Tag Archives: weight loss strategies

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My Alexa Skills Update

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So, I’ve been pretty busy since my last Alexa Skills update! I’m now up to 25 with the certification of Recall The Date by Amazon on March 30, 2021.

Here are my 4 most recent Alexa Skills with a description of each.  Below that you’ll find a link to the updated list with the Skill Names, Descriptions, and Quick Links to find the Skill in your Alexa App.

What Should I Weigh – What Should I Weigh lets you determine in which of the 4 Weight Status Categories developed by the CDC you belong based on your height and weight. If you aren’t in the normal weight category, it calculates your normal weight range and tells you the minimum number of pounds you need to gain or lose to get within the normal range.  It will also give you nutrition and exercise tips, as well as activities you can do to burn the number of calories you specify.

Your Weight Loss Friend – Your Weight Loss Friend provides powerful tools for anyone on their journey to successful weight loss based on where they are on that journey.  Successful weight loss requires changing your eating and exercise habits.  Many experts in behavior change believe there are several Stages of Change through which a person moves as they work towards healthier habits.  Your Weight Loss Friend uses this approach to organize tools to help the user on their weight loss journey. Users can develop their Weight Loss Plan, log their Weights and Exercises, schedule Healthy Text Messages about nutrition, schedule Email Messages to help them move through the Stages of Change, learn what is a healthy weight for their height, schedule Weigh-In & Exercise Reminders, and get information about BMI, the Stages of Change, and more.

Grampa Wisdom – Grampa Wisdom is a humorous glimpse into some of the sayings and quotes as remembered by the developer of this skill, a Grampa himself. Those recollections are not always the sayings with which you may be familiar, but they are meant to be fun.

Recall The Date – Recall The Date is an easy way to log and retrieve the dates of the birthdays and anniversaries of your friends and relatives. After you have logged some, you can retrieve events for a given month or by the next number of weeks you specify.  It will also tell you whether there is an event for the day you open it, as well as when the next event you have logged will occur. These features will occur accurately for Time Zones within the United States and Canada and will be adjusted for Daylight Savings Time through 2030.

Click the link below to go to a table of my Alexa Skills or click the Download button on the right to download its PDF file:

Dr. Bob Alexa Skills March 31, 2021Download

Creating Your Weight Loss Plan – Part 4 Changing Behaviors & Keeping Resolutions

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With 2016 just a few days away, many of us are thinking about making resolutions for the New Year.  Well, resolutions are really behavior changes.  In the context of a weight loss plan, changing behaviors refers to changing what you have been routinely doing in regard to your eating and exercise routines.  You may also think of behaviors as habits.  Your weight is what it is because of your eating and exercise habits.  While your metabolism plays a significant role, your eating and exercise behaviors are the two areas that you can impact to change your weight.  You will either add new behaviors or substitute new, healthier behaviors for your current less healthy ones.  It is rare to just stop a behavior without replacing it.

Adding Behaviors

New behaviors involve adding something to your current activities, such as an exercise routine.  Often the main challenge is finding the time.  For some, it’s in the morning before the main activities of the day; for others, the evening makes more sense.

As far as exercise, the ultimate goal is spending at least 30 minutes most days of the week doing an activity of moderate intensity.  The more time you spend exercising, the more calories you will burn.  It has been recommended by the American Heart Association that from a cardiovascular health viewpoint, those 30 minutes can be expended all at once or in several blocks of at least 10 minutes each.    It makes sense to start slowly, so 10 minutes three days a week may be the perfect starting point for you.

Substituting Behaviors

These often revolve around eating behaviors.  For instance, instead of drinking sugary beverages, substitute water.  While this may sound simple, it takes planning to make sure you do it.  You’ll probably want to buy fewer sugary beverages and have them less accessible, too.  (Ideally, don’t buy any!)  You may need to put notes in your refrigerator on those sugary drinks that remind you to drink water instead.

As you create your weight loss plan, take some time and identify the behaviors you need to change and which ones you’ll tackle first.  Don’t try to change them all at once.  Make a list and change a few more every week or so.

Don’t forget to check out my website www.insightsforhealth.com where you can set up Health-e Texts to reinforce your new healthier behaviors.  To use some of these you must register as a member, but membership is free!

Your comments are welcome.

For Your Health! – Dr. Bob

Creating Your Weight Loss Plan – Part 3 Milestones & Rewards

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Just as you anticipate and prepare for barriers and obstacles to your weight loss plan, you should build in some rewards for milestones you reach during your journey.

Milestones

Milestones can be thought of as mini-goals that you must attain on your way to your ultimate goal.  If your ultimate goal is a target weight loss of 75 pounds over a 6-month period, then you can set your milestones in terms of process measures and outcome measures towards that goal.

Process Measures

In order to succeed and reach your weight loss goal you need to change habits surrounding your eating and activity (exercise).  These habits, behaviors, processes must change.  For example, you can no longer buy any food just because it tastes good at the grocery.  You must read labels and evaluate your choices.  As far as activity, you need to get on a routine of scheduled exercise.  So a milestone for eating habits may be consistently keeping a food diary or consistently reading food labels at the grocery.  As far as exercise, a milestone could be exercising for at least 30 minutes a day at least 3 days a week for at least a month.  Where possible, you will want to increase certain aspects of your new behavior to set a new milestone for yourself.  This is often done with exercise.  After a month of 30 minutes a day 3 days a week, you may want to increase that to 4 times a week.  But reward yourself as you attain each milestone.

Outcome Measures

These are usually tied to getting to a specific portion of your goal.  So, when trying to lose 75 pounds, your first milestone may be losing 10 pounds.  The next may be 25 pounds.  These milestones help you track your progress and allow you to reward yourself for the work you’ve done.  Changing behaviors isn’t easy!

Rewards

The ideal reward should be tied to the new behaviors you are undertaking.  In the case of weight loss, they certainly shouldn’t be unhealthy or off-limits foods.  So, you may get yourself some new workout clothes or exercise equipment.  For more significant milestones, a weekend getaway might be appropriate but without indulging in foods that are not on your healthy eating plan.  When you hit your ultimate goal, you’ll probably want to treat yourself to some new clothes that fit the new you.

Next time I’ll talk a little more about changing behaviors.

For Your Health! – Dr. Bob

Pros And Cons

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As you identify your motivations for changing your habits of eating and exercise in order to lose weight, listing the pros and cons of making the changes can be helpful. This process helps to validate your decision to make those lifestyle changes.

The actual process is simple. Just draw a vertical line down the middle of a sheet of paper. Then at the top of the left column write Pros and on the right, Cons. Take some time to list reasons for making the change on the left and the reasons not to make the change on the right. Most people easily come up with more reasons to change their behavior than reasons not to make the effort.

For weight loss, most people list the health benefits, improvements in appearance and increases in confidence as the main benefits they will obtain if they lose weight. The health benefits alone include decreasing the risk of heart disease, diabetes and certain kinds of cancer. In addition, weight loss decreases the stress on your knees and hips.

The negative aspects of changing one’s eating and exercise habits is that it isn’t easy and requires work. You need to take the effort to substitute your new healthier behaviors for your old unhealthy ones.

After my heart attack, finding motivation wasn’t very difficult. The pros of minimizing my chances of having a second heart attack or dying far outweighed the work necessary to change my habits. Ideally, you won’t have to have a heart attack before you change your lifestyle for the better.

Save your list of pros and cons. When you get discouraged as you work through your behavior changes, pull it out to remind yourself of the benefits you’ll get if you reach your goal.

For Your Health – Dr. Bob

Goals and Motivation – What’s In It For You!

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In preparing your Behavior Change Plan, it’s important to set a measurable, attainable goal along with a goal date.  The goal date is when you plan to reach your goal.  If you are trying to lose weight, it may be to lose 20 pounds within the next 3 months.  Someone who smokes a pack a day may set a goal of completely stopping in 6 months.  Whatever you choose, it’s best to write it down and share it with people who will support you as you make your changes. 

 

In addition to defining your goal and goal date, you should understand your motivation for making these changes.  Is it for your health?  Is it to better enjoy life with your family?  Is it to get into that bathing suit this summer?  Whatever it is, you should write it down and look at it frequently as you implement your Behavior Change Plan.

 

Please share some comments and motivations to change that you found effective in your own life.

 

Dr. Bob