Now that you have set up your outcome or goal to something more you can work towards, you now need to believe in 3 things in order to be successful.

You need to believe:

1. POSSIBILITY: It is possible for you to get a slimmer body.
2. ACHIEVEMENT: You are able to lose weight or to get a slimmer body.
3. WORTHINESS: You deserve to lose weight or to get a slimmer body.

Possibility

Possibility is almost always mistaken for competence. We think that something isn’t possible, that we aren’t able to lose weight when really we don’t know how to do it – we don’t have the knowledge or resources to be able to lose weight. This is especially true in people who have tried countless diets with little or no success.

It is possible though, regardless of your situation. You can’t prove that it isn’t possible – you can only say that you haven’t achieved it yet.

Beliefs are not fact.

Beliefs are just our best guess at something and we often sell ourselves short. Do you think you have put a mental ceiling on your achievements? Do you think you have hindered your weight loss success through your beliefs about yourself?

Ability

Most of us tend to make others aware of our short comings, when we can’t do something. If you take a day out and observe people and what they say, you should notice how often people say they can’t do this or they can’t do that. We all think this is being modest, when in fact its not. Modesty is not boasting about what we can do, it isn’t boasting about what we can’t!

Once you become aware of yourself voicing your inability to lose weight, you can stop yourself voicing it. If you continue to voice your inability to lose weight, it will hold you back from achieving your weight loss goals. If you find it difficult to stop voicing your inability, a good alternative is to add the word “yet” to the end of your statements.

“I haven’t been able to lose weight…yet”

“I can’t lose weight…yet”.

It is also important not to make excuses for your weight loss failures. If you do not have the knowledge to lose weight, go out and get it. Set tasks that you need to do in order to achieve your slimmer figure.

A general belief that you should try to hold is:

You have not yet reached the limit of what you are capable of.

Keeping this in mind will help you to achieve your weight loss goals.

Worthiness

Do you deserve to lose weight? Does it make you feel uncomfortable to say you deserve to? If it does, this should help you figure out any obstacles that are in your way to achieving your goal. List them and work out how you can overcome them.

e.g. I don’t have the correct knowledge to lose weight – to overcome this I am going to do some research and find a suitable diet program or expert to help me.

For Help To Combat Cravings & Create Your Perfect Vision: CLICK HERE

Weight Loss Goals Part 1: Creating A Positive Weight Loss Mindset

Weight Loss Goals Part 3: Weight Loss Planning

Your weight loss outcomes can depend on many things but at the core of it all you need to believe in 3 things in order to successfully lose the battle with the bulge. But before I go into the 3 beliefs you need (which will be in tomorrow’s post), I would first like to address the term “losing weight”.

When saying to yourself you want to lose weight, you are setting yourself up for failure to begin with. When you say you WANT to lose weight, you won’t do so because you are concentrating on what you cannot do while still trying to do it instead of willingly doing the task i.e. I CAN lose weight. When you say you can lose weight your goal becomes focused.

However there is still a problem in the goal “to lose weight”. When you say you want to lose weight you are describing a negative outcome – to lose, when what you need to be doing is describing something positive. Not positive in the sense of being good for you or positive feelings, but positive in the sense that you want to work towards it rather than something you wish to avoid or to lose!

So instead of making the goal to get rid of excess weight or to lose it, try to change your goal into something more positive. I want to be slimmer or I want to gain muscle or I want a better physique. Making your goal positive and something to work towards is the first step in creating a successful campaign against the excess weight! It is your end result and if you keep this in mind instead of focusing on the negatives (the losing weight part) then you will have much greater success in your weight loss endeavours.

For Help To Combat Cravings & Create Your Perfect Vision: CLICK HERE

Weight Loss Goals Part 2: The 3 Beliefs You Need For Weight Loss Success

Weight Loss Goals Part 3: Weight Loss Planning

Previous Post: The Dangers of Low Carb Diets: A Quick Overview

UPDATE: For some great articles on high carb diets and interviews with athletes who follow them I strongly urge you to check out the FoodnSport Blog here

Low carb diets are everywhere. Everyone seems to be doing them and everyone is supposedly losing weight and feeling great. I don’t believe it for one second (especially the “feeling great” part).

I have scoured many resources and listened to many people try to convince me that a low carbohydrate diet can be healthy, yet the very same people trying to convince me of that are tired all the time, moody, struggle to make their days work out and struggle to stay on the diet (if you are struggling to stay on a diet then its not going to help you long term so why put your body and mind through it? Struggling to stay on a diet means something is wrong).

Many people do lose weight using low carb diets, that can’t be denied. However, Dr Michael Greger who wrote Atkins’ Facts, states that the only reason people lose weight this way is because they eat less calories.

Eating fewer calories may be a good thing if you are over consuming on calories but if you are eating a low carbohydrate diet and fewer calories, you will feel terrible.

I mean, if low carbohydrate diets are so great then why is it we are still struggling to lose weight? Why is it that 2 out of 3 Americans are either overweight or obese?

Just like most other diets available or putting in the limelight, low carb diets work well in the short term. In the long term they fail because you are either too tired, exhausted, moody or you have serious health issues.

When we don’t eat enough carbohydrates we rely on fat for fuel. This creates toxic by-products like acetone/ketones. The kidneys use minerals such as potassium and calcium to help rid the body of these toxins. So by going on a low-carb diet you urinate out essential minerals, which lead to low levels in our bodies. This can result in fatal cardiac arrhythmias. Ketosis (the process in which your body converts fats into energy) is a potentially life threatening condition and can also cause other problems due to the unnecessary stress put on the liver (resulting in potential liver damage).

When there are insufficient carbohydrates present to convert to sugar, the body will transform fat and protein into sugar, but at a higher cost: more time and energy spent on digestion with the creation of toxic residues.

Unpleasant side effects to low carb diets also include bad breath, constant cravings for sweets, irritability, constipation and low energy (As mentioned several times). Is it really worth the outcome of being slim for a short period of time when there are healthier, more long-term ways of losing weight?

A number of independent medical studies have also shown that a low carb, high protein diet can be dangerous to your health and even life threatening. This danger increases over time – so the longer you stay on it, the greater the risk.

Another problem with low carb diets is that they require people to eat an unnaturally high amount of protein every day, and generally high-fat protein as well.

The American Heart Association recommends getting 10 to 15 percent of your daily calories from protein. High protein diets overload the body by cramming their menus with meals that deliver 35 to 50 percent of the daily calorie intake as protein.

According to the John Hopkins Hospital, a leading medical research institution, high protein low carb diets cause the body to excrete calcium, and are associated with increased risk of heart disease and risk of kidney failure.

According to a University of Chicago study done in 2002, participants who were on a high protein low carb diet for a mere six weeks had a sharply elevated rate of calcium excretion, which leads to an increased risk of osteoporosis (thinning bones). They also had a high “acid load” in their blood streams, leading to an increased risk of kidney stones.

A study published by the American College of Nutrition found that the long-term use of the Atkins Diet would result in a 25 percent increase of blood cholesterol levels.

And – as if that’s not enough – the low carb diet tends to lead to constipation and other health problems associated with low fiber diets, because high fiber cereals, fruits and many vegetables are eliminated from the meal plans

People who stay on low fiber diets long term are also at increased risk of diverticulosis – a condition in which areas of the intestines weaken and bulge outward. This condition is virtually unheard of in societies that have diets rich in fiber.

Yes, people do tend to lose some water weight right away on high protein low carb diets. But they also get fatigued, grouchy, and crave carbs constantly. And as we’ve just demonstrated, staying on those diets long term can be life threatening – AND as soon as you start eating normally again you will gain that water weight right back, at an alarming rate!

But here’s the good news: it is absolutely not necessary to risk your health with a high protein diet.

Eating a high carb is important to your health. For example, we all know that fruit is good for us. A typical item of fruit contains around 80-90% carbohydrates, 1-10% fats, 1-10% proteins. This should be evident enough to not risk your health.

Previous Post: Stop Binge Eating One Step At A Time

Food is addictive especially when we use it for comfort and numbing ourselves emotionally. We can instantly turn to food during emotional upsets and get the instant gratification, the feeling of fullness we need in order to numb out old feelings resurfacing or stress we have just been experiencing. The problem is, we often feel extremely guilty afterwards and vow never to cave to food again.

Promising ourselves in the midst of guilt about our overeating and bingeing never works. You can’t just decide to stop and then never will again, especially when your decision is made during guilt.

Bingeing serves an important purpose to you and that is to make you feel better. When you are on the brink of the next binge, your promise to yourself never to binge again would have been forgotten and if it is still in the back of your mind, you will be doing everything to talk yourself into eating. We can rationalize anything when we want to.

This is why the all or nothing attitude to bingeing fails to work. It is too much to ask of ourselves to let go abruptly something we have been using as an emotional crutch for such a long time. It also lends its hand to making us feeling even more guilty when we can’t stay committed.

If you take the approach of more self awareness and observation, making note of when you binge and how you feel before and after you can gain a better understanding of your eating patterns and also can embrace and reflect on them properly.

It is too much to ask of yourself to change overnight. Bingeing and overeating has become a part and parcel of how you work and how you cope with the daily stresses and strains, so it is important to become aware of exactly what you do and to allow yourself time to overcome it. If you slip up and binge – learn from it and accept it as an experience. It’s not the end of the world, overcoming emotional issues especially surrounding food takes time.

Make sure you also acknowledge the small successes with your eating habits. These are just as important as the final destination, the final you you want to be, because without them you cannot reach that end.

Ending your binges and overcoming overeating isn’t easy. By learning to love yourself and having self awareness, you can overcome it. You won’t overcome it by continuously promising yourself not to do it again in the midst of guilt (but I am sure you already know this!).

Take it one step at a time. Learn from the binges that do occur through self awareness and embrace progress not perfection.

For Help To Overcome Binge Eating & Cravings: CLICK HERE

Previous Post: Stop Food Cravings: What To Do In The Midst Of A Craving

Cravings can be so strong that it can be hard to overcome them – I know I have been at the end of quite a few and have given in, only to find myself a little more than miserable.

So I decided to put together a quick blog post about what you should do when you are in the middle of a strong craving and are very VERY tempted to give in and feel like you are quickly losing the battle!

First of all you need to prepare for this in advanced.  Don’t have junk food or your craving items in the house.  Don’t buy them!  This is an important step in overcoming cravings because you need to make it as difficult as possible for your to be able to get a hold of what you are craving.

The harder and longer it takes you to get that craved item, the more chance the craving has of resolving itself before you can give in.

If a craving comes on and you have the craved food in the house (or even if you have managed to stop yourself buying it) – eat fruit.  I find the quickest solution to my problem is to blend 4-5 bananas together with a little water and drink.  This is usually enough to take the intense craving away.  For me, it was never enough to simply let it pass.  I know it is very hard to just find something to distract you sometimes as well, so eating fruit can really take the edge off if you eat enough.

Now you may feel like you dont want to eat fruit (if you don’t want fruit this is a true sign of craving as opposed to true hunger) and want to go get the item you crave.  You find yourself in the car on the way to the store just so you can indulge.  I would suggest that you eat fruit on the way and as much as you can and desire.

You can talk yourself into eating the fruit by saying “If I eat this fruit, then I will allow myself the craved food” (I also use this logic for when the craved food has been in the house).  Make sure you eat plenty of fruit though, because if you just have 1 piece of fruit, it will not be enough to satisfy you and you will most likely (if not definitely) give in to the craved items.

Hopefully by the time you have gotten to the store, the craving(s) you had would have diminished at least mostly if not completely.  This would have happened because:

1.  You provided your body with a nutritious food and plenty of it.
2. Enough time had passed for it to wear off and disappear.

At this point you are then able to reassess the situation rationally.  Whether you choose to indulge or not now becomes a choise as opposed to a craving ruling you.

So to summarize:

• Make it as hard as possible to get a hold of the craved item(s)

• Don’t stock craved items in the house.

• Eat 4-5 (or more) pieces of fruit before allowing yourself the craved item.  It is best that you eat one type of fruit, as this is easier on your digestion and some fruits do not mix well.

• Reassess the situation once you have eaten the fruit/arrived at the store and consider whether you really want the craved item anymore.  If you do, have a small portion and enjoy without feeling guilty; if you don’t, then go home or get on with your day knowing you have successfully combatted an intense craving!

For More Guidance & Help Overcome Cravings: CLICK HERE

Previous Post: 97 Year Old Physician’s Formula for Life

I came across an inspiring article about a 97 year old Physician, who still works 18 hours a week, 7 days a week and loves it!

He is happy, productive and has and is contributing a vast amount to the world.  We can all learn a lot from him and others like him.

One main thing we can learn from him is to keep a positive outlook in life, whether this is in regards to our weight loss endeavours, or other aspects of our life.

“Energy comes from feeling good, not from eating well or sleeping a lot. We all remember how as children, when we were having fun, we often forgot to eat or sleep. I believe that we can keep that attitude as adults, too. It’s best not to tire the body with too many rules such as lunchtime and bedtime.”

To read the full article: http://rense.com/general85/formula.htm

I came across a great article today about mindfulness and health. Being in the present moment, having self awareness is crucial to weight loss success and also to live a harmonious balanced lifestyle. If you are forever running around, if time flies by before you know it and you don’t really acknowledge what you are doing whether it be driving to work or stuffing your face with food, then you will find it extremely difficult to move forward with your weight loss.

Step back, take a moment to access the situation and you will reveal to yourself things you may never have noticed if you hadn’t of stepped back and looked at your life. The only way I truly was able to get to a weight I was comfortable with (and to continue to this day to achieve the healthy lifestyle I had always wanted) was by stepping back and spending the day observing myself. It revealed to me so many things I really hadn’t consciously acknowledged before, one being how food was a comfort blanket for me, a LOT of the time.

Anyway the article I came across talks about mindfulness being a form of meditation in which you: “…disengage yourself from strong beliefs, thoughts, and emotions, and increasing feelings of relaxation and well being”.

Being truly present is just something most of us live without, to our detriment, and something I feel strongly about introducing back into people’s lives for good!

The article talks about 5 strategies you can use to improve your mindfulness and subsequently your health and wellness. They are:

1. Consider what’s right with you.

Everyday take a moment to give thanks to the things that you do like about yourself and the things that do function correctly e.g. I am thankful I can walk, I am thankful for breathing easily etc.

2. Love yourself unconditionally.

Whether you give in to a piece of chocolate cake or if you end up eating a whole pizza, you must love yourself unconditionally. Don’t hate yourself for giving in, just embrace and accept this as a hiccup in your journey to where you want to be and learn from it. Being down on yourself or negative about yourself will only lead to failure. You are essentially setting yourself up for it by being negative.  So remain positive and when you feel yourself slipping into negativity thinking, focus on being in the present moment – dart your attention around the room to specific objects if this helps prevent you from taking your negative thinking further.

3. Live in the present moment.

When you live in the present moment, everything seems to make so much more sense. Living in the moment gives you the ability to grow, to learn and change. If you are dwelling on a past binge or worrying about the future, you aren’t living in the moment and you won’t truly enjoy life and those moments where you can grasp pleasure from it. Living in the moment also allows you to look at your life from a clear perspective. In the midst of a craving or a stressful situation, if you step back and access how you feel, you will ultimately be able to give yourself the breather you need instead of bundling along in some other dimension!

4. When life gets tough don’t take it personally.

While it is important to accept responsibility for your actions, you shouldn’t dwell on it.  The best way to deal with it is to look at what you are doing differently now, now what you could have done better in the past.

5. Put the “being” back in human.

If you fill every moment with manic activity you never give yourself a chance to simply be.  Just sitting for a moment and contemplating is a great stress reliever and calms you.  I usually spend my mornings in this way.  I awake and lay for a few moments or more in thoughtfulness before getting out of bed.  It sets my day up nicely especially after my morning smoothie

To read the full article : http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/living-well-usn/2009/03/02/5-ways-to-be-mindful-and-achieve-optimal-health.html

Previous Post: How Much Water Should I Drink?  8 Glasses A Day?

Staying hydrated is an important aspect to our overall well being. If we are even slightly dehydrated it can be detrimental to our health. It can also make us feel very tired and run down. If you are overweight, you are most likely to be dehydrated.

Fruits and most greens contain a high percentage of water and if our diet contained lots of these foods additional water needed would be kept to a minimum. Sadly however, this isn’t the case. The majority of the Western world consumes far too little water-dense whole foods and too much dehydrated refined junk foods.

By nature, we are not water drinkers, so getting most of our water needs from fruits and greens is important. There is no firm reason why we should drink 8 glasses of water a day and should only drink when thirsty. This shouldn’t arise very often if we are consuming the fruits and greens our body needs.

No hard and fast rules can be set down when it comes to the matter of water. You can faithfully drink 8 glasses a day and be getting too much water or too little, maybe. If you are wise, you will listen to your body’s requirements.

It is often said that our body needs minimum amount of water per day and we should attempt to drink this amount each time. This isn’t necessarily something I would agree with following. Unless you body is telling you you are thirsty then don’t drink water for the sake of drinking it. Drinking too much water can be damaging to your health as well as too little.

However that being said, for the majority of us, our thirst mechanism isn’t usually working so well and for some of us we can’t even make the distinction between being hungry or being thirsty. We become dehydrated without even realizing it.

Here are some possible signs that you could be dehydrated:

Lack of energy & fatigue
Migraine headaches
Dandruff

Apathy
Salty sweat
Irritability and mild depression
Low back pain
Dry mouth
Dry and flaky skin
Weakness
Excessive sleepiness
Constipation

Chronic Dehydration

Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, author of Your Body’s Many Cries For Water, claims that many of our health problems are a result of dehydration. He claims that chronic dehydration can cause many conditions including asthma, allergies, arthritis, migraines, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression etc.

I must say, having suffered from asthma and allergies once upon a time, I can see how being dehydrated may have affected those things in me. Since I upped my intake of fruits and greens (water-dense foods) my asthma and allergies have COMPLETELY disappeared. Water, or lack of, could have potentially be an irritant to my asthma/allergies.

Drinking more water will most likely not hurt you if you aren’t someone very familiar with your thirst signals and who doesn’t eat a lot of water dense fruits. In fact it can only help you. Whether you need 8 glasses is largely debateable on the premise of individual differences, so don’t worry if you aren’t consuming that many.

The best things you can to increase your water intake is:

Cut out other drinks.

Soda, Alcohol, Coffee are all dehydrating and should not be included in your add up of how much water you have consumed. Instead of drinking these, make an effort to only consume water as a drink through out the day. If you have any of the other drinks, drink twice as much water to make up for it.

Up your intake of fruits and greens.

This is one of the best things you can do. By getting a lot of water from the foods you eat means you have to worry less about how much water you are drinking.

What do you do to stay hydrated?

Previous Post: Superfoods Diet: Gree Superfood Supplements Not So Super

Superfoods are a hot topic in the world of health and are increasing touted as being among the healthiest food sources available. The term superfood is usually used to describe any food with a high concentration of phytonutrients. Phytonnutrients are celebrated for their health promoting benefits by many health food companies and researchers.

Superfoods include berries, leafy greens, sprouts, bee pollen, aloe vera, raw cacao (if you can call it “raw”), gogji berries, flax seeds and many others.

I don’t have a problem really with berries or leafy greens. In fact I really feel that we all need to be consuming lots of leafy greens in our diet and plenty of fruits. So if you desire berries, go for it and eat lots of them (I currently have a major love for blueberries!). When we take those superfoods and ground them down into a powder or a pill form, that’s when I have an issue.

Green superfoods or green powders have received a lot of attention in the past few decades; specifically green superfoods such as spirulina, blue green algae and chlorella. I was even suckered into buying some green blue algae at one point in my life, believing it would was beneficial and necessary for health. I am not saying they can’t be beneficial but I do not think they are necessary for a healthy lifestyle.

Superfoods, along with vitamin supplements (more on this in another post), are recommended regardless of what diet we are on, to make up for nutritional inadequacies but claims for superfoods are ridiculous and scientifically false.

If you are eating a diet with an abundance of fresh whole fruits, vegetables and leafy greens, getting plenty of exercise, plenty of sleep, sunshine and fresh air and leading a healthy lifestyle, you do not need to supplement with anything, including superfoods.

If you do not live this way, simply supplementing or eating “superfoods” isn’t the answer and isn’t going to be helpful in the long run.

Any food that has had its water removed, its fiber removed and vital components stripped out is not a whole food let alone a health food. Concentrated vitamins out of the ratio that nature intended in whole fruits and vegetables aren’t healthy either. Not to mention when one removes the water from food, the oxidation process destroys many of the remaining nutrients, making them far less nutritious than they were in a whole state.

We do not need them and we are the only creatures on the earth to grind things into dried powders and pills and think we will benefit from them and even call them superfoods. On top of this supplementation really is only necessary under some circumstances.

Dr. Joel Fuhrman (a nutrition expert and practising physician) recommends supplements in some circumstances, but agrees that they can be dangerous. He states in his book Eat to Live:

“A high intake of just one nutrient when nature has combined it with many others may make things worse, not better. We humans, especially physicians, are notorious for interfering with nature, thinking we know better. Sometimes we do- all too often we don’t.

Only later, when it is often too late, do we realize that in fact we have made things worse. While it still may take decades longer to understand how whole foods promote health, we must accept the fact that the foods found in nature are ideally suited to the biological needs of the species.“

Dr Doug Graham (author of the 80/10/10 diet and Grain Damage) also believes supplementation may be necessary in some cases during the initial stages of lifestyle change and “would be done solely to allow time for the benefits of correct living to accrue or for extenuating circumstances to pass”.

The amount of nutrients we require are far less than medical advice allows us to believe. High fat and low raw food diets mean we absorb very small amounts of nutrients from the food we eat, making it seem as though we need more of them, when really we need to change the way we eat to a low fat, high raw diet.

Correcting one’s lifestyle, consuming lots of fruits and vegetables and cutting down our fat intake is key to improving absorption and utilization of nutrients and health.

Save Your Money for Fruit and Greens: Avoid Superfood Supplements!

Anyone endorsing superfoods, trying to sell to you the latest scientific breakthrough, is only after your money and isn’t concerned about your health.

Superfoods are an expensive waste of time and money. Do yourself a favor and use the money you would have spent on superfoods and use it to buy some fruit and vegetables – you will be MUCH better off.

I just came across an article on nytimes.com which I agree with quite a bit.

It’s general underlying statement is really that we shouldn’t be so hung up on the organic thing, we should first be making sure we are eating better.  I couldn’t agree more, especially when the article says “we get 7% of our calories from soft drinks, more than we do from vegetables“.

Although it would be great if everyone was eating organic, growing our own vegetables and thinking about our impact on the earth, some of us aren’t in a position to do any of those things and even if we were, the first focus of a healthy eating and living lifestyle should be to make sure we are eating fruits and vegetables, regardless of whether they are organic or not. 

When we are at a point of being able to say to ourselves we have a balanced, nutritious diet full of fruits and vegetables, then we can start addressing the issue of organic or homegrown produce.

If non-organic is all we can afford while we make a transition to a higher fruit/vegetable diet than we shouldn’t worry too much about pesticides and airmiles (until we are in a more stable position with our eating habits to take it on) because it is a MUCH better improvement than the hormones and toxins that are in the meat we eat.  Cutting down on meat and consuming more fruits and vegetables is a great start but we can overcomplicate it at first if we focus on the wrongs things.

Our health should come first, then the environment.  Once we are able to take care of ourselves and nourish our bodies, we can then take care of the environment and make better choices for the world we live.

So if you aren’t a big fruit or vegetable eater work on that first.  Then work on whether you want to switch to organic or homegrown food.

Full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22bittman.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Health Quote of the Day