100 lb. Club - A habit a week

I was thinking about this class I took back in 1992, at a hospital. It was a weight loss class but the nutritionist who ran it told us not to set a weght loss goal. All we had to do was come in once a week and weigh in, learn about one new healthy habit, and spend the week working on that one habit, incorporating it into our lives. Each week we added another new habit. We did it for 16 weeks so at the end, we had 16 new healthy habits. EVERYONE lost weight. It was NOT that hard. I think this is a great approach because we tend to try and do too many changes all at once, and spreading them out over time is easier... and makes them easier to stick with.

Anyone else do a plan like this? I like it because even the most struggling person among us can handle doing ONE thing differently. And if you just do that ONE thing, no matter what else you don't do, you have succeeded for the week.

The idea (at the hospital) came from the LEARN program for Weight Control (which is a manual of sorts, and the habit-a-week approach has been studied and found to be successful). I decided to start posting an organized challenge on my blog (link below) with one healthy habit each week. So if you are interested in doing this, check my blog... and watch for a new habit to be posted every Monday.

If you are having a rough time (like I am) this might be something to help you grab hold. You CAN do one little habit... right? :)

http://escapefromobesity.blogspot.com/2008/09/lyns-habit-week-challenge.html

Thats really inertesing....Thanks for the info.

This is a great program. I am not following any specific plan and am doing something similar to the plan you mentioned. A friend of mine is a nutritionist and she advised me to do something similar. She asked me how many soft drinks I consumed a day. She added all of the calories up for a month. That surprised me so much that the first thing that I gave up was soft drinks. This week, I am giving up potato chips. I didn't have any last week, but I had planned on this being my change for this week. So far, so good. Next week, I am going to replace a lot of the starches for grains. Also, I am going to start exercising. She had advised me to wait for a few weeks before exercising, and to get used to cutting back on food first. With all of the inspiration that I am getting from this forum, I have decided to start exercising next week which is two weeks earlier than I had planned.:smug:

I never belong to a structure programme like the weight loss one you discuss. Though I did adapt those ideas I did not do all the changes at once I did one at once and when we when I say we I mean DH and I were comfortable with that change we added another. We figured that this weight loss was not a race it was more about getting there. So what if it took us a bit longer the main thing was we were changing our eating patterns to healthy ones.

If we had not changed them gradually we would not be where we are today at 60lb (dh) and 118lb (me) lighter. If we had changed them all at once it would have been too over whelming and I think we would have caved in and gone back to our "unhealthy" ways of junk food and no exercise.

At times it has been harder and it makes for a bumpy road on the weight loss journey but stay on the straight and narrow as much as you can and you will see the positive results in either the scales or tape measure. Often after a few bad days you start to feel better and you are glad you did not ruin it by going really to far off the rails.

:goodluck: with your weight loss journey make the changes slowly it is no race and I am sure you will reach your mini goals along the way in no time.

I just love this approach! I think I often try to do too much and be that 'perfect' person. And then get discouraged when I am not. I love the idea of small achievable changes that will last a lifetime. Thanks so much for posting this!

Lyn, this is a great idea! When I started my weight loss I decided to change one small thing every few weeks. It's worked really well for me. Even though I"m in a plateau, the new habits stuck with me and became a way of life.

Good luck with this; I think you'll do great!