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Awareness, Acknowledgement and Accountability The journey to discover an individual's path to positive lifestyle behaviors is an exploration process. We all have different wants, needs and obstacles that keep us from change. To help people understand their unique obstacles, I focus on the following elements for change: Awareness, Acknowledgement and Accountability (AAA). Awareness Become aware of the environmental surroundings that are sabotaging your right to make better lifestyle decisions. Our society is full of deceptions, untruths and sales tactics that make us confused, uneducated and contributing to our failure to reach our goals. We are spoon-fed 1500-calorie salads, downing "healthy" drinks that are not much better than kool-aid and spending our hard earned dollars on supplements that can keep us from eating the foods that our bodies want and need. People need to get educated on becoming a better "consumer" of food so we can fight back and win. Be aware of what your body wants and needs. Today, our lifestyle "triggers" are being influenced by our mind. Good fad, bad food, can have, can't have and we all want what we can't have - even more. Our basic biological need for proper nutrition and physical movement is being ignored and substituted by a process, a reprimand, a theory or a diet. You can learn how to tap into your body's signals again to influence your decisions. If this can be accomplished, you can make better decisions, naturally, liberating yourself from your negative lifestyle behaviors. Acknowledgement If you can acknowledge your actions before taking them, you can make better decisions. Bad habits can sabotage our intentions: moments of mindless eating, eating too fast and stress or emotional eating. By simply being aware that these actions are taking place you can put forth an effort to stop or control them. Acknowledge the impact of your well being by the decisions that you make. Shifting your motives from a specific goal of weight loss or achieving a health status to the immediate ongoing reward of simply feeling better can greatly influence your ability to make better decisions. Accountability Be accountable for your actions. Most of us are very stressed with an overload of responsibilities and we become accountable to everyone but ourselves. As a result, many of us continue to fail at overcoming negative lifestyle behaviors, no matter how hard we try because we put blinders on and don't own up to our actions as a coping mechanism. Blinders come in the form of excuses, denial, justification and blame. Until the blinders come off and you are ready to admit your actions, you will not overcome them. Through Lifestyle Coaching I am able to help individuals in their journey to discover their obstacles to change and overcome them - to live a healthier, happier, more productive life - forever. |