Willpower is Doomed - but Who Need It?

For a website customer:

Carrying some extra pounds has become the national hobby, and it's getting worse.
It's not difficult to see why - sedentary lifestyles and cheaper convenience foods - but it's rather more difficult to solve it.

In a sense it's easy - eat less, eat better, exercise more - but of course, that's offensively simplistic, because finding the motivation to do those things for a sustained period - or permanently - can be very difficult - or even impossible.

If there's one thing I've learned most clearly in all my years of coaching, (and you'll see it a lot in my writing) it's that "trying harder" doesn't generally work long-term, so we need new tools in the box to tackle this. And one of those is the "structural change" - which I'll briefly share with you.

Rather than doing something you hate because it's good for you - like going to the gym - find something you love to do, which - as a side effect - happens to be great exercise. I like to dance salsa, for example, and work on my allotment. I go because I like to go - not because I need the exercise (which of course, I do).

These tactics are immune to the "sod this - I'm done" syndrome - you'll carry on from selfish glee - not from super-human willpower, which - it turns out - is in short supply.

So one challenge for you is to find ONE THING which you can do to exercise more. It needs to get your heart rate and breathing up for at least 20 minutes - ideally 3 times a week.
Think radically - think NEW - if Linda is going to get change, then Linda needs to - well - change - and that involves a shift of mindset which can feel un-settling or even plain wrong.

Coaching helps with that, but if you can manage it, adopting this simple strategy can bring about major positive changes in your life.

Remember, the difference between success and failure is often as tiny as the difference between knowing and doing (which, it turns out - is usually huge!), so...

Give this a go!