Teekshana Smith interviews Pete Cohen, noted Life Coach and Willpower Expert, on behalf of PatientTalk.Org.  Find out more about weight loss, sensible drinking and giving up smoking.

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG)Hello Pete Cohen and thank you so much for joining us on PatientTalk.Org.  So to start, what does a life coach do?

COHEN Well I think, I’m not sure if all life coaches do but as far as what I do, definitely trying to help people sort their lives out, overcome their fears, break their habits, help them loss weight, help people basically feel good.

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG)How did you start being a life coach?

COHEN Well, I’ve always been interested in people.  I was a personal trainer for many years and it didn’t take me very long to realise that people wanted to change their body but often people had some very interesting habits and ways of thinking that made me then want to understand a little bit more about behaviour and why some people are more successful than others.

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG)What sort of qualification do people need to be a life coach?

COHEN I think there are so many different organisations that are running life coaching courses that people can do.  I personally have done a couple of those but my background is in psychology so that’s my training and I’m also trained in an area called NLP which some people know, it’s called neuro-linguistic programming.  It’s all about how we think, how we can change the way we think, how we can be more successful, more productive.

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG) When you are taking about changing the way you think is there such a thing as sensible drinking and if so, what is it?

COHEN Sensible drinking?

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG)Mmm

COHEN Well obviously January is a time for some many people, especially this January people have decided to not drink for the month.  I can’t remember what it is called but sensible drinking, I don’t know what that means, and sensible seems like a strange word.  I think the challenge with anything in life is to do things in moderation.  I say everything in moderation including moderation but if people can do that then they feel like they are in control as appose to alcohol, food or substances controlling them.

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG)Many people especially smokers struggle to quit so what type of tips would you give to a smoker?

COHEN Well, when it comes to changing anything whether it’s stopping smoking, losing weight, the most important element without a shadow of a doubt is will power and self-control and it’s something that a lot of people just don’t know what it is.  If you ask people to say what are the most enduring qualities in a human being most people will say things like laughter, fun, kindness, respect, honesty but most people will say their downfall is their lack of self-control, lack of will power so when it comes to stopping smoking, people often start again because they’ve run out of will power.  So learning how to tap into your powers of will power and increase them is the challenges that anyone faces when it comes to breaking a habit like stopping smoking.

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG)When you are taking about leading a healthy lifestyle, people always say that, do you think that is a bit of fad which does not take into account the unique nature of each person’s metabolism?

COHEN Yes, I think often these things are “fadical” if that’s a word, you know especially January is a huge time for people to get on the band wagon of changing something but most people don’t enjoy what they are changing they haven’t created a big enough ‘why’ to change in the first place so they will invariably will go back to what they want.  Not actually what they want but what they know and again this might be very interesting to people listening to this to understand that, we’ve all got habits but you might think the habit that you have is good or bad but to your brain it’s not good or bad it’s just what you know.  We do what we know until sometimes we know better and sometimes when we know better we do better but doing better often means getting some advice or some support from other people.

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG)New Year’s resolutions, everyone hopes for the best on the first of January do you think they are a good idea or do you think you are setting yourself up for a fall by putting an exact date on it?

COHEN Yes, as far as often what makes someone set a resolution in the first place is guilt, thet fact that they have indulged over Christmas and they feel this guilt to actually do something about it, everyone else is doing it but you are setting yourself up, in many cases, for a big fall.  When it comes to resolutions for a far as weight loss is concerned I’d always say you don’t want a resolution you want a revolution.  You need to revolutionise your relationship with food with exercise.  You need to learn and understand how to tap into your will power.  So the statistics that we have from research that we did show that 93% of people who start a New Year’s resolution will have given up by the end of January.  So yes, New Year’s resolutions, why wait until the first of January why now wait until the first of December or the first of May or whenever you want to start.  It’s just following through which often people struggle to do.

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG)Can you tell us a little bit about what a will power program would be and how people could get involved in it.

COHEN From my experience working with working with people from so many walks of life, from Olympic athletes to high flying business executives to everyday people just like you and me, I have put something together , it’s very simple it’s just an ebook, it’s a free book and people can download that for absolutely nothing and the whole idea is just to empower people, to give them a different perspective of what it really takes to change because we all want to change at least one thing in our life and for me the difference that makes the difference is will power.  So people can get that from one of my websites, so they just go to www.weightlossguru.com you’ll see an icon that says free will power ebook, they can download it.  It’s not many pages but it makes sense and if people follow it, it will work,

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG)What can people do to best benefit their health?

COHEN Well as far as health is concerned, there are lots of things that impact our health; stress, environment, food that we eat and food is often probably the most important and I think the element that is of most interest is sugar and the affect that sugar has on body and it actually affects our will power but when we talk about sugar we are not just talking about things that are in cakes, biscuits, chocolates, ice cream but also starchy foods like rice, bread, potatoes, pasta which often people eat in excess in their diet.  These foods haven’t been around for thousands of years, actually that have been they have been around for about 10,000 years in some cases but they are not great for us.  They inflame the body we secrete need a lot of insulin, that’s why a lot of people are overweight because of eating too many sugary foods.  So if someone was going to start a New Year’s resolution or revolution, one of the best changes they could make to their diet, to not only be slimmer, fitter and healthier would be to cut down the amount of sugar and starchy food they eat in their diet.

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG)Do you think that is quite difficult or are there easy alternatives out there?

COHEN It is quite difficult if you go outside and you want to eat something, most places you go the things you are going to be bombarded with is sugar.  What’s happened with food is we’ve stripped a lot of fat out of food because we think that makes us fat which actually isn’t really the case.  We’ve stripped out fat and we’ve replaced with sugar so people think that sugar is fat free, well if I showed you a pound of sugar, yes its fat free but not when you eat it, you just convert it into fat.  Sugar is a big problem in the world and people want to be healthier they should really learn to limit it or cut it down.  It’s not always easy but it’s definitely worth it.

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG)So it’s looking for those hidden sugars as well in meals rather than the obvious ones.

COHEN Absolutely.

SMITH (PATIENTTALK.ORG)Well, thank you so much for joining us today on PatientTalk.Org, Pete.

COHEN Thank you.