Welcome to March's Slim Down

Changing your gear

Research shows that the pace of life is getting faster. Compared to 20 years ago, people walk faster, work faster, have sex faster, take holidays faster and even get through relationships faster while consuming fast food! Of course, the possibilities to up the pace of life are endless. You can now go to the other side of the world and back for a meeting in a day – something that would have taken months a century ago. Perhaps, even as you read this, your washing is being done, your water’s being heated, the central heating is doing its job, the CD is playing music, the dishwasher is on, the robot vacuum cleaning the house, those internet purchases are on their way, and you are halfway though a webcam chat to friends in the USA.

Fred Pearce has calculated that in Roman times you would have needed around 6,000 slaves to live the way you do today. So, yes, life does give you more opportunities to speed everything up, to be more ‘efficient’, and to cram more in. But the secret to a nice life, to protect you from a rat-race pressured existence, is to control the pace of things. Change gear regularly. Take control of the pace of life

You set the pace

It seems, though, that many people do not feel in control. They feel the stresses of work and life – the pace of demand is just too great. It is true that these pressures are bad for your health and well-being – the combination of felt demand and low control is a premature killer. Research by Professor Twenge in the USA shows that in the last 40 years people have become more ‘external’ in their locus of control – feeling the world is running them, instead of them operating on the world. This means that we are becoming more and more the victims of our world instead of making it work for us. The more external we become the less we are likely to get from life and from our labours. So take control. Go slow and fast. Change gear.

Slow slow quick quick slow

NDD research has shown that that how people perceive their 'pace of life' depends upon their FITness - how behaviourally flexible and integrated their thinking patterns are. So if you're stressed by life or by work, remember that the differences between people in their perceptions of the pace of life is far greater than the differences between jobs or situations. It is the individual - not anything objective in the world - that creates the feelings. Telling someone who feels under pressure to think differently is unlikely to work, however. Perhaps that is why many psychological therapies and self-help techniques are not effective. (It is a bit like pulling yourself up with your own bootstraps!). But the NDD approach is different. Doing Something Different - behaving in a different way, or breaking a habit, for example - takes a fresh approach. Doing Something Different creates a different set of thoughts and cognitions. New experiences help you change gear and get what you want. So if you want to change the pressures you feel, change your behavioural gears and your life will change too. Try slow, try fast, try different speeds for all that you do. Change gear with the changing situations and you will be more effective and happier!

Anti-depressant drugs are not the answer to depression

One of the most consistent findings in our research in FIT Science is that psychologically FITter people are less anxious and depressed . The Do Something Different techniques of the NDD help people reduce their depression and anxiety. We believe that changing habits and behaviour is the key to changing negative thought patterns (we even think that it might be a better approach than CBT, although we have not tested this). When you remember that a third of all sick days off work are due to depression - and that drugs have side effects - there would be real benefits to tackling the problems with behavioural techniques.

So it was interesting to see the research of Professor Kirsch and colleagues from Hull University all over the media this week. They studied the effectiveness of the main class of anti-depressant drugs known as SSRIs (seroxat, prozac etc). About 16 million prescriptions were written for these drugs in the UK last year. Kirsch's research looked at all drug trials submitted to the US Food & Drug Administration, not just the ones the drug companies allowed to be published in the medical journals. Reading the original article in the medical journal made me wonder why the drugs are considered to be so useful. To my mind it seemed very clear that there was no evidence that the drugs had any benefit (over placebos) for almost all of those with depression. At best there was a small benefit for those with major depressive symptoms, but it certainly made me wonder how the drug companies can make the claims they do and that people (and GPs) seem to take what is said at face value. Perhaps it's time to Do Something Different for depression.

From the forum

An uplift in mood is what many No Diet Dieters experience. Recently, Laura wrote:

I think the concept of the diet is fantastic and even after just completing Phase 1, I felt fantastic.

This is a sentiment that many others echo. It's the 'feeling fantastic' that really excites and enthuses people. Graham summed it up with his forum post:

It must be true that all of us who have started out doing NDD did so to lose weight, physical body weight, that is. There is no doubt that the program has that effect, with variations, of course, as we are all as different as we are the same. When we think we are not losing enough body weight we can think of the other weights we are losing:

• the weight of unhappiness
• the weight of being bored
• the weight of making wrong assumptions about other people
• the weight of blaming other people for what we are responsible for
• the weight of our fears.

We hope the shedding of unwanted feelings - as well as the pounds - spurs you on as you set your own pace to head into Spring.

The No Diet Diet Way Team