The GI Walking Diet: Lose 10lbs and Look 10 Years Younger in 6 Weeks

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At their destination, the neurons deliver their message, the information gets processed and an action may or may not occur. The brain gets very good at doing the simplest thing – taking a message and sending it along the most accessible neural pathway, delivering its message and creating an action. Some of these actions get so familiar that they become an automatic response, which requires no conscious thinking. When this happens you have given birth to a habit.

Other bits of information never reach their specific destination, so the part of the brain responsible for carrying out a particular action becomes dormant. Your brain may receive the same information again and again, but each time the message carrier gets lost in the smaller back roads of the brain, never to reach its destination.

Now you can start to see why taking small steps can be so effective. If your brain is already doing a similar action, the transport system taking the information will be established. Making a tweak to that action is easier for your brain to process and develop than trying to do a totally new action that requires the neuron message carriers to travel along unfamiliar neural pathways to a destination that may be dormant.

In this way, grooving the new habits necessary to help you lose weight and improve your health need not be that difficult. The trick is to piggy-back your new habit on to something you are already doing. For example, one of the most popular forms of physical activity is walking. We know from research studies that walking can improve your health and help you lose weight and keep it off, but the way you are walking at the moment may not be sufficient for you to reap these benefits. So the one simple habit you need to evolve may not be miles away from what you are already doing. All you need to do is address your walking technique and pace. You’ll find really simple and effective ways to do this in Learn Your Walking Technique (#litres_trial_promo).

Not all of your existing habits will be beneficial to your health, and it is likely that some of your habits may need to be ditched. However, eating the odd bar of chocolate or indulging in a cream tea once a week is not a bad habit – it’s when these ‘weekly’ habits are more of a daily habit that action needs to be taken.

Since we all have individual habits that directly affect our health and wellbeing, we need to apply a good dose of truthfulness. In my experience with clients, it can be very helpful to put these actions into context, and introduce an element of reality into how many times you actually complete the behaviour.

Habit Reality Check

Here’s what you do:

Carry out an activity audit. Make a list of 10 ‘physical activity behaviours’ you do regularly, such as a keep fit class, walking the dog or walking to the shops.

For each of these behaviours, complete the following Habit Reality Check questionnaire. Rate your responses on a scale of 0–7, 0 being ‘agree strongly’ and 7 being ‘disagree strongly’.

(Behaviour X) is something:

I do frequently 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I do automatically 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I do without having to consciously remember 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

that makes me feel weird if I don’t do it 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I do without thinking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

would require effort not to do 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

that belongs to my (daily, weekly, monthly) routine 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I start doing before I realize I’m doing it 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I would find hard not to do 1 2 3 4 567

I have no need to think about doing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

that’s typically ‘me’ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I have been doing for a long time 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Please note: some of the above statements may need to be adapted according to the nature of the behaviour. However, the main purpose of this exercise is to draw your attention to some of your actions, which may be overlooked.

Case Study

Fifteen years ago I was running weight-management programmes in the US. One particular female client in her early 50s continually struggled with her weight. Each week, this client would swear to me that she’d had no sweets or treats at all and was following a healthy and moderate-calorie eating plan. Interestingly, however, on three separate occasions I saw her driving away from the building with one hand on the steering wheel and the other in a bumper packet of sweets. It’s not for me to say that this client was telling untruths, but sometimes you do need to give yourself a good reality check and get a grip of what’s happening. When I took this client through the Habit Reality Check, the fifth point was particularly pertinent.

Have I Left it Too Late? (#)

So you’ve picked up this book and now you’re thinking: this is all really depressing; what’s the point? I might as well not bother; I’ve left it far too late. Well, before you crawl into Victor Meldrew mode, let’s get one thing straight:

NO – it really is never too late to start!!

So don’t even go there as an excuse – your efforts can make a real and positive impact on the quality of your life. In fact, most studies indicate that untrained people, even in the eighth decade of life, have not lost the ability to adapt to aerobic exercise training such as the walking plan. It’s never too late to improve, and now the time has come for you to prove it to yourself. The same basic exercise programmes used for young adults can be applied in later life, but there will be a slightly different emphasis upon what you do and how you progress, depending on your age and ability.