Victor Frankl, the well-known neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor taught us that meaning comes from something in our lives that is as yet undone. During his time spent in a concentration camp he realised that having a purpose is the very essence of what keeps us alive, and that when one loses purpose and hope, one’s prospects diminish.

When someone voices an idea that runs strongly contrary to current popular opinion, it is typically ridiculed and/or ignored. If however there is enough groundswell of support for the new idea, or if it is being championed by someone with enough credibility, then the new perspective has the ability to disrupt both our thinking and our outward lives. What initially results is a strong polarisation of opinion, both in the public and amongst the experts themselves.

This is a little two audio minute clip I recorded for the Sports Science Institute of South Africa. It looks at how to distinguish between what is, and what is not worth worrying about. Perhaps not directly relevant to the normal subject matter of this blog, but certainly indirectly so - as your health and well-being perhaps ARE worth worrying about... ;)  https://soundcloud.com/ssisa/why-worry-by-clinton-gahwiler    

I remember a consultation many years ago, when as a keen but inexperienced young psychologist I was working with a gentleman in his 60’s who had had a heart attack. Prior to the consultation I had noticed that my whiteboard pen had run dry, and (without asking) decided to borrow one from the office next door.  

I have a client who is plagued by indecision. He is desperate to lose weight, but keeps changing his mind about which eating plan to follow. While being very vocal in criticising the various plans, the reality is that due to his never fully committing to any of the options for a reasonable amount of time, he has never actually been in a position to properly evaluate their effects on him.  

I did a quick internet search to try and find out how long we have been weighing ourselves. The answer proved elusive, but I did get inundated with references to both why we should and why we should not weigh ourselves daily. What IS it about weight and kilograms that has gotten our society so obsessed..?!  

The previous entry describes the ‘loss vs guilt’ bind that people might find themselves in when faced with tempting snacks. Psychologically, this scenario presents a much more complex conundrum than we might give it credit for. If however one is determined to act in accordance with one’s longer term values (and to break the habit of giving in to one’s immediate urges), then a good start is to develop a pre-emptive plan for coping in high-risk situations.    There are no rules to how such a plan should look, but it would do well to include the following three components:  

I have a client who struggles in social environments that have lots of freely available snacks. Her pattern is to approach the situation with wonderful intentions of staying ‘good’, then to make one mistake, after which she typically gives in totally. She is very aware of this pattern, but describes it with a sense of absolute hopelessness, believing there is nothing she can do about it.  

A year ago I wrote a list of review questions for the year gone by. At the end of the article I suggested that people write themselves a letter, to be opened one year later. I have in the past used this idea with a few clients, all of whom have found it helpful both in reviewing the year gone by, and in holding themselves accountable in the year ahead.   My challenge to you this year is the same, only this time round it comes with an invitation - if you don’t feel like putting you letter into an envelope and looking after it for a year, you are welcome to e-mail  it to me, and I will send it back to you in 12 months time.   

The terms self image and self esteem are often used inter-changeably. But there is a difference. To understand this difference, consider the literal meanings of the words – an ‘image’ is a picture, and ‘esteem’ has to do with how much we value something. Your self-image then is the picture which you hold of yourself, and your self-esteem – the value which you attach to that picture.

Having written about the less obvious scenario of healthy eating being taken to the extreme, it makes sense now to also mention the more commonly discussed notion of exercise addiction. We refer here to people who compulsively exercise to a degree that negatively impacts on their relationships and other life areas, while ignoring signs of fatigue, hunger or even injury. 

The question of what constitutes a healthy diet, takes up a huge amount of space in both scientific journals and the popular press. And perhaps it should. But what happens when analysis and self-judgement around eating behaviours takes up a disproportionate amount of our headspace? When planning and food preparation starts negatively impacting on our relationships and other important life areas?

The past week has seen a lot of media coverage for a study coming out of Sweden that has linked noise pollution (from traffic, aeroplanes etc) to increased waist size. This is interesting, but needs to be kept in perspective – eating patterns and physical activity levels naturally have a much bigger role to play in determining weight than traffic noise specifically. But when it comes to stress in general, I’m not so sure.

In the previous blog entry I spoke of will-power as the ability to make and then to follow through on implementing a decision. It was also suggested that we inherently all have this ability, but sometimes lose it (through lack of practice) in certain life areas. Here now are the key steps towards regaining trust in your ability to follow through on your own decisions:

Last year there was a series of adverts on South African television featuring young children struggling to resist a marshmallow that had been placed in front of them. They were based on some well-known experiments originally carried out in the 1970’s by psychologist Walter Mischel of Stanford University.

Being stuck, repeating the same old pattern is a scene we know all too well.  But this stuckness - is it sabotage, or could it be about self-protection? In all likelihood, it’s a little bit of both.

The phrase “the freedom of a disciplined life” was coined by a member of the Lifestyle Support Group, after she had experienced somewhat of a ‘light-bulb moment’ in one of the meetings. For many years this person had rebelled against the structure associated with exercise programmes, claiming that it just wasn’t in her nature to be disciplined or overly ‘routinized’. 

Just a few questions to help you review the year gone by:

When I meet a new client, I usually start by asking what it is that they are hoping to achieve through working with me. One of the most common answers is; “to be more motivated”.  But what does this really mean? 

The second of the three core skills needed to tackle comfort eating, is learning to manage one’s emotions appropriately. Firstly then, we need to consider what ‘appropriate’ means in this context. Very simply, we will take an emotion to be appropriate when it is reasonable both in type and in intensity, given a particular set of circumstances. 

In the previous blog entry I spoke of three skills which if developed, can help curb emotional eating. The first of these was regaining a sense of real physiological hunger – ie becoming more aware of when one’s stomach is empty (or close to empty). 

Comfort eating is one of the most common challenges faced by people on weightloss programmes. Last week, one of my clients and I identified 3 core skills which she needed to develop in order to stop this destructive habit:

When one or both parties in a relationship lose a significant amount of weight, it can change the dynamics of the relationship – for better or for worse.

Professor Tim Noakes has made a career and habit of proving people wrong. Not too long ago the world’s top scientists ‘knew’ that it was the cells in our muscles which determine the point at which we get fatigued in running races. It was Professor Noakes and his team that first postulated a model showing that it is in fact the brain and not the muscles which determine this. In other words, the point at which you feel exhausted has a lot to do with your perception of how far you still have to go. Amongst other things, this principle sheds some light on why when you’re desperate to get to the toilet, the closer you get the more desperately desperate you become! It’s also an important factor in explaining how we manage to create huge energy in working towards a deadline, only to suddenly collapse once we’ve made it.

People that I work with in a weightloss setting sometimes comment that I am lucky to be thin. It happened again last week in one of the Lifestyle Support Groups that I facilitate. It’s interesting to reflect on the assumptions underlying such a comment, as well as on the implications for the person making them.

In any sphere of life, when you ask people what their goals are, they will typically present you with a list of what we call outcome goals. These are goals that are determined by a combination of factors that are both under their control, and some factors that are not. Examples of outcome goals include passing an exam, finding the perfect relationship, or getting someone’s approval. Weightloss is another example.

Shops these days deliberately target your weak points in an attempt to get you to part with more of your money. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the ‘suicide isle’ – that snaking ordeal through the imposing walls of sweets and chocolates that lead to the check out tills. 

A summary of tips from a recent SSISA healthy weight discussion forum on how to how to maintain your healthy lifestyle through the holidays.

Once at goal weight, the game changes. Or at least, it should change - from a losing approach, to one of maintenance. If one does not manage this shift, then there is a greater likelihood that things will start going backwards again.

To weigh or not to weigh? That is the question which many on a weight-loss mission find themselves grappling with. On the one hand they are told to "throw away the scale", but on the other they live in a society that is obsessed with kilograms as the be-all-and-end-all measure of progress.

Since 1995, Clinton Gahwiler has run the psychology practice of the Sports Science Institute of South Africa (SSISA) in Newlands, Cape Town, South Africa. His main interests lie in the related fields of sport and health psychology. Clinton’s passion is helping clients to develop, implement and maintain strategies which optimize performance and well-being on a sustainable basis.

Adherence is the holy grail of lifestyle change - how to actually maintain the new exercise routine or eating plan over the longer-term? Many of the answers in fact lie right at the beginning of the journey. To be able to maintain the change, you need to be properly ready to implement that change in the first place. But what is it to be ready? And how ready do you need to be to not only make the change, but to also make it stick? 

Adherence is the holy grail of lifestyle change - how to actually maintain the new exercise routine or eating plan over the longer-term?