The recent Government report into childhood obesity has got me thinking. The focus of the report is on the need for healthier eating habits in childhood. This I definitely applaud. However, we as parents pass on many of our habits and beliefs to our children, some of which are related to food.

What really concerns me is the statistic that shows that for 98% of dieters, weight loss is not sustainable. In fact, most regain the weight and at least 10% more within 2-3 years. This means that the dieting tools (habits and beliefs) are failing most of us. These are the habits and beliefs that we have been passing on to our children for decades! If they do not work for us as a long-term solution to our weight issue, how can we expect them to work for our children?

Parents, and teachers for that matter, need more tools in their toolkit for managing life in a world of food abundance. We can no longer continue to label some foods as ‘bad’ and expect our children not to want it and crave it. We can no longer expect our children to eat healthily and exercise regularly if we ourselves do not role model this behaviour.

This is a subject that I am passionate about as I was an obese child. I grew up with the bullying, prejudice and shame. Throughout my childhood I learnt habits with food that have taken me half a decade to overcome. We owe it to the generations of the future to get this right now by developing a mindset that allows us all to live in a world of food abundance without fear, guilt, shame and self-loathing.

Following on from last week’s blog, I was thinking more about how difficult it is for most of us to stick to regular exercise. So many of us just hate the gym, whilst others regularly take out membership only to trail off going with 2 – 3 months!

Then I began to think about all the other areas of my life where consistency and taking a pride in what I do is not a problem. Gradually I began to realise that there are lots of jobs I do with joy. These jobs range from my work as a coach and writer, my role as a mother, my voluntary work, my job as housekeeper and cook, to list just a few. For each of these jobs…

·        I take them very seriously;

If there is one thing I found most difficult to stick to consistently, it was regular exercise. How about you? I talk in my book about the importance of increasing our activity to raise our heart rate, three to four times a week. I also talk about the ‘Stickability’ factor but one thing I haven’t mentioned is working with our biorhythms.

So lets examine what I mean. Have you ever tried to go to a gym or increase your activity after work or later in an evening? How about 6am in the morning? Believe it or not the time you set aside for extra physical activity has a huge impact on how you manage to stick to it.

We all have an inbuilt mechanism that regulates the flow of energy in our body. At certain times of the day there is more energy available to us than at others. This is our biorhythm. If we are in tune with it and working to its rhythm, whatever we do will flow more easily and be more enjoyable. Work against your biorhythm and you will always struggle.

For me, my optimum time to exercise is 6am! This is when I am most full of energy. Undertaking an activity at that time of day seems to set me up for the day. I feel more energetic and find that my mind rarely wanders to thinking about food. When there is an opportunity to get more active during the day I find myself enthusiastic and not resistant.

But that is my biorhythm and yours may very well be quite different. So how do you regulate your increased physical activity to your biorhythm? If you haven’t thought about it before, give it a go and let me know how it works for you.

Well, I have almost finished writing my book, Weight Loss, Life Gain. It has been the most uplifting work I have ever undertaken. Having never been one for writing a personal journal or 'daily pages' as Julia Cameron calls them in her book The Artist's Way, I am amazed at the positive effect it has had on me. The question that crosses my mind now is how often do we ever measure what we do by the motivation it offers us?

So often I have read personal development books and never followed the suggested exercises or journals. I never seemed to have the time. Through my book and this Blog I have made time to write and it has been wonderful. The motivational lift it gives me is enormous. In fact I miss it so much on the days that I am out working as a trainer and coach that sometimes, like today, I rise early enough to sit and write.

Finding something special, that feeds your soul and offers you a glimpse into who you really are, is so important. Anything creative or uplifting can do it.

 Time is all you need to find and invest in to make it work on your motivation levels.

In writing things down, thoughts and feelings, new realisations jump out at you from the page. Sometimes they are huge revelations that help you over a period of demotivation. At other times they offer small steps of determination for actions for change. Whatever your process for creating motivation in your life, the key is having the tenacity to stick at it. To have the belief in yourself that your goal is achievable is paramount to your success.

It has been seven years since I began to write my book. In the early stages my work was under confident and immature. Through the process of turning up to the page, every day my skill and confidence grew. It’s the same with anything we do, even our journey to find the weight we were born to be. Turning up each day ready to love ourselves is, I believe, the work we are here to do.