Weight Management

AC-CENT-TCHU-ATE THE POSITIVE

(Johnny Mercer / Harold Arlen)

You've got to accentuate the positive

Eliminate the negative

Latch on to the affirmative

Don't mess with Mister In-Between

Have you all got the tune in your head now?! Hopefully! Here’s your prescription... I would like you to sing this to yourself, or annoy your family and friends and sing it aloud, at least once a day.

The last few weeks have been a dental nightmare for my 8 year old son. He has been getting tooth ache and abscesses from his wobbly teeth. 2 weeks ago, saw him being traumatised in the dentist chair when the Dentist yanked out a tooth, with very little warning. The Dentist then whispered to me that he would have to have the same done to the next tooth along. The night before the procedure I worried and fretted about how my son would react when I told him... and when I did... how I would get him to willingly co-operate and sit in that chair to go through the teeth pulling all again! I tossed and turning growling to myself about how the Dentist had really poor rapport with children, and if only he had better communication skills, Finn would not be so terrified. After about half an hour of mindless head ranting, it suddenly dawned on me, that I cannot change other people to suit the situation, and that I could not wave a magic wand to suddenly make the Dentist human! The only thing I could do was positively plan how I would manage the situation. So I hatched a plan:

• Talk Finn through the procedure. Explain exactly what was going to happen and what to expect.

• Take his favourite cuddly toy as a comfort and to grip on to.

• Take his DS to play in the waiting room to distract him.

• Tell him a story whilst he was having the procedure done to take his mind off it

• Offer a bribe for good behaviour! The new Diary of a Wimpy Kid book.

Well, I can’t say that it was pleasant, but Finn was fantastic and very brave.

So this got me thinking to losing weight. For years and years I ranted and raved about how unfair that it was that I was fat. My rants went something like this...

‘It’s just not fair.... So and so eats whatever they like, and they are really skinny, I only have to look at a bag of chips and my bum grows another 2 inches!’

‘I must have a slower metabolism than everyone else, why me?’

‘Why can’t I eat chocolate and not put on weight like her?’

On and on and on, chunnering away! This was all negative musings, and not surprisingly I did not lose any weight long term.

It was only when I stopped looking at how unfair the rest of the slim world was, and started to investigate what realistic positive steps I could take, that I started taking control of my weight. This is when I decided:

• To listen to my body and not the diet industry

• To eat when I was PHYSICALLY hungry and stop when I was PHYSICALLY full

• To mentally taste what sort of food would satisfy me at that precise moment in time

• To naturally increase my activity levels and incorporate it into my every day routine

Through taking control and stop beating myself up, the weight gradually came off and stayed off.

So if you too are trapped in the cycle of negativity and how unfair things seem... it’s time to step off and decide what positive steps you can take to weight loss.

Remember... accentuate the positive!