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The major players in the weight loss game have a scam going on. Did you know that only 5% of the folks who lose weight ultimately keep it off? Why?
Primarily, the problem is that these programs are thought of as a diet, something you start, do until you reach some goal, and then ditch like a bad habit. Who wants to count points or eat prepackaged food for the rest of their lives to keep it up?
Another problem comes with low calorie dieting. The more time we spend eating too few calories, making our body think it is starving, the lower our metabolism drops, making it harder to lose weight the next time. Eliminating one food group, such in the Atkins Plan, where most carbohydrates are eliminated, essentially forces you into low calorie mode.
Low calorie dieting, makes you feel deprived, and it also leaves you hungry most of the time. I have been on that road many times, I have skipped breakfast, counted points, tallied calories and starved myself on weigh in day so that I would be the “big loser” at that particular meeting. I have stuffed my cart with prepacked “diet” foods in an effort to manage portion control. I did the “low-fat” thing, thinking that if I ate almost no fat, I would lose weight. None of this works in the long run!
If you buy into the “reduce calories and do cardio exercise craze”, you will find yourself being able to eat less and less, and having to workout more and more to continue to lose weight. By the time you reach your goal, you will be at starvation mode calories, and working out hours a day in order to maintain your weightloss. Is this something you can maintain for years? I don’t think so….
The diet industry has us duped into believing their plans, only to have us run from one plan to another when the weight starts to come back on. In my lifetime, on various plans, I bet I have lost a few hundred pounds. Funny, I never had that much to lose, but by being a “chronic dieter” and losing the same pounds over and over again, I have accumulated quite a boatload of weight loss!!
So what is the answer? How did I lose 70 pounds and manage to keep off most of it for 7 years? Ok, I fluctuate by 10-15 pounds, up and down, usually gaining it in the winter and losing it in the summer, but for the most part, I hover between 160 and 175 pounds consistently. Which at 5’7″ is not skinny, but it is a good weight for me. I feel strong and comfortable at this weight, fitting into about a size 10. Nope, you don’t need to be a size 2 and you don’t need to be rail thin. You can eat, you can workout a normal amount of time, and you can find your set-point weight and be happy.
Here in a nutshell is the answer.
1. Start with a few weeks of an elimination diet- Find a good elimination diet that takes out sugar, grains, dairy and “processed” foods. Follow this diet for a few weeks, then start adding back things into your diet. This allows you to assess if you have any food sensitivities or allergies that have been causing you to hold onto weight.
2. Eat whole foods most of the time- no prepackaged anything. No macaroni and cheese from a box, limit cookies, cakes and the like. Eat real veggies, fruit, meats and whole grains. Once you are past the elimination diet phase, you can start to bring other foods back into your diet gradually and create an eating plan that works for you. You can start to figure out a way to eat out at restaurants and make snacks to take with you when you travel, based on the foods that work with your body.
3. Get moving!- Work out 20-30 minutes most days. With a combination of stretching, strength training and cardio work, you can minimize your workout time, but maximize your workout effort.
4. Journal everything you eat- Not to count calories, fat and carbs, but to access how you feel, what moods make you want certain things and start to work through issues with food and fitness that may have manifested over your entire life.
5.Add meditation and yoga to your daily life- 10-20 minutes a day….that is all it takes! 5-10 minutes to meditate and 5-10 minutes to stretch, with hopefully a once or twice per week class to keep you on track and help you to learn new poses to add to your stretching sessions.
6.Face your demons-If chocolate is your downfall, make sure to acknowledge that! In order to be successful at long-term weightloss you need to be able to handle cravings in a different way. Perhaps in the chocolate example, by purchasing the one ounce squares (one serving!) and putting them in your freezer. Allow yourself to have an ounce of dark chocolate each day! Everything is ok in moderation, is the thing you need to keep in your mind.
7.Find a coach- Finding someone to guide you and help you on the journey is paramount to success. This is a person who can hold you accountable, keep you motivated and point you in the right direction when you are falling off the track. I can coach you through Beachbody Just go to the site and sign up as a free customer. I can also coach you personally with a personalized program, set up just for you. Email me at simplicityquest@gmail.com to set up a time for your free personal consultation. I will spend some time with you determining what your goals are, what things you have tried in the past, fitness level and current diet. We can then determine a plan to start to get you on track!
Here is to finding your long-term solution to your health and weightloss efforts! No one wants to do it twice! Find a system that works for you for the long haul….
Namaste,
Jennifer
I just got done listening to a recording by Joshua Rosenthal from Integrative Nutrition. I love his work and his book! “Integrative Nutrition
He talks alot about primary food. Primary food are the things in our lives besides what we eat, relationships, exercise, stress…..We can eat well, but if the other facets of our lives are out of whack, we may still feel unhealthy, unhappy and overweight. We need to look at all areas of our lives in order to get a firm grasp of our health and wellness.
He mentions work relationships and helping people either find work they love, or helping them to love the work they do. Sometimes, simple changes, such as moving to a different department or a change in frame of mind can make a job you don’t enjoy, tolerable. In relationships, we sometimes eat to dull the pain, boredom or lack of intimacy within it.
In fitness, he talks about making sure to cross train, or do different things to make sure your body is worked in a variety of ways. For example, runners who only run may need to add some yoga to their routine to balance themselves. Yogi’s may need to add some walking or running to add in that cardiovascular component.
Starting with a journal is an excellent way to access what is causing your weight issues. Each time you eat something, don’t just write it down, but make sure to write “how you felt” and “what you were doing” next to the food. No need to track calories, fat, carbs or anything else. You will start after a week or so to see a pattern develop. Perhaps you eat ice cream on the way home from work in order to “reward” yourself for making it through another day. Maybe that pizza you stopped and got while the kids were at dance lessons was your way of compensating for feeling overwhelmed by everything you have to do in a day.
By starting to identify the triggers to overeating, we can start to find ways to overcome them. Utilizing modalities such as meditation, breathwork, mantras,biofeedback and exercise, we can circumvent the need to eat with some other activity. A mantra is a word or phrase that you keep repeating to yourself to help focus your mind. For example “I am worth the effort” is a good one when you are feeling like you just want to eat that cherry pie.
Mantras are also helpful in maintaining an exercise routine. For many of us, me included, it isn’t the exercise that I love, but how I feel when I am done. I don’t enjoy running, I enjoy the high I get when I am done running. I do love to practice yoga, but it too, is challenging, where I sometimes want to quit, or make a pose easier by compromising my form. So it isn’t that those of us who are out there everyday get some sort of sadistic pleasure out of sweating, breathing heavy and working hard. We know that in order to live the life we wish to live, it is important to move our bodies everyday. It is HARD WORK, and you need to make the commitment to do it. Sometimes a little encouragement and someone to be accountable to is all you need to find fitness success.
So start your journal today, and begin to identify your triggers. Do you want someone to be accountable to, who will help you and encourage you every step of the way?? I would love to be your coach…. visit http://www.paths-to-fitness.com to see what programs I can offer to you!
have a great day!!
yogajen
This is a HUGE topic, so I am just going to touch the surface of it in this blog. If you want more information, or would like to schedule a consultation after reading it, please email me at simplicityquest@gmail.com
We have become a society that likes things to happen RIGHT NOW. Instant gratification is the word of the day. If we have a headache, we want it solved with a pill or shot that works instantly. If we are hungry, we want something that can be popped into the microwave and be hot and ready in 2 minutes. The same is going on in wellness, weightloss and health!
Passive wellness activities are those where you are not physically moving or engaged in the process. You are there, being touched or worked on, but you do not need to do anything to receive the benefits of the process.
Passive wellness includes many very good modalities including massage, Reiki, reflexology, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), herbal or vitamin supplementation and others. Some will argue that you are involved in the process and in some ways you can increase the effectiveness by being engaged in the process, but you can just be there and receive the treatment. All of these methods are awesome, if combined into an overall plan for wellness. There is another avenue of passive wellness or healthcare in the allopathic or western medical realm. These things include drugs and surgery. Unfortunately, typically drugs and surgery address the outwardly manifested “symptom” rather than looking for the inwardly manifested “cause”.
For example, if we are overweight is it because we overeat, or is it because we are stressed and too busy to cook the appropriate foods, we aren’t involved in physical activities or because the foods we eat are not providing the proper nutrients that our body needs, making our body think it is starving, thus requiring more food to try to meet the nutritional goals? Are we overeating to fill a void (emotional eating) that we can’t seem to get filled any other way? What part of that does gastric bypass surgery solve? Only the limiting food part. What part does a diet pill solve? Again, only the limiting of the food intake. These passive methods do not fix the underlying cause of the problem.
Active wellness on the other hand includes, yoga, meditation, walking, running, biking, eating well….and a myriad of other things that you are physically involved in. Active wellness is hard. It takes effort and is sometimes a difficult mode to get into. Let’s say for example, that I could tell you that if you eliminated gluten from your diet, that your migraine headaches would go away? OR, you could take a pill everyday for the rest of your life that would accomplish the same goal? Which one would you pick? But then, let’s add the other unfortunate problem of side effects, and the continual increase in dose of the medication? Now which one would you pick?
Let’s say that you are suffering from chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia, and it is determined that you suffer from a candida overgrowth that can be corrected with a special diet and anti-fungal medications, or that again, you can take a prescription drug that will cause strange side effects and will never truly correct the underlying problem of the candida overgrowth?
Now let’s examine weight loss. This is a tricky subject, because in most cases, it isn’t just your food intake that causes the problem. Actually, only 2% of people who undertake a reduced calorie diet and lose weight, manage to maintain that weight loss once they discontinue the program. Why is that? It is impossible to starve yourself forever. At some point, you fall off the bandwagon. You can’t spend your entire life hungry and you can’t fill up that void caused by stress or frustration if you never get to eat enough to satisfy you again!
Unfortunately, the diet program world has made reduced calorie dieting, eliminating certain food groups etc into really big business! Why? Because they know you will be back again and again, when you fail and need to start over. I have even seen it on a couple of ads for Weight Watchers and Nutrisystem! “I did it in 2004 and then I did it again in 2007!”. Why would you need to do it again if the method was successful at creating a lifestyle you can live with?
So what is the active wellness answer to weight loss? The answer to that question is different for everyone. First, you need to determine why you have a weight issue? Do you emotionally eat? Do you have a thyroid or adrenal issue? Is stress making you hold onto weight? Are you eating to few calories, making your body think it is starving, so your metabolism has slowed to a crawl?
Once the cause or causes can be figured out, a plan can be put together that includes a whole foods eating plan, active and passive wellness activities to help you achieve your goals and maintain them. Perhaps in your case it is a stressful job and marriage that are creating your eating issues. The eating plan is devised, followed by meditation, yoga, daily walking and counseling to start figuring out how to deal with the issues that need to be dealt with. Is a job change in order? Perhaps your spouse needs to know how you feel in order to start to work through those problems.
By starting to fill your diet with whole, natural foods, you will start to feel better immediately! By eating enough quality calories to sustain you, your metabolism will start to readjust itself, helping you to start to lose weight naturally. You won’t lose it quickly like you will with Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig or Weightwatchers, but you will lose it for always! Yes, you will need to eliminate some things like artificial sweeteners and white flour, but you will be replacing them with natural fruit sweetness and whole grains.
My personal journey started with yoga, but yours may start somewhere else. Yoga helped me to start to focus in on the needs of my body, guiding me to quit smoking, start walking and start eating better, so I started to lose weight naturally. Your journey may start with walking, or with adjusting your diet…wherever it starts, let it develop!
Active wellness is a challenge. It involves working through the symptoms to get to the underlying cause of your health problem. Then an active plan needs to be devised to help to eliminate the underlying cause, thus eliminating the symptoms. It is a cycle which can take longer than popping a pill or having surgery, but that in the long run will be of great benefit to you.
If you are ready to start your journey to health through active wellness and holistic passive wellness, send me an email or give me a call!! I would love to help you start on your path…..
yogajen
A few years ago, I had a tattoo of a small purple flower placed strategically on my right wrist, exactly where a watch face would land. I say strategically, as the intent of this tattoo was to forever keep me from working in an office setting ever again.
I had just sold my tax business that I had had since the early 90’s. I was fried from the long hours and constant demands of tax and accounting work. I had let it get the better of me, by not being able to say “no” to new clients, and not being able to delegate effectively. Having sold it, I felt this intense sense of freedom. Getting the tattoo, in my mind, sealed the deal….never again would I spend 8 hours a day sitting behind a desk in a self-imposed jail.
Ah, but here I am 4 years later, doing it again! Why? Because I did not effectively “burn the bridge”. When I got the tattoo, most financial services organizations would not hire someone with visible tattoos, so I figured I was safe. But as the need for accountants rose, this particular “ban” was lifted. And even with blatant showing of the wrist in interviews, I received several job offers.
Why was I even looking for a job you might ask? Well originally, I just sent out a resume on a whim. There was a job in the paper that I thought might be interesting (accounting, interesting…what was I thinking?), so I put together a quick resume and emailed it. Within 24 hours I had a phone call, within 48 hours I was at an interview and within 72 hours I had an offer, that at the moment seemed to good to pass up. I accepted the offer, and back to the daily work world I went, after two blissful years at home, reading, journaling, teaching yoga…
By the time I realized that I didn’t like this job, it was kind of late. We had moved into a different house, and our expense structure had changed, so I started looking again, for something closer to home, that might be more palatable. Again, send out a resume, and within a few days, I had another offer! What is up? So, this one, being just a few blocks from home, I decided to take, gave notice at the first job, and the rest is history so they say.
I don’t want you to think that I hate what I do, because I really don’t. I do hate the confining nature of work. I do intensely dislike working 8 or 9 hours a day doing the same thing. I don’t enjoy the fact that I have so much responsibility when I don’t own it, but that is somewhat self imposed I suppose. The joy of it is in helping a new business to get their accounting system set up so they flourish…in helping a young family find that awesome tax credit that will allow them to replace the car that broke down and in working with small businesses to create plans that allow them to effectively balance their businesses and lives….so there is good as well!
So, now, here I sit, wondering how to make this all work? Do I stay, work to much, get frustrated and end up leaving? Or do I try to develop a plan with better balance that allows me to do all the things I love, while still working to obtain the funds to do the things I love?
This is my challenge…how much life energy am I willing to expend to get money and how much life energy do I want to save for the things I truly enjoy doing?
Is this a bridge I want to burn at this time, or is this a bridge I may want to cross again at some time in the future? Many of us struggle with this dilemma. Have you come up with an answer? Have you burned a bridge you wish you would have left alone? Is there a bridge you want to burn but fear is standing in your way?
Let me know your thoughts…
yogajen
I was watching the first episode of the new season of Biggest Loser last night. Dan and I love that show, as it does bring out the importance of fitness along with healthy eating. The problem that I do have with it, although I do realize that people who are morbidly obese, like those on the show, lose weight faster than those with less weight to lose, I still don’t think it is good to make people think that you can lose 10 or more pounds in a week and that is ok!
It is not ok to lose more than a couple of pounds in a week, three at the most. Keep in mind that these people are in a very controlled environment. The rest of us need to go about our day, live with distractions and people who are trying to sabotage our efforts.
Weight loss has so much to do with our mind, in addition to our bodies. We need to get to that place in our head where we can lose weight. Many who are overweight, aren’t in that right place in the mind to even begin a weightloss program. Diets really don’t work if you don’t fix the stuff going on with your primary food, which is the rest of your life besides eating. Relationships, stress at work, unfulfilling employment and lack of support all play into our ability to successfully lose and keep off weight.
Like I said in my last post, I have this stubborn 20 pounds to lose, and I would love to have a few folks help me along the way who are also in need of losing a few pounds! Through fitness, eating, yoga, meditation and journaling, we can start to work through the junk that keeps us from losing the weight!
This program won’t be easy, but hopefully it will be successful and break through some of those issues we face when we intend to lose weight. I will expect accountability! We will need to track eating and workouts along with journaling through the other stuff. I will expect at least one yoga class per week, and some practice at home of yoga and meditation, along with daily workouts of some sort. There may be moments that are difficult, but we need to get through them to reach our ultimate goals.
Getting to our goal is never easy, but always worth it!! Do you want to join me? Send me an email at arkjmv@aol.com . If you live in the Winona area we will do it onsite, if you live elsewhere, we will work the virtual way!!
Come with me for an interesting journey, where we help each other!!
yogajen
I just saw an ad on TV for Weight Watchers stating that diets don’t work, but Weight Watchers does. I beg to differ with them! It might work in the short term, but how many people keep the weight off in the long run?
Is dieting just a matter of eating less or exercising more? Is there more to it?
I think there is! I think that much of how we relate to food revolves around our feelings, our history, our emotions and a myriad of other things. For me, for example, I had lost weight after each of my girls were born, getting back to a near perfect weight, only to find myself pregnant again. After I had my son, I figured, “why bother”, I will just end up pregnant again! I didn’t say it out loud, but it was in the back of my mind.
When my son was about 9, I decided I could no longer go with the “baby weight” story, even though he had weighed in at over 9 pounds, and I needed to figure it out. I had another vice to get over at the time, so figured I might as well really shoot the moon, and quit smoking and lose weight at the same time!
That afternoon, I quit smoking cold turkey and replaced it with walking, alot!! I also started watching what I ate. I lost weight and it seemed relatively easy! I also started practicing yoga at the same time, which I think helped immensely with my “mind” part of the equation.
Over the years, I have done pretty well staying with the fitness part of the equation, completing a marathon, a bunch of shorter races, and teaching several yoga classes a week. I get out almost everyday and walk or run, lift weights a bit and make sure to practice yoga on a regular basis.
In order to make weight loss a long term success, the eating needs to be watched as well, and this is where over the years, I have fallen off the truck a few times. I have gained back about 20 pounds of my initial weight loss, and really need to get back to it!
I am working on a program for myself, which incorporates fitness, eating, meditation, journaling and comraderie with others. Would you like to join me? I am looking for 4 or 5 people who would like to test run a program with me, starting in October! There will be a few things you will need to do and buy to get ready (the total will be less than $100), but I will offer the daily motivation and coaching FREE OF CHARGE! If you are interested, send an email to arkjmv@aol.com or simplicityquest@gmail.com and let me know! I can get you a list of items we will all need to have, and we can get our group together. It would be good to start with a group all located in Winona, but if you live elsewhere, and would like to join us in a virtual way, let me know!
Hoping for a good response!
yogajen
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