How can small habits actually help sustain my weight management?

Health Kerplunk - Supporting Weight Loss Goals

The Sprout-sweater approach, i.e. making small changes consistently over time can sometimes feel like we are not doing enough to make the changes we feel we need to make to actually achieve our weight loss goals. But I want to reframe the small things I encourage you and my clients to undertake, and help you see just how powerful they can.

I'm guessing you know the game Kerplunk? It's where you have a tower through the middle of which is a bunch of straws or sticks. On top of the sticks are marbles and the name of the game is to remove a stick turn by turn, with the aim of allowing as few marbles as possible to drop through to the bottom on your turn. The winner is the player with the fewest marbles at the end.

I have to credit friend Graeme Mills for using this visual to capture the challenge of midlife. We all have a bunch of marbles that we are trying to keep up. These range from child-care, parental support/ care, work, relationship and our own health-care demands and goals.

The thin sticks represent the habits, rituals and routines of of our day-to-day lives that keep the marbles on top. Remove one or two and that job gets tougher doesn't it? And we can end up dropping a marble (or ten).

I love this visual, which I now want to develop in my...

Sprout-sized food for thought:

In life, we pick up a number of those sticks (coping strategies and healthy habits, rituals and routines). During the good times, they serve us well, and we can manage and make progress in our goals, take care of our health and enjoy the adventure that is life.

However, we can all go through challenging periods of life, and here's the thing. Those sticks may not be up to the job of coping with the extra marbles. We can even find ourselves dropping some of those beneficial habits, (like a morning walk or time out for ourselves) to make space and time for the extra marbles (demands). Ironically we can end up leaving gaps for some marbles to fall through and for the remaining sticks to feel more pressure and strain. In this short video, I take the metaphor and develop it to illustrate how more, smaller habits and rituals (sticks) can be better at supporting the weight than a few thicker sticks (imagine lollypop sticks)

Dave

Dave Algeo, Restless Mid-Lifer'

It is never too late to get life back on your terms and have even bigger adventures!'

dave@restlessmidlifer.com