Our 7 Essential Elements™ for Sustainable Living

The Institute of Lifestyle & Weight Management (ILWM) provides an innovative solution to the problem of overweight and obesity and associated conditions through its system of 7 Essential Elements™ for Sustainable Living. Together, the 7 Essential Elements™ create a powerful combination of positive health practices that empower individuals to manage their weight, change their eating, exercise and lifestyle habits and live healthier lives.

The basic framework underpinning our approach to weight management is based on the assumption that our lives are too dynamic, too busy, too hectic, and the world is too complex to rely on the solutions of yesterday. The 7 Essential Elements™ for Sustainable Living is an innovative approach to living well in today’s world.

Medical Checkups
Our extensive Medical Checkups ensure proper management of each member’s personal health program. Overweight and obesity are often associated with hypertension, diabetes and other disease—conditions that can only be detected and treated through physical exams and cutting-edge diagnostic tests. Checkups also give members regular opportunities to talk privately with their physician. Each member will receive a comprehensive initial assessment-which includes a stress test-and weekly follow-up consultations.

New Directions
New Directions is a radically new way of thinking, an essential element that helps ILWM members to find a unique focal point for their lives, one that was previously missing. New Directions helps you adapt to unfolding circumstances, bounce back from adverse life events, and live a more sustainable life. By finding a new direction and aligning a lifestyle and weight management program around it, you can make the large-scale changes needed to reach the desired future you dream about.

Psychological Solutions
Psychological Solutions gives participants the tools to manage his or her environment physically, mentally, and socially through face-to-face meetings with a doctoral level clinical psychologist with training in a wide variety of theoretical orientations and proficiency in addressing a multitude of emotional and behavioral matters. Consultations with our psychologist (and subsequent follow ups) serve as key drivers of program customization and are critical elements to the program’s success.

Exercise Offerings
Exercise helps keep our heart healthy and our body in optimal physical condition. The benefits of a sound exercise program, if consistently adhered to, are unmistakable. Each member will follow an exercise prescription designed specifically for them based on current health conditions. Extensive one-on-one personal training is included in the program.

Nutritional Consults
Our approach to proper nutrition teaches not only what we should eat, but provides daily practices and tools that encourage us to do so: mind-set modifications, nutritious menus, cooking techniques, time management tips, and even supermarket shopping tips. Our state-of-the-art demonstration kitchen is the ideal environment in which to learn about and internalize healthy dietary practices. Residential clients are encouraged to meet with the ILWM dietitian on a daily basis while on site.

Educational Workshops
Our Educational approach plays a vital role in the effectiveness of consistent and meaningful behavior modification. ILWM empowers members through classes, lectures, and one-on-one consultations to give them the self confidence and knowledge to make informed healthcare decisions and to take greater control of their weight and their lives.

The Seventh Element: Sustainable Changes
Sustainable Changes is an extremely powerful behavioral program because it is a sound eclectic model that is specifically designed for to meet the challenges we face everyday. Eclectic because no single theory explains, predicts for, or completely helps everybody. It also allows room for new methods to quickly be incorporated into the model as new data emerges and unfolding events alter our way of life. Upon arrival, our staff psychologist conducts an intake assessment to determine the optimal mix of behavioral classes, workshops, and counseling that would best benefit the participant; the assessment is based on the personal characteristics, personal history, experiences, needs, and objectives of the participant. The psychologist’s recommendations will then be combined with the participant’s choices of classes and workshops and ILWM’s core educational offerings to develop a curriculum that is like a finely-stitched patchwork quilt. The participant is regularly assessed to account for progress made, and the curriculum is modified accordingly throughout the duration of the program. ILWM’s Progress Feedback Loop ensures that the optimal experiences are delivered at the appropriate time, maximizing the impact of the ILWM Residential experience. Because this unique curriculum draws on a broad range of perspectives and theories, and is tailored specifically to the member’s needs, the likelihood of its effectiveness once the member has left ILWM is much higher than if it were a “cookie-cutter” program.

Sustainable Changes Core Service Offerings

Decision-Making Training & Application
Each participant is introduced to a unique decision model—the O.O.D.A. Loop—which was developed by an Air Force Jet Fighter Pilot. Originally developed for maneuver warfare, this decision model help participants better understand why they make bad lifestyle decisions and how to make better ones in a fast-moving and often bewildering world.

Resilience Training and Mind-Set Development
Development of a Resilient Mindset will help individual cope with life events—like Black Swans—that often disrupt our lives and wreck our health and wellness initiatives and efforts. As participants develop a stress-hardiness and become more resilient they strengthen their chances of bouncing back and adapting when hit with Black Swans.

Unified Concept Development w. Focus & Direction Alignment
Each participant will be pushed to uncover their guiding principle or unified concept—also called their Schwerpunkt. Finding our Schwerpunkt requires us to explore our passions, talents and needs and articulate a simple guiding concept that reflects the intersection of these three key life attributes. Once we find our Schwerpunkt, we can align our health and wellness initiatives around this focal point and work constantly to make decisions consistent with it.

Balanced Thinking Education & Skill-Set Development
Life is full of opposing forces. We often have needs and wants that are in conflict with our environment and with ourselves. These conflicts cause us to make ineffective compromises that we often are either not aware we have made. Balanced Thinking allows us identify these opposing forces, make more effective compromises and accordingly make better decisions.

Mindfulness-Based Training, Applications & Skill-Sets
An overwhelming majority of us spend a great deal of our lives either brooding on something that happened to us or something we did to someone else in the past or worried and stressed out about what the future will bring whether it is five minutes or five years from now. Our focus on the past or on the present prevents us from living in the present moment. Applying mindfulness in our lives helps us to stay in the present moment with total awareness. This important practice allows us to more aware of our hunger thus reducing the chances of overeating; it helps us to avoid mindless eating; it calms our bodies and alleviates stress; it helps us to breathe and live better. Each day brings forth more and more data to support the use of mindfulness in our lives.

Mind-Body & Program Alignment
Once we know what is guiding us, it becomes increasingly important that we put all of our efforts and resources behind achieving those life objectives. Truly effective living requires us to align our minds and bodies to what we want to achieve in life. Our weight loss and health regimens, therefore, must be aligned with our guiding focus to be truly effective and sustainable. Any weight loss program that is not aligned with life goals will not be sustainable.