I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing!

We crunch. We stuff. We say, "Seconds, please." And most of the time, we haven't the faintest idea how much we're eating-or why.

We make about 250 food decisions a day. Should I have coffee? Should I put milk in it? Whole or skim? Sugar or Splenda? Do I pour my juice into a short, wide glass (you'll drink more) or a tall, narrow glass (you'll drink less)?

If we knew why we ate the way we do, we could eat a little less, eat a little healthier, and enjoy food a lot more.

Last night I sat with a group of people who are getting ready to start the stabilization phase of their weight loss programs. Stabilization is the process of adding food back into your diet gradually to increase the body's metabolism until you reach your maintenance calorie limit.  I believe it's the most important part of the program at The Healthy Weigh. Losing weight is very simple at THW... Eat the foods on the list you've been given and you'll lose a ton of weight.

Maintenance is another story...because now that list of foods just blossomed! Our clients go from a manageable food decision day to that 250 food decision kind of day! Healthy Weigh clients go from a somewhat limited balanced diet, to unlimited choices!  More choices mean more decisions! And more decisions mean we have to be mindful about our food choices.

I read a great article this week from Brian Wansink, from Cornell University. He has conducted more than 300 experiments proving that most people have no idea how much their putting in their mouths or for what reason.

Here are 7 essential tidbits from the article:

1. People who stock up at discount stores eat up to 48% more. If you buy in bulk, put pretzels and other snacks in portion-size baggies. NEVER eat out of the box or bag!

2. The longer you sit at the table, the more you'll eat. Dine with one friend, you'll eat about 35% more. With a group of seven, you'll eat 96% more. If you're trying to lose weight, eat alone or with the smallest group possible, and pace yourself with the lightest eater.

3. If you pre-plate your food in the kitchen, you'll eat 14 % less than if you serve yourself and then take seconds.

4. When you eat at a buffet, put only two items at a time on your plate. Even if you make repeated trips, you'll eat a lot less.

5. Always eat in the same room of your home. (but not in front of the TV or computer) You won't snack as much.

6. Don't leave serving dishes on the table unless they're filled with vegetables.

7. A Butterfinger or a hug? What do you really want? Physical hunger builds gradually. Emotional hunger develops suddenly.

I like some of his thoughts! Mindful eating is so important not only to help you lose weight, but definitely to help you keep it off.

Weight loss and weight maintenance always comes down to calories in and calories out so being mindful about those calories is crucial!  How many food choices will you have today...and will you be mindful about them?

Always encouraging you,
Letha

What Does It Take?...A Compelling Vision!

I've been doing a lot of thinking about what it takes to lose weight and keep it off for life!  I've spent the last 30 years helping people do just that. I often ask my self, "Why do some people "just do it", follow the program, lose their weight, change their eating habits for good, keep motivation alive, and others don't?"  There are so many answers to that question, but I believe when it comes down to it, there are two kinds of people...those who have an exciting compelling vision of what they want their lives to look like/be like...and those who don't!

A compelling  vision... something that is compelling is forceful, convincing, persuasive and gripping. When something is compelling it holds our attention.  A vision is a dream, idea, mental picture, image or visualization. It involves the imagination and is a glimpse of a desired future. When these two definitions are combined, we see that a compelling vision is an idea of a desired future that grips our attention and inspires us to action!

To lose weight and keep it off for life (the hard part) it is vital for you to create your own personal compelling vision for your life.  I've learned in my own life and in working with thousands of people over the years that if you don't identify your vision, others will plan and direct your life for you.

A compelling vision is what you want to create of yourself and the world around you. What does your  compelling vision include? Making a change in an area such as health, technology, or the environment? Raising happy, well-adjusted children? Writing a book? Owning your own business? Living on a beach? Being very fit and healthy? Visiting every continent? Helping others with their spiritual growth? What are you good at? What do you love to do? What aren't you good at now, but you'd like to be? All of these important questions are part of identifying your personal compelling vision.

Here are some questions/thoughts to help you create your compelling vision. Use these as a tool to get your thinking started!

Things I really enjoy doing:

What brings me joy/happiness:

What were the two best moments of my past week:

Three things I'd do if I won the lottery:

Ideas or causes I care deeply about:

Things I can do at the good to excellent level:

What I'd like to stop doing or do as little as possible:

What are my most important values:

What does the "best me" look like/feel like:

Discovering or creating your own compelling vision takes time and focus. Are you willing to take the time and spend the mental energy to get to know yourself and to dream about your future? 
I believe that losing weight and keeping it off is one of the most difficult things people try to accomplish. Having a compelling, gripping, exciting vision is a MUST to accomplish this great task.

Take some time to create your compelling vision and I promise you'll have success at weight loss and much more!

Always encouraging you,
Letha

Body Soul Spirit ~ The Spiritual Perspective

This week we concluded our 6 week CD series by listening to and reviewing the last, and I believe, most important Personal Control Guide. We looked at the spiritual perspective of weight loss.

We were created in three parts...body, soul and spirit. Our body, the physical part of us which relates to the material world. Our Soul, made up of our mind, will and emotions, our personalty you might say, which relates with people. And our spirit, the deepest place of who we are, which relates with God.

To live completely healthy lives, we need to submit our body to our soul, our soul to our spirit and our spirit to God.

The problem lies, when we have an unhealthy soul; a mind that is negative, a will that says, "I do what I want" and emotions that are wounded and have not been healed from past and present pain. You can imagine what a body would look like that comes under that kind of influence.

God makes our spirits new when we invite him in and surrender to him.

Our work, is the work of the soul; renewing the mind, submitting the will and healing the emotions.

I continue to see men and woman work so hard at dieting, losing weight and will power, all while their souls are ravaged. When we focus on the work of the soul; renewing, submitting and healing, the body comes under the influence of a healthy soul and this journey of weight loss gets a lot easier.

We continue at The Healthy Weigh to challenge you in areas of soul work. How many times have we talked to you about renewing your mind..saying no to the bad and yes to the good, and healing those emotions that are keeping you from an abundant life? It's all soul work, at The Healthy Weigh!

We have a society of excess! As we grow older and deny past pain, empty places begin to develop in our souls. We do a great job of trying to fill those empty place with things. Food, clothes, cars, houses, money, and busyness. Excess of anything, is about our emptiness. All those empty places are addictions waiting to happen.

The belief I have says this...many of our empty places can be closed up, healed, with God's help and our soul work, but many of those empty places are holes that only God can fill. He created us for relationship with him and until we surrender to Him, we will always be looking to "fill" those holes.

Whatever your faith background is, I hope that you are able to see the importance of submitting your will regarding your weight loss and your maintenance journey over to God, as you understand Him.

Always encouraging you,

Letha

Exercise and Weight Loss ~ It's a Math Problem!

We spent a couple of emotional weeks looking at the things we're responsible for and then coping skills. It's always good for the soul to throw in a little logic after spending time on our emotions! Our Math assignment did just that!

Sometimes math can be hard too. The simple fact that our bodies need a certain amount of calories to maintain weight can be a difficult truth to accept. The amount of calories we burn compared to the amount we take in, is the story problem.

As we look back to the generations before us, there is a big difference between the amount of calories expended in a day compared to now. That's where the problem lies. Our lives have become more automated and we still want to consume the same amount of calories as the people generations before us did. That's where weight gain comes in!

It takes 3500 calories to lose or gain a pound. We are either saving up calories to add a pound on our bodies, or we are working to have a deficit of 3500 calories to lose a pound off our bodies. It truly is a math problem.

Lesson #5 talked about exercise and the ability to turn up our bodies thermostats to have a speedier metabolism. Keeping close track of all calories consumed and working to burn more calories by being active is the goal!

With so many unknowns in our world today...it's somehow comforting to know that weight loss really is a math problem!

Knowing your maintenance calories and becoming aware of the calories in food is the first step to maintaining your goal weight for life! It truly is a math problem!

Always encouraging you,
Letha

Coping Skills ~ Feeling Your Way Through Life

This week we looked at the importance of having healthy coping skills to be truly healthy; body soul and spirit!

We took a look at the coping skills that our society uses. Drinking, drugs, shopping, and over eating to name a few. Coping; wrestling or grappling with difficulties and acting to over come them. As we looked closer at our societies list, we realized that we are not coping at all...we're avoiding. Avoiding the pain of the past and present. Instead of overcoming and healing our issues and pain, we are numbing them.

At The Healthy Weigh, we are convinced that unless a person acquires a healthy list of coping skills and begins to use them to heal past and present wounds, they will have temporary success at best.

The feeling wheel was introduced this week as a great tool to identify feelings and begin to process them. For many of us, we are a bit handicapped when it comes to expressing our feelings. We were taught to feel; mad, glad or sad. Identifying our true feelings is the first step to being able to process what's really going on inside of us.

We took a look at anger this week and learned that anger is a secondary feeling...meaning, there's always another primary feeling under the anger. Insecurities, fear, insignificance, you name it and it comes out in the form of anger. They key is to identify the REAL feeling so that we might process what's really going on inside of us. The reason anger shows up so often is that it takes being vulnerable to show our REAL feelings, and who likes to be vulnerable right??? 

The feeling wheel is an easy way to find that primary feeling under the anger. We recommend that you keep your feeling wheel on the inside of a journal so that you can refer to it as often as necessary while you're journaling. It wouldn't be such a bad idea to put it on the fridge so that the whole family could benefit from it!

It takes courage to forge ahead and begin to use real coping skills. What I know is that a mind that is healthy, and emotions that are healed will effect a physical body more than any diet ever could!

Always encouraging you.

Letha

What's In Your Back Pack ~ Controlling What You Can

This week I introduced my favorite lesson on the CD series. I learned about "Back Packs" about 10 years ago, and it was life changing for me.

Learning to control what you can and let go of things you can't control is not only freeing, it's smart!

At first look, clients wonder what "back packs" have to do with weight loss. It doesn't take long to begin to understand the concept. The more you understand about self-control, personal responsibility and emotional ownership, the easier it is to make choices for yourself regarding your weight loss program and your health.

As we begin to look at the 12 things we are responsible for, in control of, and are to take ownership of, I can't help but think about my personal life at present time.  I just married off my only son and I've been been referring to my "back pack" list often lately!  When I first learned about back packs, my son was 10 years old!  I thought at the time that mastering the art of "staying in my own back pack" was the key to raising an independent young man.  I was right, but now, I am keenly aware that "staying in my own back pack" will be the key to not only me moving on and embracing a new season of life, but also allowing my son and his new beautiful wife, to grow and become who they need to be! Back packs never wear out...they just take on a new look! I love it!

Over the years I've seen clients, friends and family, using all their time, and energy on things out side of their control. Those things appear to get bigger and bigger, because we have no control over them, and we appear to get smaller and smaller. The things that we DO have control of...the 12 things in our back pack are the ONLY things that will help us become the women and men we were intended to be. Strong, healthy and full of love.

We looked at the difference between feeling responsible TO others and feeling responsible FOR others. I encourage you to look at the chart on the back of this important control guide and work to become a person who is responsible TO others.

This is a lesson that you will want to share with your children, your spouses and everyone you spend time with. I pray that it will be as life changing for you as it was and still is for me.

Always encouraging you,

Letha

Change Your Thinking ~ Change Your Life!

Last week we learned that in order to change your actions permanently, you have to change your belief system. This week, we're focusing on your thought life.

I tackled 4 things on this weeks message:

Motivation

Goals and Rewards

Positive Thinking

Mental Conditioning

Losing weight and keeping it off for life is one of the hardest things most of us have ever tried to do...so the questions is, How do you prepare for that? This week we are focusing on necessary steps to be successful at not only starting this weight loss journey, but reaching your destination as well!

Motivation:

As I talk with clients week after week, I see a common theme with clients who are not losing weight. They have lost their motivation. Knowing WHY you want to lose weight and keeping those reasons in the fore front of your mind is critical for weight loss success. There are many ways to keep motivation high. What ever those ways are for you, keep doing them! We all have different motives as to why we want to lose weight...the key is to keep motivation alive! Motivation is in the doing! What can you do this week to elevate your motivation?

Goals and Rewards:

Setting goals and rewarding yourself are proven methods in changing your beliefs permanently. Everything we do, we do out of our need to seek pleasure or avoid pain, the problem is, our society believes that over eating is pleasure and eating in moderation is painful. At our Tuesday Team Challenge, I had clients speak out words connected to over eating. I heard, guilt, shame, poor health, pain, and tears. I had clients speak words connected to eating in moderation. I heard, happiness, peace, health, clothes fit, and confidence. That is the truth...we just don't believe it!

Linking pleasure (rewards) to your new healthy life style and pain to your old unhealthy habits will begin to change your belief system and help you keep this weight off.

Rewards are a must!

Positive Thinking:

You won't catch me in a conversation with someone about permanent change, without hearing me talk about our thought life! Choosing positive thoughts will promote positive actions! How we think about ourselves has EVERYTHING to do with losing weight and keeping it off. The good news is that we have a choice every minute of every day about our thoughts. This little girl has it figured out...we could learn a thing or two from her.

Check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR3rK0kZFkg

Mental Conditioning:
This is the first week of your mental conditioning exercises. No great accomplishments have happened without first the visions of them! The subconscious mind is powerful. What ever you force into it on a regular basis, it believes. Adding this piece to your Healthy Weigh program could be a key to your success.

Great effort goes into great accomplishments. I encourage you to spend time this week on your thinking...it will change your life!

Always encouraging you.

Letha