As we head to the end of May, I want to explore one last important aspect of bringing more support for your weight mastery into your life. We have looked at ways to support ourselves and learned about assembling our support team from people in our lives who want to give us a hand.  But what about those who seem to sabotage us, either consciously or unconsciously?  How do we shift them from being a saboteur into a support for us as well.

The Hamburger Technique

We have to understand that most people behave out of habit in their relationships. If someone isn’t supporting you, it usually isn’t from being mean, just unconscious and unaware. Maybe even deep down, they think their actions will bring them closer to you (like bringing you donuts — what a nice gesture — aren’t I generous??) without them knowing how much it works against your deeper goals.

I want to teach you a great technique that works well for SHIFTING a saboteur into a...

How many people are currently helping you with your weight management?  As we head into our third week of “Ask and Allow", I would like you to consider that your weight management journey has more than one person on it.

When we are the only ones supporting ourselves, it can get lonely and disheartening and fattening. There are a lot of people in our lives that may push food on us or tempt us, not because they are mean, but because they just don’t know what to do and how to support us.  We need to train people how to support us for weight mastery.

ASKING FOR SUPPORT FROM OTHERS

When it comes to asking for support from others, many of us are afraid to ask because of past failures:

• I don’t want to draw attention to myself
• I hate to fail publicly
• Nobody will help me they think I’m a lost cause
• My friends will try and sabotage me

Six out of ten clients will say to me, “no one knows I am doing this. I just don’t want to fail one more...

Life never lines up for us to be “good” on a diet. Life is always throwing us curves: crappy days, life drama, maddening life stuff, happy celebrations.  If we are prone to eat over all these turns in the road of life, that road can get pretty twisty.

This month, as we look at seeking support from ourselves and others, I want to explore a powerful intervention tool that I discovered on my own weight release journey.

AM I GOING TO EAT OVER THIS?

A Powerful Question and 3 Slimming Self-Support Responses

I was so pissed off!  How dare they? My two best friends couldn’t make it to my birthday party. Why weren’t they coming? Didn’t they love me? Wasn’t I cool enough?

I was angry and I was eating, chomping away as I processed my hurt.  All of a sudden, I 'came to' as I reached the bottom of the icing bowl. Without even knowing, I had demolished all of the chocolate frosting hours before my birthday party.

Now on top of angry, I...

Welcome to May and our theme of ASK AND ALLOW. This month, we are going to really look at our support systems and focus on strengthening them. Seeking out, receiving, and giving support is a huge skill of weight mastery.

No man or woman is an island—weight management is often a huge team practice.

First there is the ”Inner Team” and the way you support (or don’t support) yourself. Then there are the people in your world, your “Outer Team”, your friends and family, your co-workers and the people you run into in your life. Even your local barista is on your team if they are offering you a croissant every day with your coffee.

How are your teams currently supporting you on your daily success with your Mastery?

This first week I would like to start by looking at how you support yourself.

3 LITTLE STEPS TO STOP BEING BOSSY WITH YOURSELF

Just this week I noticed something that reminded of what I used to do when I struggled with my weight.

I was...

We have been focusing on cravings this month and have mostly been looking at how to master our negative cravings. But how about creating positive cravings? Wouldn’t jonesing for exercise and broccoli be pretty good? Well, let’s explore how to do that, shall we?

TIPS TO CRAVE THE GOOD STUFF

A craving is a desire for something. The brain attaches the promise of reward to things it believes will make you happy. The interesting thing is that the actual having of the thing may not actually make us happy, but if the brain perceives that it will make you happy, it will send a simultaneous shot of dopamine and stress response through your body creating an agitation drive that compels you to fulfill the craving.

The good news is that we can get in the habit of positive cravings just like we get into negative cravings. I invite you to try a few of these tips this week to got your mind primed for some healthy living solutions.

1. CREATE A POSITIVE CRAVING: By pairing something...

In my practice, this is a time of year I often see people falling prey to excess sugar. There just seems to be more sugar around. Have you succumbed or have you remained masterful?

This week’s coaching is so short and sweet that hopefully it will be the replacement for any sugar craving you might get. It is also very effective for dodging that place called “physical craving” all together.

THE CRAVING ZONE: WHY WE FALL IN AND HOW WE GET OUT

In the research I have done, as well as in my clinical practice, there seems to be a sweet spot for staying in a zone - where our body feels nourished and our mind feels relatively free from the obsession for food - especially refined sugary and carb-based foods.

This zone is achieved by eating at least 50 grams of protein a day and keeping your carbohydrate intake under 150 grams per day.

Why?

Protein keeps your blood sugar stable.  Also, by eating over 50 grams a day, the amino acids that are present in the protein...

I was out weeding this week, getting more vegetable beds ready for new seeds in the backyard. I thought I had gotten all of the weeds out, but as I pulled harder, I realized there was a whole deeper circuitry of roots underneath the weeds I had pulled.

If I did not pull those roots up as well, the weeds would be back very quickly. So, I took a hoe and worked to dig deeper to get those roots out.  Now, the weeds can’t come back because the roots that would feed them are gone. Phew!

This week, I invite you to see that your cravings have a whole deeper root system to them as well. Have you ever noticed that once you relieve a food craving by giving into your desire, it often doesn’t satisfy that yearning feeling that you had hoped it would?

That is because most of our cravings have deeper origins and are actually an emotional or self care need that has nothing to do with food, but food has come to symbolically represent that need.

For instance - when I first moved to...

Welcome to April!

I have a case of Spring fever! Do you? I have been out weeding the vegetable garden in my backyard in my few minutes of free time and it feels so good to be out in the sunshine and to feel re-energized-and re-awakened.

This month, I want us to focus on Mastering Cravings. Cravings are a natural part of being a living being. However, when we routinely give in to cravings for refined foods, this craving can become a habit - and a huge obstacle to weight release.

This week, I want to keep it simple with an easy 5-step way to refocus our minds away from those pesky daily cravings, but still give ourselves a treat. There is a huge difference between giving in to a craving and giving ourselves a treat.

A 5-STEP SOLUTION TO RIDE THROUGH “CRAVINGS”

CRAVING definition: A powerful desire for something.

Along the paths of our daily lives, we have many thoughts that pass though our minds. Thousands upon thousands of thoughts pass through the wiring in our...

This last week of March and the last week of our theme of Patience and Persistence, I am going to continue to help you to create a repeatable structure for your meals and exercise in order to stay consistent over time.

Structuring Your Weight Release - Part 2

Last week I talked about my garden and how it took me some time and trial and error to build a garden I love that is very low maintenance. Every once in a while, when the seasons change, I have to get in there and add some things or cut things away, but for the most part, the structure remains year in and out.

The same happened with my weekly exercise structure. Honestly, I have been following the same structure for the most part (except for a few months when I was super pregnant or had just given birth) for years. I definitely have changed up food choices and specific exercises, but the habits that I cultivated and the way I eat and move, the amount of calories I burn and take in, has remained constant over time, allowing me...

I hope you are great and enjoying the wild and wacky weather this spring is bringing in.

I would like to take the next two weeks to look at creating a structure for your eating and exercise within your daily calorie budget for weight release - one that is repeatable so that it can become a low maintenance habit rather than something you have to consciously focus on all the time.

LANDSCAPING YOUR SUCCESSFUL WEIGHT LOSS STRUCTURE, PART 1

I was out in my garden last Sunday.  It was a glorious day and my front yard is coming to life. There are roses and other flowers blooming, but also all the other plants that go all year long.  I love my front garden -- there is no grass and the plants don’t take much water or care -- it is both beautiful and low maintenance. (This is going to tie into weight mastery in a moment - so hear me out.

TRIAL AND ERROR AND TRIAL AND SUCCESS

My garden was not always like this. It took time and trial and error to set up a garden that now I look...