Welcome to August! It is the month of embracing the final carefree days of summer, vacations for many.  As we head into the month, I would like to invite you to think about embracing yourself as we explore this month’s theme of loving yourself down the scale. So often when we struggle with weight, our attempts to actually release weight are focused on our negative beliefs about ourselves:

• I’m fat.
• I’m out of control.
• I‘m lazy.
• My stomach is ugly.
• I can’t look like this, I have to lose weight!

All of the negativity causes stress and inner tension, and guess what happens when we are stressed and tense? We eat! What if, instead of struggling with ourselves and our weight, we focused on actually loving ourselves down the scale?

When we appreciate ourselves and come from a loving place, with a desire to give ourselves the best health and best life we can, it allows our mind to feel relaxed and inspired. It also changes the tone of our weight release from that of a desperate need ...

I have really enjoyed this month of “Bouncing Back” with you. One thing that came up in the mastermind and the meeting was our need to forgive ourselves in order to bounce back. Many people said they couldn’t forgive themselves, or at least didn’t know how.

I have outlined a few steps that help me to forgive myself and then understand and learn from my mistakes: overeating episodes or even going off-track for a week or so and gaining some weight. If we don’t learn, we will just keep making the same mistake over and over. Forgiving yourself opens you up to learning and learning shifts you back into mastery out of the struggle.

FORGIVING YOURSELF FOR AN OVEREATING EPISODE

1. SAY 'I FORGIVE MYSELF' EVEN IF YOU DON’T MEAN IT: Since you want to begin a forgiveness process, say “I forgive you” to yourself to start the ball rolling.
2. OWN IT: Own what it was that you did that you didn’t want to do, specifically. Just saying "I was “bad” " or ”I was a pig” or “I shouldn’t have done that” b...

Our focus is on the skill of bouncing back when we get off-track or overeat.

So far, we have looked at preventing going “off”, intercepting “I Blew It!”, and how to physically pull our mind and body out of “overeating” mode. This week’s lesson is going to focus on the inner game of bringing ourselves back from feeling off track or having binged or overeaten.

I can’t emphasize how important this month’s lessons are for long term success.  Consistency is the cornerstone of weight mastery. Being able to build the muscle of getting back on track, mentally and physically, from a food fallout, is key.

The three steps I am about to describe are each tools that you can apply separately or all together to pull yourself back from the mental and emotional stress that comes from being off-track.

3 STEP INNER GUIDE TO BOUNCING BACK

1. FORGIVE YOURSELF: Our relationship with ourselves creates either stress or power.  When we are guided by our Inner Coach, we are powerful: looking for solution...

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me! Fool me multiple times,shame on sugar and carbohydrates!

During the time of my almost two decades in clinical practice, I have seen many weight mastery success stories. Over this time, I have also seen many successful weight masters get delayed or thwarted on their journey to weight mastery and often the major culprit is consuming too much sugar and/or carbohydrates.

To me, the defining distinction of someone who finally masters their relationship with weight and themselves is the person who learns the skill of consuming less than 150 grams of carbohydrates a day. And, if these masters wind up going over that amount and eat too many carbs, even over multiple days, they know how to quickly shift their food intake and bounce both their mind and body back from the influence of too many carbs and move forward on their journey with very little damage.

This week, I would like to explore that skill of noticing you have gone too far an...

Happy July everyone and welcome to our theme of “Bouncing Back”. This month we will be looking at developing the incredibly powerful skill of how to bounce back after binging, or losing focus with your weight release, or even if you have gained a few pounds. Being able to build the muscle of recovering as quickly as possible from any overeating episode is vital to not only reaching your ideal weight but keeping it off for the long term.

This week I would like to begin with looking at three of the best ways I know to keep from “falling off” in the first place. Obviously, it is much easier to stay focused rather than to recover and get it back, so let’s focus on working that muscle first!

PREVENTING “GOING OFF”

I want to invite you to see that there is a science behind weight mastery that goes beyond writing your food and getting enough exercise. The science involves working with your brain in a way to keep it on course with your weight goals.

Nowadays, with all the distracting fo...

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 supporter called the HAMBURGER TECHNIQUE.  It help...

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 time.” But, research shows that people doub...

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 felt sick and sad. My friends hadn’t ruined my birthday...

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 bossing myself.

How did I know 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 that you don’...