Therapists: Advice for Your Patients to Lose Weight

As a therapist, you have the power to change your patients' lives for the better, starting of course, with their weight. Losing some pounds can just be another year's resolution but keeping a food and activity journal can actually make it happen. Help your patients to lose weight and keep it from coming back.

Here are some other benefits:

Tracks their progress. They can instantly access their starting point. They can also track their successes and challenges, and later go back through the circumstances that moved them to stay on the program or temporarily get sidetracked.

Reduces stress. Writing is therapeutic. They can use their journal to express what they are feeling each time they eat something, whether good or bad. The act of writing it down will allow them to process the situation better and also get it out in the open so they are better able to deal with it.

Keeps them focused. The very routine or habit of writing down their food intake and daily workout activities means that they are making time for themselves. When they set aside “me time,” they are saying to themselves that they are worthy of the process of making themselves better.

Gets them organized. In order for the weight loss program to be successful, they have to be committed to following the plan. To follow the plan, they must prepare ahead of time and consistently do the right thing over and over. Keeping track of all this in their journal gives them a sense of accomplishment that they are doing all that they can to be successful.

They gain a better understanding of self. Whether or not they re-read their journal, they will benefits from just writing down their story and their thoughts. Through their writing, their experience becomes alive and real and they begin to gain a better understanding of how they are changing their own life, one day at a time.

Now that I’ve discussed the reasons patients can benefit from using a journal, here are some suggestions on how to do it and what to use:

• Suggest that you patients register for the Online Weight Loss Tracker - it’s free.
   
• Suggest creating a scrapbook: Have you patients use their imagination to express their feelings through images, graphics and other positive symbols.
   
• Suggest using a composition or loose leaf notebook.
   
• Suggest that they create a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or some other software

Tanya Stroh, B.S., NSCA, ACE, is the founder and creator of GetinShapeforFREE.net featuring a “6 Week Shape UP Challenge” with Sequential Progression. This brand new fitness and exercise website is completely Free and available to everyone who has the desire to be fit and healthy. Tanya's philosophy has always been that a fit and healthy lifestyle is a process that you build upon; that’s why her approach to exercise with Sequential Progression is so effective. Tanya’s clients have successfully improved and achieved their health and fitness goals because of this approach to fitness. And now with GetinShapeforFREE.net so can YOUR clients!

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