admin, Author at Nirvana Diet

Are you an optimist and why is optimism so important?

May 30, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

In a recent article in The New York Times Jane Brody discussed the merits of being an optimist. Seeing the glass as being half full as opposed to half empty is very much a function of how you see it. An important distinction was made between being an optimist and two other character traits that complement optimism: persistence and what is called motivation (not giving up).

This was found in a research study by Dr. Segerstrom and others to be the gift of optimism because when you combine optimism with persistence it leads to being able to creative solutions. All great moments of creativity began with a problem. Frustration and not giving up on finding a solution to a problem is the genesis of creativity. Pessimism derails creativity which often requires one to keep on keeping.

Insights come when we least expect yet when we are still waiting expectantly for an answer. In order to do this, a problem has to be turned around into a question and not viewed just as a problem. That takes character.

The other gift in optimism is the capacity to see a set back into a learning. Once again this is a function of how you view it and how a negative once again gets spun into a positive. These gifts appear to have some basis in genetics specifically one’s that affect neurotransmitters in to the brain such as dopamine that affect goal focused behavior.

The question then becomes if you were not born with the optimism gene can you acquire it? According to Dr. Segerstrom and other researchers the answer is yes. Perhaps we should focus more attention on optimism than happiness? Her advice is to “fake it until you make it” which is another way of saying how taking actions have the capacity to rewire the brain. I think a key to this is to reawaken the creativity within which then leads to the qualities that help turn problems into solutions. Creativity is a state of mind and a way of seeing. If you think you can, the likelihood that you will is much greater.

Losing weight is really the same dynamic. If you think you can, you will, but you must think of yourself first as a thinner person, from there you have the ability to make changes that become your way of living. Another way to approach this is to take up meditation. Meditation has the capacity to increase the cells in the brain that register optimism. Download Meditation Made Easy and get started now on thinking like a more optimistic person.

Want change? Embrace change without needing anything to change

May 17, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

We live in a culture that is full of advertisements that encourage us to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We all want to change or strive to keep things the way they area. What you may be wondering is wrong with that? The messages are subtle: a mother who sits down on a park bench to take a well-deserved break eats a Nutrigrain bar. If you pay attention, most food advertising is selling and linking pleasure and reward with food. No wonder so many people associate food with a reward. This is one of the main reasons people find it difficult to lose weight. Successfully losing weight requires re-wiring the brain. To find out more download my free EBook The Key to Successful Weight Loss.

The wisdom traditions have been suggesting the root of suffering is the constant striving for pleasure along with the desire to avoid pain and displeasure. We are very conditioned to think there is something outside of ourselves whether it is a pill or an Almond Joy that can give us pleasure and the happiness we are longing for.

The sad thing is that all these things do is to lull is deeper into a lifeless sleep. I feel very grateful that I am aware of how this conditioning negatively affects us and try as best I can to help other people to awaken and start making decisions based on their self-interest as opposed to mindlessly pursuing short term fixes in the form of candy bars and other distractions. I think my meditation practice has helped me to do this. That is why I created Meditation Made Easy. Try it you might like it or leave a comment to let me know how this resonates with you.

Why watching TV causes weight gain

May 16, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

The most important piece of information I got out of watching The Weight of the Nation which was focused more on the consequences of weight gain than how to lose weight is the effect of watching TV on weight gain. Why would watching TV cause people to gain so much weight? The Weight of the Nation focused on children, and called the advertisements for soda and cereal predatory. Food companies understand how brand loyalty works. The younger you get them the more hooked they get. The more you eat junk food the more food you eat and the cycle is hard to break.

The other reason watching TV causes weight gain is that the commercials border on being hypnotic. The continual parade of fast food and junk food commercials which now position Coke as happiness, or happy meals, or other subtle messages that link food with feeling good are having the effect of re-wiring the brain to think like that.

The other obvious reason watching TV causes weight gain is the couch potato syndrome. People tend to eat mindlessly while watching TV and the time spent watching TV takes away from other things you might do that cause you to be more active.

I think the writing is clearly on the wall. The first step you should take to lose weight may have to do with your TV habits. The second obvious step is to stop drinking sugar with which most drinks are loaded. The most remarkable statistic presented on The Weight of the Nation is how the obesity curve sky rocketed beginning in the 1980’s. This is also when food companies started putting high fructose corn syrup in everything. It is also saturated fat, hormones in milk the list goes on. The next step you can take is to stop eating foods that have ingredients on the label you do not recognize. It’s simple. Eat real food…preferably grown locally. This is of course the genius of my program The Nirvana Diet™.

Let me know what you think are some of the keys steps to take to lose weight.

Not all calories are created equal…we have been misled on the weight problem

May 14, 2012 by admin 1 Comment

There is a new documentary about to air The Weight of the Nation. This well researched documentary has come to the same conclusion I have on the weight problem in America. The best way and only way to lose weight and keep it off which to me is the only successful way to lose weight you must treat the way you lose weight as your lifestyle. That means the changes you make must be permanent and not viewed as a diet. This is hard to do because the brain tricks you into thinking its ok to eat this or that and not exercise every day. The problem is before you know it the weight starts to come back.

The other important piece of information you need to successfully lose weight and keep it off is to stop allowing yourself to be brainwashed about how the weight problem is an energy imbalance- you eat too many calories and expend too few calories. The problem is not just with calories in and out but the type of calorie you consume. Gary Taubes has written this in his bookGood Calories Bad Calories and in an article in Newsweek The new obesity campaigns have it all wrong. There is a different theory which says holds certain foods accountable- foods that contain refined sugar and grains which are loaded with them because of the affect it has on creating metabolic syndrome and their effect on the hormone insulin which regulates fat accumulation. These foods also change the way the brain operates by increasing the production of ghrelin and decrease the production of leptin so you feel hungrier and are never satisfied. Sound familiar?

The single easiest thing you can do to put a stop to this is to stop looking at calories and low fat and start looking at the sugar or carbohydrate content in the food you buy. This includes the biggest offender which is soda, including diet soda. The other simple thing is to stop buying packaged food or fast food. This is why the nation is heavy and getting heavier. This is really important that people start paying attention to this. It’s time to wake up. We as consumers can put a stop to what the food and drug companies are doing to us. Just stop consuming it.

Feeding your creativity. What are you really hungry for?

May 10, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

So how do you ‘grow’ creative ability and lose your appetite for the things that do not serve you in life?

So we are born creative, to be creative and then we seem to lose it. To grow and reconnect with the creative spark within you must be willing to make mistakes, and laugh at yourself. Einstein’s quote is relevant here: “A person who has never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

Creativity can be re-cultivated. Creativity comes from using the “whole brain” that is left and right working together. Believe it or not meditation has been shown to increase creativity helping to connect left and right brain. Meditation and creativity go together and both can become your daily practice. To begin your daily practice check out the meditation made easy program I developed. You can also look at Julia Cameron’s groundbreaking book on creativity The Artist’s Way. Growing creativity is like exercising you have to do it everyday as a daily practice.

Something happens in school that shuts that down, favors and rewards left brain thinking. I remember with my own children growing up and how different it was moving from kindergarten to first grade. My daughter came home from school one day very upset complaining how the first grade and school was not fun anymore. There was the big push to learn how to read and from then on creativity was not honored but marginalized. I also think it has a lot to do with playing… children spend so much of their lives playing. If you can bring more play into your life you may find yourself more focused to achieve your lifestyle goals whether it be to lose weight or find your passion.

Ultimately creativity involves the capacity to see relationships between things that are not related and to “think out of the box.” The problem is if one lives in a box, how does one think outside it? I also think creativity comes from the muses. It is about inklings, flashes of ideas that just pop into one’s head that may not even be one’s own.

Creativity is also about change and transformation. It is the process of bringing something new into being and making something of it. Does that sound familiar? Isn’t that how we change a habit? To that I would also like to add Amit Goswami’s definition: “creativity is the discontinuous exploration of new meaning in new and old contexts(s) of value. Looking for the link between creativity, change and values is a creative act.

What do you want to create? When you give some focus and attention to this drive, you may see that eating healthier food and exercising daily comes more naturally to you and watching TV are no longer interesting. Ultimately tending to our creative side makes us more stress hardy as well.

Tell me how some ways you can begin to activate and tend to your creative side.

Goswami, A. (1999). Quantum creativity. Creskill, NY: Hampton Press.