Your attitudes and beliefs are the core of how you react to your world. For whatever reason as to why you hold to certain beliefs or ways of thinking, it is first and foremost important for you to take responsibility for them and evaluate them honestly. Some attitudes and beliefs are positive and supportive of your efforts, and ultimate goals in life. However your negative attitudes and beliefs become obstacles that all to often block your vision of fulfilling your dream in life. Attitudes and beliefs will either move you forward or backward in regards to fulfilling your dreams.
Make a list of your beliefs, both positive and negative concerning where you are and where you want to be in regards to your weight loss goals. Your positive beliefs about yourself and your situation related to fulfilling your ultimate weight loss goals are your friends and will reinforce your efforts in reaching your goal. Your negative beliefs; your fears, doubts and concerns are your foe and will sabotage your dreams if interjected. Whether it is concerns of money, lack of time, skill or knowledge, determine how you can change a negative belief into a positive friend that will enable you to reach your goals. Interpreting an attitude or belief as “good” or “bad” doesn’t make it good or bad; it’s just an interpretation. If your beliefs are obstacles, they become stones that will trip you up, however if you use your beliefs instead to achieve your dreams, they then become stepping-stones. Will you use your beliefs as obstacles or stepping-stones? How you see them is up to you!
Remember: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?!
~ Robert Schuller
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Diets Don't Work!
If you are like most people you have tried literally hundreds of diets. It might have been the grapefruit diet, the cereal diet, the Atkins diet, Protein power diet, or the Sugar Busters diet. The first thing that you should understand about weight loss is that focusing on “dieting” is a waste of time and energy. Commercial diet centers want you to buy their product and will provide you with a sound plan for short-term success. If your new diet is simply a diet supplement, or a product that promises weight loss, will you take this diet product or supplement forever? Interestingly, regarding diet supplements, a study of those who are successful at long term weight loss through the National Weight Control Registry demonstrated that only 3.6% of those who were successful used any kind of diet supplement to reach their healthy body weight and maintain it. Past dieting patterns are often conditioned with “I’ll eat what I want to today and start my diet tomorrow.” So, you binge today and starve yourself tomorrow only to fall back into old eating habits by the third day. Today is the time to start your lifestyle change, the time to select healthy food choices. This journey will be filled with stumbles, challenges, and successes, however by starting to make healthy decisions for good eating now, will be an essential step to living a healthy life.
When you become aware of the unhealthy things that you’re eating, i.e. non-nutritious empty calories, and high fat foods, and focus on cutting out these type of foods for healthy low fat nutritious food choices you will then be taking a step toward a lifestyle change. Without changing your habits and daily activities, you will never realize life long success with your weight and health. It takes time to get rid of the excessive weight that you’ve put on, and it takes time to change your unhealthy habits that have been cultivated for years. In the past you may have dieted just to lose weight, this is why the diet didn’t work or allowed you to lose some weight only to gain it back again when you returned to old eating habits. This time you must plan on changing your lifestyle for a lifetime.
Remember: The time when you need to do something is when no one else is willing to do it, when people are saying it can’t be done. ~Mary Frances Berry
When you become aware of the unhealthy things that you’re eating, i.e. non-nutritious empty calories, and high fat foods, and focus on cutting out these type of foods for healthy low fat nutritious food choices you will then be taking a step toward a lifestyle change. Without changing your habits and daily activities, you will never realize life long success with your weight and health. It takes time to get rid of the excessive weight that you’ve put on, and it takes time to change your unhealthy habits that have been cultivated for years. In the past you may have dieted just to lose weight, this is why the diet didn’t work or allowed you to lose some weight only to gain it back again when you returned to old eating habits. This time you must plan on changing your lifestyle for a lifetime.
Remember: The time when you need to do something is when no one else is willing to do it, when people are saying it can’t be done. ~Mary Frances Berry
Avoiding Weight Gain during the Holidays
Weight gain during the holidays does not need to be inevitable. However to avoid those extra calories you must preplan your meals. When going to a holiday party, plan on filling up with low calorie foods prior to the party. Eating high fiber foods prior to going to the party, such as high fiber cereals and fruit will fill you up and satiate you, so that you’ll be less inclined to overeat at the party. When you arrive at the party, start with calorie free drinks, and progress to low calorie hors d’oeuvres. Then try small bite sizes from two or three items that you really wanted to taste.
When preparing for the large holiday dinner, plan on allocating the majority of your calories to that meal by reducing your breakfast and lunch calories. Start by using a smaller plate. Plan on savoring your meal taking your time to eat and taste the food. This will allow the food you eat to signal receptors in your stomach that will send messages to your brain, telling you you’re getting full. Put those foods that will fill you up, on your plate first then add small portions of those foods that you really find tasty (your favorites).
Lastly, realize that if you have a plan that is carefully laid out, you’ll be more likely to succeed.
When preparing for the large holiday dinner, plan on allocating the majority of your calories to that meal by reducing your breakfast and lunch calories. Start by using a smaller plate. Plan on savoring your meal taking your time to eat and taste the food. This will allow the food you eat to signal receptors in your stomach that will send messages to your brain, telling you you’re getting full. Put those foods that will fill you up, on your plate first then add small portions of those foods that you really find tasty (your favorites).
Lastly, realize that if you have a plan that is carefully laid out, you’ll be more likely to succeed.
Claiming Responsibility for Your Successes
When you realize that your weight loss successes are dependent upon your thinking and ultimately your thoughts pushing you toward positive action, you’ll then realize that your failures are also dependent upon your thinking and negative thoughts regarding your weight loss efforts and goals. The first step to weight loss success is realizing that being overweight is a result of your eating habits and/or lack of consistent exercise. Secondly, you must embrace the understanding that while genetics play a small role in weight control, your family background is not the reason you remain over weight. Thirdly, while there are organizations and programs that are helpful in assisting individuals with the weight loss process, you must understand no one outside yourself, nor any special diet or program is responsible for your weight loss/health and fitness success or failure. Lastly, you must realize your success is not based upon some stroke of luck, nor is being overweight “just your fate in life” and that you have no control over it. If you continue to blame your weight on someone or something other than yourself you will always have difficulty in achieving permanent weight loss success. Plan to take responsibility for both your successes and failures related to achieving permanent weight loss and an improved level of health and fitness.
Remember: Demand the best from yourself, because others will demand the best of you… Successful people don’t simply give a project hard work. They give it their best work.
~ Win Borden
Remember: Demand the best from yourself, because others will demand the best of you… Successful people don’t simply give a project hard work. They give it their best work.
~ Win Borden
Setting Yourself Up for Success
After making “a no turning back” commitment to a lifestyle change for good health, and to reaching your healthiest body weight, you’ll then need to make your environment conducive to making this a reality. Continuing with the same eating and exercise behaviors will not give you what you want, which is reaching your health and fitness goals. Making sure your environment encourages positive behavioral changes and does not promote the old behavioral patterns is CRITICAL! Several aspects to making this happen are listed below:
Make your home a place, which is safe from tempting old eating behaviors. Make sure you remove unhealthy junk foods that are impulse or binge foods for you. Foods like sugared sodas, crackers, cookies, breads, and pastries, candies, ice cream, and high fat foods should be removed from your home, kitchen, study, or wherever you might be hiding them.
Make your workplace conducive to ongoing progress in reaching your goals. Take healthy foods to work to replace any tempting foods that are brought in by other people.
Go grocery shopping with a goal of buying healthy foods: Make a shopping list before you start and plan on sticking to the list. Put foods in your refrigerator that are compatible with your taste and are also healthy.
Plan your meals and snacks ahead of time: Write out a breakfast, lunch and dinner plan the night before so that you’ll be less likely to eat impulsively or to overeat.
When you go out to eat, plan on visiting restaurants where you know you can make good food choices. Restaurants that have low fat “healthy heart” items on their menu or where you can order healthy “a la carte” dishes should be a priority.
As you make each of your weight loss goals plan on not returning to old behaviors just because you reached your weight goal. Be serious about your lifestyle change for improved health and fitness. Returning to old eating and exercise behaviors will only return you to your previous overweight out-of-shape condition.
As a part of not returning to old behaviors, make a vow to not return to old “big clothes” that are now too large for you. Get rid of these “big clothes” and buy new clothes that show the slimmer you, and personify the “new healthier you”!
Make your home a place, which is safe from tempting old eating behaviors. Make sure you remove unhealthy junk foods that are impulse or binge foods for you. Foods like sugared sodas, crackers, cookies, breads, and pastries, candies, ice cream, and high fat foods should be removed from your home, kitchen, study, or wherever you might be hiding them.
Make your workplace conducive to ongoing progress in reaching your goals. Take healthy foods to work to replace any tempting foods that are brought in by other people.
Go grocery shopping with a goal of buying healthy foods: Make a shopping list before you start and plan on sticking to the list. Put foods in your refrigerator that are compatible with your taste and are also healthy.
Plan your meals and snacks ahead of time: Write out a breakfast, lunch and dinner plan the night before so that you’ll be less likely to eat impulsively or to overeat.
When you go out to eat, plan on visiting restaurants where you know you can make good food choices. Restaurants that have low fat “healthy heart” items on their menu or where you can order healthy “a la carte” dishes should be a priority.
As you make each of your weight loss goals plan on not returning to old behaviors just because you reached your weight goal. Be serious about your lifestyle change for improved health and fitness. Returning to old eating and exercise behaviors will only return you to your previous overweight out-of-shape condition.
As a part of not returning to old behaviors, make a vow to not return to old “big clothes” that are now too large for you. Get rid of these “big clothes” and buy new clothes that show the slimmer you, and personify the “new healthier you”!
Priorities In Life
We hear this word thrown around a lot; phrases like “You need to get your priorities in order.”, or “if you only would put it as a priority in your life,” rings familiar to many of us. In reality there is a hierarchy of priorities that should dictate our daily actions. Usually things like our health, faith, family, relationships, and career are near the top of our list, while things like homes, cars, entertainment, hair, jewelry and clothes, rate near the bottom. When priorities are not in the right order, we often find that other aspects of our life suffer. It’s the trickle down affect! If our health is bad, it can affect our job, family, and relationships. For most people their health rates very near the top of their priority list. While we say that our health is one of the most important aspects of our life and rate it at the top of our list of priorities, often our daily actions do not reflect this priority. We spend so much time tending to menial tasks, washing and waxing cars, renovating homes, fixing our hair, dressing in style, while neglecting the most important priority, our health. We often pay more attention to the type of oil and gas that we put into our cars than the food that we put into our mouths.Stop and think, what are the most important aspects of your life? Sit down and prioritize your life in the order which demonstrates what is the most important to you. Then make your time and actions reflect your list of priorities.
Why Low Glycemic Foods?
All foods can be categorized as either having a low, moderate or high glycemic value. The glycemic index is a value that is given to foods based upon how high they raise the blood glucose levels after eating them. Foods are rated on the glycemic index from 0 -100, with the low glycemic foods (<55),>70. When blood glucose levels are elevated, insulin levels also rise to assist in glucose transport. High insulin levels suppress fat mobilization and facilitate fat storage. Low glycemic foods stabilize blood glucose levels at a lower value and do not spike insulin levels in the same way as high glycemic foods. Low glycemic foods should predominate your food selection. Foods high in protein and fiber are typically low glycemic foods. Typically low glycemic foods are beans and lentils, which are a good source of protein and high in fiber.
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