Posts Tagged ‘dieting’

When stress becomes long term and chronic, the net result is a metabolism-depressing and vitality-sappy disaster. Do you have a plan to manage stress?

Creating a Strategic Plan for your Life requires a look into all the area that affects your health. Study after study proves that stress makes you vulnerable to a host of physical and mental illness and generally has a negative impact on just about every part of your body. Stress:
• Suppresses your immune system
• Can cause a heart attack or stroke
• Increases your risk of many types of cancers
• Causes delays in wound healing
• Promotes inflammation
• Cause you to gain weight
• Impairs your memory
• Causes depression
• Increases risk of diabetes
• Deteriorates sexual function
• Ages you on the inside and outside

The Good News?

Managing health deteriorating stress is easy. By simply changing your eating patterns, adding some important nutrients and minerals to your diet and practicing stress management techniques, you can minimize the damage that stress creates. Losing weight can also reduce your stress, as being obese is a physical stressor too.

by Lynette Patterson, ICF Certified Life and Health Coach

It’s hard to stand back and watch someone that you care about, a beautiful, amazing human being speak themselves out of being healthy. The “it’s too hard”, “I have no time”, “I don’t like the way it tastes”, “I’m too busy” excuses that rob them of their health and years of life on this planet.

So often, I find that people believe it is diet and exercise that will help them achieve their weight loss goals.

They’re wrong.

Well….not entirely, but as important as diet and exercise is to good health, it is just as important to have a attitude that will support you getting there.

A healthy body begins with a healthy mind and the six inches between your ears is the first thing to get into shape. As important as it is to remove junk food from your kitchen, it’s just as important to remove the junk from your mind. You can have all the support systems in place with all the right tools but if you have a negative attitude or your self-esteem is in the toilet, you won’t create long-term success.
Ready to become unstuck?

Creating the right attitude is so vitally important because thought IS behavior. The power of the mind is complete….the way in which you think about yourself, your body and your life manifests into your reality. It’s so easy for negative thoughts to turn into lack of confidence, hopelessness, despair and depression. And to comfort yourself with your favorite soul food, sit on the couch and stay stuck. It’s so easy for our views of ourselves to become self-fulfilling prophecies.

There are many things you can do to course correct. You can:
•Meditate/pray/journal each morning, focusing on your daily goals. This gives purpose to your day.
•Each night, before you sleep, envision the ultimate you, the strong, healthy, happy, successful person that you dream yourself being.
•Be in gratitude. Before more is available to you, you must first be in gratitude of what you have. Be grateful for your body NOW. Be grateful for your health NOW. Be grateful for your life NOW.
•Keep track of your thoughts. For a few days, keep a journal with you and write down the negative thoughts that come to you. You may be surprised at how often they show up. And with that awareness, you can then begin to monitor them more closely and eventually begin to automatically substitute them with positive, life affirming thoughts until your unconscious disposition is more positively focused.

Each day, the average person has 80,000 thoughts…60% of which are negative. It’s not enough that these negative thought lead to anxiety and depression, Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) actually increase the stress hormones, including cortisol, which promotes fat storage (not fair, right?). So it makes sense to believe that eliminating, or at least reducing, these negative thoughts would create a difference in your health. But how?  So glad you asked!

Let’s begin by better understanding the ANTs. You know the ANTs are in your pants when they are:

• Automatic – you don’t decide to think them and they may have become such a habit that it is hard NOT to think them
• Negative – They make you feel bad about yourself. For example, “I’m useless, I’m lazy, I’m fat, I’ll never be good at it”.
• Believable – They simply feel real and they seem to be true. You even accept them as a fact in your life. “My metabolism is slow and I’ll always be overweight. My genes are like my moms and I’ll always be this shape.”

Luckily, you CAN neutralize negative thoughts by asking these questions when they appear:

1. Is it true?
2. Can I absolutely know it is true, what facts evidence this as true?
3. How does it make me feel?
4. Who would I be without this thought?

If you will take a few moments to examine these questions, you can often realize that the negative thoughts were simply random ideas that caught you off guard. Let’s use the example of weight to see how using these questions can neutralize ANTs for you.

Negative thought – “I don’t have enough willpower to be thin.”
Ask yourself…is it true? Have there been times when you demonstrated willpower? Have you passed by dessert or chose a healthier meal? If you did it once, it is possible to do it again. And if it is possible to do it again, you can do it a third time. So the negative thought isn’t true…you HAVE demonstrated willpower in the past.

What evidence is there? Can you, without a doubt, have a doctor locate your broken willpower? Where does it reside in you? Can you pet it? Poke it? Does it have a name? Of course not, it is simply a concept that you’ve bought into, with the conclusion that you don’t have any!!

How does it make you feel? Be careful with this one. On the outside, saying that you have no willpower can make you feel vulnerable and sad, as if this “thing” that is broken inside of you is out of your control. Digging deeper, placing blame on things outside of ourselves creates a sense of resignation and resignation can take a strong hold on you. It keeps you on the couch. Keeps you stuck.

Who would I be without this thought? If you didn’t have this negative thought holding onto you, who would you be? Would you be the thin, energetic person you were meant to be? And what part of the current you would have to be changed? Would you have to have crucial conversations with people around you, would you have to be brave and say no to requests, would you need to be more organized and plan your life by design, would you have to take the steering wheel of your life and drive your own path.?
When you start to get the hang of catching these thoughts, it’s a good idea to write them down. This can help you to look over the thoughts, understand where they come from and challenge them with the questions. Even if you don’t have time or in the right space to ask the questions in that moment, take the time later.
Determination is required to build resilience and it’s a discipline you can strengthen. You CAN eliminate the ANTs in your life. Manage them powerfully and create a new, and healthy, future for yourself!!!

And when you begin to eliminate these negative thought, you develop an uncommon common sense, a bone-deep faith in your belief in your ability to cope in any situation, faith that you can figure out what to do, figure out how to do it, pick up the pieces and move on.

In today’s full-on, fast-paced, non-stop world, more and more people are relying heavily on processed foods to feed not only themselves, but their families as well. When asked, most people note convenience as a major factor in choosing “fast food,” whether it comes from a drive-thru restaurant or from the grocery store as processed, pre-packaged meals.

It is true, processed food may be convenient, especially for busy families on the run, but just HOW convenient is it, truly? In the moment, processed foods ease time crunches and offer momentary comfort or a quick energy fix. But what about hours later, when you don’t have enough energy to do anything but nap? Or when your focus is broken or the indigestion kicks in. Is processed food convenient then?

Let’s also consider what processed foods do to your body. You’ve heard the saying “garbage in, garbage out,” but with our bodies, it isn’t quite so simple. With processed food, when the “garbage goes in,” our bodies have to react in a complex manner to “rescue” you from the fake food you just consumed. Since junk food has no nutrients in it, your body must use its own precious stores of nutrients to even digest what you’ve eaten. Plus, dyes and chemicals used to flavor and preserve junk food demand a lot of extra vitamins and minerals to be utilized just to metabolize and detoxify them.  While convenient food is convenient for your busy life, it certainly isn’t convenient for your body!

Consider this…30 minutes after you consume refined sugar, your immune system is compromised by as much as 50%, causing your body to quickly call in the troops and tap into your enzyme, vitamin and mineral stores. In addition, your pancreas is hard at work gobbling up the excess sugar so that you don’t fall into a diabetic coma. Then, because your body can’t process the sugar, it is laid down as fat, unless you are willing to exercise the needed amount to burn the additional calories.  (you have to walk the length of one football field to burn the calories of one (yes, 1) M&M – how far to you have to walk to burn off the entire pack?) THAT certainly isn’t “convenient” either!

So the next time you find yourself eating donuts, potato chips, fast food or candy bars, think about all those precious enzymes, vitamins and minerals that must be pulled from the important repair processes, tissue re-growth, or bone strengthening they are designed to do just to deal with these foreign invaders called fast food. Ask yourself, just how “convenient” is that convenient food to your body, really? And how “convenient” is it when you are nodding off at your desk or lose productivity because of brain fog? Years from now, how “convenient” is the heart disease, diabetes and other horrid diseases that are certainly in your future.

Remember, you cannot save time; you can only spend it wisely. Lean protein on whole wheat with veggies and fruit on the side will most certainly be time well spent.

And I can’t end without saying…high quality meal replacements are what get me through my busy-working-mom-of-three-boys life. My favorites can be purchased here…. www.lynettepatterson.tsfl.com

There it is….just next to the cash register at every convenience store and gas station in America. Those little packages of temptation that are strategically placed to entice you to buy something other than that gallon of milk or the tank of gasoline your came in for. Isn’t it amazing how those little packages have a way of shouting “eat me”?

While an occasional indulgence doesn’t seem like a bad idea, the truth is that many times, it becomes impossible to stay away. If you are one of those people whose occasional indulgence turns into a full-on gorging, you are not alone.

The food industry does a beautiful job of combining the ingredient of these snack cakes to make us want more and more. After all, it is their job to have you eating as many of these snacks as possible and food science knows exactly how to create combinations that make you crave more. By layering sugar, fat, and sodium, these packaged cakes, doughnuts, and muffins are equivalent in calories and fat (especially the bad, artery-clogging kind) to a hamburger at a fast-food restaurant and combine a lethal mixture that doesn’t allow your brain to know when we are full. They also trigger a hormonal response to keep us craving more and more.

Next time you find yourself craving any of these quick-fix snacks, take a moment to check the nutritional label. Are you shocked at the grams of fat your see? You should be! And don’t be deceived by the “low fat” snack cakes….sugar replaces the fat and are just as unhealthy as the full fat variety.

The next time the snack cake is shouting your name, grab a piece of fruit, sugar free gelatin or a healthy fast food like a meal replacement. Meal replacement bars are very tasty, are low in calories and provide a balance of protein, fat and carbs to stabilize your blood sugar and keep craving at bay. You can buy my favorite by visiting www.lynettepatterson.tsfl.com.

And remember that eating right means that you must eat in a balanced way. Indulging in these high calorie/high fat foods do not fit into a healthy eating plan. Choose your snacks wisely and see the weight fall off and your health improve.

Have you ever sat down with a bag of chips, swearing to eat just a few and by the end of your favorite movie find that you inhaled the entire bag? Or opened the jar of peanuts to find it mostly empty and you don’t remember where they went?

This happens all too often, mindless eating that fills us with calories and harms our health. And often, it happens beyond our conscious awareness. Scary, huh?

That’s why keeping a food diary can help you learn a lot about yourself in terms of what, and how much, you eat. Tracking the food that you eat helps you avoid unconscious eating and makes you more aware of what you put in your mouth. In fact, research shows that keeping a food diary will help you not only lose weight but keep the weight off once it’s gone!

As you track your meals and snacks, pay attention to the nutritional breakdown of the foods and drinks you’ve eaten each day – including calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fat. It is important to keep track of not only what you eat but also when and how much. In your diary, write down everything you eat throughout the day and record the time of day. And don’t forget to include your beverages. Many a 1,000 calories have been consumed by drink alone. Also keep up with water intake so you can know if you are staying well hydrated, or not. You will likely be surprised how often you find yourself eating –and drinking – something during the day!

It’s also a good idea to jot down your mood at the time that you began eating. Where you stressed out, sad or even happy? Log your mood next to the food items and then start looking for patterns to emerge regarding why you are eating when you do. For example, as you track what and when you eat, you may see that you are snacking out of boredom or habit, even when you are not really hungry.

You can use any type of notebook or diary to track your food consumption. Some people use their calendar as their journal or online software with tracking tools. Remember that it doesn’t have to be anything fancy, it just need to be used routinely. The main thing is that you consciously keep track of everything that goes in your mouth.

And also remember that your weight loss program does not just consist of what, how often and how much you eat. It also requires that you make a conscious choice to change the life-long habits that got you unhealthy to begin with. Keeping a food diary to track your food intake is simply the first step in recognizing what your current eating habits are so that you can course correct as necessary. This will assist you greatly in being successful and in adopting the habits necessary to maintain your amazingly healthy new body for the rest of your life.

I’ve caught myself in this trap, touting the statistics and reminding everyone who will listen that obesity is the leading killer in the US. I speak about the dangers of obesity and how being overweight shortens life and lengthens disease. But I’ve been thinking….is this the right focus? Is talking about death enough to motivate people to seek life? I’m beginning to believe no.

Just tonight I had a conversation with a young father with many years of life ahead of him. I listened to him as he spoke with great knowledge of how diabetes ravages the body, of how being obese will cause him to die many years before is necessary. And, how even this knowing doesn’t stop him from his need to stop for fast food, drink a soda or eat the food his co-workers bring in. This amazingly smart young man knows that the path he is walking is slippery, yet he finds difficulty in making wiser choices and beats himself up for his lack of willpower.
So…is discussing death enough to make us want to choose life? After all, the #1 cause of death is death. Everyone will die. It’s a certainty.

Let me ask a better question…..What is the #1 cause of life?

What do you live for? Your family? Career? Being on stage? Helping others? Dancing? Singing in the shower? Walking in the rain? Making love? Hanging out with friends? Being a contribution to society? Giving back?
These, I think, are the leading causes of a life. The “why’s” that can motivate us to stay on this earth longer and in a stage of good health and abundant energy. The true motivation to exercise, eat well, manage stress, sleep and live life by design.

The next time you are tempted to drive thru and receive a bag of nutritional pollution, I urge you to focus on LIFE and ask yourself this question…..how do I want to live? If the answer to that question is a desire to feel sluggish, run-down and tired, unfocused, unsure and unhealthy, flabby, foggy and fatigued then continue to stick your hand out that window and consume that fast food. Continue to eat ice cream, candy bars and pizza. Fill up on potato chips, soft drinks and mystery meats.

If, instead, you want to feel energized, focused, productive and creative,  you want to be fit and trim and like what you see in the mirror. If you simply want to discover your full potential, then your diet will consist of lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and plenty of lean protein sources (fish, beans), and of course water as your beverage of choice.

As a society, let’s remove the fear of death from the equation and stop focusing on trying to avoid, fix, heal or cure illness. Instead, let’s focus on life and the choices we can so easily make each day that will allow us to enjoy outrageous health during our abundant life on this planet.

Food not only satisfies our stomach, it can also satisfy our feelings. That’s when the cycle of emotional eating takes over. Emotional eating can lead to eating too much food, especially high-calorie, fatty foods. Eating to suppress negative feelings can sabotage your efforts to lose weight.

Here are the top five emotional eating triggers:

1. Anger
2. Hopelessness
3. Lack of Control
4. Feeling Unappreciated
5. Boredom

How do you regain control of your eating habits?

• Keep a food journal and rank your hunger from 1-10 every time you begin eating something. By keeping this journal, you will be aware of how often you are eating, and how hungry you feel when you begin eating. Similarly, getting to know your triggers will help combat your feelings associated with foods. In your food journal, write what you are thinking about. It may help determine what your mood is and make you more aware of your emotional eating habits.
• Feel free to share this journal with your Health Coach as well; it will help build a mutual understanding of where and when you may need extra support.
• Make a list of things you enjoy doing and carry the list with you. When you feel the urge to eat, take out the list and begin doing an enjoyable activity instead.
• Stay away from your normal comfort foods and instead indulge in a pickle, celery sticks or a cup of bouillon. The clue is to keep healthy snacks around the house for when you have trouble overcoming your trigger points.

Are you one of the millions of Americans who looked into a mirror on December 31 and made a solemn promise to yourself that this was the year you were going to attack the battle of the bulge – and win?  Now that Spring is here, how are you doing with your pledge?  Are you still going strong and on your way to a sexier you, or – like all the times before – has your New Year’s resolution been discarded like one of your kids’ brand-new Christmas toys?

If your answer caused you to hang your head in defeat, keep reading, because you’re not alone.  The average person fails with their New Year’s resolutions simply because resolutions don’t work.  While you’re filled with boundless optimism of what the new year represents, without a specific plan to guide you to your weight-loss success, you will fail every time! The good news is that you can still go back to the SMART way to get your weight-loss back on track while it’s still early in the year – and make a life-changing decision today that will stick with you for the rest of your life.

Specific – The first thing you need to do is to get clear on exactly what you hope to accomplish with your goal.  Think like a newspaper reporter writing the story of the century.  Ask questions and then answer them: Who?  What?  Where? Which? Why?  Answer these questions and you’ll be on the right track.

Measurable – If you can’t measure your progress, how will you know if you’re still on the right track or you’ve been derailed without realizing it?  Numbers mean everything, so instead of saying something like, “I want to be skinny enough that I no longer have to have to wear a table cloth instead of a dress,” go with a number that you can easily quantify. 15 pounds or 50 – you’ll know if you’re headed in the right direction and when you get there.

Attainable – If your starting weight is 350 or 400 pounds, don’t set an initial goal of 125 pounds.  Start small, perhaps with something like 25 or even 50 pounds.  It’s a bite-sized, yet attainable goal that can be reached within a reasonable period of time.  Once you hit that goal, set the bar even higher, and keep doing it until you get where you’re going.

Realistic – How bad do you want it?  If you swing for the fences with a goal of losing 150 or 200 pounds, a failure can really set you back.  And it might so thoroughly demoralize you that you give up altogether.  Instead of trying to get there all at once, take small baby steps that will eventually lead to bigger and better things.

Time-Bound – A time frame to reach your goal is a critical component to your success or failure.  So set a goal that you think you can reach in a time-frame that makes sense.  For instance, giving yourself 10 weeks to lose 25 or 30 pounds is fairly aggressive, yet lets you know how long you have to reach your goal.  The good news is that if you reach your goal sooner than you expected, you can set your personal bar even higher.  At the same time, if you don’t quite make it, you can revise it downward.  The good news is you’ll be taking proactive steps to reaching your goals.

To take this plan to the next level and help ensure your success, there are six healthy habits you need to employ in reaching these goals.

1. Start Out Right Every Day – You may be tempted to skip breakfast with the mistaken idea that you really don’t need those calories to start your day.  Don’t hamstring your weight loss.  Eating a good healthy breakfast will kick start your metabolism and will awaken your brain.  A high-protein breakfast consisting of eggs will do wonders for you.  Scrambled, hard-boiled, or in omelet form doesn’t really matter.  If you like, mix it up a little bit from one day to the next.

2. Get Off the Couch – Not only will it do your body a world of good, but exercise will help you feel better about your overall level of health.  Before you get too carried away and decide to run a marathon race, check with your doctor to design a reasonable exercise regimen that makes sense for the shape you’re in, and takes into consideration any health issues you may have.

3. Don’t Go It Alone – Just as you should never go swimming all by yourself, you should have a support network in place to help keep you motivated to succeed.  A health coach can do that by encouraging you when you need it, but can also give you a swift kick in the seat of your pants if you show signs of giving up prematurely.  A friend, a spouse, or a co-worker can also be helpful.  Spread the news about what you’re trying to do.  They can help to motivate you as you get closer to the success you’re striving for – and they might even follow your lead and make positive changes in their own life.

4. Eat Regularly – Small, regular meals are easier to digest and will actually help you to lose weight even more quickly.  Other benefits include being able to stabilize your blood sugar, among other important health benefits.

5. Be Yourself – Your plan needs to be custom-tailored to you, your goals, and your needs.  Cookie cutter weight loss plans don’t usually work because we’re all different.  Recognize your unique qualities and embrace them.  Don’t forget that what works well for someone else may not work for you, so don’t be afraid to modify your plan to meet your needs and your lifestyle.

6. Keep Score – At first you may look at your bathroom scale with a cross between contempt and fear, but you’re going to have to quantify your progress.  While your pants will fit less snugly as you lose weight, it’s not an effective method of knowing just what you’ve accomplished.  Numbers don’t lie.  They’ll tell you in no uncertain terms whether or not your weight loss plan is succeeding.  If it’s not, you can redouble your efforts to reach your goals.

Losing weight can be a challenging, individual effort that many undertake – and very few people actually succeed at for any length of time.  You won’t get there overnight, but you can reach all of your goals.  A systematic, step-by-step process will get you to your ideal weight.

Unfortunately, some people just don’t succeed with their goals as quickly as they would like. Instead of giving up, analyze the reasons behind why you may not be reaching your goals as quickly as you might hope.  Don’t be surprised if the only answer you can come up with is, “Beats the heck out of me.”  Sometimes a professional evaluation or another set of eyes or ears can mean the difference between failure and success.  Then again, you may just need a second opinion to verify that you’re on the right track.  Whatever the case, point your web browser towards http://www.createmyhealthyweight.com.  It will help you to answer all the questions you have and reach your weight loss goals more quickly.

Do it today.  You’ll be glad you did.