it easier to give up than carry on?

Gaining back control over our weight loss journey begins with that first step, and for many, this is the hardest.

We can become experts at the art of distraction and putting things off until tomorrow, especially if something appears to be hard work or near impossible to achieve. For many, it can often appear simpler to live with unhappiness than to make changes but making changes has a far better outcome. The best first step is to allocate just a few minutes of our time to look at our current lifestyle; visualise where we are heading with our weight loss and decide what needs to change to get back on track. Write down what you are looking to achieve and the steps it will take to get there. The secret is to break up anything that looks too challenging, too big of a task or too many things to deal with in one go. So literally taking one step at a time, no matter how small.

When you have the list in front of you, pick, perhaps, just one task to deal with and have a set day that you will tackle it. When you tackle that task, move on to the next.

Andrea Rose, Mind Coach

REMEMBER POSITIVE LIFESTYLE CHANGES TAKE TIME.

THERE ARE LOTS of ‘sayings’ around reaching goals. The saying about enjoying the journey and not just the destination perfectly illustrates that if we concentrate solely on the end goal, we aren’t appreciating all the obstacles that we are overcoming along the way.

By acknowledging the journey as well as the end goal it enables us to gain strength, character, self-worth and confidence, embracing the highs as well as the lows.

After all, our end goal is comparatively short lived when considering the time and effort it took to get there. The end goal maybe the product of our achievements but it was the journey we took that got us there and this is fundamentally far more important.

Focus on your own individual journey, experience the bumps along the way and feel empowered when you have managed to overcome these. End goals often require further maintenance, especially if this end goal is regarding weight loss. If you have enjoyed your time getting here and gained confidence, then you also have a much better chance of maintaining the achievements made along the way.

“I lost 6st 2bs”

Frances Maxiliofacial Nurse

BUT HOW CAN WE OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES ON OUR JOURNEY?

IF WE AREN’T progressing on our weight loss journey as quickly as we would have liked, then it’s a question of allocating some time to ourselves to figure out what exactly is halting or slowing that progression.

Pinpoint the cause, for example, this could be a lack of motivation, stress, slipping back into old patterns of behaviour, our weight loss journey becoming too hard if trying to fit around other commitments, lack of enjoyment or just simply being too hard on ourselves.

If we know what the cause is, then we can work on how to resolve it.

Ultimately, it is the empowerment of understanding and self-awareness that creates choice and how we can utilise this to make and maintain change.

HOW DO OUR WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAMMES HELP MINDSET?

BEING ABLE TO regularly speak to an expert in weight loss means you have more chance at success on your journey.

Because our medical practitioners are all highly trained, skilled experts in weight loss, they spend time getting to know you and your journey that led you to joining The Slimming Clinic.

Through regular remote appointments, together with the doctor, you can get to the root causes of your weight loss problems, and find out how to change your mindset, so that you are able to develop the skills to improve your health and weight for good.

Over the years, we have seen so many patients who have gained weight due to their emotions, stress or low mood or weak willpower. We know that no matter how much you change your diet or exercise regime, no weight loss programme can work to its full potential unless you can use your mind and willpower.

We work with you from beginning to end on your weight loss journey, offering support and advice to help ensure your mindset stays focussed. We start by helping you with the basics of healthy eating and movements, small, sustainable changes that mean you can begin a weight loss journey with ease.

We adapt our advice and your weight loss programme as you continue on your journey with us, to ensure you are able to reach your weight loss goals.

Once at your goals, our support and advice doesn’t stop there. We know that half the battle with weight loss is keeping it off once you’ve lost it!

As part of our Maintenance programme, we work with you to learn new skills that mean you can maintain your weight loss and that you will not regain any of the weight you have lost.

We have a variety of different weight loss and slimming programmes to start at home, all of which are selected based on your requirements.

All our weight loss programmes are built by our specialist team of medical practitioners to suit you

When you book an appointment with one of our Doctors, you are spending time with a real weight loss professional. Our Doctors have opted to specialise in the area of health and diet, so you will get expert help and a personalised programme.

Alternatively you can use our online prescription request service.

Our Weight Loss Programmes

FORM BETTER HABIT Tips!

Why is it so easy to form bad habits, but so hard to form good habits?

WELL TRUTH IS, bad habits are usually things we allow to happen because they are so easy to form and maintain. Things like, allowing ourselves to stop our movement and exercise regime – it is SO much easier to sit on the sofa and watch TV than get out of the house and have a walk or run, or put on a YouTube exercise video.

And when it comes to eating, it is much simpler to pop a pizza in the oven or order a takeaway than think about being in the kitchen cooking and then having to clean up afterwards. Our mindset allows us to pick up these negative habits as they just make life easier. Which is why it can be really hard to break the cycle of these negative habits and change them into good habits. But these habits don’t help us, in fact, they tend to hinder our health and well-being, and over the long term, can really be detrimental to not just our physical health, but our mental health too.

We know that by exercising, we will not only feel better physically, but will also feel better mentally too. The same can be said for eating habits, we know healthy, home-cooked food will make us feel better, but it just requires that little bit more effort.

So just how can we break the cycle of negative behaviours and form better habits? ? ? ?

One of the best ways to form better habits is to have some time away from any distractions and re-evaluate where we are right now and where we want to be at some realistic point in the future. We then ask ourselves the steps we would need to take to get there and challenge any bad habits we have developed along the way. This year has certainly been like no other and whilst lockdown has given many of us time to think and perhaps re-evaluate future goals, it has left others developing bad habits, poor time management and a lack

So, if we find ourselves in the latter of these two groups, now is the perfect opportunity to get back on track with some well-deserved self-care and attention leaving our bad habits behind.One of our biggest motivations in goal setting is to look at any wasted time due to procrastination or lack of direction.

What have we achieved in the last few months and what are some of the small changes we can make now to get ourselves moving again?

So, get a date in the diary to firstly write down what has been happening for us over the past few months and any bad habits we wish to leave behind and work towards developing healthier

Remember to keep it bite size so, for example, if we find ourselves drinking more alcohol than we would like, snacking more than usual, a lack in exercise or avoiding any form of socialising amongst friends and family, begin cutting down or building up whatever it is to rid ourselves of those bad habits and feel more positive again.

If we focus each day on choosing some healthier, maintainable habits, it allows us to kick start a better routine for the future

Willpower Find your

WHEN WE BEGIN A WEIGHT LOSS JOURNEY, WE SET OUT WITH THE BEST INTENTIONS. We do a food shop full of healthy items, we stick rigidly to the plan for a week, two weeks, maybe a month. Then something hits us, something knocks us off track.

Perhaps it’s a meal out, or a few drinks, or that comforting family-sized bar of chocolate and slowly but surely, the bad eating habits we have spent the last few weeks trying to work on go well and truly out the window.

So when you fall off track, how do you react? Do you put it down to one bad meal or day and get right back on track? Or, do you fall *really* off track and blow all your hand work out of the window? >

“I lost 3st 11bs”

Liam Administrator and Professional Gamer

> If you’re the second, we are pleased to say that there is a really easy way to tackle this and that you don’t have to throw away all the hard work and weight you have lost already. So where do we begin?

MAKE A FOOD LIST

Using your willpower means starting back at the very beginning, by trying to avoid buying the unhealthy snacks and foods in the first place. So, the first point of call comes on our visit or internet shop to the supermarket and whilst there to consider and give thought to our long-term goal.

When making your shopping list, note down which healthy foods you enjoy the most and stock up on those. If you notice there are a number of unhealthy foods on your list, try limiting those and reducing the temptation to have them in the

SET YOURSELF A GOAL

What has shown to really benefit us at this stage is if we have some form of screensaver on our mobile phones reminding us of This can either be in pictorial form or text of your choice that you feel would encourage you on your weight loss journey. It could also be in the form of some kind of reward, for example a picture of the hotel you would be treating yourself to when you reach

A quick glance at a reminder of what we are hoping to achieve or reward ourselves with (staying away from foods as a reward) can really help in

TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS

Taking progress photos is a really effective way of seeing how far you have come and reminding yourself where you don’t want to be. Physically seeing where you started and where you are now is a fantastic reminder of what you can achieve when you put your mind to it.

ALLOW YOURSELF TIME AWAY FROM YOUR HEALTHY EATING

For some, it is easier to avoid temptation all together, but for lots of us, we need that incentive to help us stay on track. In a lot of cases, your incentive might be a cheat meal or day, or night out. Something you have been building up towards and means you can really enjoy yourself.

Planning is key if you intend to incentivise yourself with cheat days. It is best to plan it for a time when you know you are more likely to crave higher-calorie foods, such as the weekend or special occasions. This way you can fit it around your healthy lifestyle, and it’s great to have something to look forward to, giving you that extra motivation to do well during the week.

FIND WHAT MOTIVATES YOU

Before you started your weight loss journey, you must have had a reason for why you wanted to begin. The first stages of your weight loss journey are when you’re most determined and your willpower is strongest.

However, as we get further into a weight loss journey, our willpower does wane and we find it harder to stick to it. The important thing when you feel your motivation lacking is to ask yourself ‘why am I doing this and what do I want to achieve?’ and write this answer down. Take it with you everywhere you go or, put it somewhere you will see it every day to remind you of why you’re on this journey. If you remind yourself of your motivation when you want to give up, you’ll be less likely to!

Ultimately, the simple answer to keeping your willpower boosted is to ensure that you use as much willpower as possible. The easiest way to view it is it to see your willpower as a physical muscle - The more you use it, the stronger it gets.

Ultimately, the success of your diet depends on you. Sticking to your goals and continuing to work towards them when times get hard is incredibly inspirational, but the best part is, you already have the ability to stick to them. You just need to flex your willpower muscle!

OFF THE SCALES Measuring Success

YOUR MOOD HAS IMPROVED

If you’ve started eating better and moving more, you’ll start to notice you’re feeling happier mentally.

This is no coincidence as movement and exercise release your feel-good hormones, endorphins. These are the hormones that give you that happy, warm, fuzzy feeling inside and boost your mental health and ability to deal with conditions like low mood and anxiety.

Non-Scale victories, or NSVs as you might have seen them called, are just as important on a weight loss journey as seeing your weight go down.

But why do so many of us focus vehemently on the number we see on that cold slab of plastic we have in the bathroom? Most weeks, we tentatively step on it, only to see the numbers aren’t telling us we’ve magically lost 5 stone in 7 days.

It can be incredibly frustrating when your weight loss slows, and the pounds don’t come off as easily as they once did.

So, when the number slows or stops despite best efforts, how do you react?

Do you pull your socks up and think ‘this is just a stumbling block, I’ve got to keep going’? Or do you think ‘I’ll never reach goal, I may as well give up’? When we focus too heavily on the scales, it masks us from being able to see other victories we might be having because of our healthy lifestyle and without knowing, you could be giving up on some amazing improvements in life, that you’ve not even realised you’ve made.

We’ve put together some of the best ways to measure that you’re doing great on your weight loss journey, even if the scales aren’t telling you that.

TASKS BECOME EASIER

It could be that you’re walking further, taking the stairs quicker or running around after your kids, but simple things that might have proved difficult previously suddenly seem easier! You could have bags more energy and feel less sluggish.

Losing weight also takes all kinds of strains off your body that you might have felt before. For every pound you carry, it adds 4 pounds of pressure to your knees, so those aches disappearing in your joints and that feeling of moving more freely can be a real

YOUR WILLPOWER HAS IMPROVED

In our article on page 16, we talk about ways to boost your willpower, but even if you’re struggling, you might well have improved your willpower without even noticing.

For instance, you may eat less as a result of emotional stress or reward. Where before you might have had a whole pack of biscuits because of a bad day, you’ll now only have a couple or better, reach for something healthier to comfort you.

YOU ARE SLEEPING BETTER

One of the lesser-known benefits of losing weight is that you are able to sleep longer and you get a better quality of sleep too.

Sleep is essential for us on a weight loss journey, as if you aren’t well rested, you make poorer food choices out of tiredness and convenience. However, when you begin losing weight and adopting a healthier lifestyle, this can lead to a better night’s kip!

YOUR CLOTHES FIT BETTER OR ARE TOO BIG

Well this one speaks for itself really, doesn’t it? Did you take your measurements at the beginning of your journey? How many inches have you lost from your body?

Clothes fitting better, buying smaller clothing and your measurements shrinking are all fantastic visual ways to see just how brilliantly you are doing on a weight loss journey.

YOU JUST FEEL BETTER

This one is one you need to really stop and think about. It could be your digestion has improved, your skin is healthier or you were able to fight off that cold quicker, but we’ll bet now you’ve improved your eating habits and are moving more, you will just FEEL better.

Something inside you just feels different to who you were before you started your weight loss journey, and it feels brilliant. Take time now. Stop for one minute and assess how you feel. We bet it is much better than before you started losing weight.

However you measure your weight loss success, be sure to see it as just that, success. Celebrated yourself and how far you’ve come. Don’t dwell on the scales, your hard work shows up in different ways that you might not have thought about.

Now, tell us, what’s your best non-scale victory?

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