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Nirvana Diet

A Diet For the Mind

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Breathe and Lose Weight

August 8, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

meditation-croppedHow breathing can help you lose weight

I remember reading in Be Here Now by Ram Dass a part where he talked about a woman who began to use the powerful yogic breathing techniques for weight loss. Not only did she lose weight, she overdid it and ended up with psychic powers as well.  Putting the attainment of those powers aside, I think many of you would be interested in knowing how yogic breathing can provide a holistic natural way to lose weight.

The breathing technique Ram Dass was talking about in his book was the breath of fire. Many of you might recognize this if you have studied Kundalini yoga. This is an advanced technique designed as it says to build fire in the body. This type of breathing has the effect of stoking the metabolism by oxygenating the system according the beliefs of Ayurveda, a system of traditional medicine that originated in India and complements the practice of yoga.

Pranayama is of course the fourth limb of yoga according to Patanjali who wrote Yoga Sutras and explained how yoga is a powerful system of spiritual transformation.  Recently I had the pleasure of taking a unique yoga class, Yoga Heart Meditative MovementTM with Dinndayal Morgan in Napa. He shared with me a way to incorporate the notion of using breath to fire up the metabolism, build more heat and heart I may add, which can be practiced by beginners.

Many of you may be familiar with the three part breathing which is the basic one that is taught. You inhale through the nose slowly (I can’t emphasize that enough), letting the diaphragm drop and the rib cage expand for  5 counts, you hold or pause the breath for 20 counts and exhale for 10. This should also be done with caution as the breath holding called kumbakh brings on or resembles a deeper meditative state as the body’s oxygen requirement is reduced. This technique is considered to be the royal road to deeper meditative and mystical states so it should always be practiced gently without forcing it. I recommend one build to holding the breath for 20 counts or just do a few to get started. Start with a series of 5 and build to 20 holding the breath for 20 counts.

The ideal way to use this type of breathing is to set up your meditation practice. Imagine…breath and lose weight. What I found happened from using these techniques and teaching them to my clients is my cardio vascular capacity increased exponentially. I do not get out of breath easily when I do cardio exercise.

I am happy to announce that Dinndayal will be joining me in a retreat I am creating in Napa on personal power that will include Yoga Heart Meditative MovementTM, breathing, guided meditation, journaling and a creative process. In the meantime if you want to supercharge your metabolism, reduce stress, and practice healthy weight loss I recommend you try the breathing. These techniques are also included in the Nirvana Diet™ Home Study program if you want to learn all of them.

Filed Under: Blog, Habit Change, Stress Relief, Weight Loss Tagged With: breathing practices, Dinndayal Morganj, habit change, lose weight, meditation, napa, pranayama breathing, Yoga Heart Meditative Movement, yoga retreats

Obesity and Overeating; Why you have no willpower…

August 8, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

Woman exercisingHere’s what I have learned in the ten years of working with people who struggle with diet plans and are seeking healthy ways to lose weight. 

Although Kelly Brownell who wrote Food Fight is focusing on children who are certainly victims of the obesity epidemic, we are all prey to these insidious and dangerous phenomena of the addictive substances in processed food. What is going on?

 

I think we have all been misled into believing and thinking that diet and exercise are the answer. You have been programmed to think that if you are challenged by losing weight it is because you don’t have enough willpower. There is only one problem with that solution.

 

You can’t diet and exercise if you are addicted to sugar.

 

According to Robert Lustig MD, an endocrinologist at the University of San Francisco, you don’t have a chance because sugar is for some people as addictive as the ethanol in alcohol and should be a controlled substance.

 

Despite this, sugar is literally in everything. This is a biochemical problem that wreaks havoc with your brain and disenables the hormones you rely on to tell you when you are hungry and full. They no longer work when you are under the influence of this toxic addictive substance. According to the Harvard Health Letter, October 2006 issue, annual consumption of sweeteners has increased to about 100 pounds per person over the past 20 years. During this period more people especially children have become overweight and obese…added sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup may be the reason. Artificial sweeteners added to drinks are particularly troubling because people believe these drinks are healthy.  People who drink two cans of diet soda a day over a decade are 70% more likely to be obese. Not only are you saturating your body with sugar, it is debilitating your energy so you can’t exercise even if you want to.

 

The cure for this like all addictions is to become knowledgeable and ready to make some changes. The pain of continuing to eat like this has to become in your mind greater than the reward you think you get.

 

 

This includes taking a hard look at the underlying emotional or life issues that created it. As with most addictions the cure is abstinence and or a modification of how you eat that includes the consumption of plant based foods supplement with moderate amounts of concentrated protein preferably fish. This means focusing on eating real foods such as vegetables, salad, fruit and some “truly” whole grains.

 

Lustig said this is such a problem for our children.  It starts with the baby formula we feed.  If we do not have government intervention to help protect us…we will be sorry. This of course will not happen. So you have to take charge of your health yourself. The New York Times has run several articles on the merits of taxing food such as soda and subsidizing vegetables:

 

 

We need to treat the food industry just like we did the tobacco industry.

 

The best diet plan is to eat real food and take up something like meditation and walking to help rebalance the brain chemistry in a  This is why I put together a great home study program for stress reduction that includes a great beginner course: Doubt Free meditation.

 

This is why I put together a great home study program for stress reduction that includes a great beginner course.

Filed Under: Blog, Habit Change, Stress Relief, Weight Loss Tagged With: addiction, eating disorders, Food Fight, Kelly Brownell, losing weight, New York Times, obesity, sugar cravings, willpower

Sugar Cravings: Why you can’t follow a plan to lose weight.

August 8, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

Young blond woman eats chocolateSugar Cravings: Why you can’t follow a plan to lose weight.

Why are we reluctant to call eating disorders and other negative habits that relate to food eating addictions?

According to Gabor Mate, MD, author of In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, a powerful book, the definition of an addiction is:

a habit that causes negative consequences and despite these consequences you cannot stop or change easily.

According to most addiction experts, an addiction is also a chronic neurobiological disease, characterized by behaviors that include: impaired ability to control use of the drugs, which eventually becomes compulsive, and continues despite the harm it brings to the person. Typically when one tries to stop, there is a relapse of the behavior.

Perhaps the reason the medical community is reluctant to categorize eating problems as an addiction this way is because they do not consider food to be an addictive substance.

I believe until we begin to acknowledge the drug-like effects of processed sugar and flour especially when combined with other ingredients such as fat that hook and high jack the brain, we are denying one of the most prevalent addictions our society today.

Recently, Marcia DeSanctis wrote a powerful article in Vogue’s April issue about her fear that her sugar cravings and eating behavior were in fact an addiction. The medical community calls it “hedonic eating.” This means eating for pleasure as opposed to sustenance. In my own practice, I have come across this problem in about 30% of the cases I saw.

What I do now when I come across a case like this is to refer them for testing. Often there is an insulin sensitivity that goes along with this condition, and a brain chemistry imbalance, although this is hard to unravel. DeSanctis discovered a correlation between her cycles being “out of whack” and carbohydrates became a “tranquilizer of sorts on which she was “overdosing.”  Interestingly what she found was trying to quit cold turkey is partly why we fail. Although the key is to address the imbalance, and remove the addictive substance from the body to allow the brain chemistry to heal, it is the drastic change of trying to stop all at once that causes failure and relapse.

Kelly Brownell, PhD, and director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity says: “the magnitude of the effect  that sugar has on the body  is not as strong as what you get from cocaine or morphine or alcohol, but the whole body of evidence suggests that sugar affects the brain in a very similar way.”

Understanding this takes away some of the shame associated with addictions and food addictions in particular. It is not something that is so easily controlled by one’s will and it is often an attempt to self-medicate an underlying chemical imbalance in the body/brain. I do not necessarily advocate that people automatically turn to antidepressant medication either which is now the most frequently prescribed drug in the U.S.  and our most popular export.

There is new body of work suggesting that nutrition therapy holds more promise to treat the underlying condition than antidepressants. This is why I work with teaching mindfulness skills and meditation, a process I have worked with for years. Research is showing that meditation has the ability to change the brain by creating new brain cells in the part of the brain that registers happiness and compassion. The stress reduction process I work with which includes an easy effective way to make meditation a part of your life is in my opinion, the best way to start breaking a sugar addiction.

One thing is for sure, treating these problems the way we have been doing does not do them justice. If you have any experience curing a sugar addiction, I would love to hear about it.

Filed Under: Blog, Habit Change, Health and Wellness, Weight Loss Tagged With: addiction, eating disorders, Gabor Mate, losing weight, M.D., sugar cravings

Drop the Story ! How to Reduce your Stress with a Pause

August 5, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

jump-joyI have been taking a fabulous tele-class with Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God.

Neale explained very clearly the reason we are stressed, get stuck in ruts and repeat behaviors that do not serve us is because we  see things as an imagined truth as opposed to the actual truth. It is has been said that if you want to change your “life” you have to change your reality… shift out of the imagined to the real truth.  This is possible, because you create your reality by virtue of what you believe to be true.

There are according to Neale three levels or layers to the truth: the imagined, the apparent and the actual truth. Most of us operate at the level of the imagined truth based on beliefs we integrated throughout our life and the “data” we collect to support it. That is why we imagine things to be true. The problem is usually this imagined truth formed when we were very young and lacked to ability to discern if we really think it is true. This is what is called “our story.” Until we become conscious of this, we create our reality based on data we have been collecting that may not be true but supports the story.

The problem or opportunity is what we think is true can also be untrue, and or spun a different way.

The goal is to live one’s life at the level of the actual truth without the filter or lens we have in place that created the imagined truth. It is like getting to a higher level of how you perceive the experience based on better data. Neale suggested this higher level is called using the mind to communicate directly with the soul which is the storehouse of the real truth. To get to that level you have to drop your story, this allows one to live in a stress free zone.

To me this is just like changing a habit.

I recommend that you try it. First you have to be open to why this is beneficial for you to “drop your story.”)

Here’s an example of what I am talking about:

A woman I once coached had a pattern of being overweight because her romantic relationships ended with her feeling dumped. In reality, she brought that outcome on by being fearful that she would end up getting hurt and abandoned. This was a childhood misconception she picked up by watching her mother relate to her dad that way. The “story” she had to dump so she would avoid getting dumped was that she was unlovable.

To do this, you start with noticing the emotion you feel in your body when a situation comes up that triggers you and feels familiar. Start paying attention to your internal dialogue.  Then pause…take a few deep breaths and become the observer of the experience as you remind yourself that you are not more than your ego. It is your ego that feels hurt. By practicing meditation you gain an awareness of an expanded sense of your self that is beyond suffering.

Secondly, you come to understand that “story” is an imagined truth. It is not really true. You understand thoughts such as “I’m not loveable” were really based in a false interpretation of the past coming from a part of the brain that is stuck in the past. The part Neale added that was brilliant was to go one step further and to try to access the wisdom of the Soul.

Once you stop and, breathe you can ask the Soul for new data to come in that is informed by the Soul not the ego. This is how you shift your truth about an event and reduce your stress in a Nano second. You use your mind as a doorway to the Soul, not the past. This is what I believe transformation is all about. If you start up a daily meditation practice, it will eventually become second nature to you to reduce your stress by dropping your story naturally.

Filed Under: Blog, Habit Change, Stress Relief Tagged With: Conversations with God, meditation, Neale Donald Walsch, stress relief

Real Reason Most Diets Don’t Work

July 14, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

Have you noticed that many of your issues with food don’t really have much to
do with food at all? With all life’s demands, challenges, choices, and frustrations
coming at us seemingly non-stop, it’s hard to stay focused and be successful, 
especially with our goals for healthy eating, exercise and self care.
It seems like something we should be able to control. Think again. More>>

[button text=”More” link=”http://www.nirvanadiet.com/real-reason-diets-dont-work”]

Filed Under: Articles, Blog

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