goal setting Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Weight Loss Journey: Personal Accountability and Responsibility

AHA Publisher — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 09:37:18 +0000

LifeBridge Health via Newswise – Weight loss may feel intimidating at times, but it can also be an empowering assertion of self-worth and control – your future is in your own hands and no one else’s. It’s a deeply personal journey towards a healthier self. No two people are the same, and the most important contributor is you. This is why a strong sense of personal accountability and responsibility is crucial to achieving your goals. Of course, it’s vital to assemble a team: seek the support of friends and family, and work with your doctor to determine the best path for your health, but only you can make it happen. Your healthy future will be built on a foundation of accountability. While this may feel overwhelming, there are several simple steps you can take to prepare for long-term success. Set Goals When you set achievable goals, your weight loss journey is divided into a series of milestones and opportunities for success. By achieving a string of smaller goals, you can build up the momentum and confidence to propel yourself into your healthy future. And if you happen to stray from the path, your goals can serve as a road map to get you back on track. Talk with your doctor to determine what the best goals are for you based on your unique circumstances. Keep an Online Journal Keeping a journal of your eating habits is a way to deepen your understanding of and connection to yourself. Healthy weight loss requires a sense of honesty about your own habits, tendencies and tastes. Your journal will help you keep track of what works, what doesn’t and how these dietary choices make you feel, all of which are crucial factors in the formation of not only healthier inclinations, but a healthier lifestyle overall. Don’t forget to include protein checklists to make sure you’re getting the most out of your food choices. By comparing your journal to the guidelines and resources provided by your doctor or nutritionist, you’ll be empowered to keep yourself on track and to take control of your own habits. After all, this is your weight loss journey and no one else’s. Get Support Your weight loss journey is your own, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need support. On the contrary, ensuring that you have ample support is a way of setting yourself up for success, and is therefore a critical aspect of your personal accountability. Our community of physicians, dietitians, psychologists, exercise specialists, and fellow bariatric patients is available to uplift, inform, and inspire you as you navigate the challenges of weight loss. And, by participating in the community, you can pay it forward by offering your insights and experiences to those faced with similar challenges. Learn more about LifeBridge Health’s bariatric support groups. Weigh Your Choices Weighing your food for portion control is best, but if you don’t have a scale, try comparing your portions to your own hands or everyday objects to make sure your serving sizes are correct. For example, a 3-ounce serving of meat should have the approximate dimensions of a deck of playing cards. Find additional examples below for a quick and easy way to help keep your portions correct. • 3 ounces of fish should be about the size of a checkbook • 1 serving of cooked grains should be about the size of a lightbulb or closed fist •1 ounce of cheese should be about the size of three dice, a domino or your thumb Check Your Progress Weighing yourself on a consistent basis is an important personal responsibility in achieving your goals. Remember, weighing yourself isn’t about anyone else, so don’t feel pressure to compare the number on your scale to that of others. Weighing yourself can help you: • Track your progress • Establish recorded history of your weight loss •Learn more about how you can most effectively achieve your weight loss goals. Try weighing yourself once a week, always at the same time of day, and preferably before breakfast. Record these weigh-ins in a spreadsheet or journal so that you and your doctor can review to learn more about your weight loss patterns. Stay on Target Whether you’ve had weight loss surgery, are a weight loss surgery candidate, or are simply seeking treatment to improve your dietary health, follow-up appointments are essential to achieving your goals. These appointments are an opportunity to assess your progress and adjust your plan if necessary, helping to keep you on track and well-equipped for a successful weight loss journey. To read the original article click here.

The post Weight Loss Journey: Personal Accountability and Responsibility appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

A Neuroscientific Approach to Setting Sustainable & Attainable New Year Resolutions

AHA Publisher — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 08:00:45 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #345) and blog, I talk about New Year’s resolutions, including what they are, how to think about and make New Year’s resolutions, and how to use resolutions to bring about sustainable change in your life. First, let’s be honest with ourselves: many of us don’t stick to our New Year’s resolutions. And we are not alone! Several studies show that around 80% of people abandon their resolutions very early in the new year. So, why do we keep on making resolutions? What drives us to make changes in the new year? Is this a bad thing? Not at all! We should be excited to start the new year with new goals and resolutions. A New Year’s resolution means setting a goal for ourselves, which we should all do on a regular basis, and not just in the new year. From a neuroscientific perspective, it is good to set goals. When we set goals, we are using our executive functions, — thinking, feeling and choosing — in a more coordinated way, which generates coherence and healthy changes in the brain. For instance, the amygdala is arranged to respond like a library, which means that when we set a goal, it evaluates how important that goal is for us based on past goals we have set and achieved (or not achieved). Our frontal lobe responds when we think, feel and choose, which helps us problem solve, introspect and figure out the details of how we will accomplish our goal or resolution. Both of these parts of the brain function coherently together when we are focused on a specific goal. As we start focusing on this goal, these areas in the brain get higher beta and gamma energy across the left and right side in a more coherent way, which helps support healthy cognitive function. In fact, when the frontal lobe works with the amygdala to achieve our goals, we will start to perceive obstacles that might hinder the goal as less significant! But resolutions can be hard to keep, even with all these great things happening in the brain—we all know this. I think a great way to see a New Year’s resolution is to imagine it is a cake. There are certain ingredients that make this “cake” bake well: 1. Be kind to yourself and grateful for what you did achieve this past year, or even over the past two years! Celebrate your achievements, no matter how small or big they are. One great way to do this is writing down all the things that happened in the last year that brought you joy. Note what has changed in your life for the better—what happened over the past year that got you here? Celebrate these achievements! And, when you do this, try to focus on the positive and reframe the negative. You may feel a sense of peace when you write this list. Embrace this feeling! Take that list and try to surround yourself with the people who made you happy, the things that brought you joy and the places that made you feel at peace. Next, write down all the things you are looking forward to in 2022. Is there a vacation you are looking forward to taking? Are you visiting a friend/family member you haven’t seen in a while? Is there a new movie or TV show you want to watch, or a book you want to read? Are you starting a new job, or plan to start a new job? Do you want to achieve something specific? Why? How will this improve your life? As you write these lists, you will feel more encouraged and develop your sense of hope for the future. 2. Remember that the biggest thing about goals is the TIME it takes, whether it’s a new lifestyle habit or changing something that is stealing your peace. Changes in thinking and behavior occur in 63-day cycles, which is how long it takes to build a new thought network that influences how we think, feel and choose. (I discuss this in detail in my latest book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, my app Neurocycle and my blogs and podcasts.) Essentially, for a thought network ormemory to be usable (which is how a goal starts in the mind), it needs lots of energy. It gets lots of packets of energy when you repeatedly think about and practice it daily, especially during the first twenty-one-day cycle, which facilitates the required neurochemical and structural changes in the brain that make it a usable and useful thought. Then, for the next forty-two days, you need to continue to consciously practice using the new thought, which allows a useful habit to form. This means that we can all realistically achieve 5 to 6 major goals or resolutions each year! (Just do the math: 365/63=5.8) This may not seem like a lot, but it actually is! Can you imagine making 6 major changes to your life each year? The transformation would be incredible! However, I do not recommend trying to figure out 6 different things all at once when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve. Rather, find 1-2 specific goals/resolutions and break them into 9-week segments that you can start working on. A large group of different studies indicates that new year’s resolutions tend to fail because they are often quite overarching and not specific enough. We tend to give ourselves a big task when we see the whole year ahead of us—it seems like the perfect amount of time to achieve our resolution. Indeed, it is easy to look at the big picture and say, “By the end of the year, I will have changed this!” However, when we start doing the work as the year goes on, it seems like a lot more effort is needed—definitely more than we anticipated! Consequently, our motivation tends to wane as we see all the days stretch out ahead of us. When we do this, we are essentially treating what should be a marathon like a quick sprint. If you start a marathon by sprinting, you will be completely worn out by the first mile! It is far better to measure your pace so you don’t tire out too fast. So, instead of sprinting towards your resolution, try setting increments of tasks every 7 days to achieve a specific goal at the end of the 9 weeks. For example, you may wish to be more adventurous. This is the big picture goal. Now, you can break that down and say something like, “Each month I will think of something new that I want to do that will fulfill my needs in that moment and make me feel like I am adventurous.” This will help you focus on the present moment while keeping your bigger goal in mind. When you set a goal/resolution in increments like this, on January 1st all you need to focus on is your incremental goal for the month of January. February will come when it comes; you are in the “here and now” and just need to focus on the first part of your goal. As a result, the small changes that you make each month won’t feel so intimidating, and you won’t feel as worn out by achieving them! 3. Practice daily mind management and self-regulation to achieve your overall goal. Make sure you stay focused on what you want to change each day by building your goal into your mind, brain and body in little bits each day. To do this, I recommend using the mind management technique I have researched, developed and applied clinically over the past three decades: the Neurocycle. The kind of self-regulation that is achieved using the Neurocycle is a great way to deal with the root of the toxic cycles in your life and reconceptualize them and how they impact your wellbeing. It is done in 5 steps: Gather awareness of what you are feeling emotionally and physically as you work on a negative cycle/habit in your life. Reflect on how this is impacting you and why—be as specific as possible. Write this down—this is way to help organize your thinking and gain clarity. Recheck what you have written. Look for patterns in your life, your relationships, your responses, your attitudes and so on. What is the antidote? What do you want to change and how? Take action. I call this step an “active reach”. It is essentially an action you take to reinforce the new, reconceptualized pattern of thinking you want in your life (which is replacing the old, toxic habit). For more on the Neurocycle method and how to use it to break toxic cycles, check out my latest book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and my app Neurocycle. 4. Set a time for when you are going to build this goal into your life, and pick a theme for the year. This could be any word, idea, or concept that speaks to you. For example, my theme last year (which I am going to use this year again!) was to have a possibilities mindset, and my mantra is that every failure is knowledge gained—when something doesn’t work out, this is a possibility to grow, because now I know something doesn’t work, and I am one step closer to achieving my goals! As you face the start of a new year, give yourself space, compassion and grace to achieve your goals. Don’t rush the process—take things moment by moment. Remember to enjoy life while trying to achieve your goals. Don’t try to sprint through the marathon! Pace yourself, and you will be able to finish. You got this! To read the original article click here.

The post A Neuroscientific Approach to Setting Sustainable & Attainable New Year Resolutions appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

Healing Trauma: Research Links PTSD, Emotion Regulation and Quality of Life

AHA Publisher — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 07:00:28 +0000

Binghamton University via EurekAlert – We often talk about the coronavirus pandemic in terms of health or economic impacts: the numbers of cases and deaths, the persistence of long-haul COVID, lost jobs and toilet paper shortages. But there is another crisis, too… [t]he pandemic is a type of mass trauma, explained Binghamton University doctoral candidate in psychology Craig Polizzi. And trauma can and does give rise to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and potentially problematic behaviors and a lower quality of life. Recent research from Polizzi, fellow graduate student Damla Aksen and Distinguished Professor of Psychology Steven Jay Lynn provides insight into the impact PTSD has on emotional regulation and quality of life, and points to ways to improve both. Their article, “Quality of Life, Emotion Regulation Dissociation: Evaluating Unique Relations in an Undergraduate Sample and Probable PTSD Subsample,” was published in a recent issue of the journal Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy. Their research fills some of the gaps left by previous studies into PTSD, emotion regulation and quality of life. Previous studies mainly focused on older adults and individuals with medical problems, and tested emotion regulation strategies or difficulties separately; they also didn’t account for important variables that may explain the relation between emotion regulation and quality of life. Polizzi, Aksen and Lynn instead take a more comprehensive approach and include such critical variables as dissociation, neuroticism and PTSD symptoms in addition to dimensions of emotion regulation. Using questionnaires and personal narratives, the researchers identified participating college students who potentially met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. The traumatic events these students experienced ranged from physical or sexual assault to car accidents, abuse, severe illness and witnessing suffering. The researchers then used a series of self-report surveys to measure difficulties in emotional regulation, positive and negative coping strategies and dissociative experiences with the participants. It’s eye-opening to see how much trauma college students — and the U.S. population in general — are exposed to, Polizzi acknowledged. “The positive side to these statistics, though, is how remarkably resilient people can be following traumatic events, especially during this pandemic,” he said. What Is Quality of Life? “Quality of life” isn’t an amorphous concept, although researchers can have different definitions, including improved function related to physical health and psychological well-being. It can actually be measured in many ways, such as through self-report surveys, physician ratings or direct observation, Polizzi explained. In the study, the researchers relied on a broad definition informed by the World Health Organization (WHO), which defines quality of life as healthy functioning across mental processing, life activities, physical mobility, participating in society, self-care and social skills. In particular, they administered a questionnaire, the WHO Disability Assessment Schedule, based on the organization’s definition of this concept. Closely associated with quality of life is emotion regulation, or the ability to alter your emotional state to better cope with the situation at hand. People with enhanced emotion regulation tend to have greater psychological health, whereas problems in this area are associated with psychological difficulties, Polizzi explained. During and following traumatic events, many people dissociate — or distance themselves from their emotions, body, mind and even personal identity — to escape overwhelming feelings such as shame, fear and anger. People who experience dissociation may lose focus, forget people and events, have out-of-body experiences or extreme daydreaming, and feel a sense of unreality and detachment from their immediate surroundings. While some researchers have argued that dissociation is an emotion regulation strategy, it typically has negative effects, including interfering with emotional awareness, sense of self, social bonds and engagement in daily activities. In fact, it was surprising how strongly dissociation was related to quality of life, Polizzi acknowledged. Rather than just a part of other unhealthy emotion regulation strategies, it appears to play a disruptive role in daily activities and everyday behaviors. Overall, their research suggests that decreased emotion regulation is related to a lower quality of life, although not necessarily a sole cause. People may experience a lowered quality of life for many reasons, one of which could be the inability to effectively regulate their emotions; conversely, the lack of psychological resources — for example, from stress, pain or physical health issues — could also limit a person’s ability to emotionally regulate. “These variables could exist in a vicious cycle, in which lack of emotion regulation contributes to lowering quality of life, which in turn reduces emotion regulation skills,” said Polizzi, adding that further research is needed to confirm this idea. On the plus side, emotion regulation is something that people can learn. “Many techniques used in psychological treatments are designed to help individuals enhance their emotion regulation. For example, learning to accept and re-interpret emotions in realistic ways rather than avoiding emotions and blaming them on others can improve people’s psychological functioning and their quality of life,” Polizzi said. Three Main Symptoms In their research, Polizzi, Aksen and Lynn provide information that could refine the current evidence-based practices for treating PTSD by focusing on a trio of symptoms that have a strong impact on an individual’s quality of life: namely, dissociation, impulsivity and blaming others. Used as a coping strategy for negative emotions, impulsive behaviors can lead to physical injury, substance abuse and other health concerns, while dissociation may make it even more difficult for people with PTSD to be emotionally engaged, cope with stress, set goals and have a healthy sense of self. Individuals with PTSD also tend to mistrust others, which could lead to blame in interpersonal interactions and the further erosion of social bonds. That doesn’t mean, however, that trauma is a one-way street to a diminished life. Many individuals can learn how to successfully cope with such experiences, and treatment can lead to a greatly improved quality of life. For those diagnosed with PTSD, focusing on these three factors would be especially helpful during the later phases of treatment, when the individual has improved their coping skills and stability, Polizzi said. If the pandemic’s aftermath has you feeling not quite yourself, it might be helpful to take an honest look at how you’re really feeling and the strategies — good and bad — that you’re using to cope. “People experiencing increased psychological stress during this pandemic may look to improve their quality of life by focusing on ways to enhance their emotion regulation skills via reducing dissociation, impulsivity and blaming others, such as increasing emotional engagement, planning goal-directed behaviors and fostering compassion toward others, respectively,” Polizzi said. To read the original article click here.

The post Healing Trauma: Research Links PTSD, Emotion Regulation and Quality of Life appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.