The 4 Habits of Overweight People

1. They eat out a lot:

Regardless of the occasion, this type of weight gain is caused by all social occasions revolving around food and drink. These can be working lunches, networking drinks, birthdays, holidays, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is when the habit of eating out becomes far too common that trying to choose healthy options or controlling portion size just becomes too difficult. Corollary: healthy weight people cook their own food and they cook it often.

2. They don’t drink enough water or don’t enjoy the ‘taste’ of water:

It’s really simple – water is too important to ignore. If you are a juice, soft drink, cordial, creamy coffee and/or ALCOHOL drinker you can expect to have a really hard time working off all of those additional kilojoules. You will also be placing a high level of stress on your pancreas and liver. Corollary: healthy weight people LOVE water and drink it often. It is the most important thing you put in your body every day!

3. They LOVE cheese 🙂 :

OK. Let’s get a bit controversial. It is my opinion that the health benefits of cheese are highly over-rated. You obtain all of the nutrients available in cheese from other food sources that don’t have OVER 30% fat! When skim milk became popular in the 70s and 80s, the excess fat from milk was used to produce higher amounts of cheese. The dairy industry, particularly in America then began a sales and marketing campaign that pushed cheese into the hearts and minds of the public. In short, you don’t need to eat cheese very often at all. Treat it like a dessert food and eat it rarely and in small portions. No-one needs stuffed crust pizza or 3 cheese lasagne! Corollary: healthy weight people choose low fat dairy and eat high fat foods as rare treats.

4. Regular exercise becomes an increasingly difficult proposition:

Weight gain generally doesn’t happen quickly. It happens over weeks, months, years and decades. That 100g gain this week is 5 kgs this year and it’s 50kgs this decade. As such, regularly exercising becomes increasingly difficult until it is almost impossible. I see people everyday who have given up one form of exercise or another because it has become too hard and because they have had setbacks. You can’t let the weight creep set in. Start slowly, progressively and adjust your exercise to help you meet your goals. Corollary: healthy weight people are habitual exercisers. Once they have a setback, they adjust, they iterate, they start again and build a new healthy habit. 

Weight gain is generally a product of poor habits. If you consider that well over two-thirds of Australians are overweight or obese, you can’t be doing what the majority does when it comes to eating. I encourage all of my clients to become leaders in their family and social circle environments. The proof is in. The way that most Australians choose to incorporate food and exercise into their lives is NOT working. Time for change – and it starts with you.