How to Fight Cravings and Win
Think back to high school biology and you'll probably have a memory buried somewhere of a Russian researcher named Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov, you may recall, repeatedly rang a dinner bell right before feeding his dogs a big, juicy steak. Eventually, the dogs would salivate at the sound of the bell.
Pavlov had trained his dogs to have a physiological response to a neutral stimulus - a bell - simply because the bell was associated with food.Think about that the next time you're at the movies and pass the popcorn stand.Our brains are wired in much the same way as the brains of Pavlov's dogs. We associate all sorts of things with food - from a holiday celebration to a fight with our spouse. Food nourishes us - but it also comforts us, soothes us and even medicates us when we're feeling anxious, lonely or tired. And it helps us celebrate when we're feeling happy. Put that together with the fact that obscene amounts of food are everywhere and you have a perfect recipe for eating disorders and mass obesity.But just as we were conditioned to associate food - and overeating - with all sorts of things, we can undo that conditioning. It's not easy - but it's also not as hard as you might think. And it generally takes no more than 21 days.Our overeating triggers are actually chains of events - like Christmas tree lights that go on in sequence. A stressful argument leads to feeling helpless which leads to a journey into the kitchen which leads to ten packs of ring-dings. Usually the chain of events is faster and shorter - think of feeling stress and immediately reaching for a cigarette. So here's the trick: short circuit the chain. Break the circuit and the remaining lights don't fire up. You can accomplish the same thing with your overeating triggers.First, isolate exactly what your five biggest triggers are. (Write them down.) Now comes the part where you put a "chink in the link". You're going to substitute a new activity for the destructive activity (much like an addict learns to go to the gym and get "high" from running). Try any one of these simple activities next time you hit one of your triggers:
Brush your teeth
Eat a pickle (eating something completely different from what you're craving tricks the brain and kills the craving - try eating a hot pepper when you're craving chocolate and you'll instantly see what I mean)
Reward yourself with a relaxing activity you normally wouldn't do - i.e. a warm bath or uninterrupted reading of glossy magazines!
Go for a walk (the endorphins released will often balance the chemistry of a craving brain)
Write down what you're feeling. Try "being" with that feeling for five minutes.Most cravings (and overeating triggers) only last 15 minutes. If you can outwait - or outwit - them, you can beat them. Tell yourself "I can have this food" (thus eliminating thoughts of deprivation) but "I have to wait just 15 minutes".
You'll be amazed (and happily surprised) at how differently you'll feel a quarter hour later. Are You Making 'Elephant Mistakes' When Setting Your Goals?
Ever wondered what's holding you back from getting what you want from life? Let Dax Moy's encounter with an elephant shed light on the subject...
By Dax Moy
Over the last 4 years my family and I have done a huge amount of travel throughout South East Asia where we’ve been priviledged enough to enjoy some of the world’s most beautiful and inspiring surroundings whilst sharing real quality time together as a family.
These times are always amongst my favourite times of the year, reminding me of what I work so hard for the rest of the time… to learn, explore and discover with my family.
On a recent trip, I took my family to the Chiang Mai region in Northern Thailand, where mountains, jungle and amazing rivers combine to create a fantastic backdrop of colours, sights and sounds.
A true feast for the senses!
While we were there, we took an elephant jungle trek tour that allowed us an ‘elephants’ eye view of the jungle as we waded rivers, climbed hills and descended into deep valleys and gullies.
It was an amazing experience to see my children first fearful, then a little more relaxed and then outright excited and thrilled to be privileged enough to share this experience with the largest land mammal on the planet.
During one of our short stops to feed and reward the elephants with a handful of bananas and sugar cane, I noticed that the Mahout(elephant handler) simply popped a small rope on a stick into the ground and tied the elephant to it and walked off, leaving us on the elephant alone.
As I looked at the stick I wondered what foolishness must be going through this little man’s mind.
I mean, here we were, sitting on this huge mountain of muscle and raw power and the little fellow had hitched the thing to a really thin piece of rope that was tied to a stick no thicker than my thumb!
I fully expected the elephant to (in elephant-speak) laugh at this puny little thing, pull it out of the ground and walk off with my son Connor and I into the jungle never to be seen again.
But that didn’t happen.
The elephant didn’t walk off.
It didn’t even TRY to pull the stick from the ground.
It stayed exactly where it was waiting to be ‘released’ from its bondage.
When I got back to the camp, I asked the mahout about this and he explained a concept that had totally blown me away at the time, and still does to this day.
He told me “We train the elephants when they are very young by using thicker ropes and heavy beams or tree trunks. When the young elephant pulls, it is pulling against an immovable object and so soon tires and gives up.
Eventually, over a short time (and several smaller trees and sticks), the elephant stops pulling altogether, believing that the attempt is futile and will always end in failure.
It merely gives up.”
As a performance coach I couldn’t help thinking of many clients I’d worked with who were doing exactly the same thing in their lives.
People who were trained when young about what was possible and what was not when they were too weak to pull against these ideas and release themselves to being successful.
Now they’re all grown up, they’re like the elephant, unwilling to try because they’re so sure it’ll end in failure that they don’t even bother.
It made me think about about all the times I’d quit in the past and all of the people who write in to tell me of their own decision to do the same.
Everyone’s got goals, dreams and aspirations that they’ve have left by the wayside because some well-meaning friend or loved one told them ‘would only end in heartache and failure, so why bother?’ right?
Dreams that someone said were ‘silly’ or ‘childish’ or ‘unrealistic’.
But what if they’re not any of these things?
What if, just like this big, beautiful yet dumb creature we’ve have been conditioned to believe something that is totally and utterly untrue?
What if, just like the elephant, we could literally rip up the chains that are holding us down and walk off into our own jungle of success and happiness...if only we had the courage to pull, and keep on pulling in order to bring about the things we want?
We can you know!
Many, many people who once led lives of total and utter desperation now live lives that most of us would consider pure fantasy with houses, planes, boats, cars, money and above all, happiness that would never have been theirs if they hadn’t ‘pulled against the rope’ that was telling them they couldn’t possibly win.
You CAN, but will you?
Will you write that book that the small voice inside of you tells you that no-one will ever read?
Will you take that trip to those places you always dreamed of but that your wallet tells you that you can’t afford?
Will you finally lose that weight or shift that body fat that your ‘slow metabolism’ insists won’t go?
Will you buy that house, start that business, learn that language.....?
I could go on all day, but in the end, when all’s said and done, it’s you and ONLY you who can pull the stick from the ground and break free.
No-one is going to do it for you.
No-one CAN do it for you.
You, and only you have the power to do this.
Start TODAY!
(Please don’t send me any hate mail. I am not an elephant hater. On the contrary, I love and respect them. ‘Dumb’ only refers to their inability to recognise and use the awesome power that they have, yet aren’t using. : )
Dax Moy is a master personal trainer and lifstyle coach with studios in and around London. Voted one of the UK's leading health and fitness experts, Dax is a regular guest expert on television, radio and in print media where he advises on all manner of performance related issues. You can read more of Dax's unique perspective on goal achievement and personal success by visiting http://www.themagichundred.com or http://www.daxmoy-pts.co.uk
| The Four Lies you tell yourself each New Years Eve Have you ever noticed how many good, honest, hardworking people turn into liars at New Year?
It's an amazing thing to watch as people from all walks of life, all ages and both sexes, go through the whole New Year’s resolution ‘thing’ and tell themselves lies about what the next 12 months will bring them.
You know what I mean. You've probably done it yourself right?
11.59pm on New Year’s Eve you turn to a loved one and say “This year is going to be different. I’m really going to achieve some great things!” and for that one minute, that one moment in time, you mean it. You REALLY mean it!
You are fired up, raring to go and ready, willing and (despite the glass of champagne in your hand) able to commit to that new diet, getting that payrise or new job, starting that company, writing that book and a whole host of other great sounding things.
Then the bells ring in the New Year and a funny thing happens.
January 1st rolls around and, whilst the goals are still in your head, they don’t seem as important anymore. (maybe it’s the champagne?)
January 2nd comes and by lunchtime you’re telling yourself that some of your goals are ‘just silly fantasies’ and you scratch them off your list.
January 3rd arrives and, despite a much shorter list than you had just 2 days before, you start to tell yourself that “I’ve got all year to do this. I don’t have to start right now. Let me just ‘settle in’ to the year first and ‘get myself sorted’ and THEN I’ll work on my goals”
Like I said, all lies!
In fact, there are FOUR of them…
Lie number one: ‘This year is going to be different’
The truth of the matter is, for most people, sad though it is, 2007 is going to be EXACTLY the same as 2006 was.
Why?
Because their strategy is EXACTLY the same as it was last year and, as the saying goes, if you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.
Lie number two: ‘The goals don’t seem as important anymore’
Yes they are! They’re just as important as they were 24 hours ago it’s just that somewhere deep down you’ve started to persuade yourself that your goals are somehow unachievable and, if the truth be known, you’re scared about failing so instead you lie about their importance.
Lie number three: ‘They’re just silly fantasies’
This is a continuation of lie number two but much more harmful. With this lie you’ve started to rationalise and justify why your goals are impossible and use all kinds of excuses disguised as ‘reasons’ as to why your goals are unrealistic… the biggest lie of all!
Lie number four: ‘I’ll settle in and get sorted’
What a great lie!
This is an ‘I’m not giving up, I just need to get back into the flow at work or school before I attack these goals’ kind of lie that you use to delay things until the time is right.
But wait a minute…
Wasn’t work, school or your other favourite excuse the reason why you couldn’t achieve your goals before New Year?
No, lie number four is simply a delay tactic, that ‘one day’ lie that we all tell ourselves in order to get out of taking action when we know we could, when we know we should. You know, ‘one day when I have more time…’ or ‘one day when I have more money…’ (or whatever else you use to delay your goals).
Regardless of your ‘one day’ excuse, the results are the same… zero!
Now, if you’ve read this far you’re probably recognising many of these lies as ones you’ve told yourself in the past, and maybe even ones you’re still telling yourself now. But, like many people, you have no real idea about how to break free from the habit of creating ‘wish-lists’ and then lying about why they didn’t come true.
In short, you’re not really that sure about how to make 2007 any better than 2006 was.
Well, if that’s the case then you definitely need to keep reading because I’m about to lay out a strategy so simple, yet so highly effective that, if applied as I describe (the important bit) simply cannot fail.
Interested?
I bet you are!
Well, here’s the thing. It requires 6 steps.
Just 6.
Follow them all and seriously great things will happen for you, miss one and it’s game over on your goals. I can’t put it any clearer than that.
Ok, here is success in 6 simple, straightforward, easy-to-understand steps:
1. Know what you want
2. Know why you want it
3. Know when you want it by
4. Write it down
5. Know the price
6. Pay it
If your first reaction to that list is one of ‘is that all?’ then you’re underestimating the power of simplicity for achieving great things.
You see, that those steps, whilst simple, really do form the most powerful goal achievement strategy on the planet. You’ll be hard pushed to find a single successful person on that planet who isn’t committed to using these six steps on a daily basis.
1. Know what you want –
Sounds obvious really, but ask almost anyone what they want to achieve from their diet, their exercise plan, their career and even their life, and you get vague generalities at best.
Let’s be clear on this;
Things like “lose weight” or “get fit” or “earn more” are not goals.
They’re not!
They’re simply wishes that are so vague and meaningless that you can pretty much guarantee that they’ll fail.
A real goal, on the other hand, is very clear indeed. It tells you exactly what you’re setting your sights upon meaning that you always have a reference point as to how near or how far you are from completing it.
For example ‘lose weight’ becomes ‘lose 30lbs’ or ‘weigh exactly 120lbs’. ‘Get fit’ becomes ‘run the marathon’ or ‘do 50 pushups’ and ‘earn more’ becomes ‘earn $100,000 a year after tax’
See the difference?
One is open ended and allows for excuses and get out clauses whilst the other hangs the target in plain view allowing you to measure your current level of success and adjust your course as appropriate
So, just what is it that YOU want?
2. Know WHY you want it –
It never ceases to amaze me that people will happily set goals that they don’t really care that much about.
They say ‘I’m going to do this’ or ‘I’m going to do that’ yet when you ask them why they can’t explain it.
This is the surest sign that a goal is doomed to failure and is a definite warning sign you should look out for when setting your own goals.
You see a goal, any goal, is nothing without desire to fuel it into action and, in turn, desire cannot exist without a strong WHY behind it.
But not just any old WHY.
It takes the ‘true’ why to put any real power into your goals.
Let me give you an example;
I coached a lady earlier this year who, for many years had struggled with her weight. She set goals all the time, sometimes reached them but nearly every time found that she quickly regressed back to her old weight and very often added a bit extra into the bargain.
When I asked her why she wanted to lose weight she looked at me incredulous, like I was really dumb. “Can’t you see how overweight I am? Isn’t it obvious?”
“So are many people” I replied, “but that doesn’t explain why YOU want to lose weight.”
“Because I want to fit into nicer clothes” she responded “I want to wear pretty things”
“Why?”
“Because prettier clothes will make me look prettier” she said with her discomfort now becoming obvious.
“Why is that important?” I went on.
“Because…” (she started to cry now) “…I feel ugly the way I am now….” She went on “… and I want to feel pretty so that I can meet someone and I won’t be alone anymore… I want someone to love me…” and the tears flowed.
Now, you might be sitting there thinking ‘poor girl’ and wondering why she had to be put through such an ordeal just to help her set a goal. It might even sound cruel in some way.
Well, let me finish the story and let you decide for yourself.
From the moment the coaching session ended, this lady began an amazing metamorphosis.
She lost over 50lbs (and is still losing more), looks happier, feels happier and now has a relationship with someone who loves her like crazy.
I asked her not long ago “What was the turning point? What changed everything for you?” and her answer was simple “I stopped lying to myself. I told the truth about why I wanted to lose weight, and as soon as I did I realised that not only should I lose weight, but that I MUST if I was ever going to be happy”
That’s what WHY does for goals.
It takes all of the shoulds in your life and transforms them into things that MUST happen, and that’s when the magic begins.
You see, the things you could do and the things you should do aren’t anywhere near as powerful as the things that have the power of MUST behind them.
Once you take your could’s and should’s to the level of MUST, you no longer look for reasons, justifications and excuses or other ‘get out clauses’ and instead you focus making things happen.
Turn YOUR should’s into MUST’s by defining WHY you want your goals
3. Know WHEN you want it by –
A goal without a completion date is like a book without words in it.
It’s meaningless.
Until you define the timescale that you’re allowing yourself to complete any given goal you’re simply reverting back to the ‘one day’ lie and the ‘wouldn’t it be nice if..’ wishes that most people make.
In effect, you’re giving yourself an excuse not to take action and, as you’re well aware, without action nothing changes.
That’s why, whenever you know what you want and why you want it you MUST set a date for getting it. This adds a sense of urgency to your goal and reinforces the feeling that ‘every second counts’ which, in reality, it does.
You also get to measure whether or not your goals are on schedule or falling behind and, if necessary, exactly what actions it’ll take to bring you back on track.
So, WHEN do you want your goals to come to life for you?
4. Write your goals down –
There is a definite sequence to taking a goal from concept to reality and it can best be summed up in three words.
Thought – Word -Action
Up to now we’ve been dealing with thought and deciding what you want, why you want it and when you want it by. This is all mental work and, whilst vital to the achievement of your goals, is by itself, not enough to bring your goals to reality.
You could say that, up to this point, you have a more clearly defined wish or dream but that, nevertheless, it’s still a dream.
To take it from a dream it needs to become real in some small way, either by verbalising it into words or, better still, writing it down.
It’s been shown that the act of simply writing your goals down increases the likelihood of their achievement by anything from 500% to 5000% and that reading those words aloud on a daily basis, even several times a day, increases the effectiveness even further.
Certainly every successful person I’ve ever met or interviewed has told me that they not only have a written list of goals, but that they read it numerous times a day and many carry their list with them at all times.
Why does it work?
Well, it’s simple really. You’re reminding yourself that your goal is important to you. More than that, you’re laying down thought patterns that turn into habits, habits which turn into actions and actions which, when carried out regularly, lead ultimately to your goals.
5. Know the price –
Many people start out setting goals correctly, they know what they want, why they want it, when they want it by and they even write their goals on paper and yet, despite doing everything right up to this point, they find that they never make any real headway toward achieving them.
I believe this is because they often don’t think about the cost of achieving their goals beforehand and so, when the time comes to pay, they’re shocked, stunned and unwilling to do so.
The truth is, every single goal has a price that must be paid.
It might be financial, it might be time, it might be a change of lifestyle, it might be a relationship cost or any number of things, but rest assured, there WILL be a price.
Certainly, at the start of my own career (and even now to a lesser extent) my determination to have my own business, to become a journalist, TV presenter and author meant that I would have to pay the price of longer hours at work, less time with my family and a high degree of financial risk.
That was the price.
I didn’t have to pay it but then, if I didn’t I wouldn’t reach my goal. My choice.
What is the price of YOUR goal?
Figure it out now, upfront so that you can decide before you start whether or not the cost is too steep and if it is, set another goal that you can live with and still be happy.
6. Pay The Price –
Hand in had with step five goes the obvious step of paying the price.
It gets its own category because, unlike knowing the price, paying it is an ongoing investment that you must consciously make every day until the goal is yours.
What we’re talking about is the consistent day by day, step by step ACTION that many people are simply not willing to take.
Sure, they come out of the gate well, they’re motivated to get their goal but, well, like just kinda gets in the way. One day they don’t take any action toward their goals, then two, then three and, before you know it, the goal has fallen by the wayside.
What happened?
They stopped paying the price.
Here’s the thing most people don’t get;
If you’ve been paying the price, and paying the price and paying the price for days, weeks, months and even years, then one day you wake up and stop paying the price the every single payment you made was a waste.
A waste of your time.
A waste of your money.
A waste of your effort.
A waste of your life!
You see, the only way to possibly get your investment back is to achieve the goal. Anything less than that is throwing away a chunk of your life.
This might sound a bit over the top but nevertheless it’s true.
Once you start paying the price, stay with the goal until it’s achieved.
Thankyou for taking the time to read about the four lies we tell at New Year and the Six things that you can do to make 2007 your best year ever.
I have, within this short article, done my best to convey the exact steps that are required in order for you to achieve bigger and better things than you did in 2006 but, as in all things, what actually happens for you in 2007 is totally up to you.
You could brush this off as an interesting little read or as something that ‘you’ll get around to’ but, as I’ve laid out for you here, to do so would simply be to continue lying to yourself and, in the long run, bring about the failure of your goals.
The other alternative is to actually follow the 6 steps laid out for you.
Not kinda, not sorta, not almost but follow them exactly and see what happens for you.
Now, I can’t guarantee specifically what that’ll be but I do know that it’ll be something great and that, whatever your goals are they’ll be that much closer to coming true for you.
The choice is yours as to which route you take, but I do know this; one of those choices leads to certain failure and the other, certain success.
You now know which is which… It’s time for you to choose!
Dax Moy is a performance enhancement specialist, personal trainer and life coach with his own studios in London and Hertfordshire.
Voted one of the UK's top fitness experts, Dax's holistic approach to health, fitness and success is highly sought after by television, magazines and other print media.
Dax's newest goals program The MAGIC Hundred can be found at http://www.themagichundred.com
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