Anna Manning's Ideal Weight Success

Obese? The Devil Made Me Do It!!

2012-01-30T09:56:00.000-08:00

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth and populated the Earth with broccoli, cauliflower and spinach, green and yellow and red vegetables of all kinds, so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.

Then using God's great gifts, Satan created Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and Krispy Creme Donuts. And Satan said, "You want chocolate with that?"

And Man said, "Yes!" and Woman said, "And as long as you're at it, add some sprinkles." And they gained 10 pounds And Satan smiled.

And God created the healthful yogurt that Woman might keep the figure that Man found so fair. And Satan brought forth white flour from the wheat, sugar from the cane and he combined them. And Woman went from size 6 to size 14.

So God said, "Try my fresh green salad." And Satan presented Thousand-Island Dressing, buttery croutons and garlic toast on the side. And Man and Woman unfastened their belts following the repast.

God then said, "I have sent you heart- healthy vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them." And Satan brought forth deep fried fish and chicken-fried steak so big it needed its own platter And Man gained more weight and his cholesterol went through the roof.

God then created a light, fluffy white cake, named it "Angel Food Cake," and said, "It is good." Satan then created chocolate cake and named it "Devil's Food."

God then brought forth running shoes so that His children might lose those extra pounds. And Satan gave cable TV with a remote control so Man would not have to toil changing the channels. And Man and Woman laughed and cried before the flickering blue light and gained pounds.

Then God brought forth the potato, naturally low in fat and brimming with nutrition. And Satan peeled off the healthful skin and sliced the starchy center in to chips and deep-fried them. And Man gained pounds.

God then gave lean beef so that Man might consume fewer calories and still satisfy his appetite. And Satan created McDonald's and its 99-cent double cheeseburger, and then said, "You want fries with that?" And Man replied, "Yes! And super size them!" And Satan said, "It is good." And Man went into cardiac arrest.

God sighed and created quadruple bypass surgery.

Then Satan created HMOs.

Author Unknown

I found this parody a number of years ago and thought it worth sharing. Enjoy!

What happened to December?

2012-01-28T16:55:00.000-08:00

I know you won't believe this, but it's the most creative excuse - made up story - for not blogging since November! Santa got stuck in my chimney and I have been working with him to get a few extra pounds off. Well, he's doing fine, and I'm baaack. More later. I promise!

This is SCARY!

2011-11-29T04:46:00.001-08:00

It's not terrorism that will bring this country down, it's our weight. This chart is from the Gallup Poll folks.

The latest on the streets is that possible legislation is being introduced to protect the obese from being discriminated against in job hirings. This is not right. Our businesses are so overburdened with health care costs, they are unable to compete with overseas companies.

Is anyone as nervous about our country's future as I am?

That bottom number is over 153 BILLION dollars; that's with a B, folks. Billions!

Two Tablespoons of Tomato Paste

2011-11-17T08:23:00.001-08:00

There is a big battle going on in Congress over thenutritional value of the two tablespoons of tomato paste that tops the pizzasfed to our children in public schools. The big companies behind themanufacturing of these nasty little discs of pizza dough and cheese grease areactually lobbying for the pizza's nutritional value!!! And Congress isresisting enacting any laws to require that healthy food be served in schools.Why? The lobbyists of course. The cost of providing healthy food to school kidsis prohibitive. But, that doesn't matter, not even in the slightest, becauseit's simply not a battle any worthwhile parent should fight.

Here is my analogy, and I admit a rather bad one, but itmakes the point. You are a parent of four children and they have to walk, say,a mile to school. The road that they have to cross is dangerous, and you'vebeen fighting for a crossing light or crossing guard for a long time. Now,let's say one of your children gets hit by a car. Do you get angry at the cityfor not providing a safe crossing? Do you get angry at the school for notproviding a crossing guard? And do you continue to fight for either of thoseall the while allowing your other three children to continue to walk to school?Or do you do what's best for your children by taking them to school, by neverallowing them to cross that dangerous road to begin with?

So, what does that analogy have to do with lunches? Well,rather than fight for nutritious food, prepare your children's lunches every day,and, if you can, deliver those lunches just prior to the lunch period. And Ihope this goes with having to write it - NEVER put in processed foods likeLunchables or other equally nasty food. If it's processed, DO NOT feed it toyour children, especially before they reach the age of six. Why? By feedingthem only wholesome, nutritious food in their early years, you will have createda "taste" for the good stuff, a habit of eating highly nutritiousfood, and, hopefully, an aversion for the bad stuff.

In the long run, the lack of nutrition is even moredangerous than that road. A lack of proper nutrition prevents the brain fromdeveloping, and when the brain doesn't work well, school work becomesdifficult, and your child could be labeled as slow. Good food is NOT found onany children's menu in restaurants; in fact, good food is rarely found inrestaurants at all. Good food is found in your produce section, NOT in thefreezer section. Good food doesn't have ingredients that you can't pronounce,and good food is low in calories and high in nutrition.

Solution vs. Problem

Be part of the solution, folks - NOT part of the problem.

Oh, and you can boycott those large companies that arelobbying for the status quo on school lunches. During an NPR interview on this topic, I did hear that the contract withSchwann Foods brings in about 45 billion dollars for them. Gee, I guess thatmakes it okay to ruin the health of our kids...NOT.

Don't bother trying to change the world; change only yourworld, and begin today.

Fiber! It's time to Have the TALK

2011-11-08T15:35:00.000-08:00

Fiber! Everyone needs to know about it; no one wants to talkabout it. Well, it's time to have that "talk."

If you don't have a bowel movement at least once per day,you are NOT taking out the garbage. Let's talk in metaphors, okay? When was thelast time you put a chicken carcass in the trash? How long did it take to getyour attention? Not long! Why? Because of the bacteria associated with rottingfood. Have you ever thought about the difference between animal proteins and,say, good, old-fashioned vegetables and fruits? Do you ever get nervous aboutleaving an apple on the counter all day? What about a package of hamburgermeat? Okay, I know I'm rambling, but the point is you need fiber. If you'reconcerned with "it" sitting on the counter for too long, then what'sthe difference when "it" sits in your gut too long? The bacteriastill builds up, and it's no safer that the bacteria that builds up while"it" sits on the counter!

Fiber: It's safe, it's plentiful, it fills you up, it hasmore vitamins and minerals associated with the "container" you eat toget it. By "container" I mean the fruit or the vegetable you eat toget it.

Before you get all "anti-vegetarian" on me, I amnot promoting veganism. I am promoting fiber. I am promoting daily trashdumping.

Take your garbage out, and do NOT use a laxative to do it. Alaxative is like traveling around in a wheelchair. Your muscles will atrophyfrom lack of use, and eventually you will not be able to "walk" atall. Fiber does so much more than "take the garbage out." It cleansthe toxins in the blood: the toxins that can and will lead to all sorts of problems,including cancer, arthritis, and a host of other inflammatory diseases.

It starts with an internal stink - not taking your garbageout - and it could easily end with colon cancer. The choice is yours!

And now for a "plug" for my favorite fiber: SuperSeed by Garden of Life. I mix it with cold water, orange juice, or I put it inmy morning "green" smoothie. I take my garbage out every day,sometime twice, sometimes more. I don't want rotting garbage in my body.

And I talk about this with ALL my clients. There are nosacred cows when it comes to weight loss. I talk about it ALL.

A Few Tips for Easy Weight Loss

2011-10-14T08:13:00.000-07:00

While I was surfingthrough the Swanson Vitamins website looking for my favorite fiber supplement,I found this succinct, says-it-all advice. My comments are in parenthesis.

A Few Tips for Easier Weight Loss

Drink water to increase metabolism.One study showed that metabolic rate increased in participants by as much as30% after drinking approximately 17 ounces of water. (This is especially trueif the water is very cold. The body uses energy to warm up the water.)
Snack on a handful of almonds. They’refilling, healthy and tasty! They aren’t exactly low in calories, though; sodon’t eat more than 10 or 15 at one time. (Just about any protein will help curb hunger,because it takes more energy to digest protein than it does to digestcarbohydrates. Not only that, but proteins don't trigger the release of insulinlike carbohydrates do. Less insulin, less fat creation. See my blog on Insulin: Both a Life Saver and a Killer, March 27, 2010

Use mental imagery to boost yourwillpower. In addition to identifying why you want to lose weight, visualize apicture of the reason in your head and focus on it often throughout the day. (Whenwe visualize what we want, we are more likely to see opportunities to make thatvision a reality. When we visualize ourselves thin and healthy, we are morelikely to choose healthy and nutritional meals. In our minds, I hope, webelieve that thin, healthy people eat this way. We will also see other thinpeople and begin to pay attention to what they do and what they eat and,hopefully, begin to emulate them.)
Turn off the TV at dinnertime.Studies show that undistracted eating means you’ll eat less. (Eat consciously!Always pay attention to what you eat, while you eat. An ancient Buddhist saying- chop wood, carry water - means to be present in what you do. If you ever wantto eat in front of the TV, which I sometimes do, take only a normal portionedmeal or a small portion of your favorite snack, never a whole bag or a largebowl. It will be gone in no time, along with your dream of achieving your idealweight.)

Don’t fall for the lure of crashdieting. Losing large amounts of weight all at once causes you to lose muscle,not fat, and the pounds quickly return. Make healthy eating a way of life andthe pounds will disappear slowly but steadily. (Anyone who is a serial dieterknows this - calorie restricted diets are no more than quick, short-term fixes.And the more you yo-yo diet, the greater the damage to your body and to yourmetabolism.)

Eat foods with plenty of fiber likewhole grain breads, beans and fruits with the skin. Be sure to drink them with lotsof water, as it makes the fiber swell much like a sponge in water, thus makingyou feel more full. (Not only is fiberan essential part of any food, it is critical in the prevention of many cancersand other diet related illnesses. If you are constipated, think about this: allthat food is rotting in your gut and in your intestines. It's like not takingout the garbage in your home for weeks. It stinks and the bacteria can bedeadly. You should have at least one bowel-movement each day, every day. If youdon't, then you are not "taking out your garbage!"

Epigenetics: An Excuse or a Warning? Your Choice!

2011-10-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

I just finishedreading an article in the January 2010 issue of Time magazine: Why Genes Aren’t Destiny. (Yep, a littlebehind on my reading.) I’ve understood the concept of epigenetics for a while,which means that we may have the genes for a specific disease, such as obesity,but that gene could remain dormant in the right environment. This articleexplored the work of Dr. Lars Olov Bygren, who wondered what effects feast andfamine had on the offspring of the families that lived in Norrbotten, a remotevillage in northern Sweden.

When the harvest was bad in Norrbotten, people starved; whenthe harvest was good, people gorged themselves. Bygren’s research showed that“kids who went from normal eating to gluttony in a single season” producedoffspring who lived far shorter lives – approximately six years shorter thanthose kids who endured a scarce harvest.

Reading those findings reminded me of a book I'd boughtyears ago: The 120-Year Diet. The premiseof this book is based on a diet high in nutrition and low in calories. Dr. RoyWalford's research indicated that we would live much longer by beingunderweight. The secret, of course, for his premise to work is to consume foodthat is truly high in nutrition. Because of mass production of our fruits andvegetables, the nutrition content is lower than it’s ever been. It seems thenthat by attempting to grow more food, we are actually getting less nutrition.

In many ways, we’ve lost sight of what is important for usto live: food, water, and oxygen. We seem to be more focused on our cell phonesand the latest flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Not that those thingsaren’t important, but perhaps we should pay just a little more attention to thenutritional value of what we ingest. Not only do our lives depend on it, butour kids’ lives do too.

Kirstie Alley Proves It!

2011-10-03T11:58:00.000-07:00

Kirstie Alley proves what happens when you quit paying attention AND what happens when you use a diet program without dealing with the emotional issues.

Wow! Kirstie Alley's dramatic weight loss
Kirstie Alley | Photo Credits: Michael Buckner/Getty ImagesTV Guide

Kirstie Alley, who has struggled with yo-yo weight gain and loss for years, is showing off a body 10 sizes smaller after a lot of hard work. The 60-year-old actress strutted the runway during New York Fashion Week -- 100 pounds slimmer! – at her designer friend Zang Toi’s show. Inspired by her physically demanding "Dancing With the Stars" stint, Alley has gone from a size 14 to a size 4.

Before her appearance on the show, Alley said she visualized one day fitting in a size 4, and now she does. Today, Alley's confidence is contagious, and she says she feels much more comfortable in her body. "I feel like I'm back in my element," Alley told Entertainment Tonight. "I honestly didn't even realize what I looked like." Her hard-won metamorphosis is not tempting her to take things further. No plastic surgery for the former “Cheers" star. "I haven't had plastic surgery but here's the reason: People do plastic surgery to make you look younger," she said. "I don't think it makes you look younger. I think it can make you look weirder."

Once 228 pounds, Alley saw the scale go up and down a lot and got to the point when she stopped looking at it altogether. After a 15-month hiatus from weighing herself, she finally stepped on a scale. What she saw, she said, was shocking."I started screaming," she told People in 2009. "It said 228 lbs., which is my highest weight ever. I was so much more disgusting than I thought!" At that point, Alley had already lost 75 pounds during her tenure as a spokesperson for Jenny Craig, then gained that weight (and more) back.

Any bets on how long she keeps it off? Anyone?

Stop the Presses: Another Study Done!

2011-09-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

This breaking news just in from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: U.S. adults not just eating more, but more often.

Over the past 30 years U.S. adults have been eating larger portions and eating more often, according to a new study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers.

The findings help illustrate that how Americans are eating contributes to the country’s obesity epidemic.

“First, the food industry started ‘super sizing’ our portions, then snacking occasions increased and we were convinced we needed to drink constantly to be hydrated,” said Barry Popkin, Ph.D., the study’s senior author and W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

“This study shows how this epidemic has crept up on us. The negative changes in diet, activity and obesity continue and are leading to explosions in health-care costs and are leading us to become a less healthy society,” said Popkin, a member of the Carolina Population Center.

The study is believed to be the first to examine the combined contribution of changes in three key factors (portion sizes, food energy density and eating frequency) on people’s total calorie consumption. The findings appear in the June 2011 issue of the journal PLoS Medicine.

As if another study is going to cure obesity or change the basic formula - excess calories leads to obesity. It's time to stop studying the issue and begin working on it. When I read this latest study, I had a vision of all these Ph.D. types sitting in a huge auditorium, like during the ancient time when a patient was studied, all staring down at fat people like they were some sort of slide on a microscope. I will admit that the findings are spot on, but there is nothing new or profound here. We eat too much and we snack too often.

We can analyze this until we are blue in the face - I know I was - blue in the face - but that was because I was a Smurf at a Halloween contest. It's time for those suffering from the eat-all-you-can-buffet syndrome to STOP! Think about the consequences, think about the wasted dollars on empty calories, think about the legacy left to the children.

Don't let the smart food industry marketers continue to lead us into temptation! Get back to real normal portions sizes and stay there. Your waist line will thank you!

Why Track Calories?

2011-09-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

How many of you hate tracking what you eat? Yeah, my hand is raised, too. The article from John Hopkins Medicine below might change your mind. Think of tracking calories as tracking your money. As much as you don't want to overspend, paying no attention to your purchases could easily sink you deeply in debt. Not paying attention to the amount of calories we consume could easily move us into obesity.

Now, more than ever, we need to track our calorie intake. Why? Because we have become a nation of super-sizers. We no longer "know" what a normal portion really is. We no longer know how many calories we should consume to maintain a healthy weight. The only way to get back on track is to track what we eat and when.

Why track when we eat? Well, that's where we learn our triggers: those emotional times we eat when we're not really hungry.

How Keeping a Food Diary Can Help You Lose Weight

Looking for a powerful set of weight-loss tools? Search no further than the pen and paper in your desk drawer. Writing down everything you eat each day in a food diary can help lead you to weight-loss success.

Tracking the food you eat in a food diary compels you to pay closer attention to your diet, including what foods you choose, portion size, how frequently you eat, the emotions that impact your hunger and cravings and what leads you to stray from your healthy eating plan. And having this information in hand in a food diary can help you spot eating patterns … and reach your weight-loss goals.

The Evidence: Keeping a food diary may nearly double weight loss, according to a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. In the study, 1,685 overweight or obese adults (average age 55) who were taking medication for hypertension and/or high cholesterol were asked to keep food diaries as part of a weight-loss program. After six months, the participants lost an average of 13 lbs, but those who kept food diaries six to seven days a week lost nearly twice as much as those who didn't.

How to get started: Select any kind of paper or notebook for your food diary. Index cards work well because they are easy to carry around in your pocket or purse.

In your food diary, designate spaces for the following information for each meal: date, meal, time and place, food and beverages consumed and mood prior to eating. Write in your food diary immediately after eating -- don't rely on your memory.

When you make an entry into your food diary, break it down into its components. For example, if you have a hamburger, enter the patty, bun and any toppings or sauces. Next to each item, include the portion size. Be as specific and accurate as possible, using a food scale, measuring cup or measuring spoons whenever you can. Research has found that when people guess at their portion sizes, they tend to substantially underestimate how much they've eaten. (Not surprisingly, they also tend to overestimate how much exercise they do.) To determine calorie counts, check the food label or consult a calorie guide.

It's crucial to be honest. Nobody else has to see your food diary, and you have nothing to gain (except extra pounds) if you cheat. So don't forget to include BLTs -- bites, licks and tastes. Also remember to write down all of the beverages you drink. A glass of wine, a cafe latte or a can of soda can all contribute significant numbers to daily calorie counts.

After you calculate the amount of calories you consume each day, check it against your ideal calorie intake. Now you know the formula for weight gain. When calories consumed are greater than calories burned, they get stored as fat.

Packing Up the Pounds!

2011-08-29T07:30:00.000-07:00

Nothing like a loooong vacation to help a person to relax. It's been awhile since I last wrote, and I wished I could say I was on vacation, but I was not. I've been living in a rather large, two-story house on a little over three acres since 2003. These last two years have been rough; two major surgeries and a few other life-altering events made me realize that it was time to downsize. I've moved a lot in my life - being a military brat prepared me well for packing and moving. But over the years, I've accumulated a lot, mostly because I've been upsizing each home for quite some time.

This time, however, I downsized by over 50% in house size and my yard looks like a postage stamp compared to the envelope I had grown accustomed to. I had a huge vegetable garden, a 400 foot long driveway, well over 100 oak trees, and countless number of mountain laurels. I fed the deer, the birds, the squirrels, and whatever else moved out there. So, I put the house on the market, thinking it would be at least a year before I sold it. I guess the universe knew how tired I was, so it sent buyers in two months. And that's when the "diet-from-hell" began.

Moving from a size 16 house to a size 6 cottage is like trying to fit a size 16 butt into a size 6 corset: very painful. I likened it to having to go on a starvation diet to lose 50 pounds in two months. Doable, but very painful and life-threatening, albeit only emotionally. This move was surely the hardest move I've ever had to endure, but it has been the most cathartic by far. This is what I learned:

We don't pay attention to what we accumulate as long as we can stuff it somewhere.
We no longer "see" the stuff packed away and soon forget we have it.
We never know how much we've packed on in our lives until something bad happens.

Packing up my house, knowing I would have no place to put a lot of my stuff, made me really, and I mean really, look at why I was hanging on to such things as a pattern for a poet's blouse I'd cut out but never sewed together, which I had for over 15 years, a twelve-place setting for dinnerware - when a six-place set was enough - a collection of 100 plastic coin cups from Las Vegas - I walked to each and every casino on the strip collecting two cups from each casino - enough plastic plates, cups, forks, spoons, and knives for 75 people, and .... well, you get the picture. Let is suffice to say, I made about $1,200 on the yard sale and still have stuff left over.

What's my point, you ask? Well, I think we pack on body fat in the same manner; we simply don't pay attention to the scales, or the increase in clothing size, or the arthritis, or the loss of interest in physical activity UNTIL something bad happens: diabetes, gout, high-blood pressure, a heart-attack, or even cancer.

Body fat harbors the inflammatory hormone C-Reactive Protein, which is responsible for inflammatory diseases, such as the ones I listed above. And if that's not scary enough, guess what else excess body fat in linked to? Dementia! Yes, a study by the Center for Disease Control found that going into middle age with a body mass index of 25 or higher increases your chance of getting dementia by 35%! And if you go into middle age with a body mass index greater than 29, your chance of getting dementia increases to 74%.

Now is the time to look at what you are accumulating, not just in your home, but around your middle too. I've heard all the excuses for not losing weight. What if you, instead, looked at how you could lose weight? Always focus on the goal - never the obstacles.

"The man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can't are both right." Henry Ford

One small change today, can make a huge difference in your tomorrows.

A Root Canal and Wine - Bad Combination

2011-05-28T15:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes our opinions should be kept to ourselves, especially when we do so in person. I found out first hand that some people, probably more than I realize, feel that people should be entitled to health insurance regardless of how they live their lives. I'm not so sure that I agree. And I base my opinion on the fact that our health care costs are killing our small businesses, and they are placing a huge burden on the larger companies, and that the vast majority of those costs are related to life style diseases. That is, diseases that are directly related to how people live their lives. Smoking and its related diseases are the number one killer in the United States. Obesity and its related illnesses are a close second. The two greatest killers are costing this country hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Annually! That's like every year!

So, the person I was sharing my opinion with told me that I was living in a small, compassionless world. Compassionless? Enabling people to continue smoking and eating themselves to death by throwing money at the results of their lifestyles vs. requiring them to take responsibility for themselves, to me, is compassionless. Ah, but he wasn't that mad yet. I guess he thought he had me by insulting me personally. I was okay with that, because that usually means he had no more ammunition for the topic itself. So far, what we had was a difference of opinions.

But...when I likened health insurance to, say, auto insurance or homeowners insurance, and said, "So, do you think that people who continue to have wrecks or drive drunk should keep their auto insurance? Or should homeowners who smoke and cause multiple fires in their home or otherwise cause damage to their homes also keep their policies?" Thinking I'm on a role, I just had to continue, especially after seeing the stunned look on his face. "Wow, so would you be willing to have your auto or home insurance skyrocket, so that these people who take advantage of their policies can continue to keep them?"

Well, I guess that's when I crossed the line. He turned red in the face, and then stood up and said, "I will not sit here and listen to this garbage!" The he left. And so did my friend.

I did feel bad for being so adamant about my position. Even if he was just as adamant about his position, it was not important enough for me to be right, to embarrass him and my friend. Not one to use excuses, but I feel compelled to offer two. One: never drink wine right after a root canal. Yes, silly me. I had just left the dentist's office and went directly to a wine bar to meet a friend. Two: Realize that not everyone is an ideal weight coach and a Smoking and Neural Association (SNAP) Facilitator who researches topics related to cost of lifestyle diseases on a daily basis.

Some people, like this man I argued with, truly care, but they just get overwhelmed by the issues, and throwing money at problems really seems like the easiest thing to do. But! It is the wrong thing to do. We need to make changes to prevent and reverse the problems, not just try to fix the symptoms of those problems.

And that's all I have to say about that for now. I will keep my opinions to my blog. I still feel bad, but I haven't changed my position. As for my friend? I haven't seen her since. No, it wasn't worth arguing the point at all.

Obesity is Contagious!

2011-04-08T07:54:00.000-07:00

In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, the findings reported that obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus. It said that when a person gains weight, friends tend to gain weight too. This study involved over 12,000 people, and it followed them for 32 years. It went on to report that when a friend (not even a close friend) became obese, the person's chances of also becoming obese increased by 57 percent. When a close friend became obese, the probability rose to over 150%!

Okay, before you put on a mask or avoid all your overweight friends, let me say that it is NOT like a virus, a physical germ. It is more like a bonding thing. When our friends change, we want to continue to identify with them, and that seems to mean, be like them. We eat like them, we go to the same restaurants as them - many of those restaurants are likely to be of the fast food variety - and we begin to look like them. In other words, we validate them. Just as we want to be validated by our friends, we do likewise for them. It's a belongingness thing. We want to belong to this friend and to have him or her belong to us, and to do that, we must in some way be like them. To use an old cliché, Birds of a Feather, Flock Together.

I can attest to the contagion of how my friends eat. When I go out to restaurants with a friend, and he or she orders a high-calorie, high-fat, large meal, I sometimes feel emotionally compelled to do the same. It scares me that I am so easily persuaded, but after reading this article, I realized that the act of my friend ordering the meal gave me permission to do the same, maybe even an incentive. I suppose there was a voice in my head that said, "If you order a small meal, will this person feel bad? Will this person feel like I'm making a statement about what he or she ordered? I don't want to be different, so maybe I should order a similar meal." Then my Dad's voice would boom out from the recesses of my brain, "So, Anna, if all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you want to do that too!" Thanks, Dad! No I wouldn't.

The researchers also said that the results may be due to the fact that as the friend gains weight, we no longer see him or her as being obese. The person's size become familiar, acceptable. Once we become comfortable with a new behavior or a new way of thinking or living, we are less apt to resist it. So, if by hanging out with a close friend who is obese you become comfortable with obesity, you are highly likely (more than 150%!) to become obese too. For same sex siblings, the probability of also becoming obese is 50%. To find the article, Google "NY Times Obesity is Contagious."

The good news is that the same effect seemed to occur when a close friend was losing weight. Now, that's a good thing! So, what can you do? Make a pact with your friends to lose weight together. And by the way, I offer group coaching for that very purpose.

Hypnosis for Weight Loss: Does it Work?

2011-03-26T18:38:00.000-07:00

I've seen several ads lately about hypnosis, and based on my dismal success with it, I decided to do a little research - I have to confess, I tried hypnosis many years ago because I had gained over twenty pounds in a few short years, and it seemed that no matter what I did, I couldn't get it off . What better place to start than with the Mayo Clinic's website. Here's what Mayo Clinic nutritionist Katherine Zeratsky reported:

Hypnosis may help you shed a few extra pounds when it's used along with other weight-loss methods, such as diet and exercise. But there isn't enough solid scientific evidence about weight-loss hypnosis to recommend for or against it.

Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness, usually achieved with the help of a hypnotherapist using verbal repetition and mental images. When you're under hypnosis, your attention is highly focused and you're more responsive to suggestions, including behavior changes that can help you lose weight. After proper instruction, you can also try self-hypnosis for weight loss. Weight-loss hypnosis is often combined with cognitive behavioral therapy.

Through the years, numerous studies have evaluated the use of weight-loss hypnosis. Most found positive but modest weight-loss results, with an average weight loss of about 6 pounds (2.72 kilograms). But the quality of some of these studies has been questioned, making it hard to determine the effectiveness of weight-loss hypnosis.

If you've tried diet and exercise but are still struggling to meet your weight-loss goal, you may want to try weight-loss hypnosis. Just remember that there are no guaranteed results.

I had spent almost $1200 on hypnosis, which included the purchase of audio tapes and this strange pair of glasses that emitted flashing lights while I listened to the audios. I had lost about ten pounds, but it didn't stay off. Without digging deeper to find out what the underlying programming was behind my overeating, hypnosis turned out to be just another "diet" program destined for failure.

What caused me to eat too much? Several factors surfaced, actually. Number one, I had a husband who would put more food on my plate, after I served the amount I wanted - it was almost as if he wanted me to gain weight! In reality, though, he was controlling and needed to be "in charge." (His mother was the same way.) I would have preferred that he be in charge of doing some work around the house, rather than just watch football while I did everything, or maybe take charge of paying the bills, but he seem to take pleasure in simply putting more food on my plate, despite my initially weak protests. I did eventually assert myself and told him in no uncertain terms, "Do NOT put food on my plate, ever." Well, he didn't, but I don't have a husband anymore, either.

Another factor which had lead to overeating was a very long and stressful commute to work - fifty miles each way. As for the commute, I began listening to books on tape and soon found myself looking forward to the drive each day. Arriving home relaxed took a lot of pressure off, and my habit of grabbing a bag of chips as soon as got home began to wane, and it helped not having someone ask as soon as I walked in the door, "What's for dinner?" I discovered that another of my hidden programs was that when someone else was hungry, I ate too, even when I was not.

The number of strategies available for "re-wiring" sabotaging eating habits are as plentiful and varied as Texas wildflowers after a wet winter. Once I learned to re-habit myself, my weight returned to normal, and for the most part, stayed there.

hCG Hormone Diet

2011-03-08T13:39:00.000-08:00

I am so confused!!! I just read an article on the hCG diet. Apparently, people are injecting themselves with a pregnancy hormone derived from the urine of pregnant women and expecting the weight to melt off. Here is where I am confused. How many skinny pregnant women have you seen? How many of them complain about the difficulty in losing the "baby-weight"?

Oh, I guess I should have read a bit more of the article. What you have to do is eat only about 500 calories a day, and THEN the weight drops. 500 calories a day, huh? Well, that's equivalent to about a half of a Schlotzsky's sandwich, no potato chips, and unsweetened iced tea. Hey, if you can live on a half-sandwich every day, I say go for it. However, does anyone give any thought to what will happen when the dieter goes back to a regular meal routine, especially after a long period of starving the body? Well, the answer is easy. It will return to the original weight and then some, just like with all calorie restricted diets. If people don't change how they use food, they won't change the number on the scale, not permanently.

I also read where some people are paying up to $1000 for a consult to get on this diet. Fascinating what people will do to lose weight, albeit temporarily, isn't it?

Bariatric Surgery?

2011-02-13T10:47:00.000-08:00

While doing research on bariatric surgeries this morning, I found a short video on the WebMD site interviewing several post-operative patients and Julie Schwartz, the registered dietician at the Emory Bariatric Center. I wanted to find out what the mortality rate was for such surgeries and the percent of the patients who actually achieve their ideal weight. I'd read some time back that very few bariatric patients ever achieve normal weight, and I was shocked. I'd also read that the mortality, or death, rate was rather high.

I knew very little about this type of surgery until a close writer friend had it done several years ago. He was probably 150 pounds overweight, and he'd had a lot of trouble walking. His bones just couldn't take the weight. (Read my blog on The Sinking Balcony - May 16, 2010). Anyway, he died within a few days after the surgery, and he was missed terribly. Not long after his death, I decided to become an Ideal Weight Coach.

I'd known for years that diets don't work, because they don't address the real issue behind the food binging - emotional immaturity. What this means is that, for some, there are certain feelings that we desperately need distraction from: feelings that we never became comfortable with, feelings that never matured. For men, it may be feelings of shame. For women, it may be feelings of fear or insecurity. For either sex, it could be feelings of happiness. (Read my blog on Happiness Can Cause Weight Gain - January 30, 2011) Regardless, overindulging in food or drink is almost always a reaction to an uncomfortable feeling.

Many of my clients say, "I just love food!" But when I ask them about what happened right before the binging began, I discovered that there was ALWAYS an uncomfortable situation that they did not know how to deal with. ALWAYS. Yes, I know that there are exceptions to every "rule," but I haven't found an acceptable excuse yet for binging.

So, back to the video, which I found quite enlightening! Every patient interviewed agreed with one premise: the surgery was NOT a magic bullet. Each and every one of them had to make major changes in their behavior. Schwartz even stated that unless people make the necessary behavior changes, they are not likely to lose much weight, if any, with the lap band procedure. With the bypass procedure, patients would lose weight, but, again, without the necessary behavior changes, they would likely gain it all back. With or without surgery, people who want to achieve their ideal weight AND keep it off, MUST make changes to their behaviors.

And that, my friends, led me to this question: If you have to make behavioral changes anyway, why not work on those changes first, before undergoing a $30,000 plus surgery that has a ten percent complication rate and a death rate - within thirty days of surgery - of about one in three-hundred. (I read one article that stated the mortality rate as one in two-hundred and another one as one in four-hundred.)

Coaching works without the surgery - although some of my clients have said that coaching can be painful. Coaching works when the client is willing to look at what's triggering the binging behavior, and that's the painful part. The good news is that once old programming is discovered, new programming can be implemented immediately. Simple? Yes. Easy? No, but with a coach who understands, you can and will achieve your ideal weight.

Kids Need Your Love, Not more Food!

2011-02-11T17:36:00.000-08:00

I was fortunate to not have been an overweight child, but based on what I've seen with today's teens, I probably should have been. What I am noticing today, that was prevalent even when I was a teen, is that many teens are just plain lonely. They are turning to cheap, fast food to squelch their hunger for parental attention. I, too, was a lonely child: both parents caught up with work, with me being treated as little more than a pet to be fed.

What is different today? Fast food, microwave ovens, the internet, and much more stress! Teens are still children. Why parents feels that their teens should act like adults is beyond me. It's almost like parents have decided that their parental responsibilities end when their kids enter puberty. The opposite is true. Kids need their parents more than ever to give them love and provide them with guidance.

It's at this time of their lives that they are exploring their boundaries, and this is the time when parents need to be present more than ever.If your child is putting on weight, pay attention! This is a sign that he or she needs your love and attention more than ever. Stop and think about why you had this child. What your teen needs more than anything is your attention and your love. They don't need criticism or shame. His or her future depends on you.

Don't let your children down. Be there for them.

Happiness Can Cause Weight Gain!

2011-01-30T17:58:00.000-08:00

Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But in fact, many people who binge-eat do so because they are uncomfortable with the feeling of happiness. In the past, feeling happy may have been closely followed by disappointment or sadness. We may not realize it, but a history of repeated disappointments could have set us up to avoid happiness anytime it surfaced. Binge-eating is one common way to distract ourselves from any feelings that we have subconsciously learned to avoid. For some, the feeling of conflict may be the trigger; for others, it could be anger.

The next time you find yourself eating when you are not hungry, think about the event that happened or the feeling that surfaced right before the binging. Oh, and I define bingeing as eating more than your body needs to maintain your ideal weight (based on the Center for Disease Control’s body mass index) or eating when you are not hungry.

What feeling might you be trying to avoid?

McDonald's Unhappy Meal

2011-01-21T21:02:00.000-08:00

As a subscriber to The New York Times online, I was shocked when I read the following article, Not So Happy Meals, from the December 20, 2010 edition.

It's standard marketing: pitch your product to the most easily persuadable. Or as Roy Bergold, a former McDonald's head of advertising, argued once: "Go after kids." McDonald's had done just that with the Happy Meal, a choice of burgers, nuggets, fries and other specialties with a must-have toy.

According to a recent consumer survey, 37 percent of kids rank McDonald's as the top fast-food restaurant. This is nearly four times as many as those favoring the No. 2 chain, Subway. The key is heavy advertising to children - Happy meals account for about 10 percent of McDonald's ad spending - and , of course, the toys.

A Happy Meal of cheeseburger with fries and soda packs 640 calories, more than half the U.S.D.A. daily allowance for a sedentary child aged 4 to 8, as well as about half the allotment of fat. McDonald's has added healthier choices to its menu - things like mild and Apple Dippers with low-fat caramel dip. But a study of 44 McDonald's outlets from the Center for Science in the Public Interest found that French fries were automatically put in the bag 93 percent of the time.

The Happy Meal is up for some well-deserved scrutiny. Last week a mom from Sacramento filed a class-action suit supported by the center to make McDonald's stop using toys as bait to lure children. Last month, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a measure requiring that meals sold with toys meet a minimum standard of nutrition.

McDonald's chief executive, Jim Skinner, has pushed back at what he calls the "food police," arguing that these actions seek to deprive families of choice. A company spokesperson told us, "We are proud of our Happy Meals and intend to vigorously defend our brand, our reputation and our food."

Parents are responsible for their children's diet. And they certainly could do a better job: almost 17 percent of American children are obese, three times as many as in the 1970s. But it would be easier for parents to do their job if they didn't have to push back against the relentless tide of marketing aimed at their children.

Parents, there are many, many creative ways to say "no." The easiest and most efficient way goes like this:

Child: Mom, can we go to McDonald's for dinner?
Mom: No.
Child: But Mom....
Mom: I love you, dear, and that's why I'm saying no. How about Subway? We could split a sandwich, and with the money we save, you could get a new coloring book.

When saying "no," if you offer an option, you're not only changing the subject, you're changing your child's mindset too. And one more thing: never, never attempt to shame your child by saying something stupid. Just say no, and follow your answer with "I love you." When your child writes his or her memoir in twenty or thirty years, you'll be glad you did!

Water, Water Everywhere!!!

2011-01-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE, AND NARY A DROP I DRINK!

Does this describe your relationship to water? Tsk, tsk, if so. The body’s need for water is second only to air, and food comes in a not-all-that-close third!

More often than we realize, we may eat because we think we’re hungry, but in reality, we could simply be thirsty. With the incredible amount of stress and information overload so many of us are bombarded with, it’s no wonder the brain gets confused. Then again, maybe it gets confused because it’s dehydrated. If we can’t think straight when we get overtired, hungry, or thirsty…and it’s our brain that does our thinking…get the connection yet?

If you are trying to lose weight, water is your very best friend. Actually, it’s your very best friend even if you’re not trying to lose weight. Here’s an analogy: Would you rinse your clean dishes in Diet Coke? How about your car? Better yet, what do you think your clothes would look like if the final rinse was with coffee? Not a pretty sight, is it? Our bodies need rinsing too.

When we burn calories, waste matter is created. We need pure, fresh, water to move those toxins out of our system. And we need to consume one ounce for every two pounds of body weight every day. So, if you weigh 150 pounds, you need to drink 75 ounces of water. Attempting to rinse with anything but pure, clean water is no different than rinsing your clothes in anything but pure, clean water.

Ever notice the stains in the armpits of white t-shirts? I’ll bet you that person is a heavy coffee or soda drinker! Whatever you eat or drink that does not get “rinsed” out will secrete out of your skin.

BUSTED!!!

How To Handle the Newly Skinny Body

2010-12-06T13:29:00.000-08:00

When I read the article on How to Handle New Riches in the San Antonio Express-News last Friday, I thought that the concepts applied to the newly skinny too. Studies have shown that people who come into money quickly, usually lose it almost as fast and end up in worse financial condition. Scam artists show up in droves, ready to bilk them of their windfall. The newly rich often do not know how to handle a drastic life change.

Isn’t that the way it is with dieting too? Except in reverse, of course. People who lose a lot of weight and who are not emotionally prepared to be slender – that is, the emotional reasons underlying the weight gain are never addressed – will gain all the weight back and usually a few pounds more. Each and every one of my clients had one thing in common: they had lost a great deal of weight and had gained it back, not once but several times before they hired me. And, as it is with the lifestyle change for the newly rich, if the newly skinny are not confident with their new body, they, too, can easily fall prey to the attention of undesirable people. For several of my clients, that was the reason they had put the weight back on: to keep "predators" away.

So how does someone deal with being newly skinny? First and foremost, fall in love with your new body. Every chance you get, look at yourself, really look at yourself, in a full-length mirror, preferably in clothing that makes you feel attractive. If you feel guilty or shameful in any way, realize that guilt and shame are always gifts from someone else. We are not born with either of those feelings, and we cannot develop them on our own. The freedom from guilt and shame is through forgiveness: forgiveness of the person who gave us shame or guilt and forgiveness of ourselves for whatever event precipitated the feeling. The more confident we feel about our new body, the less likely we are to succumb to insincere flattery from potentially dangerous people. As the confidence within builds, the protective armor becomes unnecessary.

The very best way to lose large amounts of weight is s-l-o-w-l-y: no more than one to two pounds per week. In reality, it’s not the weight we need to lose; it’s the emotional pain and/or the childhood programming underlying the need to overeat that we need to shed. Once we release the emotional pain and/or rewrite our childhood programming, the weight comes off easily. Excess weight is a symptom, not a problem. Correct the problem and the symptom disappears almost like magic.

Which reminds me of a joke…a man goes to the doctor and says, “Doctor, every time I hit my elbow like this, it hurts.” The man has a small hammer and hits his elbow with it to show the doctor, and then he asks, “What can I do to make it stop hurting?” The doctor looks at him with a very serious and somber face, and says, “There is only one cure, Mr. Smith.” He pauses for full effect, and once he feels that he has Mr. Smith’s full attention, he says, “Don’t hit your elbow like that anymore.”

If every time you drink alcohol before eating, you overeat, don’t have the drink before eating. If every time your sister calls, you have an argument with her, and you devour a bag of M&Ms, don’t argue with her. If every time you push yourself to exhaustion, you eat a bag of cookies or an entire cake, don’t push yourself to exhaustion. The key is to find out what the triggers are, develop a healthy strategy for dealing with each of the issues, and use food as a friend, not as a punishment. I say “punishment,” because if what we do leads to misery, such as obesity and its associated diseases, I would call that punishment. Wouldn’t you? A friend would not have allowed you to gain all that weight. Let food be your best friend!

Somebody Stole Thanksgiving!

2010-12-05T20:36:00.000-08:00

Where did November go? And what happened to Thanksgiving? It used to be celebrated between Halloween and Christmas, but now it seems that people are wearing Santa outfits to Halloween parties, goblins have been replaced by elves, candy handed out to trick-or-treaters is now wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper, and the only thing we’re thankful for is a day off from work. Keen marketers have stolen our holiday! There is no money to be made in being thankful, is there?

Not that long ago, Thanksgiving was a time to reflect on all that we are thankful for: a roof over our heads, food on the table, and love from our family. But the advertising on TV and the flyers in our newspapers, which are packed with sales for the latest and greatest, have left us with the feeling that we don’t have enough.

Like others, I got caught up in the frenzy for more stuff this year. I drooled over the Black Friday sales, and before I went to bed on Thanksgiving Day, I circled all the items I wanted to buy and set the alarm for 3:30 AM. The alarm did not ring, and I woke up late, feeling like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when the hot air balloon left without her. Instead of rushing to get dressed and hope that some of the things I wanted were left, I poured a cup of coffee and sat in my living room looking out the window. That’s when it dawned on me: I had so much to be thankful for. At that moment, I realized that many of us have grown to believe if we had this TV or that handbag, we’d be happier. But we never are, not for long anyway.

Our eating habits have also lost Thanksgiving; we don’t take the time to reflect on what we eat and to give thanks for having food. We’ve super-sized our appetites, just like our shopping habits, but instead of being healthy and happy, we have become overweight and miserable. We are deep in debt for buying what we don’t need, and we are packed in unhealthy fat for eating more food than our bodies could use.

Perhaps it’s time to slow down and reflect on all that we have before we make another purchase, reflect on how many calories we’ve eaten before we take another bite, and reflect on the stress created by our burgeoning debt and bulging waistlines, neither of which adds to the quality of life.

Why Is It So Hard?

2010-10-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

A group of friends and I went to lunch last week. The topic of discussion was Why is losing weight so simple yet so hard? It’s simple in that losing weight is easy when you follow a simple formula: eat less and exercise more. When calories consumed are greater than calories expended or burned, weight gain is the result. It’s also simple when you begin the process slowly. I suppose you could compare it to this analogy: you will be more likely to catch a rabbit if you sneak up on it slowly. Our eating habits are like that rabbit – the faster you try to change them, the more resistant they become to being changed. For behavior changes to become permanent, they need to be made slowly.

So why is it so hard? I think it’s because we try to change too quickly or because we don’t address the underlying reason behind the weight gain. If we use food for emotional comfort, and we don’t uncover the cause of our discomfort, it will be very hard to give up what we think makes us feel better. Food seemingly calms us when we are feeling discomfort, but it is never a solution. The solution is to find the “burr in our saddle” and remove it. Each time we “feel” the need to reach for food when we are clearly not hungry, we need to stop, look at the situation, and ask ourselves this question: What feeling am I resisting?

Here are a couple of triggers to think about:

Social anxiety – perhaps you are in a room with people you don’t know. Eating gives you something to do besides talking or listening. Something to think about: others feel the same way. Possible solution: just listen to the conversations around you without feeling the need to say anything. Just be present.
Frustration – bored at work, feeling stuck, want to be somewhere else. Eating gives you an excuse to take a break. Perhaps you feel that just sitting there and thinking – or resting your brain - might make you look like you’re lazy. Possible solution: have affirmation cards handy and read them.

What is one thing you could give up today that would make a world of difference in your quest for a thinner you? How about giving up all sugary sodas? How about giving up the idea that you have to finish everything on your plate?

Remember that every journey to the attainment of a great goal begins with one small step.

And Now For a Short Commercial Break...

2010-10-09T13:39:00.000-07:00

OBESITY HURTS

– EMOTIONALLY AND PHYSICALLY –

Not just you. It hurts your family and friends too.

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO ANYMORE

NO MORE DIETS! NO DIET PILLS! NO SURGERY! NO FOOD PURCHASES!

Lose all the weight you want by changing only one thing. Yes, only one thing.

YOUR UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS ABOUT FOOD!

• How would you feel if you could finally achieve your ideal weight without giving up the foods you love?
• How would you feel if you could lose 50, 60, or even 100 pounds without resorting to dangerous surgery, expensive diet pills, or starvation diets?
• How would you feel if you could eat a normal portioned meal without wanting seconds?
• How much money would you save in food bills? How much money would you save in doctor bills?
• How much more productive would you be at work if you could think more clearly? How much more quickly could you get that promotion you’ve been wanting?
• How much better would you sleep if you did not have weight-related sleep apnea? How would your spouse feel about that?

I WORK WITH BELIEFS SYSTEMS, NOT FAD DIETS, NOT SURGICAL PROCEDURES, NOT QUICK WEIGHT LOSS SCHEMES, AND NOT ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL PROGRAMS.

WHY IS IT WE NEVER HAVE TIME TO DO THE JOB RIGHT THE FIRST TIME, BUT WE ALWAYS HAVE TIME TO DO IT OVER?

DO IT RIGHT THIS TIME

Call me to set up a complimentary 30 minute coaching session.

830-964-4037 Anna Manning, M.B.A., M.S. Ideal Weight Coach

Long-term Coaching rates, Teleclasses, Group Coaching, and Ideal Weight Workshops specifically designed for employees and patients are available.

For more details, go to www.idealweightcoach.com

Or call me for more information! 830-964-4037

You’ll be glad you did.

An Open Letter to Mom & Dad

2010-10-03T07:08:00.000-07:00

Dear Mom & Dad,

I know that you can’t get along, and that’s why you got separated, but I still need both of you to be my parents. Being a parent does not mean driving through McDonald’s for dinner, nor does it mean ordering pizza because you’re too tired to cook, or because you don’t have time. That food is not good for me. I know I say that’s what I want, but the only reason you give in is because you want that kind of food too. If I said I wanted to drink alcohol, would you let me? No, you wouldn’t, because it’s bad for me. Well, so is high-fat, low-nutrition food. I am growing. My brain is growing, and without proper nutrition, it won’t grow well.

Dad, do you remember that time you planted a tomato seedling in the backyard? It didn’t get a lot of sun, nor did it get fertilized. It didn’t grow very well, did it? And it didn’t produce any tomatoes either. Well, I’m like a young seedling. I need proper care. I also remember that you later read a book about how to care for plants. Do you think you could read a book on how to care for me?

Mom, you said that you separated from Dad because he was never there for us. What about me? Now that you’re dating, you’re never there for me. Don’t I deserve your love and attention? Don’t I deserve to be fed high-nutrition food? Don’t I deserve help with my homework? Don’t I deserve to be listened to without being yelled at?

Mom and Dad, I’m being bullied at school because I’m overweight. I’m overweight because you are not helping me make good choices about food, and those choices need to all be good choices too. If given a choice between pizza or a salad, I’ll going to choose pizza. Remove the bad stuff as a choice. Pizza, hamburgers, sodas and other low-nutrition, high sugar/fat foods are not good choices at all for me while I’m this young. It could lead to an imbalance in the neurotransmitters in my brain and an addiction to that type of food.

Neither of you have to be perfect, but at least give me a fighting chance to succeed in this world by making sure that I am protected from things that are bad for me. I’m too young for PG-13 movies; I’m too young for bad nutrition; and I’m too young to be left alone in front of the TV or the computer for hours at a time. I’m also too young to have to tell you how to raise me.

Mom & Dad, I love you. Please love me back by taking better care of me. If you don’t know how, go find out.

Your Loving Child,

(Insert your son’s or daughter’s name here.)

Find the Reason for the Alarm!

2010-09-26T06:21:00.000-07:00

When we eat to distract ourselves from whatever is bothering us, we are practicing denial, pure and simple. We do not want to deal with the problem. If a fire alarm wakes us up, what should we do? Find the fire or silence the alarm and go back to sleep? The answer is obvious to me. Find the fire and put it out before it kills us. With emotional eating, acknowledging the source of the upset, even if we can’t do anything about it, will help us at least stop the automatic behavior, and perhaps this acknowledgment will help us make that first step in changing the situation.

Sometime back in the 70’s, separation therapy become popular. The foundation of this therapy was to separate ourselves into our adult self, our feeling self and our acting out self. The adult self’s role is to monitor the feeling self and the acting out self, so that feelings could be fully felt, but not acted upon, except in cases where it was appropriate. All feelings are appropriate, but not all feelings should be acted out. What gets most of us stuck in immature behaviors is that we act out feelings before even understanding those feelings. That is, our feeling self never really gets to fully feel, because we act on stuffing those feelings before we’ve had a chance to allow our feelings their due process. It’s like taking a cake out of the oven before it’s done. It’s going to be messy. When we act out our feelings before allowing ourselves time to process them, it gets equally as messy, only psychologically so.

Here’s an example of a separation therapy dialogue with respect to acting out behaviors with food. Adult is the adult self, Feeling is the feeling self, and Actor is the acting out self. Keep the following in mind: Adult only moderates. Feeling only feels and Actor only acts out.

Here is the event: I have been invited to a party at work, and I am a new employee. I am 40 pounds overweight, and everyone else is slender (or at least that’s what my brain tells me).

Adult: I’m going to try to meet as many new people as I can. I’m going to make this new job fun.

Feeling: I feel really uncomfortable. I feel like everyone is looking at me. I feel very afraid that no one will like me.

Actor: Whoa, I see the food! Let’s go eat. I can take care of those feelings. Let’s just stuff them right now!

Adult: Actor, what Feeling needs to do is simply process these feelings until she realizes that they’re just feelings and are in no way based on fact. If you always try to sooth her feelings, she will never be able to mature. She will never be able to gain confidence in her ability to meet new people and to feel comfortable around them. Stop trying to protect her. You’re only making it worse.

Feeling: I feel so awkward. I feel like nobody likes me. Can you let Actor make it better? I don’t want to grow up! It hurts to feel this way.

Adult: Feeling, I realize that, but emotional growth sometimes comes with pain. If I allow Actor to stop these feelings, you will never be mature enough to be with other people without over eating. Just feel the feelings. I will, however, allow Actor to go to the bathroom so we can sit and process these feelings, but I will not allow Actor to do anything that will sabotage our progress.

After a few moments of just feeling and recognizing that the feelings are not based on fact, Feeling begins to relax. Her anxiety begins to lessen, and she feels stronger. I go back to the party, I stay away from the food, but I do drink water! Simply having a glass of water in my hand really helps.

Acting out behaviors, also known as reactions, can be thought of as knee-jerk behaviors that result from emotional unawareness. The key is to allow your feelings to get fully processed BEFORE initiating responsive behavior, and to know the difference between feelings and acting out behavior. Awareness is the FIRST step.

What feelings are you suppressing?

Eat Less & Live Longer

2010-09-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading an article in the January 2010 issue of Time magazine: Why Genes Aren’t Destiny. I’ve understood the concept of epigenetics for a while, which means that we may have the genes for a specific disease, such as obesity, but that gene could remain dormant in the right environment. This article explored the work of Dr. Lars Olov Bygren, who wondered what effects feast and famine had on the offspring of the families that lived in Norrbotten, a remote village in northern Sweden.

When the harvest was bad there, people starved; when the harvest was good, people gorged themselves. Bygren’s research showed that “kids who went from normal eating to gluttony in a single season” produced offspring who lived far shorter lives – approximately six years shorter than those kids who endured a scarce harvest.

Reading those findings reminded me of a book I bought years ago: The 120-Year Diet. The premise of this book is based on a diet high in nutrition and low in calories. Dr. Roy Walford indicated that we would live much longer by being underweight. The trick of course is to find food that is truly high in nutrition. Because of mass production of our fruits and vegetables, the nutrition content is lower than it’s ever been. It seems then that by attempting to grow more food, we are actually getting less nutrition.

In many ways, we’ve lost sight of what is important for us to live: food, water, and oxygen. We seem to be more focused on our cell phones and the latest flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Not that those things aren’t important, but perhaps we should pay just a little more attention to the nutritional value of what we ingest. Not only do our lives depend on it, but our kids’ lives do too.

Sad, Enraged, & Hopeful

2010-09-11T09:28:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to feel sad, enraged, and hopeful all at the same time? A recent trip inside a local fast food establishment – for iced tea - triggered all three of these emotions for me.

Why sad? I saw a man sitting in a booth, distracted by his cell phone while his two children sat quietly eating huge hamburgers, French fries, and sipping on large sugary drinks. Neither of these children could have been more than twelve, and both of them were overweight. The amount of calories sitting in front of each of them had to have topped a thousand, more than either of them should have eaten in a whole day! The story I made up about that scene was that the man was divorced from the children’s mother, and that he had them for the weekend. He was having a casual conversation with someone who wasn’t even there, and the kids seemed bored.

Why enraged? The man seemed oblivious to his children, like he was just doing his duty to feed them and keep them entertained, so he could continue his conversation on his cell phone. When the boy asked his dad a question, his dad snapped at him, “Can’t you see I’m on the phone!” Here’s the story I made up about how they got there. Based on the excess weight of both the children, I suspected they had found a way to feel comfortable while being with their dad – and he found a way to keep them entertained until time to send them back to Mom. I also suspect that the environment with their mom was not much different. Fast food, it seems, has replaced cartoons for the entertainment provided by the non-custodial parent. Fast food, however, has less nutrition than Sponge Bob Square Pants. And neither fast food nor cartoons can replace quality parental interaction. Besides, just sitting and talking to your kids is a whole lot cheaper. A fast-food restaurant, or any restaurant for that matter, is NO substation for the dining room table at home.

Why hopeful? The media blitz on obesity has taken the gloves off. Overweight is overweight, anyway you look at it. The message is simple: The obesity epidemic can be cured. It’s not like a contagious virus or bacteria; you can’t get fat from walking into an all-you-can-eat buffet full of obese people. You can get fat if you do what those obese people do, though, and that’s eating too much and eating the wrong food.

The average calorie intake for a healthy woman is 1800. For a man, it’s 2200. These number, though, are as variable as the temperatures on our planet. Appropriate calorie intake depends on height, bone size, and activity levels. Don’t guess, and don’t make excuses. Do the calculations. Your life may depend on it.

How Difficult Do You Want It?

2010-09-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

I just picked up the latest Austin Fit magazine at the Whole Foods Market, and on the front cover is a forty-six-year-old woman riding a bike and gorgeous enough to stop a war. Jealous? Okay, yeah, I’ll admit it. My point? She looks really great, but then I read what she does to look the way she does, and it stops me cold. First of all, she’s Susan Dell, of the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, and she rides her bike 50+ miles several times per week. I can’t do that. Not that I don’t have a bike, which I do, but I don’t have the stamina to ride it up a hill, which is all I have close to my home. So, does that mean that I have to settle for a less than fit body?

NO!

To me, doing what extreme fit people like Susan does vs. what I am willing to do is like the difference between having a million dollars and having ten million dollars. I can do just fine on a million, meaning that working out on my Elliptical machine for thirty minutes to an hour each day, and using dumbbells to tone my muscles, will get me exactly where I want to be without having to bike fifty miles or spend a bundle on a gym membership.

I guess then that begs the question: Why do we work out? It is really to get fit, or is it to relieve stress? Is it really to lose weight, or is it a social outlet? Are we working toward a goal, or are we working off anger from a high stress lifestyle? Before we can plan a strategy on achieving our ideal weight, we need to come to terms with our real motivation for doing so. If our motivation is not clear or if it is based on pleasing someone else, our focus will dim and our motivation will fade. We all need what I call a WIIFM – What’s In It For ME! What will YOU get from achieving your ideal weight? What will YOU get from living a healthy lifestyle? What will YOU get from looking and feeling years younger? And finally, what are YOU afraid of that keeps you from having an ideal body? Isn’t that often what it’s really all about? What we are afraid of might happen if we look too good? Feel too good?

For me, my motivation has less to do with health than it does to do with being able to wear a size four pair of jeans with a pair of four-inch heels. I’m already fit: low blood pressure, heart rate in the low fifties, fabulous immune system – haven’t had the flu in over twenty years and rarely get a cold, although I occasionally suffer from headaches caused by cheap wine – and I am a semi-vegetarian. That means I eat mostly fruits, vegetables, and grains, but if I’m invited out for a steak dinner I rarely say no.

So, that leave me with my vanity, and at 55 years old, I’m entitled to at least that.

Stuffing

2010-08-12T12:12:00.000-07:00

No, I did not fall off the planet, but I did pick up a writing project that has kept my proverbial nose to the grindstone. Not sure I have much nose left, but at least the project is done.

Today, I’d like to talk about stuffing, and not the stuffing from inside a turkey, but the stuffing that we do with our feelings, which more often than not, creates so much emotional pain that we turn to food for comfort. Emotional pain is often invisible, not at all like placing our hand on a hot burner. When we cannot see what is causing our discomfort, we find a distraction. Distractions take many forms and are as diverse as the food products in a grocery store. Just as food has a purpose, to stop hunger, distraction too has a purpose, and that purpose is to stop the invisible pain, pain that we often don’t even know is there.

How do we find out what’s bothering us? Before we can do that, we have to acknowledge that we are bothered by something. That is, we have to admit something exists before we can begin to look for it. This takes being conscious of our automatic behaviors. For example, if every time your sister calls, you reach for bag of M&Ms and devour them while chatting, that is an automatic behavior, and those M&Ms represent a distraction. Pay attention to your behaviors and look for patterns and automatic reactions to certain events. Write them down. Link the cause and effect. After you’ve done this, then you can begin asking yourself questions to find the reasons behind your behaviors.

In the above example, one question you could ask is why do you feel that you need chocolate for comfort while talking to your sister? What program is running in the background of your brain that triggers the craving for candy? Sometimes the answer is easy; sometimes you will never know what the answer is. And it doesn’t really matter, because you can stop the automatic behaviors by following these steps.

1. Become aware of the automatic behavior – grabbing M&Ms
2. Become aware of the preceding event – your sister calls
3. Determine what behavior you would rather occur – grab a stuffed animal instead
4. Begin the process of creating a different habit – have a stuffed animal by each phone in the house, and every time your sister calls, pick it up and hold it tight instead of reaching for the M&Ms.

The new behavior won’t occur overnight, but stay focused on the new behavior and you will be able to establish it. Albert Einstein got it right when he said that imagination wins over willpower every time. Try imagining doing something different when you feel the need to overeat rather than attempting to use willpower to stop. Go buy a Teddy Bear.

Vacation

2010-06-21T12:10:00.000-07:00

Vacation time! I will be back to my blog on July 10th!

Weight Loss: A Quick Reference Guide book

2010-06-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

And now let's take a commercial break...

Here is the introduction to my book Weight Loss: A Quick Reference Guide.

WOW! I just typed in “diet books” in the Yahoo search engine and it came up with 41,800,000 hits, and a search on Amazon.com came up with almost 6000 books on dieting! The shelves of bookstores are filled with every diet imaginable, and the magazines on the racks at grocery stores have at least one article each on weight loss. With all this information available to us in this country, why is it we are still among the most obese? And why are we getting fatter every year? There is only one answer to this question: DIETS DON’T WORK! The more we diet, the more weight we ultimately gain back, assuming we ever lost the weight to begin with!

Our country is riddled with heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. We are spending billions on the search for cures, but practically nothing on prevention. However, there is one cure that is most often overlooked! Weight loss! Weight loss is probably the number one greatest cure, the number one miracle cure, for much of what ails us in this country, but few folks want that prescription! Why? Because overeating is very often related to our emotional issues, those issues that are far too painful for us to explore. It’s so much easier to remains victims to our habits even if it means a miserable life and early death.

For me, I would rather spend a few weeks or months, or whatever it takes, exploring the painful emotional issues surrounding my use of food for emotional comfort than spend the remainder of my life, albeit much shorter and most likely disease ridden, stuffing my pain with excessive amounts of food. And exploring my painful issues is exactly what I did! Now I can deal with those issues differently rather than unconsciously reaching for comfort food. That’s not to say that I don’t still love my French fries, but the time spent mindlessly eating them is over!

Thinking back during the time when I believed that magazine articles and diet books would be my salvation, and ruminating over how much money I spent on them, I now see that it was the headlines and book titles that grabbed my attention. Who wouldn’t be emotionally affected by the following?

• Are you tired of settling for a body that doesn't reflect who you are inside?
• Are you frustrated that you are unable to fit into clothes that you love?
• Are you fed up with not having the energy you desire to be able to do all of the things that you want to do?
• Do you want to attract the love of your life with your new sexy body?

Do you ever get tired of reading statements like these? I know I did. I got tired of feeling bad about myself. These emotionally charged statements are in practically every magazine, as well as in ads on TV every day, and yet we continue to wonder why we stay so overweight in this country in spite of all the attention paid to being overweight. Something just isn’t working! For most of us, diets don’t work, diet pills don’t work, diet centers don’t work, and they don’t work because food is NOT the culprit. Virtually every weight loss program on the market has a dismal failure rate. Only those folks that stick with it are successful. The drop out rate is very high, but I doubt those statistics are kept. Would you subscribe to a weight loss program with a success rate of 10%?

The culprit is our programming, our core beliefs about food, and the underlying emotional pain we carry with us.

Those headlines are meant for one purpose and one purpose only: to stir up our emotions and our shame surrounding our weight issue. That is, to get our attention, so that we will buy the magazine or book. It’s about marketing, but it’s not the marketing that will help us shed those pounds: it’s a commitment to ourselves and to our future. It’s not as complicated as we seem to think, but to think of losing weight as a complicated and difficult issue is merely one way to excuse ourselves from doing so. It’s a way of avoiding what it is we really need to address: our emotional pain and how we’ve chosen to deal with it.

If you've tried dieting, bought gym memberships, read weight loss books and even attended weekly meetings with a popular weight loss program, and you were still unable or unmotivated to stick with your eating and exercise plan, it may not be your body that is holding you back. The best diet in the world won't work until you have the right mindset.

The bottom line is this: You must be fully 100% responsible for your weight loss. To depend on someone else to motivate you or to encourage you is setting yourself up for failure! The minute you feel that that person is not supportive, what do you think you’re going to do? EAT! That’s what. But if you take 100% responsibility for your emotional issues and for what you eat, you will never be held hostage to another person’s actions or inactions.

This book doesn’t provide diets or recipes. It does provide condensed and thought provoking statements to help you break free from your denial as to why you overeat. As you read this material, pay attention to what offends you, as that may provide the clue to your particular issues surrounding food. On the pages within this book, I show YOU how to be self-motivating, self-encouraging and self-supportive.

This book is your quick reference guide, something that you can read every day as a reminder that your health is a top priority! It is your reminder mechanism. It is your pocket weight loss coach!

It is available through XLibris, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. Enjoy!

Amino Acids: Could They be a Miracle Cure for Food Addictions?

2010-06-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

I attended the Pediatric Obesity Symposium here in New Braunfels a few weeks ago, and one of the speakers, Dr. Mark Statler, talked about people who can’t stop eating certain foods once they start. For example, most of us can eat a half cup of ice cream or a handful of M&Ms and stop. Some people, once they have that first bite, will continued to eat until the whole container of ice cream or the whole bag of M&Ms is gone. He indicated that the culprit may be the nucleus accumbens, that part of the brain that has a great deal to do with addictive behaviors, like alcoholics have. Alcoholics can’t stop with one or two drinks; many of them drink until they pass out, which may also be an issue with this same part of the brain. Dr. Statler went on to say that there are two neurotransmitters at play in this area of the brain: dopamine and glutamate. When either of these is out of balance, which is often the case with addictions, the body attempts to re-balance by craving those particular ingestibles that will affect this area. However, it is a catch-22 situation, in that by ingesting the foods that “calm” this area, the calmness is short lived, just like alcohol, and the cravings return as soon as the surge in the neurotransmitter begins to fade.

A number of years ago, I experienced alcohol cravings, so I decided to do a little research. I found a website that purported the use of L-glutamine and L-phenylalanine, two common amino acids, to curb the cravings. These amino acids are safe, over-the-counter, inexpensive supplements, so I thought I give them a try. Yes, they worked very well. Not only did the alcohol cravings disappear, but so did my other favorite craving: tortilla chips.

I stopped Dr. Statler on his way out the door, and asked him if he knew of any research on the use of these two amino acids to help obese patients to curb their out of control cravings and subsequently help to balance the nucleus accumbens. He said no, and he seemed surprised by the question. I didn’t tell him about my experience with these supplements, as he was in a hurry, but I hope he gives my question some thought.

How much did I take? I took a total of 3000mgs of L-glutamine and 1500 mgs of L-phenylalanine per day, along with vitamin B-6, but I broke the amino acids into three servings per day. I never realized that my nucleus accumbens was most likely out of balance and that simple and inexpensive amino acids could stop the cravings long enough for me to re-program my beliefs and behaviors around alcohol and certain foods. Periodically, I will resume my regime of these amino acids, especially when I am experiencing stress. High stress will sometimes cause me to revert to old coping mechanisms, like using food for comfort rather than nutrition. It seems too easy, taking inexpensive amino acids, and it really is, but I strongly suspect that very little will be said about these supplements to help with the obesity problem, mostly because, you guessed it, there’s no big money to be made. And that makes me sad.

Creation: A Different Perspective

2010-05-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

I have no idea who created the funny piece I'm going to share with you. I suspect it was written years ago when HMO's hit the scene, but it is still relevant and still funny!

Enjoy!

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth and populated the Earth with broccoli, cauliflower and spinach, green and yellow and red vegetables of all kinds, so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.

Then using God's great gifts, Satan created Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and Krispy Creme Donuts. And Satan said, "You want chocolate with that?"

And Man said, "Yes!" and Woman said, "And as long as you're at it, add some sprinkles." And they gained 10 pounds And Satan smiled.

And God created the healthful yogurt that Woman might keep the figure that Man found so fair. And Satan brought forth white flour from the wheat, sugar from the cane and he combined them. And Woman went from size 6 to size 14.

So God said, "Try my fresh green salad." And Satan presented Thousand-Island Dressing, buttery croutons and garlic toast on the side. And Man and Woman unfastened their belts following the repast.

God then said, "I have sent you heart- healthy vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them." And Satan brought forth deep fried fish and chicken-fried steak so big it needed its own platter And Man gained more weight and his cholesterol went through the roof.

God then created a light, fluffy white cake, named it "Angel Food Cake," and said, "It is good." Satan then created chocolate cake and named it "Devil's Food."

God then brought forth running shoes so that His children might lose those extra pounds. And Satan gave cable TV with a remote control so Man would not have to toil changing the channels. And Man and Woman laughed and cried before the flickering blue light and gained pounds.

Then God brought forth the potato, naturally low in fat and brimming with nutrition. And Satan peeled off the healthful skin and sliced the starchy center in to chips and deep-fried them. And Man gained pounds.

God then gave lean beef so that Man might consume fewer calories and still satisfy his appetite. And Satan created McDonald's and its 99-cent double cheeseburger, and then said, "You want fries with that?" And Man replied, "Yes! And super size them!" And Satan said, "It is good." And Man went into cardiac arrest.

God sighed and created quadruple bypass surgery.

Then Satan created HMOs.

Author Unknown

I Don't Care Enough About Me

2010-05-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

As an Ideal Weight Coach, I work with clients who want to uncover the hidden belief system behind their weight problem. The one thing I find in common with obese people is that knowing how deadly obesity is does not deter their eating. To proselytize about the dangers of obesity – heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and a host of other ailments – is like nailing Jell-O to a tree. Judging this as a self-esteem issue is, well, a judgment, and a waste of time. It’s much more productive to find something that they want and link achieving their ideal weight to that goal.

For example, one client wants to find her ideal partner, and she realizes that a man who would want her at her current weight would not be an ideal match. She quickly discovers that her weight was a protective barrier, and one that was slowing killing her. We set up a plan to convert the excess fat into internal confidence, a confidence that would enable her to say “no” to unhealthy relationships verbally instead of using her weight to keep poor choices away. Fear was the underlying issue, not the weight. She’d had a bad relationship a few years back and turned to food for comfort. She soon became “addicted” to high fat foods and lost track of what a normal sized meal actually looked like. She had gotten caught up in the Super-sized mentality. After calculating her ideal weight and ideal calorie count, she knew that she had some relearning to do. But first things first, she had to replace the underlying fear about getting into a future relationship with the confidence that she could and would walked away from any relationship that was not right for her.

So, you see, being overweight is never about the weight; it’s about the underlying issue. Find out what that is, work on it, and the weight will return to normal in no time.

The Sinking Balcony

2010-05-16T18:06:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me the other day what I thought the biggest issue was around obesity, and I said, “Denial!” Most people don’t realize that they are overweight, and if they do realize it, they don’t seem to care because everybody else seems to be overweight too. That seems absurd to me. That mindset reminds me of what my father would say when I would ask to go somewhere because all my friends were going: If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you? I know that sounds silly, but in a way it’s true. We all have a tendency to follow others, even when doing so is not in our best interest.

I recall a study done that reported that gaining weight was contagious. It stated that if your friends are overweight, you have a greater chance of becoming overweight too. I suspect it’s because of our need to belong, to be like others, to fit in. Being different in a circle of friends could lead to ostracism, the death knell of teenagers and young adults.

Back to the idea that most overweight people are in denial makes me think about two people I know who have knee problems. Both are obese, and neither has given the possibility that their knee problems are the direct result of having too much weight on so little support much thought. I actually had the audacity to suggest to one of them that losing eighty pounds could really help, and I was told that being overweight had NOTHING to do with the problem. Say what?

I learned firsthand what happens when a support structure is inadequate for a massive amount of weight just a few weeks ago. I hired a handyman to look at some wood rot on my balcony, and he noticed that one of the cedar posts holding up the balcony was “sinking.” Apparently, the inside of the post was deteriorating, and the balcony had sunk a little over an inch. Four years ago, I noticed a crack in the stone on the side of the house, and a crack in the ceiling in my living room. I panicked, thinking my foundation was faulty, and I quickly called a foundation company. No, there was not a problem with the foundation, and he said the cracks were cosmetic only. He suggested I build a short retaining wall alongside that part of the house and fill it in with dirt to help support the foundation and to keep the moisture consistent. I did, but I still heard the creaking sounds at night. When Wade the handyman replaced the bad post and added an additional one for more support, the creaking sounds stopped, and the stone on the side of the house closed up! That one post was insufficient to support the balcony, and it began to deteriorate under the weight. And so it is with our bodies.

The other person I know had surgery, and his knee never healed quite right. Even after a year, he was still limping. I didn’t know him well enough to suggest losing weight – he was at least ninety pounds overweight. I lost track of him a couple of years ago, until yesterday. I discovered that he twisted his knee again, and again he had more surgery. His knees are like the post on my porch; they are not sufficient to support the extra weight and never will be.

Our bodies are not designed to be pickup trucks that can be loaded with massive amounts of weight. A pickup truck has a weight limit, and so do we. That weight limit should be our ideal weight.

Too Many Choices!

2010-05-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

The other day I was channel surfing with my Dish Network remote, and I noticed something odd. About eight weeks ago, I upgraded my programming to include HBO, Showtime, and the 200 channel package, and I found myself unable to watch a full show. I’d watch a few minutes of a movie, and then I’d switch over to another movie. I couldn’t commit to watching any one show, because I had TOO MANY choices. This made me think about food choices, especially buffets. We seem to think that if we pay for something, like our cable programming, we feel somewhat cheated if we don’t use what we pay for, or in the case of buffets, we feel cheated if we don’t load up our plates with a little bit of everything.

A study was done a while back that proved this point. College students were asked to pick an investment, and then they were asked to rate how they felt about their choice. When the number of investment choices was limited, not only was the decision to pick an investment made quicker, but the satisfaction with that choice was greater. But when the number of investments choices was increased, the time to decide also increased, which makes sense, but the satisfaction with the final choice plummeted! Too many choices wreak havoc with our confidence levels and in some cases will trigger greed. There is apparently a point where we move from feeling satisfied to wanting it all, a tipping point if you will.

Could that be the case with our food intake? Do too many choices lead to “wanting it all”? I’m thinking it does. Quite some time ago, I “eliminated” a lot of food choices for me. I eat very few, if any, processed foods, and do I not eat at fast food establishments – with one exception. I like the crunchy tacos at Taco Bell, but I’ll only eat one or two, and nothing else. With fewer choices, I feel satisfied, and my confidence about my food choices is strong.

This week, eliminate a few of your food choices permanently, and see how your feelings change with respect to what you decide to keep. Might be an interesting way to learn to like broccoli, eh?

As for my journey, the progress is slow but sure. I reached 149. Although that’s less than a pound a week, I’m okay with that, because I KNOW I will achieve my ideal weight. AND I canceled HBO and Showtime and downgraded to the minimum cable package. Managing too many choices was too stressful for me.

The Many Faces of Diets

2010-05-02T19:36:00.000-07:00

Low fat; low carbohydrate; low calorie; high protein? Cabbage soup; grapefruit? You name it: there’s a diet for it. There are so many diet books on the market today that each and every one of us should be skinny, skinny, skinny! But we’re not. Why? Diets don’t work? Lifestyle changes do! Find a permanent nutrition plan and stick to it. Period! Work with a nutritionist if necessary, but don’t follow a diet intended for weight loss only. You’ll never stick to it, and the weight loss will only be temporary. And stay away from pre-processed foods as much as possible! The sodium content is usually very high, and the nutrition level is usually very low. Focus on nutrition and balance, not just calories. The best overall nutrition plan I’ve seen that can be followed with ease and permanence is The Zone Diet by Dr. Barry Sears. In a nutshell: 40% carbohydrates; 30 % fat and 30% protein. Keep those carbohydrates low on the glycemic index, and you will feel differently in a matter of days. It really is about balance and nutrition!

A Super Size Meal is Enough for Three!

2010-04-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

When did we get the idea that a 1400 calorie meal was “normal?” Well, it took awhile, and we can thank a great marketing genius at McDonalds back in the 60’s, who discovered that although McDonald’s customers wouldn’t think of eating two hamburgers, they had little resistance to eating a bigger one, and they didn’t mind paying proportionately more for it. Little by little, not only did the burgers get bigger, but so did the serving sizes of French fries and soft drinks. What was once a reasonable calorie count for one person soon became a calorie count for THREE people! The damage did not stop there. Once other food establishments caught on, they, too, began offering larger proportions, knowing that the cost of the extra portion was considerably less than the proportional increase in price: that it, profits began to soar! And we began to change our concept of a normal portion size.

To further this point, I want to talk about an article I read in the San Antonio Express-News a few weeks ago: “What to do about Obesity?” I was taken aback by one teen’s comment: “As I look around school, I see girls and boys who just don’t seem comfortable in their skin. I want to let them all know that it’s OK to be a size 16 or a 4.” Say what???

When we began to supersize ourselves some years ago, the enablers among us decided that “Big is Beautiful,” and that a few extra pounds were a good thing. We began to glamorize obesity and decided that we shouldn’t discriminate against obese people. I don’t believe in discriminating against anyone, but obesity has NOTHING to do with who the person is. Is has everything to do with being unhealthy.

And now we have an epidemic of obesity, which is quickly overtaking smoking as the number one cause of death in this country. All I can say is “Thank you, McDonald’s.” NOT!!!

So what is “normal”? Normal is our ideal calorie intake. For me, this number is about 1800. And if I divide that into three meals per day, the maximum calories I can consume at any meal is 600. If I want to allow for a couple of in between meal snacks of about 200 calories each, then my per meal calories become about 475. A Big Mac has 580 calories and a Whopper has 670 calories!!! And that's without the cheese!

What brought this tirade on, you ask? Well, my own journey to re-achieving my ideal weight is going too slowly, and the setbacks have been disappointing. I know it has a bit to do with getting my hormones back on track after my total hysterectomy, but I began to wonder how long I would milk this excuse. I decided to really look at my calorie intake, instead of guessing. After calculating the calories in my favorite meal, a spinach quesadilla with brown rice flour tortillas (am gluten intolerant), I was a tad shocked at the amount of cheese I used. So here is what I discovered:

2 tortillas – 130 calories each - total 260
Cheese – equivalent to 4 – 1” cubes – each cube 110 calories -   total 440
Shredded fresh spinach – less than 15 calories -   total 15
¼ cup Salsa – about 20 calories -  total 20
Grand total    735

OUCH! I had gotten so used to larger proportions, that I really lost sight of the amount of calories I was actually eating! After cutting out one tortilla and half the cheese, I found that I was still just as satisfied. It’s a little harder to eat without the top tortilla, but the fact remains I was still full. New calorie count: 385. Now, where is that tootsie roll?

By the way, if you must eat on the run, Taco Bell is the place to go. One regular crunchy taco has only 185 calories. Remember, if you’re really hungry, eat only a small amount and then wait. You’ll be surprised at how quickly Mr. Hunger goes away. Mr. Right Now is NO substitute for Mr. Right. And if you want to eat out, it's okay to share a meal. It's not okay to eat everything on the plate, just because you don't want to waste food. No, it's not!

Next week, I'll explore the ideal combination of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Achieving Your Ideal Weight Should Not Be a Battle!

2010-04-18T08:27:00.000-07:00

Why is it that we rarely stay on diets? We all start out with great intentions and lofty goals, but within a few weeks, and for some just a few days, our plan begins to fail. I think that’s because we think of losing weight as an uphill battle, swimming upstream, waging war on our fat, and other exhausting thoughts. Battling with our selves is always a losing battle: one side has to lose for the other side to win. No one likes to lose, nor do we like having to admit that we’re wrong. And that’s exactly what happens when we feel that we have to change. But what if you didn’t have to “change”? What if it was as simple as shifting into a “new normal?” We learn new things every day; that’s not hard at all. When we focus on our new normal vs. a temporary plan to lose weight, there are no strict diets, no unattainable exercise plans, and no failures.

So, how do we determine what our new normal needs to be? First, we need to calculate what our ideal calorie intake should be to maintain our ideal weight, and second, we need to create a new meal plan that accommodates that calorie count – and yes, this is permanent, so make it reasonable and doable – and third, we must create an exercise plan – again, this will be permanent, so make it reasonable and doable, and then let go of the battle. Easier said than done? Not really, unless you have emotional triggers that send you running to the refrigerator, or old programming that kicks in before you even know it. Those triggers need to be addressed, either by a therapist, if there was deep emotional trauma in the past, or by an Ideal Weight Coach, if it’s a matter of helping you create your new normal and turning unconscious reactions to triggers into conscious responses.

Quit feeding the guilt, and quit battling the weight. Remember: What you resist - persists.

Ideal Calorie Calculation

2010-04-10T18:20:00.000-07:00

How many diets have you been on? If you’ve been on more than one and you’re still struggling, then I’m hoping you’ve finally realized that DIETS DON’T WORK. Of course the next question is, “Then how do I lose weight?” Stephen Covey and every other highly paid motivational speaker say to begin with the end in mind, visualize where you want to be, and act as if you’re already there. How does this work in weight management, though? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Beginning with the end in mind means, first and foremost, to calculate your ideal calories. The key is to create a “new normal.” When you learn to eat, no less and no more, the number of calories needed to sustain your IDEAL weight, the body will acquiesce. For example, if I eat only enough calories to sustain 130 pounds, my body will eventually weigh 130 pounds. However, there is one caveat. If the body thinks it’s being starved, it WILL retaliate by lowering your metabolism. Pretty smart body, eh? Ah, but we have a secret weapon, and that is exercise.

Here is an example from my book of an ideal calorie calculation and explanation of how exercise fits in this picture:

Your basal metabolic rate – BMR - is the amount of calories your body requires to complete its basic functions, like keeping your heart beating and regulating your internal temperature. Knowing this rate is the key to calculating the number of calories you need to consume daily in order to maintain your desired weight. It is estimated that the body burns about 10 calories per day per pound. For example, a 150 lb person will burn 1500 calories just to keep alive. The next step is to approximate the number of calories burned in normal daily exercise. A person who sits all day is said to be sedentary, so the amount of calories burned would be about 20% of the BMR or 300 calories. A moderately active person would burn about 30% of the BMR, and an active person would burn about 40%. The final step is to add in the amount of calories burned by the digestive process, which is estimated to be about 10% for the general population. The amount of calories burned by a 150 lb person through the digestive process is 150. Adding the calculations together, we find that a 150 lb person requires 1950 calories per day to maintain that weight. Factors that can affect this calculation include age, gender, low calorie diets and medical conditions, such as those affecting the thyroid. However, the above calculation is a good start for most of us.

So, to calculate my ideal calories, I will start with my ideal weight of 130 pounds, and I will say that I am moderately active. So the calculation for my ideal calorie intake is as follows:

130 x 10 = 1300 for basic functions
1300 x 30% = 390 for moderate activity
1300 x 10% = 130 for digestion

Adding those together makes my ideal calorie intake to be 1,820 calories.

The next step is to determine how much exercise I need to do to lose two pounds per week. Bear in mind, the body will begin to lose weight simply because of reduced calories; however, to eat less than the calories required to maintain your ideal weight will backfire, so don’t do it. It takes 3500 calories to make up one pound, so to lose two pounds you would need to burn 7000 calories per week, or about 1000 calories per day. That’s quite a lot of calories, so let’s assume that just eating “normally,” your body will shed about a pound per week, so you need to burn 3500 calories, or about 500 calories per day. This is doable. You can do this with just 30 minutes per day on an Elliptical machine. The list of opportunities to burn calories is endless. Do some research on exercise and amount of calories burned. The internet is full of information on this topic.

As for me, I finally made my goal of 153 with a bonus of another pound of body fat gone. I really like my Omron body fat analyzer. It may not be perfectly accurate, but at least it shows me the change in body fat.

Glycemic Index is Really Cool!

2010-04-03T17:18:00.000-07:00

The foods you eat really do make a difference in your weight. For example, a huge portion of broccoli is not the same as a huge portion of potato chips, although they’re both carbohydrates. Broccoli has a much lower conversion rate on the glycemic index, and as such will not affect our blood glucose levels as do potato chips. Why does the level of our blood glucose matter? Well, it’s because consistently high levels of glucose in the blood, which is known as diabetes, will cause damage to our body. Those of us who are not diabetic produce our own supply of insulin, the hormone released by our pancreas that removes the excess blood sugar and eventually stores it as adipose tissue. And guess what adipose tissue is! FAT!

The glycemic index is about the quality of the carbohydrates we eat. Carbohydrates low on this index convert to glucose during the digestive process much more slowly than carbohydrates which rate high on this index. The slower blood glucose levels rise, the less insulin is released into our blood stream. The pancreas wants to keep our blood sugars steady and at a level that will not cause damage to our arteries and organs. If we eat foods that keep our blood sugars in a healthy range, the pancreas won’t secrete much insulin. Without insulin, blood sugars won’t be converted to glucose, and then ultimately to body fat. This is one of the reasons a low carbohydrate diet causes such quick weight loss: little insulin is produced to store glucose, so the body begins to use fat as fuel. BUT, like all diets, it must be a lifestyle change, as a low carbohydrate diet could create an even greater sensitivity to carbohydrate consumption, which means it could take even fewer carbohydrates to cause a release of insulin once you stop the diet. A quick weight loss usually leads to an even quicker and greater weight gain!!

You can find a good glycemic index for foods either on the internet or in your local bookstore. It is worth your time to find out more.

As for me, I am happy to report another pound of body fat lost: up to a little more than seven pounds of body fat since I started this blog. But did I lose scale weight? NO! And that makes me sort of mad, but then I reflect on my goal: to lost twenty-five pounds of body fat. I will stay committed, because what are my choices? In my mind, there is only one, and that to have a body fat percent of about twenty and a BMI of about twenty. My workout with weights accounts for my lean muscle mass gain, and my calculations say that I am on track, so I say, "Quit yer c'plainin', Anna!"

Insulin: Both a Life Saver and a Killer

2010-03-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

Insulin, in an oversimplified nutshell, is a fat storage hormone. Too much sugar in the blood? Not a problem, unless you are a diabetic and unable to produce insulin, because insulin removes excess sugar from the blood. This is a good thing, because excess sugar in the blood can cause heart disease, renal failure, blindness, and it can prevent healing of simple injuries like blisters to the point where gangrene can develop and amputations become necessary. Not a good thing! The “dark” side of this hormone is that it converts and stores excess calories eventually as fat. The reason that the low carbohydrate diet works is because there is usually not enough sugar in the blood to “wake up” the pancreas to send out insulin. But before you go sign up with the Adkins diet, know this: a low carbohydrate diet is a LIFE LONG COMMITMENT. Many folks who got off the low-carb diet put all the weight back on and a whole lot of then some. Why? Because the body can become hyper-sensitive to carbohydrates. Another drawback of the low-carb diet is hair loss! If you want to reduce carbohydrates, that’s okay, but be reasonable, and know that it is a commitment.

Now I’d like to turn my attention to addressing one of the main problems with eating out, and that is the dreaded “Is there something wrong with the food?” question that the waiter asks if you leave anything on your plate. Talk about triggering “mom-speak”! However, there is a solution if this is an emotional trigger for you. Ask for a to-go container when you order your food, and as soon as your meal arrives, move at least half of it into a container. Even if you know that you can’t take it with you, because the whole point is to avoid the emotional trigger that might get pulled when you leave food on your plate.

As for me, I am continuing to do weight bearing exercise as well as working out on the Elliptical, but I’m unhappy to report a 1.5 lb. weight gain. I’m not bothered by this, because I am still losing body fat, another .5% since last week! My goal for next Saturday is 153. I know I should be happy with a reduced body fat percent, but I want progress in BOTH areas, darn it!

Shedding Stuff Can Lead to Shedding Weight

2010-03-20T07:39:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for this really long blog, but I did not have time to write less (in the words of Benjamin Franklin in a letter to a close friend).

As strange as this may sound, sometimes getting unwanted clutter out of our lives helps with weight loss. I like to “purge” my belongings about every two or three years, and it was time. I have a lot of storage space in my house, and I found things that I’ve not seen for a while, things that needed to be let go. I’ve spent this last two weeks going through closets and cabinets, packing books, dishes, clothing and other unwanted items into boxes. It was garage sale time! A friend wanted to sell some things, too, so we decided to have the sale in a parking lot closer to town rather than at her home or mine, since we both live in the country, which is really too far to get much traffic. And so I moved about six Jeep-loads of stuff into a storage unit across from the parking lot where we would have the sale. Yesterday was the first day of the sale, and I found new homes for about half of my stuff. If the amount of stuff I’ve moved out of my life is any indication of how much weight I’ll lose, then I will not only get through this plateau, but I should be sliding quickly into home base – my ideal weight goal!

I am still “stuck” at 154.5, but I decided to check my body fat loss to see if I was really stuck or if something else was happening. I bought an Omron Fat Loss Monitor, the kind you hold in your hands, and I have noticed a decrease in body fat, but I’ve not done the calculations as to how much body fat I’ve actually lost. So, here are the numbers: my weight went from 158.5 to 154.5, a loss of four pounds, but my body fat percent went from almost thirty-five percent to thirty-two percent, which equates to a loss of six pounds of body fat! Since my goal is to lose twenty-five pounds of body fat, I am most definitely on the right track, and in reality I’m not on a plateau at all! This revelation underscores the importance of exercise and working our muscles. I gained two pounds of lean muscle, which is fine by me! I guess moving all packing and moving all those boxes, several times in fact, really did help me.

As promised, here is a simple list from the National Weight Control Registry that provides five things successful losers (I prefer to call these people “ideal weight achievers”) do to maintain a healthy weight:

1. They eat breakfast everyday – this is extremely important as this is the time when the body decides on whether to conserve or splurge on energy. If the body decides to conserve, guess what it will do – it will burn fewer calories. If it knows that you will provide it with ample nutrition for the day, it will burn more calories. Our bodies are very, very smart, and they will do whatever it takes to survive. Notice that I used the phrase “ample nutrition.” If you eat food with very little nutritional value, like doughnuts, bagels, or other high-carb, low nutrition foods, the body will also rebel. It needs vitamins, minerals, and enzymes, not just calories, in order to function best. The best food? Fresh fruits and vegetables and lean meats. And don’t drink your calories – this means NO sodas, none, zippo, nada, and limit your juices to about eight ounces per meal.

2. They weigh themselves at least once a week – our weight can be likened to our bank balance, except in reverse. We would never want to be overdrawn at the bank, nor would we want to be overfed at the dinner table, and the best way to keep track of our spending behaviors is to keep an eye on the balances. Eating too many calories is no different than spending too much money: both will get you into trouble.

3. They exercise for approximately an hour every day – an hour seems like an eternity if we think of spending an hour running or an hour on a treadmill, but if we add up the many types of exercise we do in a day, it’s not so daunting. How many times per day do you walk up a flight of stairs? How many steps do you take per day? How much time do you spend vacuuming the house? Even walking up and down isles in the grocery store count. Whatever you do, do it consciously and do it as briskly as possible, and do as much weight bearing exercise as you can too. Building muscle burns body fat.

4. They reduce the amount of television time to less than ten hours per week – I suspect the biggest reason for this to be a sign of success is two-fold: less time sitting on the couch and less time for mindless eating. People who spend a great deal of time in front of the TV also eat in front of the TV.

5. They restrict calories and often follow a low-fat diet – that is, they restrict their calories to their ideal weight calories, but a low-fat diet does NOT mean eliminating fat. Our bodies need fat for several reasons, and the biggest reasons are that it makes food taste good and it helps us feel full. Ah, but everything in moderation, folks. Also, low fat usually means high sugar. Look at the difference in the carbohydrate content of normal salad dressing versus low or fat-free salad dressing. High sugar content is by far worse, especially if the carbohydrates are from high-fructose corn syrup.

Next week, I will briefly explore the reason behind why “fat-free” is not good for us. That is, the topic will be about the good and bad of insulin: the hormone released from the pancreas that removes the sugar from our blood and stores it, ultimately, as adipose tissue – another word for FAT.

The Dreaded Plateau!

2010-03-13T07:20:00.000-08:00

OH, NO! I hit the Plateau! Ah, but this is a good thing. I bought a DVD course on Nutrition Made Clear from The Teaching Company some time back, and I learned that when we hit the dreaded plateau, meaning no progress with weight loss, it means that the body is adjusting to the change. For the most part, our body burns glucose for fuel, but when we embark on a change in lifestyle (notice I did not use the phrase weight loss – the brain hates to lose anything, and it will cling to homeostasis for as long as it can), it takes awhile for our bodies to adjust to the use of a different fuel. For example, I want to burn body fat, but since the body normally burns glucose it will take a shift for my body to begin to burn fat. Heck, if it needs a week to learn a different trick, that’s fine with me! My brain has been trained to comply fairly quickly, because it knows I am relentless, but it still takes time for my body to make the shift to burning fat.

This week I spent a total of five hours on the Elliptical machine, and I kept up my commitment to drinking at least sixty-four ounces of pure water a day…well, for the most part. I have to admit, this is not always easy, but if I want to flush out the body fat, I know how important the water is in doing just that! I suppose if I visualize the water cleansing my body of the free-floating body fat that I just loosened up from exercising, like rinsing food off a dish, that that it will help me drink more. (That’s not really how it works, but it’s a good visualization for me.) It will also help if I visualize the body fat that does NOT get flushed out finding its way back into the fat cells, like little fat rats going back to the hole in the wall. Okay, now I’m really wanting that water! Scat, you fat rats!

Last week I promised to write a bit more about programming changes. Anything that disrupts the craving for excess food will work, as long as it is used consistently. For example, if we are looking for emotional nurturing, we can find another surrogate other than food: a soft blanket, a teddy bear, certain music, anything that will give us that feeling that we want. Food, for overeaters, is never about sustenance; it’s almost always about nurturing. Is overeating ever really about nurturing? Do the resulting shame, pain, and guilt we feel afterward make us feel better? I DON’T THINK SO! So, we might be able to say that overeating is more about punishing ourselves for something rather than helping us feel better. Now that’s a deep question: What are you punishing yourself for?

Today, find a surrogate for emotional eating, something that is truly good for you. It could be as simple as taking several deep breaths each and every time the craving surfaces. Remember, what you really want is to FEEL better, and overeating always backfires.

Next week we’ll look at the habits of people who achieve and maintain their ideal weight. The easiest way to get what you want is to find someone who already has it, and then find out how he or she got it.

Mindful Eating

2010-03-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

To begin with, I want to congratulate myself on attaining 154.5 this morning, in spite of having a bit of a setback with the weight work. I’ve had trouble with the discs in my neck for years, and I knew from past experience that a commitment to chiropractic care during my start-up phase would be, in the words of Martha Stewart, a good thing. Well, let me tell you! I found the super-duper-est chiropractor. By that, I mean she worked my spine and my neck so well I couldn’t do my weight work this week. Not because I really couldn’t; it was because she told me not to. And I listened. I also knew from past experience that I did not want to strengthen the muscles in my back and neck UNTIL the discs were aligned properly. The Doc worked on me four times last week, and hopefully she will give me the green light to resume my workout with Joyce when I see her again on Monday.

Okay, since I couldn’t work out with weights, then what did I do to achieve my goal, you ask? First let me say this: I don’t overeat in general, so reducing my “normal” calorie intake would cause me to lose lean body mass, which I don’t want to do. I only want to lose body fat. For me, the best way to do that is up the exercise ante and to reduce or eliminate non-normal calories, like mindless snacking. Yes, I can get caught up in mindless snacking. I KNOW better than to put anything on the coffee table while I watch TV or even read. The key to stop mindless snacking is to make it mindful; that is, pay full attention to what you put in your mouth, and while you’re eating don’t do anything else. Be MINDFUL.

Last week, I promised to chat about childhood programming around eating habits. The number one programming that most of us have imbedded in our brains is this: Eat everything on your plate. The reasoning behind this seemingly innocuous line of neural code can vary from “think of the starving children in (fill in this blank with your favorite third-world country),” or “Mommy will love you if you eat everything on your plate,” or “You have to eat everything on your plate if you want dessert!” I say “seemingly innocuous” because, as young children, we are not yet able to judge the soundness of what we are told. I never did get, “Eat everything on your plate. Think of the starving kids in China.” How is eating beyond satiety going to help them? I actually asked my dad that once, but only once.

Let’s take a reality check. How do you feel when you leave food on your plate? Do you feel like you’re wasting food? Well, eating more that your body needs is still wasting food. It’s not like money. It’s not like you can use the extra stores of fat to accommodate you when you get hungry. In other words, eating two days worth of food in one setting will NOT prevent you from being hungry for two days! Extra food is converted to fat, and it actually does the opposite of what it supposed to: it slows us down vs. gives us energy. (Not sure about that? Trying running a 5K with a fifty pound backpack on, but turn it around so that you carry it in front like obese people do.) In fact, extra fat is not only useless, it is dangerous! For those of you who have a BMI in the overweight category (see www.idealweightcoach.com for the ranges), you have a thirty-five percent greater chance of developing dementia. For those of you whose BMI is in the obese range, you have a seventy-four percent greater chance.

Okay, so how can we “disrupt” or “rewrite” our habitual eating habit? First and foremost, be aware of its existence. Then use a disruptor to stop the automatic behavior either before or during it. Disruptors can range from simply yelling “STOP” to snapping a rubber band on your wrist as soon as the habit begins to assert itself. For me, I found the rubber band to be the most beneficial. Each and every time I experienced the “need” to finish everything on my plate, I snapped the rubber band. I made a conscious choice to leave at least twenty percent of whatever was on my plate, on my plate. Twenty percent is not set in stone; it’s just what I chose. At first, I had to get up and throw the extra food in the trash right away, so I wouldn’t be tempted. But after a while, I actually began to notice when I was full, and I no longer let what was left on my plate to determine that for me. The programming in our brains MUST be congruent with our goals, or we will falter and eventually fail.

Next week, we’ll explore some other tips to help us reprogram. Until then, practice leaving food on your plate, if that is your downfall. And remember, your mother will still love you!

The Strategy

2010-02-27T09:28:00.000-08:00

Since I've been down this road before, tried all sorts of fad diets and quick weight loss schemes in past years, I can speak with experience when I say that there is only one way to attain your ideal weight (assuming there is no medical reason for being overweight), and that is to eat less and exercise more. BOTH of these must be done in order to achieve your ideal weight. By "ideal weight" I mean a healthy weight and body fat percent. Before you get upset with me for making a seemingly absolute statement, bear in mind that there are exceptions to every rule. But let's don't use an exception for an excuse, okay?

On to my strategy. First and foremost, I set an attainable goal for the week. I'm only three months out of major surgery, so I set my goals accordingly. And I always state my goals in terms of attainment, not loss. For example, my goal for this last week was to weigh 156, not to lose two pounds. The brain hates loss, and frankly so do I. I want to say that I achieved something. It seems a little odd to say, "I achieved a loss." Which sounds better: I burned seventy gallons of gas, or I went to Disney World? Who drives with their eyes on the rear view mirror? Always focus on where you are going! With my goal set, I then created a strategy, one that I know works for me.

Knowing my body fat is high, knowing that working with weights will increase muscle mass, and knowing that increased muscle mass burns more calories, I chose to resume working out with weights. I have an old Joyce Vedral video that I used years ago, that is perfect for beginners. As in any endeavor, returning to the basics is always a sound plan. I started with the lightest weight I have, a three-pounder. Don't laugh! Try doing super sets with Joyce and then tell me how you feel in the morning! I also have an Elliptical machine, and I use it.

So, my strategy for this last week was to work out with Joyce for four days, alternating between her upper body workout and her lower body workout, to work out on the Elliptical machine for 30 minutes, four times, and, of course, to drink at least sixty-four ounces of water each and every day. When you think about water, think about this quote from a general surgeon: The solution to pollution is dilution. Think of your excess body fat as pollution, and as you burn that fat, the water will help flush it out of your system, before it finds another place to hide.

Did I follow my strategy? Yes. Was I perfect? No. The weight work was the toughest, and I had a hard time keeping up, even with three pound weights. Using the Elliptical machine is easy for me. Cardiovascularly, I'm fit as a fiddle with a resting heart rate in the low fifties. Did I achieve my goal? Almost. My weight this morning was 156.5. My goal for next Saturday is 154.5, and I will continue with this same strategy for the next several weeks.

Next week, we'll explore childhood programming and how to break free from these old, outdated, belief systems.

Begin at the Beginning

2010-02-20T14:48:00.000-08:00

For those of you who want to achieve your ideal weight, just as it is with any endeavor, goals must be set, then a strategy must be created. To get where you want to go, you also need to know where you are now. So, let's begin with the important benchmark numbers, namely our BMI (Body Mass Index) and our BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) Our Ideal Weight and our Ideal Calorie Intake will also be explored.

The BMI is a calculation used by the Center for Disease Control to measure one's risk level for diseases associated with obesity, such as heart disease, Type 2 Diabetes, kidney disease, cancer, and a host of other inflammatory ailments. This calculation may not be helpful for extreme bodybuilders, but let's face it, most of us are NOT working out in the gym for six hours a day lifting refrigerators and small trucks.

I will begin with my BMI. I currently weigh 158 and I am 5'8" tall. (I weighed 136 a year ago. Hormones imbalances are hell on the stomach and thighs, ladies!) The calculation is my weight, divided by my height in inches, divided by my height in inches again, times 703. So, here goes: 158/68/68 X 703 = 24.02.

According to the CDC, the BMI range is as follows:

18.5 - 24.9 = Ideal
25 - 29.9 = Overweight
30 or over = Obese

My BMI is in the ideal range, but that's not the whole story. I need to look at my bone size. I am small to medium boned, so my BMI should be on the lower end. On the face of it, my BMI looks good, but since my body does NOT look good, I took it one step further. I tested my body fat percent. I have digital scales that calculate body fat and a hand held body fat calculator, and they both came up with the same results. My body fat is almost 35%. This is NOT good. A woman's body fat should be NO more than 25%, but no less than 20%. The weight I put on this last year is all fat.

Let's do the Ideal Weight calculation. If I want no more than 20% body fat, then I need to lose 15% of my current weight, or about 24 pounds of fat, which would put me at 135 pounds. My BMI at 135 would be 20.23, which is in line with my bone size. Body fat percent is a much better indicator of health than just being in the ideal range of the BMI, which I just proved.

What about Ideal Calories? First, we need to look at the BMR, or Basal Metabolic Rate. I will use my Ideal Weight for this calculation, because I don't want to eat enough to maintain my current weight. I want to eat enough to maintain my Ideal Weight. The BMR is the amount of calories required for the body to complete its basic functions, like keeping your heart beating and regulating your internal temperature, which is about ten calories per pound. For me, my BMR for my ideal weight is 1350. Add 10% for the digestive process and add an additional 20- 40% for daily activities: sedentary gets 20%, moderately active gets 30%, and very active gets 40%. I am moderately active, so my Ideal Calorie intake will be 1350 + 135 + 405 = 1890 calories per day.

Now that I know where I am now, next week I’ll share my strategy for re-achieving my ideal weight, and I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Never Give Up

2010-02-18T12:58:00.000-08:00

I've been absent from my blog for a while. Health issues, weight gain, and subsequent major surgery required me to focus elsewhere. But...I'm back! I've discovered something that many "mature" women have probably already known, and that is that fighting an imbalance in our hormones wreaks havoc on our metabolism, not to mention our relationships. I've never been one to over eat, other than on an occasional basis, and I am not sedentary, but as I got older, maintaining an ideal weight got harder. However, maintaining an ideal weight when we get older is more important than ever! Being overweight in our middle age is linked to dementia and a host of other ailments. I, for one, want to enjoy my "maturity," not spend most of it at the doctor's office.

So, beginning this Saturday, I will write about my progress toward returning to my ideal weight each week. It's been almost three months since my total hysterectomy, so I will take it slow and keep my weekly goals reasonable.