Health and Wellness Archives - Page 7 of 8

Overcome unhealthy eating patterns…the “easy way” to follow a healthy diet

October 10, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

Let’s put first things first. Did it ever occur to you that the food you eat influences your thoughts and feelings? It has been said that you are what you eat, but who really things about that when they are eating. What you think affects what and how you eat. Most people are aware they are driven by their senses, the smells and perhaps the “memory of how good it tastes” and how they think the food will make them feel good. Advertisers know this and use it in their messages. Next time you watch a commercial for fast or processed food, pay attention to the underlying message.

It has become so obvious to me that many of my clients are eating poorly because of their feelings and how they think. Food and eating becomes a way to stuff down and not feel or deal with their feelings.

Overeating and eating junk or crap food (processed food with sugar or fat) becomes a coping mechanism or a release from the feelings. Usually it is what I call a “low vibration” emotion such as anger, fear, guilt and all the negative nuanced feelings that flow from those emotions.

Did you know what that the energetic vibration of thoughts and feelings can be measured? If you do not believe me pick up Dr. David Hawkins’s book Power vs. Force. Using kinesiology, he measured the different emotions. As you would expect, shame and anger were the lowest on the scale. This is why how you deal with your feelings and what you feel is so tied into why it may be hard for you to follow a healthy lifestyle and diet. You have to change your energy first.

That is why I have come to the conclusion that before anyone even attempts to change their eating, or embark on a new habit that is going to involve delaying immediate gratification, it may be better to start doing something to change your energetic vibration first and learn how to be more present to your feelings.

Overcoming unhealthy eating patterns should start with the practice of:

1. Mindfulness

2. Meditation

It is not surprising that mindfulness and meditation go together. Creating the habit of mindfulness and meditation makes it easier to practice a healthy lifestyle. I learned this from Jon Kabat Zinn’s Mindfulness Meditation Workshop years ago. Zinn calls it awareness.

I have found the best way to do this is to first become aware that you may have an unhealthy relationship with food because you have food patterns in your life that are unhealthy. Recently one of my clients came to the awareness that she eats processed foods because she does not process her feelings. She grew up in an environment where it was not ok to say what you feel or to “rock the boat.” So even though she is a successful highly functioning adult on some level she operates as if she is frozen in time and still that little girl. It has been an awakening to her to begin to feel her feelings and instead of stuffing down food, she can begin to express what she is thinking and learn how to let the feelings pass.

So instead of beating yourself up which is all about shame and guilt, why not start being aware of what you are feeling? Identify what triggers eating episodes, and how you may be trying to shut down and not feel. The problem with that strategy is that you may get temporary relief, but eating, especially junk food, lowers your energetic vibration even more. No wonder you feel like you have no energy. Gaining energy is one of the first things my clients report to me they see changing. Then you can move to the next practice which is exercise. Take one step at a time.

Before you try to make changes to your eating and are able to eat healthier naturally, you may have to understand why it has been so challenging. What purpose is the food serving? What is your relationship with food that is mirroring how you are unhappy with your relationships with other people? If you down load my E-book available on the website you will find an assessment that will get you so much clearer about what is really going on.

Stay tuned in because in the next post I will be talking more about how meditation is the foundation for change and how it can help you want to eat healthier naturally.

8 Steps you should take to eat healthier right now

October 6, 2011 by admin 2 Comments

I just finished by interview with Joanne Neft who shared with me the most important steps you should take to eat healthier. The advice is summarized in two words… Eat real food which is the name of her cookbook. After writing the cookbook many people have thanked her for making this fun, easy and practical. There are so many life changing stories she and I both have been privileged to hear about since this is the advice I have been giving my clients for years. You will hear more about his interview, but I wanted to give you the basics of eating healthier food.

1^st Step to eating healthier food:

Buy your vegetables and fruit from the local farmer’s market. You don’t want to know how the produce is grown that you are buying from the grocery store. She suggests people go on Saturday buy what is in season and build their weekly meals around that.

2^nd Step to eating healthier food:

Buy only organic dairy. This will cut out the hormones and antibiotics you are ingesting daily that you do not need and that are wreaking havoc with your system.

3^rd Step to eating healthier food:

Eat yogurt and fermented foods including sauerkraut and pickles daily. This does not mean any old yogurt; we are talking about real Greek yogurt and Straus family yogurt which contains active cultures that aid in digestion and absorption of nutrients you eat.

4^th Step to eating healthier food:

Minimize or even stop eating food that comes from bags, boxes or cans. This is processed food that contains a lot of sodium and other chemicals to promote shelf life and it is not really real food.

5^th Step to eating healthier food:

Eat animal protein that is locally raised and pastured if possible., This includes organically raised non- caged free range chickens, grass fed beef and line caught fish preferably from Alaska or the Pacific. Atlantic salmon is mostly farm raised and there fed in a very suspect way things like cat food.

6^th Step to eating healthier food:

Buy organic flour and grains that have organic whole wheat flour. She recommends quinoa and the rice made by the Lundberg Family Farms.

7^th Step to eating healthier food:

Enjoy some real chocolate that is made in a way that conforms to fair trade…no slave labor. The best source for this is Sweet Earth Chocolate.

8th Step to eating healthier food:

View the food you eat as what you are. That is right you are what you eat. When you change you make these changes, you will never have to worry about being overweight, it is naturally satisfying and give you energy. Many health problems will disappear and you will look better as well.

Buy Joanne’s cookbook and start giving more importance to how you treat your body. I cannot tell you how much better you will feel if you make even some of these changes. Trust me taking these steps to eat healthier food will change your life. Let me know if we missed anything. Share with me your story if you have already begun to awaken when it comes to what you are feeding your precious body.

I promise you. Once you start to eat real food especially locally grown and take some of the other advice I gave you, it will change your life. You will feel more energy, you will automatically lose weight without trying, your health issues will start to resolve themselves and you will look better. Share this with other people you know…these are gems.

Research Proves Theory Right: Overeating can be a Drug Addiction

September 29, 2011 by admin 6 Comments

If you struggle with your weight and have obsessional thought about food you could have what the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) is now calling an addiction. The ASAM recently changed the definition of addiction which now includes food along with other addictive substances such as drugs and alcohol. The important new thought is that addictions are now considered to be a chronic neurological disorder or disease of the brain. Addictions “high jack” the brain and create obsessive or compulsive thoughts that lead to weight and health problems. Despite the negative consequences the addicted eater seeks out and keeps using and over-using the very substances that are so harmful to them.

It is important to understand that an addiction is not a willpower problem. Research shows addictions are usually inherited. Genetics make it 50% more likely you will have an “addictive personality.” That means there is an increased tendency or predisposition for addictive substances to get you. Using addictive substances heavily before the age of 21 increases the odds especially for someone at risk. Using large quantities of it can also trigger a problem. This coupled with an inability to deal with the up’s and down’s of life or to deal with feelings makes matters worse. This disease overwhelms the pleasure reward circuitry of the brain and can over time cause a mood imbalance. Could this be a reason why so many people are now on antidepressants? Can healing our food issues begin to change our mood problem?

The most important piece of information to understand is that according to Scripps Research Institute, compulsive eating shares the same addictive biochemical mechanism as cocaine and heroin abuse. Processed sugar used in packaged foods is the prime offender. All snack food, baked goods and even processed/packaged foods are in this category of food.

Because an addiction is a chronic disease, it does not go away and can only be managed. Managing it includes increasing your coping mechanisms and learning how to express and feel your feelings. Relapse is part of the disease. By understanding the nature of the addiction, those who suffer from it can move away from the shame. Shame and guilt are low vibration emotions. They bring on more addictive behavior. Learning how to deal with our feelings, stress and whatever other purpose the addictive eating may be serving is the way out as well as “seeing the food” differently. This is what I teach. I would recommend ordering the Nirvana Diet™ program for weight loss or start with stress reduction. You can also reach out to me if you want to continue this dialogue.

3 Things You Can Do To Disarm a Food Craving

September 16, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

Carl Jung said: “you are what you do not what you say you’ll do.” If you want to do what you need to do to lose weight, you have to say the right things to yourself. That’s right, losing weight is not just about what you eat, it is as much about what you think or don’t think before you eat.

Experience has shown me that most people who struggle with their weight do not think, they just act or if they do think first, it’s a thought that is guaranteed to make them eat.

Here is a really helpful strategy adapted from the Four Step recovery process developed by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz at UCLA, an American psychiatrist and researcher in the field of neuroplasticity and its application to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). If you are a yo-yo dieter, and can’t keep the weight off, you can relate to how food thoughts can seem obsessive and compulsive. Here is an adapted version of the process that has some similarities to meditation and mindfulness.

Become conscious and aware. The thought you have before you act needs to be redirected. Pay attention to the thought as it comes up. This is similar to the skill you learn when you meditate, where you become the observer of your thoughts. When you meditate you let the thoughts go, but in this case you redirect it.
Say to yourself: “It’s not true.” It’s not true that I need to eat because I am bored or sad. It’s not true that I need to eat when I am not hungry.
Acknowledge the obsession. This is just an obsession I have that I think I need to eat when I am lonely. The point of the redirect is to make the addictive urge, craving, thought disappear.

It’s important to understand that the patterns of thinking that lead to the actions you want to change do not go away overnight. They will not go away unless you stand witness to them and call them for what they are. Both the thought and the desire are wired into the pleasure reward part of the brain, thanks to the addictive nature of packaged foods. Paying attention is the first step to changing it.

The important thing is that you are not acknowledging it as a need, but a dysfunctional thought. You have to understand this is a game of persistence, it will come back. It is only because you are determined not to give into that you have a shot at rewiring your brain.

This is the first step in a four part process to end yo-yo dieting. The rest of the steps are outlined in the Nirvana Diet™ Home study program that you can use at home.

So remember…the key to successfully losing weight is changing the way that you think. The best way to manage your weight is to learn how to manage your mind first.

Best way to lose weight? Get savvy…not all calories are the same

September 15, 2011 by admin 2 Comments

One of the reasons it is hard to lose weight is that most people don’t understand what they have to do. That’s because it’s really confusing. The current thinking is that you have to exercise and reduce your calorie intake. Well my experience and now research is finally showing that is not correct. If you exercise more and cut back your calorie intake you are going to be hungry. That is not a formula for success. The goal is to change what you eat, have more energy and not feel hungry. Sound too good to be true? Not if you know what to do.

The first thing you have to change is the notion that all calories are the same. I have always thought Gary Taube’s book Good Calories Bad Calories explained the science very well. Now his new book, Why we get fat-and what to do about it, is also helpful especially for debunking the myth that cutting back fat and calories is how you lose weight; which most people think means cutting out the fat.

Cutting out the fat is really not the point, it is more important to cut out the wrong carbohydrates. Most people who are overweight eat too many carbohydrates, which may not amount to that many calories, but when consumed in excess leads to a condition called metabolic syndrome. It is basically a disorder in the way your fat tissue works and this depresses the metabolism as well as your energy levels.

While I do think it matters how many calories you eat, the real issue you need to focus on is how much protein you need. Unlike Taube’s, I do not think you can eat as much protein and fat as you want. I have a very easy way to figure this out how much protein is the right amount. Take you ideal weight which let us say 150 lbs. and divide that by 2.2 and you will get an estimate of how many grams of protein you need. In this case it is it is about 70 or 23 grams per meal. This is an estimate; the actual number is related to your lean body mass and your exercise levels. The leaner you are and the more active the more protein you need.

The next key number is how many grams of carbohydrates you need. The current thinking is that this number is less than 50 grams after you subtract fiber. If you divide that by 3 you get about 15 grams per meal. This information is so useful to getting yourself on the right path that will allow you to lose weight, give you energy, and most importantly you will not be hungry. I am conservative in my assessment about how much fat you need. I would not eliminate fat, but be mindful of eating real food so that the fat you eat does not have a negative effect. That means nuts, avocado, some cheese and dairy. To eat fat with abandon is missing the mark. If you eat the right amount of protein and carbohydrates the fat naturally falls into place. That’s what I teach my clients…it should be coming naturally to you and something you enjoy doing or else, it will not be sustainable. That’s how you lose weight and keep it off.

Let me know what you think about this? This is what has worked for my clients. The only other pieces you will need are how much exercise and how to manage the internal dialogue. Stay tuned…