newjerseynewsroom.com

BY ADRIAN BAILEY

Many people, with the New Year upon us, have already started thinking about their resolutions. Most of us try to bring in the turn of the calendar with ideas on how we can improve our lives — but without the essential habits needed to see our resolutions through to completion these resolutions are simply dreams that fade away soon after the New Year begins.

One of the most popular resolutions is a promise to lose weight, which is perhaps the most ubiquitous desire — with over 60% of the American population either overweight or obese.

People make grandiose plans about the next year involving a healthier diet and more exercise, but the sad fact is that this goal is like saying "I'm going to be a doctor this year." Unless you find a genie in a magic lamp, this is just a wish that will never happen.

Like becoming a doctor, dropping pounds is actually a lot of work — most people would rather be sitting around their houses watching television as compared to out running for miles on end. Ice cream tastes better than alfalfa sprouts. It's a fact of life.

One of the biggest wishes is for an easy way to lose weight. Clever marketers prey on the naive looking to bypass the work and magically lose weight. Hundreds if not thousands of these products hit the market every year. There are "fad" diets, workout gadgets, fat loss pills and tons of other "magic" secrets to lose all the weight we want with minimal effort.

If it sounds too good to be true, it almost always is. Everything in life costs something. In order to lose weight and keep it off the price that must be paid is a serious commitment to living the life of a healthy person inside and out. Weight loss is not simply a diet plan or an exercise routine, although it will almost certainly involve both of those. No, the key ingredient for weight loss is developing the habits that foster a balanced lifestyle conducive to health, wealth and happiness.

Finding a balance between this trinity of life essentials is vital to achieving any goal because each one helps to make the other two easier. So what is the key to finding this balance? Mental conditioning. No pill, book or gadget can provide this. The truth is that mental conditioning is an essential step to completing any life goal — but in the case of weight loss it gets so frequently overlooked due to the amount of emphasis placed on the physical. Losing weight is indeed a physical process, but it's the mental drive that keeps everything on track.

For instance, most people do not overeat because they like food, although that certainly helps. They tend to overeat as an escape from underlying issues that come from discontent in other areas of their lives. Address those issues and it becomes easier to stick with a healthy lifestyle. No matter how strong we may be physically, our minds are ultimately where success or failure begins.

The key is to combine the best of physicality with the mental "oomph" that most weight-loss programs lack. As an NGH Certified Hypnotherapist, I provide my clients with the tools that may be listened to during exercise to provide them with the mental conditioning and motivation to change. I've found that the "the zone" that athletes experience while working out is an opportune time to deliver the mental kick needed to create lasting change in the mind. This is the perfect way to achieve any goal — weight loss included.

Adrian Bailey is an NGH Certified Hypnotherapist and a NASM Personal Trainer. He is the creator of The Perfect Me Program. For more information visit his website at www.theperfectmeprogram.com.