I hope that you are enjoying connecting this month as much as I am. It’s amazing to see what you notice about your thoughts, your body and your life when you really tune in.

One thing I have noticed over the years of helping people master their weight is how easy it is to go from eating one serving of something and then, because the jar or the box or bowl of the thing I am eating is still there, I continue to graze on that thing. The tricky thing is that my mind has registered only one serving, but my body registered, recorded, and stored (as extra calories), 3 servings.

Often, it is those extra bites that create the difference between a weight release week and a weight maintain or gain week.

I have been maintaining for years, but still catch myself with the jar of peanut butter eating an extra spoonful or two… That is when I know the peanut butter is in charge of me and not the other way around.

What do I do?
I get back in charge.
How?

I have learned a simple tool that...

We will look at how we connect with others in our lives with an awareness on how they support or challenge our weight mastery. I invite you to observe these connections and use these observations to create more support based connections for your weight mastery.

We interact so habitually with people in our lives that we often don’t see how some interactions with loved ones, friends or co-workers are detrimental to our long term weight mastery. Once we are aware, we can strategize how to balance these relationships with our own health goals.

How do people challenge our weight mastery?

Their needs get in the way of our self care.
They bring unhealthy food into our environment.
Interacting with them stimulates us and creates emotion so we want to sedate ourselves with food.

How do we begin to move the equation to having more support in our lives?

1. MOST IMPORTANT: We must become conscious of the challenges. Who is a support and who is a challenge to our Weight Mastery? This is...

I remember when I struggled with my weight-- it was like I lived in my head and my body was this disconnected entity existing below me. Every once in a while, I would feel the extra flesh pressing against my waistline or see my reflection and I would react by feeling horrible and habitually spew poisonous word darts at my poor body:

• “You are disgusting”
• “I wish I could cut the fat off my thighs!”
• “Nobody could love you, you fat slob.”

How do we stay disconnected from our body?

• We have negative thoughts about our body and say nasty things about it.
• We feed our body food that pollutes it.
• We do not exercise it.
• We over work and exhaust it.

RE-CONNECT WITH YOUR BODY

When a couple is in therapy trying to repair their relationship, they often have homework to teach them to become more loving towards one another.  Of course, there may be things that we want to change, but step 1 to making positive change is setting up a positive...

As we head into November and our theme of CONNECTION, we will start by looking at our connection within ourselves and learning to become more aware of our actions and thoughts.

Do you know how many times a day you mindlessly reach for food? Not because you are hungry, but simply because you were “triggered” unconsciously? Maybe something happened externally (like your co-worker made an annoying comment) or internally (you were stressing about taxes being due) or maybe you simply saw some food and reached for it and popped it in your mouth--without even giving yourself a chance to think if you really needed it or wanted it?

How many times do you think a certain thought and immediately there’s a response or an answer from your brain, without you being aware of even thinking about it?  “I wonder what Pilates is like?” or “I’d like to do ____” and with no further exploration, your mind has answered for you, “Oh, I couldn’t...