Why Your Company Should Help Employees With Their Weight Problem

Posted on January 4, 2017 | Leave a comment
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photo: obesity action.org

Most wellness programs approach weight control with exercise and nutrition programs, which don’t address the underlying causes of and solutions to your employees’ weight problem. Helping them with a clinically sound behavioral solution will help them lose weight and be healthier, and will also help them to be better problem-solvers and goal attainers.

Why Your Company Needs to Help Employees With Their Weight Problem:

1) Weight management is the single most important issue in an employee’s health. Excess weight and obesity is the single greatest cause of preventable disease and premature death in the American workforce. It affects every aspect of their health and well-being.

2) They don’t know what to do to solve the problem. They may think they do and you may too, but chances are, you don’t. Neither do most physical trainers and dieticians. That’s because for most people, it’s a behavioral disorder, similar to an addiction or gambling problem. Just knowing what’s got to change and even wanting to change is not enough. Intelligence, good character and “will power” are not enough. There are other powers at work, and to overcome them, you need to know how. That’s what behavioral therapy training teaches.

3) Because many health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic fatigue and mobility impairment improve greatly with weight loss, your employees who lose weight will exhibit more energy, positive attitude and higher productivity, as well as less illness, diminished productivity and absenteeism.
A sound behavioral approach, including pyschoeducation and training in cognitive behavior techniques, will help them become better managers of their emotions and attitudes and the behavior related to them.

4) The problem-solving, time management, stress management and goal-setting skills learned will be applicable to all the problems and objectives they have, on and off the job. They will become better at handling problems and getting things done.

5) The improved health, sense of well-being, self-confidence, self-esteem and personal mastery will make them more effective and motivated on a long term basis.

6) The biggest reason to help them is that they need the help and there are few able to give it, other than your company. And it’s the right thing to do. You’ll be proud and thankful that you made it happen.

By all means, promotion of exercise, gym memberships and nutrition classes are a great benefit to the employees who take advantage of them, but the very best way to help overweight and obese employees is to give them access to comprehensive behavioral approaches to weight management.

This article first published at ThriveGlobal.com

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The Gods of Enthusiasm And Success

Posted on January 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

Gods of Enthusiasm

In another time, another life, before I veered off into the path of becoming a psychotherapist, later becoming known as “The Weight Loss Guru”, I was the CEO of a small chain of furniture stores. One day, while touring one of the stores, I spotted a sign the store manager had posted in the break room: “Those who are not fired with enthusiasm soon will be!”

The scary sign had appeared soon after a sales trainer I had hired preached that enthusiasm was the single most important ingredient for success in sales, as well as every other aspect in the operation of a business. My manager’s sign was not quite the lesson I had hoped would be remembered, but alas, it was a truism. Success, and even survival, were not possible without this vital ingredient.

Today, I am known as the clinician who “healed thyself” when I lost 140 pounds permanently with The Anderson Method, a weight loss program that has become recognized nationally and spread internationally. In the years since that business lesson, I have become an expert in human behavior and dysfunction and teach recovery from the most difficult of challenges. The importance of that lesson about enthusiasm has only multiplied.

weight loss clinician

In that lesson we learned that in order to be really successful, in order to be fully alive and fulfilling our true potential, we needed to be filled with real enthusiasm. Success, especially with difficult things, requires us to summon all the energy we can muster, and invest it in the mission. We cannot be even remotely apathetic, “cool” or blasé about things. And we learned that enthusiasm referred to the spirit or God (Theos) within us (en+theos).

So, here we were, learning, from an established business trainer, that our success in business depended on a spiritual quality, energy that came from something inside us. It was not something that we needed to get. It was already in us, what made us alive. If we did not know it or sense it, getting it was a matter of getting in touch with it, becoming aware of it, giving life to it and drawing on it. Enthusiasm was not an intellectual thing, related to being smart or educated or skilled. It was a spirit. It was not something to be acquired from the outside world. It was an energy already within us, perhaps untapped, but waiting to be called upon and unleashed. What is it? How do we experience it? How do we put it to work? What are its’ characteristics?

Passion

Passion is feeling, emotion, strong emotion. Games and wars are not won by those without emotion, who are dispassionate about things. We must really care about what we are doing and be able to express that emotional investment through our words and actions. To tap and unleash enthusiasm, we need to feel it and express it, in no uncertain terms, not hold it back.

Sincerity

We need to be genuine. We can’t be faking it. Our passion has to be real, not an act. It has to come from the depths of our soul. If we sign on to a mission, to succeed, we have to believe in it, for real, not pretend. If you can’t be sincerely committed, you need to find a mission you can be passionate about. You have to care, really care about success in this mission. It’s not enough to say it’s important. There has to be integrity, where you mean what you say and say what you mean.

Desire

Desire has gotten a bad rap, but wanting or craving is a powerful drive that is the prime motive in many success stories. It’s something we feel from day one, and psychologists have said that “needs reduction” is what causes drive and motivation in us. It’s not an intellectual thing. It’s not something we create. It is part of our psyche that you feel when you spot an object of your desire, be it a love interest, an adornment, a car, a promotion, recognition, a house, a cupcake…. Desire. Wanting it badly.

Wanting springs as an energy from within and takes you with it, so that you dream about it, obsess about it, create ways to make it happen, and you can’t stop it. Sometimes, desires have gotten us into trouble, been harmful, sometimes led to big troubles. Some have said that desire is a sin, a mistake, something we should extinguish. But rather than snuff it out, we need to channel it. Constant craving for food when you are overweight has to go. But consistent strong desire for the well-being of yourself and your loved ones needs to be fueled.

We need to foster the desire for the things that will make our life and our world better — not greed that makes the world worse, but a passion for a better life, a better world. We need to channel that energy and activity to attainments and objects of desire that help instead of harm, that make life better, healthier, happier, whole. A desire for what is good is not a bad thing. Fuel it. Build a fire. Let yourself dream, imagine, crave and picture that which represents real success, so much that you can taste it. Build up a burning desire. That kind of desire and enthusiasm spring from the same well.

Love

Enthusiasm is the natural experience when you love what you are doing. It is the fire you feel when you work for the benefit of what and who you love. It is the opposite of greed. It is the devotion of yourself to something greater than yourself. There is enormous endless energy there. Embrace it.

The Right Gods

Can one be enthused by greed, by hate? Certainly. We choose the spirit we choose to give life to. While we think that we possess spirit when we are enthused, the definition of enthusiasm is to possessed by the spirit. So, we better choose wisely. There are different outcomes with these different spirits within.

Commitment and Success

To commit to something, in the origin of the word, is to “join” or “send with”. When we honestly commit ourselves to a mission, a cause, a goal or to someone we love, we are giving our very selves, our souls, to that process, and there is an energy engaged beyond understanding. It wells up from within and powers us. It is not something only of our own making. It is enthusiasm. If done with the right spirit, it propels us to favorable outcomes (the definition of success) in line with those spirits, loves, missions and goals.

Do you want to be successful? Be enthused.

William Anderson is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor who specializes in weight loss, eating disorders and addictions. He was an obese heavy smoker and workaholic until his early thirties, and burned out, but survived and changed direction. He changed in many ways, among them, losing 140 pounds permanently. Health, in a holistic way, is now his mission. He is the author of The Anderson Method of Permanent Weight Loss.

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The 140 Calorie Breakfast. Here’s The Recipe. Real Easy.

Posted on January 3, 2017 | 3 comments

140 Breakfast

(The author is a psychotherapist who lost 140 lbs. when he developed his methods, and he’s kept it off for over 30 years. Read about his method in his book at the right, or listen to his audiobook, free sample provided here.)

After posting the blog about the 140 calorie breakfast versus the 1730 calorie breakfast, I got lots of messages asking me what it was and how to make it. So, here it is.

It’s a vegetable omelette made with onion, red and green peppers, mushrooms, 2 portions of Egg Beaters and a slice of low calorie toast.

Use a small sauce pan to cook the veggies, starting with a little Pam. Cook at a low to medium heat, covered, and add a little water if needed to prevent burning. You are actually steaming them, mainly in their own juices.

When they are tender to your taste, pour in the Egg Beaters (1/2 cup), cover again, and put your slice of bread in the toaster.

When the toast pops up, your omelette should be just about done. You want it to be solid, not liquidy, on top. Fold the omelette over and put it on the plate.

Since I’m a big fan of You Can’t Believe Its Not Butter spray, people have asked if I use that on toast. Nope. It’s doesn’t work. I use Brummel and Brown spread, like low cal margarine, but better. (Thanks Trish).

Enjoy! And if you haven’t read my book yet, don’t forget to order a copy. It’s on Amazon, both paperback and Kindle, and now an audiobook too.

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How to Lose Weight and Still Eat Everything You Like.

Posted on January 1, 2017 | 7 comments

pizza-junk-food-600

Most people think you have to deny yourself your favorite foods and stick to a rigid diet to lose weight. On the contrary, the key to learning how to lose weight permanently is learning how to eat and enjoy everything you like in the right way, not making yourself go without. You even learn how to “splurge” on the weekend without gaining weight. This is not only possible, but is absolutely necessary if you want to lose weight permanently.

(The author is a psychotherapist who lost 140 lbs. when he developed his methods,  and he’s kept it off for over 30 years. Read about his method in his book at the right, or listen to his audiobook, free sample provided here.)

I was overweight and obese my entire life, well over 300 pounds at times and a miserable failure at diets and weight loss plans. I had given up more times than you can count. Fortunately, I kept looking for an answer and at the age of thirty-three, I finally learned how to lose weight for good and lost 140 pounds at a pretty fast clip. I’ve kept the weight off pretty easily for over thirty years now, and I eat everything I like. I don’t eat diet food and I don’t exercise like a health nut. I’m a Licensed Counselor now, I’ve helped thousands to succeed like I have, and I’ve written a popular and respected book about it, The Anderson Method, available in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.

The truth is that there are no “bad” foods or “bad” calories. Managed healthfully, they are all good! I eat everything I like, and I’ve learned how to lose weight while going out to dinner, to parties, on vacation and how to have drinks and desserts and still lose weight pretty quickly. Here’s why and how it works:

If, over a month’s period of time, you’ve eaten fewer calories than you’ve burned in normal activities, regardless of what you’ve eaten and when you’ve eaten it, you’ll lose weight. You’ll lose weight even if you’ve eaten all your favorite foods, even if they are the things that the “diet experts” say you can’t eat.

If you’ve been listening to diet nonsense on TV, in the magazines and at lunch, you may be skeptical of this, but this is science. It’s easy to verify at any university or college. Your body doesn’t operate on a 24 hour schedule. A five foot four inch woman needs an average of approximately 1400 to 1800 calories per day, depending on the individual, and will not gain weight if she doesn’t exceed that. However, if she has habits where she averages that most of the time, and exceeds it only occasionally, which is very easy, she’ll get overweight and constantly gain weight! If you’re a normal American, this has probably been happening to you.

Instead of thinking of it as a 1800 calorie per day daily budget, think 12,600 calories per week. If you keep your weekdays at 1200, you’d have to eat more than 3800 calories per day on the weekends to gain weight! Keeping your weekdays austere gives you the ability to fit in anything without going “over budget”. A piece of cake is about 350 calories. A glass of wine is about 100. A normal serving of lasagna is about 500. If you think you can’t fit those things in on a day with a budget of 1800, we need to talk about that.

However, getting these new habits in place isn’t a matter of “will power” or “just making up your mind”. There is a scientific method in how to lose weight and keep it off, but it is not so much the science of nutrition as it is the science of psychology and behavioral medicine. Will power and self discipline were never within my grasp before I discovered the methods I teach my clients, the methods of Behavioral Medicine I call Therapeutic Psychogenics.

Reprogramming habits is the result of using these therapeutic techniques, methods of behavioral therapy. Once the habits are in place, we get a different result. We become and stay the weight we want to be. You’ve seen other people do it, those people who seem to eat just like you or worse and stay slim. You can do it too! Now, we eat only our favorite foods. We waste no calories on mediocre food. Our “diet” can include every kind of meat, potatoes, pasta, sauce, wine, drinks and even desserts that you can think of, as long as they are good enough for the calories they “cost”. We deny ourselves nothing.

There is a proven way to “reprogram” your habits so the calories come out right and it becomes automatic and habitual, even easy to maintain for many. Learning how to lose weight permanently is not impossible. It’s just work, and not hard work at that.

You don’t have to live a miserable life of diet food and torturous exercise to solve your weight problem. In fact, permanent weight loss is the result of learning a more pleasurable way of living that includes some of your most cherished foods and activities, a way that becomes habitual and normal for you. You can even become one of those infuriating people who seem to eat all the wrong things and “have no problem”. Read my book and you’ll truly find out how to lose weight.

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How to Stay Focused on Your Weight Loss Goals in 2017

Posted on December 27, 2016 | 2 comments

I’m asked all the time, “What finally made you decide to solve your weight problem?” as if it didn’t bother me being overweight for 25 years. The truth is that I sincerely wanted to solve my problem when I was 12! But I wasn’t successful until 20 years later. It took me that long to learn what I needed in order to be successful.
Bill in 1983 and 2005

(William Anderson, author of The Anderson Method, Secrets to Permanent Weight Loss, in print and audiobook.)

Wanting, even with all your heart, to lose weight does not make it happen, as anyone with a stubborn weight problem knows.

Hopefully, it won’t take you 20 years to learn what I learned. You can learn it from me!

For my first 30 years, I was overweight and out of control, more than 300 pounds as an adult. Only in my early 30s was I finally able to succeed, losing 140 pounds and becoming my ideal body weight. I’ve maintained it handily since. Now I help other people and I wrote a book, now an eBook and an audiobook, about what I eventually learned that made me successful. Here are a few of the most important things, five key requirements to make 2017 the year you solve your weight problem for good:

1) You must make it the priority in your life.

You need to decide that being healthy in body, mind and spirit is more important than anything else and that your weight problem must be solved. Losing weight must become your No. 1 one concern. More important than your job. More important than your favorite pastimes, clubs, hobbies or comforts. You must become like a zealot who forsakes all else, a soldier in the field where losing this battle means losing everything. Nothing else can stand in the way of doing what you need in your effort to solve your weight problem.

Some may criticize this as being unreasonable and off-centered. I understand their criticism, but for most of us, this is one of those things where you will not make it unless you are totally devoted. To enjoy all of those other things you cherish, you’ve got to get this right. Nothing less than total dedication will do. It’s like wanting to make it to the top in a music, sports or business career. Nothing else can get in the way of doing what you need to do to succeed. It cannot take a back seat to anything else, cast aside when something else “comes up” as if it were more important. Controlling your weight is more important.

2) You must respect the science that tells us that we need to eat fewer calories than we burn to lose weight. We must accept the fact that we need to develop habits where we consistently eat within our caloric “budget” to keep it off.

There is no mystery to the science of weight control. It has not changed in eons. Eat too many calories and you get fat. Eat fewer than you burn and you burn it off. Accepting this reality does not by itself solve the problem, but there is no hope until you do. Hoping for a way around this fact will prevent you from ever succeeding. There is no way around this, no magic pill or surgery that will relieve you of having to limit your caloric intake. Fight this reality and you’ll never succeed. Accept it, and you’re on the path to success. In over 20 years, I have never had a client not lose weight when they eat the way I teach them.

3) You must learn how to train your mind to program yourself and master your habits, desires, impulses and feelings. The idea that your behavior and feelings are a matter of just making up your mind or wanting it badly enough is a fallacy. We are not born with well-developed “will power” and conscious control over the things that go on in our mind and body. In fact, most of what goes on is unconscious and a product of conditioning and programming that we were not even aware of. Habits and impulses were not chosen and they can seem to have a life of their own beyond your control. However, you can learn the programming and conditioning techniques discovered in behavioral and cognitive psychology as well as the ideo-dynamic phenomena that hypnotherapies use. The techniques I teach in my method are not unknown to science and behavioral medicine, but we are not born knowing them. They must be learned.

4) Make your goal the development of new permanent habits, rather than weight loss. Don’t focus so much on pounds but rather on the way you are living.

The most common approach to weight loss is doing something out of the ordinary for a while, like eating a special diet or going on an exercise crusade, and then going back to “normal” after a while. This is self-defeating. Even if we lose the weight we want, the “normal” that we have learned is what makes people fat, so we’ll just put it back on.

We are suckers for these diets and schemes because usually, we don’t want to change our habits. We are fond of doing the things we do, snacking the way we do, enjoying our favorite foods and restaurants and not having to think about it. We don’t want to give those things up. We’ve tried and we couldn’t do it or it was so miserable we gave up the idea.

However, we don’t have to give up enjoying food. In fact, one of the keys of reprogramming is that the new behavior must be satisfying. I enjoy food now more than I did when I was overweight. I eat all my favorite foods, don’t deny myself any food I really want, and enjoy it more. However, it is different than the way I used to eat. But just wanting and “willing” yourself to change habits is not the way it’s done. There are reprogramming techniques you need to use. The first step is to realize that our goal needs to be a change in our habitual behavior. When that happens, the weight comes off automatically. Focusing on weight loss instead of a change in yourself and your habits will not work.

5) You must be honest and sincere. I used to say things like “no matter what I do, I can’t lose weight.” That’s crazy of course. If I somehow got myself to eat very little, I’d lose weight. If I kept it up long enough, I’d starve to death. People who don’t have food in the Sudan are not fat. I was telling myself nonsense, lying to myself.

I used to say, “This won’t matter” if I cheated or “I just don’t care anymore” when my self-control flagged. Neither was really true. Everything counts. When I got discouraged and caved, I cried “uncle” and gave up in that moment, but I never stopped caring. I never stopped hating obesity and wanting something better. I still cared. Saying, “It doesn’t matter” was a lie.

Behavioral science teaches us that what we say to ourselves affects how we feel and how we act in an almost magical or mystical way. When we tell ourselves this nonsense, we are literally programming ourselves to overeat and become overweight, just as if we were using hypnotherapy to gain weight. When we say, “I just can’t lose weight,” we are using cognitive therapy techniques to make ourselves feel hopeless and depressed and self-hypnosis to unconsciously sabotage any efforts to succeed.

Changing the way we think and talk is essential to reversing obesity. Getting honest and serious, truly sincere about what we want, is one of the most important keys.

So, what do you think? Can you say, “yes” to these five key requirements? If you can’t, and you are a person who has been overweight and unable to fix it, you now know where you need to start to make changes. We are not going to solve this problem by accident. We need to be very intentional and meet these requirements. If you meet them now, you are on the path to success. That’s progress! Follow me.

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