Weight Loss Archives - Page 6 of 7

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.

6 Ways to get motivated to Drop the Weight

October 3, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

Today I wanted to share with you my personal secrets, what I do to stay motivated to lose and keep the weight off. These 6 steps have also helped my clients overcome their food issues. It is important to realize that losing and keeping weight off is a lifelong process. I don’t want you to view it as a struggle. Did you know that 85% of people who lose weight regain it? That is why I am sharing these steps with you. These steps work for any habit you are trying to break and change.

Tip # 1 to get motivated to drop that weight.

Ask yourself why you want to lose weight? Find the important motivating reason or the meaning in your goal. It should be something that really matters to you. For me it is vanity and health. I like to look and feel good. Looking and feeling good is more important to me than eating foods that put weight on. Sometimes you need to go beyond vanity as it can be de-motivating if you are trying to lose weight to please someone else. The motivation should be important to you and not culturally imposed. Many people stay overweight and don’t’ change because they are secretly angry about our cultural obsession with thinness or if you’re significant other thinks you should. .

Tip # 2 to get motivated to drop that weight.

Focus on the negatives of what you are trying to change. Get clear about the negative effects of staying the way you are or getting worse. Often times we can get into denial and ignore or do not want to see how being overweight or eating unhealthy foods is harming us. You have to be unhappy about the negatives effect of overeating and/or of making unhealthy choices. You need to see that the negatives outweigh the so called positives or immediate gratification.

Tip # 3 to get motivated to drop that weight.

Think before you act. Once you are clear about what and why you want to lose weight, and the negatives of staying the same, you have to think about these things before you eat unhealthy food or overeat. When I was trying to decrease my coffee consumption, since coffee like processed food containing sugar, flour and fat, is addictive, you will get cravings. See my post on Overeating is Like a Drug Addiction. You want to notice the craving, and hit it hard with why you don’t want the negative side effects. After a while, you don’t get the cravings anymore and it becomes easier.

Tip # 4 to get motivated to drop that weight.

Share your goal with a friend. Research on how we change shows when we tell people about what we are doing, it keeps us more motivated to stay on course. You can also find a buddy and motivate each other.

Tip # 5 to get motivated to drop that weight.

Find a touchstone that empowers you. A touchstone is something that gives you power, keeps the motivation alive for you. Do you have a picture of yourself at a more ideal weight you can keep handy? Take a picture of yourself now and keep that next to it. You have to want what you are trying to change more than you want what you have now to stay motivated.

Tip # 6 to get motivated to drop that weight.

Keep a journal or a log of your weight loss progress. Your attitude is everything. There is no such thing as failure. It is all what am I learning? This includes not getting despondent and letting the old negatives internal dialogue de-rail you. Ultimately progress is motivating in itself.

Personally I find it empowering to break free from a habit that no longer serves me. What we are all looking for is more freedom. Can you imagine not having to really obsess about your weight anymore? What would you do with all that wasted energy? That alone is motivating isn’t it?

These are my best practice secrets on how to get and stay motivated to lose weight. The Nirvana Diet™ Guided Meditations I have created can give you the extra help you need to make the most of your motivation. The home study program I developed literally takes you through the whole process. For more information on this unique approach to weight loss and if you are looking for steps you can implement today, click here. Start seeing results immediately without feeling the struggle. Print this out and share it with a friend and better yet…work these tips together.

If this has influenced you in a positive way, OR if you have a suggestion I have not mentioned please add a comment below. Let’s heal and prosper together.

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…