Make today the first day of the rest of your life!

If you are telling yourself you will never lose weight or that it is too hard, or that you have no self control and you accept these thoughts, you will only sabotage your efforts to manage your weight.  What you tell yourself can make you feel stressed, anxious, worried, depressed and more apt to binge or overeat.  You need to change your thinking!!

Recognise that there will be events which you will not have control over.  Suppose you have had a good week you have been motivated and eaten according to your plan but the scales say otherwise.  Getting mad at yourself would be a mistake, since other factors may be responsible such as water retention or if you are exercising additional muscle (remember muscle weighs more than fat).  Be realistic about what you can control & what you can’t, pay attention to how good you feel, or how loose your clothes are.  These are the hallmarks of real progress.

Your thoughts powerfully program you.  Realistically assess what you can control and what you can’t and take action to make a difference in your life. You may find it hard to see yourself being able to enjoy a party, go on a vacation, eat what other people are eating.  You then start feeling sorry for yourself.  You start saying “It’s not fair other people can eat what they like”, “I hate depriving myself”, “I shouldn’t have to work this hard”, “I can’t go to any parties”.  This type of thinking is highly destructive.

Feeling sorry for yourself you start eating to make yourself feel better.  What you fail to realise is you can still go to parties, you can still go on vacation and you can still do what you want. You need to focus on the scenery, the activities, the “battery recharge”, rather than focussing on food.  Think about deprivation in another way: by overeating, you’re depriving yourself of a healthy weight, an attractive appearance, self-regard and peace of mind.

You are creating the situations you are in and you are creating the thoughts and emotions that flow from these situations.  You must embrace the fact that you own your own problems and take action to solve them.

Does this sound familiar??  “I can’t help bingeing when I’m alone”.  Is this really true?  Is there nothing else, nothing at all that you can do when you are alone?  Isn’t there some activity or something that doesn’t involve food that you could rather do?

Is your goal to achieve permanent weight loss, and experience the physical and emotional health that stems from it?  If you want to look and feel better how does repeating “This won’t work” or “It’s too hard”, help you achieve your goal?  Tell yourself “I’m not powerless over my behaviour.  I’m in charge of myself.  I have to choose what’s more important: reactive overeating or taking care of my health.  It’s my choice, and I can do something about it! You can only control what happens now.  You have no control over what has happened in the past.

Self-Defeating Thinking	Right Thinking
My family/friends are conspiring to keep me fat, so I can’t lose weight	Losing weight is within my control
I didn’t lose weight this week - I must have messed up	I may be retaining fluid.  My body is adjusting to the positive changes I’ve made so far
I’m so overwhelmed - I can’t do it	As long as I continue working on my weight, I’ll achieve the goals I have set for myself
I will not succeed	No matter what happens, I’ll stay on course.  If I do what is required, I will succeed
I’ve gained a kilogram, and it’s terrible	I’ll review my week and see where I can improve.  After all, since starting this program I’ve lost ____kilograms
I’m going to lose 2 kilograms this week	I’ll stick to my Eating Plan a day at a time.  Whatever I lose will be a positive
I feel fat, so I must look fat	There’s no evidence for this.  I am looking better than ever
I can’t have fun anymore	Not true.  The fitter I get, the more fun I have, and the more activities I can participate in.  Life is more fun than ever

Make up sticky reminder notes for yourself and place them around the house -

Where to place them               Front door

Fridge

Computer

Diary or Organiser

Purse or Wallet

Next to your bed

Bathroom mirror

On your TV

Write on them                           Losing weight is within my control!

I will achieve the goals I have set for myself!

No matter what happens I will stay on course!

If I do what is required I will succeed!

Quitting will get me nowhere!

Take control!

I am in control!

I’ll stick to my program, a day at a time!

Whatever I lose will be a positive!

Remember - You can’t control everything all the time so control what you can control, accept what you can’t and be wise enough to know the difference!  

Source: Cohen's Weight Loss Clinic

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Learn To Say 'No'

It is such a small, but can be a very powerful word. It is not always easy to say. There are however some things that you can do to make ‘saying no’ a bit easier in your life, so that you can put more of your time and energy into the things that truly mean the most to you - such as reaching your goal!

• Kindly defuse and then say your needIt becomes easier for people to accept your no if you kindly defuse them first. You could for example do that by saying that their cake looks amazing or that you are flattered and that you appreciate their kind offer, and be honest about whatever you say. Then you can, add that you do not eat cake between meals or have the time for accepting and doing what they want.

• Express how you feel about itSome pushy people might want to overcome your objections and convince you to have or do something even if you first say no with a valid reason. Then try this: State how you feel as a reason for saying no. For example say that you do not feel that this offer is a good fit for your life right now or your doctor has said you need to cut back on sugar and you feel this is very important for your health at the moment or you are super busy and so you cannot do whatever they want. By telling someone how you feel it not only makes them understand your side of the issue better but also that it is a lot harder to argue with how you feel rather than how you think. How you feel is your thing and no one can really come up with good counterarguments to that.

• Improve your self-esteemIf you do not value yourself then you will not value your time or the things that are important to you very much either. The most powerful thing to make it easier to say no is to improve your own self-esteem. With better self-esteem your time and your energy will become a lot more valuable to you and you do not want to waste it. Your sense of what you deserve in life will also go up and you will be less likely to give in to other people's negative ways of persuasion. Like guilt-tripping, being really pushy or simply trying to take advantage of you.

• Remember why you are saying noWhen you are about to say no, remember why you are doing it. Focus on the positive things it will open up in your life such as losing weight because you were able to stick with your Eating Plan, more time for a hobby or simply for relaxing so your stress levels will go down. This positive motivation will help you to go through with your decision even if it feels tough.

• The world will go onIf you have trouble saying no remember that just because you say no to something does not mean that the world will stop. They will manage and life will go on for all of you.

• Always celebrate and analyze your successesYou may not be able to say no to everything you would like to say no to in your week. Even if you use the advice in this article. Do not put too much focus on those few situations though. It will only bring your self-esteem and motivation to cultivate the no-habit down. Instead, focus mostly on your successes. You may just have said no in one or a few small ways this week. That is still something new and great in your life so feel good about it. Pat yourself on the back and celebrate in some small way what you have accomplished and how you have grown as a person. Also have a think about what went well in those situations and what you can learn from them for the future.

Source: Cohen's Weight Loss Clinic

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Addictions & Discipline

Discipline is a something that most people lack, even though they might try to convince you otherwise.

Most of us believe that we are capable of making our own decisions and nothing can influence those decisions. 99% of the time this is not the case.

Many, if not all of us are slaves to our addictions. They are hard to fight and when we do not get our fix, we get irritable and try anything to get it.  It doesn’t matter if it a coffee or the sugar in the coffee we ‘need’ or if it is that ‘awesome’ show on TV we can’t miss. What matters is that we are addicted and nothing can change that…

 

Well, it can, but how hard is it and are we willing to fight? I like when people say: “But I like it and I don’t want to change it and if I wanted I could!” The problem is, they couldn’t! They just think they can… The moment you take their coffee away or turn the TV off, they freak out! They have a panic attack and will most likely attack you verbally or even physically. They have no discipline to stop and be free.

Why don’t us ask yourself what are your addictions? Try to name some of the things you can’t live without. Can you live without that glass of wine you have every night? Or is it some soft drink you are addicted to. Or maybe it is your car, your phone or the Internet you can’t live without. I think many can relate to this one. The obsession about checking emails or Facebook posts.  Is your phone the last thing you look at before you go to sleep? Is it the first thing you look at when you wake up? Try to break that pattern and see how hard it is. If you can’t live without it, then you are addicted.

What about electricity or hot water? What happens if there is a power black out and everything stops working? What if your phone is running out of battery? How does it make you feel?

We are so addicted to our favourite foods and modern life luxuries, we don’t even notice. If you were addicted to an illegal drug and were unable to get it, you would do anything to find it and get your fix. Only in that state of need you are able to realise how much you are addicted. If all our ‘soft’ drugs are supplied 24/7, we wouldn’t even notice that we are addicted.

For a person, to be really free, one would have to identify all addictions and get rid of them. There is a difference between using a phone to make a call and check emails as necessary or being obsessive about checking it every 2 minutes. We must keep checking in and constantly monitor our relationships with things, people and food in our lives. If we don’t, we are slaves to those things that control us.

Sugar, alcohol, coffee, bread, pasta, TV, the Internet… Those things are the most addictive things, but no one seems to care.

All processed food is loaded with sugars and at the same time are stripped of all the essential micro nutrients like vitamins and minerals. We eat it, we get our sugar rush, but our bodies are starving.

The only way to break the addictions is to ditch it. One must make the decision and let it all go. It might be hard the first couple of days during the detox, but after a while you won’t even miss it. Your body will be grateful that it doesn’t have to work so hard removing all that sugar from your bloodstream and your mind will get a break from TV trance that encourages passivity. You might even replace it with more stimulating activities where you can become creative and live, instead of watching someone else living it on the screen.

All you need is a discipline. Discipline is like a muscle that you need to exercise to make it stronger. Every time you say no to your addictions, you make them weaker and your discipline grows. You will get your independence back and slowly end your dependency on everything that society feeds you. Everything that we are consuming and do not really need, can be traced back years, decades or centuries and usually at the source you can find an idea on how to make money… That’s all it is.

Sugar was non-existent in our culture 400-500 years ago. Humanity did not need it to survive. Then it suddenly took off with the discovery of the new world. Plantations, slavery and human exploitation – all that to make money. The business people back then quickly realised the potential in sugar because it was so desirable by people for its addictive properties.  This is the same with coffee and all other things like chocolate. What this little affair with sugar has cost us, as a society is astounding.

Fact - the global diabetes devices and drug market was worth USD 50.8 billion in 2011 and is expected to reach USD 98.4 billion in 2018. Do you think with those kinds of figures they want people to be healthy? Think about it. Really! The mechanism is in place. Sugar, wheat products, corn syrup is in almost everything these days. 

Now, diabetes is only one of many modern diseases that terrorizes the human population. There are many others, mostly caused by bad nutrition, lack of good air and water, lack of activity and depression caused by overall unhappiness thanks to the passive consumption lifestyle. When did food become so important and start to play such an important social role? When did overeating and overindulging in the wrong food infiltrate our culture? When did we swap one chicken a week on a Sunday for chicken 10 times a week? When did we become so ignorant that we are capable of slaughtering 80,000,000,000 chickens per year as a human race and not even notice?

How self obsessed and food obsessed can we become? How far is this going to go? How many more people have to get sick and die thanks to overeating and over indulging in the wrong food?

The only way we can change this and become healthier as a society is to stop and start to think for ourselves. Turn off the TV and stop obsessing about the latest episode of Master Chef.  It is nice to eat tasty food, but healthy and conscious choices can be tasty too.

People do not need more medication, what they need is better food choices, to enable our bodies to heal. This requires discipline.

Sometimes when we go out with friends or meet with extended family, we somehow lose all common sense and take on the herd mentality. We forget ourselves and eat like it’s going to be out last meal. The next day we feel tired and regret what we did, but it’s too late. Our little ego won again. The little kid inside of us got what it wanted. Our true self is left defeated and weakened.  Let’s try to do better next time.

Do we really need to eat all that food? Most likely not…

What I love about the Cohen’s program is because it teaches you to eat less, and only what your body really needs. It teaches you not to overindulge, but still enjoy food. It teaches you to live without processed food and lets your body heal and reach a new hormonal balance. You will feel better, healthier and stronger… But you must be disciplined and stick to it. You have to ignore that little kid inside your brain and let it carry on with its tantrums. It will stop eventually…

 

It is up to you to wake up and realize what you are doing to your body.  It is up to you to lead a new healthy lifestyle.

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Margaret Homsy Continued Journey

Since my last entry as to my weight loss journey, I have shed a few more kilos!  I am stablising now, which is fantastic!

I can't believe I have lost a total of 98kg.  It really does blow my mind!

Cohen's has taught me to listen to my body and only use food as my fuel. I have learnt that I am unique and I'm no longer that unhappy person I once was. Shedding my sumo suit has revealed so much about my emotional struggles and I'm grateful everyday that I deal with my emotions without food as my saviour! 

I still have much to learn about my body; but in the midst of the discovery I am having so much fun!  The greatest thing and the one thing I was truly concerned about was my excess skin.  The human growth hormone is still doing its job and I am proud to say, I am still shrinking in! Woooo

98kg gone and loving life! Thank u to everyone who has been a part of this with me! 

Much love xxoo

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Say No To The Victim Mentality

Say NO!

How do you react if your day doesn't go the way you planned? At first you might feel pain, but after your initial feelings, do you think of yourself as a victim with little or no control or power? You might slip back into a headspace where you feel sorry for yourself and it feels like the whole world is against you. Many people get stuck in this mentality from time to time. Here are a few things that may help you move out of this mindset:


See the benefits of the victim mentality

The victim mentality is addictive and can be pretty beneficial in the short term and for instant gratification. A few benefits are:

• Attention and validation - You can always get good feelings from other people as they are concerned about you and try to help you out
• You don't have to take risks. When you feel like a victim you tend to not take action and so you don't have to risk rejection or failure
• You don't have to take the heavy responsibility. Taking responsibility for your own life can be hard work, you have to make difficult decisions and it is just tough from time to time. In the short term it can feel like the easier choice to not take personal responsibility
• It makes you feel like you are right. When you feel like the victim and like someone else is wrong and you are right then that can lead to pleasurable feelings

By being aware of the benefits you can derive from victim thinking, it becomes easier to say no and to choose to take a different path.

See the long term consequences of the victim mentality

• How will it hold you back from achieving the goals you deep down dream about in life?
• How will it affect your most important relationships?
• How does it affect your relationship with yourself?

Be honest with yourself and get motivation to change by seeing how destructively this will affect your life over the next year or even 3 to 5 years from now.

Replace the victim mentality with something more helpful

Gratitude - It is healthy to recognise and accept the initial pain when something goes wrong in life and to not just paint a fake smile on your face. However, after that initial pain is gone you don't have to create more suffering for yourself. Instead, you can tap into gratitude and ask yourself: "Does someone in this world have it worse than me?" and then take a few minutes to think about the small and bigger things you have in my life that you can be grateful for.

Learning and taking action - After tapping into a more grateful frame of mind, you will be more open to getting a good answer out of this next question: “What is one good thing about this situation?” or “What is one thing you can learn from this situation?” You can then follow it up with: “What is one small step you can take to move forward or out of this situation today?” By asking these question and taking some small steps forward over and over in these situations you will build confidence in yourself and while you cannot control everything in life you can build more and more power and influence over your own life and achieve your goals!

Source: Cohen's Lifestyle Clinic

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Guilty As Charged

We are all guilty of breaking "weight-loss rules" from time to time. It comes with being human. The important thing is that we learn from our mistakes. Label them as experience, put them behind us and keep working towards our goal. 

I will start again next week

You decided that you wanted to start living a healthy lifestyle when you signed up for your Cohen's Lifestyle Clinic Program. Sure, but it is Thursday. Might as well wait and start fresh on a Monday, right? Wrong. It is all too easy to put off that initial move, but chances are if you wait until Monday, you will only be met by another excuse. The trick is to start today. It could be just sticking to your three main meals and the correct foods, or making sure you drink at least 2 litres of water through the day. At least take small steps to instigate action now and you are on your way. Remember every journey starts with a single step. Today is the day!

I went for a walk, so now I can eat something extra

Unfortunately, working out does not give you a pass to eat whatever you want. It will help get your heart rate up, but you will not see significant fat loss because of it and it may leave you feeling tired and hungry. Instead of exercising and sitting down to a larger serve of food, enjoy your 'food as medicine' and watch the fat melt away - it is that easy!

I gave in to my chocolate craving

Lapse does not mean collapse. The worst thing you can do is use it as an excuse to write the day off. A whole day of deviations may lead to weight gain, cravings and not being able to get back on track as easily. Instead, make sure your very next meal is perfect and focus on your goal. You can then continue on to achieve it.

I have not lost weight in a week - I may as well give up

Almost everybody who is losing weight experiences plateaus from time to time. Instead of feeling disheartened, reflect on the weight you have lost and the centimeters you are losing. Measure yourself each week as it is a much better indication of fat loss when your body is doing its maintenance and reshaping. Only weigh yourself once every 4 weeks and concentrate on how you are looking and feeling. If you are diligent and continue on, you will achieve your goal!

Source: Cohen's Lifestyle Clinic

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Margaret Homsy in the Hills Shire Times - Let's beat the obesity epidemic together!

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Make A Decision And Focus

Keep your focus on things that are useful

The things that you dwell on in your conscious mind, grow in your experience, so the key to success is to focus your conscious mind on the things you desire, not the things you may fear. This is very important and sometimes clients do not grasp the full extent of it. When your focus is split and you fill your mind with a normal amount of negativity or dwell on times that you slipped up with your Eating Plan, you are using up valuable time, energy and available focus to pull yourself backwards and to make mountains out of molehills. Problems will seem to become even bigger in your mind than they actually are, because you are dwelling on them.
However, opportunities and gratitude work in the same way if you dwell on them. What you focus on is what you will see in your reality (opportunities vs more reasons why “you are never going to get there”). What you dwell on becomes bigger and bigger in your mind and what you think about is what you will act upon. That is why it is so important to keep your focus and your thoughts in the right place and on the positive and useful things in your life as much as you can. If you focus on the negative and irrelevant stuff it is quite likely that you never will reach your goal.

Ask yourself helpful questions

It can be helpful to ask yourself two questions after every difficult situation you face: "What did I do that was right?" and "What would I do differently next time?" The questions you ask yourself in life will determine much of your outlook and success. If you ask negative questions like "What is bad about this situation?" then you are creating a lot of unhappiness and victim thinking. If you on the other hand keep it to useful and empowering questions, then your chances of succeeding and reaching your goal will go up.

Focus on the activities that bring you results 

There are a lot of people who perform activities that are tension relieving, rather than goal achieving. You may like to just take it easy or relieve tension, but you end up creating more of it by procrastinating and complaining instead of doing. It seems easier on the surface but in the long run it tends to cause you more disappointment. Of course, you must take time to relax, but find a good and helpful balance for the two aspects of life and the best ways and most positive ways to relieve tension. You could take up meditation in some form or watch a good movie or just read a magazine or newspaper.

Make a decision and do something

Decisiveness is a great characteristic and usually any decision is better than no decision at all. It is one of the most fundamental things that hold clients back. Sitting on your hands and hoping that someone else will do something for you usually results in a lot of waiting. Just make a decision and take the first step. The sky will most likely not fall if you fail or have a few hick ups along the way - You may just feel bad for a short while and learn a few things by asking some simple questions. Then you make a new decision based on what you have learned and take action again!



Source: Cohen's Lifestyle Clinic

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A Little Loss Weighs Up to a Lot

Personal note from Margaret:- I am getting a lot of people comparing their weigh loss to mine and they are becoming very disappointed that they are not losing the same amount of weight. People shouldn't be comparing their weight loss. When I was a bigger girl I would do the same. The weeks I had lost 500grams, I had lost a heap in measurements and the weeks I had lost a heap of weight my measurements didn't really shift. So appreciate all weight loss and get in the habit of measuring yourself weekly.

A little loss weighs up to a lot and when it comes to losing weight, a little bit can mean a lot. A modest weight loss of 5% to 10% of body weight can lower blood pressure and provide other health benefits even to very obese  people, according to an article in the journal Obesity Research.

However, patients don't always listen when their doctors try to give them that message. If a patient weighs 130kg and then loses 13kg, their doctor says "That's great. You've lost 10% of your weight and reduced your blood pressure", says Arthur Frank, MD, medical director of the weight management program at George Washington University in Washington. But the patient says, "I still weigh 117kg!" In the article, Ilse L. Mertens and Luc F. Van Gaal, of the department of endocrinology at the University Hospital of Antwerp in Belgium, examined a number of studies that looked at the effect of modest weight loss on blood pressure and other health problems.

In one such study, a group of high blood pressure patients all discontinued their medication; one group made no other changes while the other group lost nearly 3.6kg. At the end of the study, nearly two-thirds of the high blood pressure patients who lost weight still had normal blood pressure. "A modest weight loss significantly reduced the risk for high blood pressure", the authors write. "These results suggest that, in adults and in the elderly, modest weight loss is an effective therapy for the treatment of hypertension. That's a message that more doctors need to spread," says Frank. "We have to reinforce the value of a modest weight loss". Cultural pressures have prevented many obese patients from considering the value of even a small weight loss, according to the authors of the study.

The authors point out that patients often have unrealistic expectations about their ideal weights. Even losing 5% to 10% of your body weight and maintaining the loss, will have a continuing positive effect on one's health and wellbeing!

Source: Cohen's Lifestyle Clinic

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How to beat the Easter Chocolate Crave!

The countdown is on! Easter eggs have taken over the supermarket isles and children are counting the sleeps until the Easter Bunny pays them a visit! With any holiday, most people associate it with glucose gluttony and health experts are urging Australians to think about Easter treats in terms of exercise rather than eggs. It's not just the chocolate that we eat over Easter that keeps us from achieving our healthy weight, so I'm not going to rant about the calories in chocolate or the amount of exercise we all need to do to burn off a hot-cross bun. You guys are smarter than that. You don't need warnings about the perils of chocolate and junk food. It's not going to help you with your weight-loss goals. 

I must say though, isn’t it convenient that Easter falls 12 weeks after our New Year's resolutions, which is why it's a good a time to sit down and reflect upon your goals. Evaluate your eating habits over the week. It's what we do day in and day out that really counts the most.

It is also a long weekend, one that provides us with quality time to spend with family and friends doing what we love, for many it also brings with it stress and worry about how you are going to resist the temptation with all those treats screaming “just eat me!”

I really don't want you all to think about the junk food over the weekend, so I  have put together some tips to get you through this long weekend and to keep you on track:-

1. Plan your meals and snacks for the long weekend so you know what you are going to eat. Choose healthy options you LOVE. Prepare plenty of yummy healthy treats by using your allowances to make something delicious so you are not tempted. Those already on Cohen's will find treats in your recipe book.
2. Drink plenty of water! Water will help flush out toxins, help you feel fuller, you will be hydrated and have more energy.
3. How about instead of eating the chocolate or that hot cross bun, you arrange a fun Easter egg hunt, or boil some eggs and have fun with the family colouring them.
4. Brush your teeth when you get that craving; it will quash the appetite of even the most dedicated sweet tooth.
5. Take chromium (sugar balance by Blackmores is a good one)
6. Keep your goals in check.  Remind yourself that it really isn’t worth it – you’ve come so far since you set your goal to lose weight!
7. Enjoy the time with your family and friends.

Easter is the one time of year where size does matter and I am really encouraging you all to choose wisely!

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Making lifestyle decisions for our future generations

There has been a lot of discussion on Facebook given the Biggest Loser is about to air! One of the discussions is about our children, our next generations. What would you do for your child if they had a weight problem? Why did it get to that point to start with? Children need role models, they learn and then follow what you do! It's all about what you put in your mouth. You make the decision to purchase processed food. Those decisions are then made by our children. Eat the way nature intended us to eat. It does not mean you eat massive portions either. It's about teaching our future generations about what is good for their body. Seriously, has a box of cereal on the shelf really got 50% more calcium? I don't think so! if it did, it would not be on a shelf in a box with an expiry date! Processed food is all about economics, making big companies more money! What you do at home sets the example for our next generations! Remember, 80% what you eat 20% exercise. We would never have weight problems if we did this! I had a weight problem, and for me it was about bad habits. I wasn't sitting there eating a stack of food, I was just eating the wrong food or nothing at all! But I learnt these bad habits from home. It's all I knew!

Let's start by setting examples!  Let's get healthy together and change our lifestyles for good!

I now know new habits and my body is loving me!  I will now be able to change what I had been taught and teach my children a new way of life!



I would encourage you all to post comments and examples of how we can do this.


LET'S DO IT! 

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Get Motivated Now!

You can use these very easy steps to find your personal reasons for wanting to change your lifestyle or simply refuel your motivation right now!  What motivates you?

When you want to make changes in your life to lose weight, it is not always easy to keep the motivation up. It can slip and you may fall back into old eating habits or you may get stuck in daydreams and never actually start changing your lifestyle.

Here is a very effective way to refuel or kick start your motivation:

Find a quiet place and sit down… Close your eyes

If you need something to get started then ask yourself these questions:

• How will I look and feel in 2 years time if I continue to stay on the same path as I am now?

• How will life likely become worse for me and maybe even for the people around me?

• How will I look and feel in 1 year if I stick with it and keep going? How will I feel in 2 years?

• How will life improve not only for me but for the people around me if I stick with it?

It may be uncomfortable but try to see the negative consequences as clearly as you can in your mind. This will help to get motivation so you can work towards positive lifestyle changes now.

If you have already gotten started but your motivation has dropped and you do not feel like continuing towards your goal or until the new lifestyle changes stick, ask yourself:

Try to see the future in as much detail and as clearly as you can and also find your very personal reasons for making these lifestyle changes.

For example, losing weight could help you to become more optimistic and more energetic - Which is great, but to really find the heart of your motivation keep looking for a few more minutes for the more personal answer. It could be that you want to make these lifestyle changes for your health, because if you do not do it now then you might not have the energy to have fun and play as much as you want with your daughter or granddaughter while she is young... and as she gets older, you may be too tired to give her quality time each day.

So make the time to really think about and find out what is important to you, so that you can refocus on and refuel your true motivation!

Source: Cohen's Lifestyle Clinic

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Why do we fall off the wagon?

I bet I know what you're feeling right now. You have been following your program for weeks or months and you were feeling good about yourself and the progress you were making. Your weight was getting closer to your goal and all was good. 

Until . . . you fell off the wagon!

It probably started with that little piece of chocolate that turned into two or three bigger pieces. Perhaps it was more sudden, like pigging out during a big birthday or holiday feast. In either case, now you're feeling guilty (and maybe bloated and groggy, too), and you don't know what to do about it.

I wish I could solve the issues; the world (for many) would be a better place! Well, the reality is that there are real answers to this question that will apply to many people. It will take a good dose of reality to stop denying what really happens.  I am no saint and fell off the wagon plenty of times, more times than I like to remember.  It was a hard ride going through the ups and downs not to mention hard on my body!

I can only provide you with ways to discover some of the answers that may help change your life and provide you with the determination to get to your goal to lose the weight and most importantly keeping it off!  Let’s check out some of the things I went through, which I am pretty sure you can relate to.

Do you justify your behaviour?

Being overweight can be used as an excuse for being unhappy, especially when you do not do anything to help yourself. Subconsciously, over-eating is a comfort for many people and this then allows them to hide behind their weight problem and helps them to justify rejection and avoid being hurt. They can then shift the blame of rejection on their weight-problem, without addressing other aspects of their fears. Sometimes it seems easier to hide behind your "weight problem", than address other matters where you may have a greater fear of failure.

Eating Without Thinking?

If you are concentrating on another activity while you are eating you are more likely to overeat because you are not fully aware of how full you are feeling. This factor can be difficult to change because it is not a conscious action. Try to only eat when you don't have a lot of other distractions. Sit down, eat slowly and enjoy the food you are eating, and remember that it is not always necessary to go back for seconds. It takes 20 minutes for food to reach your stomach and for your brain to register that you are full.

Are they real cravings?

We condition our animals to eat at the sound of a bell or call, and we human are much the same when it comes to habitual cravings. Now don’t think I am comparing you to our animals , all I am pointing out is the conditioning you have been faced with most of your life.  The Habit!  If you wonder why you always feel like a popcorn when you sit down to watch a movie... think again. You are not necessarily craving these foods because you are hungry, but rather consider force of habit. During the time when you have a craving, try to ask yourself whether you are really hungry or not. If you are hungry, reach for your allowance of fruit rather than the popcorn.   I’ve spoken about chromium in another article before, use the chromium! It knocks out those “real” cravings.  If you know for example you are going to go and watch a movie, then prepare your daily allowed, “snacks” and take them with you!  It is about preparing! You will thank yourself later for it.

Are you indulging?

Eating or thinking about food can be a distraction from your troubles and you may therefore be unnecessarily over-eating. Emotions and hormones can trigger certain cravings, for example, if you are feeling low, chocolate and carbohydrates assist the production of serotonin in your brain. Serotonin helps you feel happier. This is why we might crave sweet or starchy foods during times of sadness or stress. We all know though on the Cohen’s program that your serotonin increases, so in our case, what emotions are triggering this indulging for you?  To be honest, there shouldn’t be the need to want to “increase your serotonin”, it is already increased, and so I would only be looking at the above situations as to why you are falling off the wagon!

How to get back on the Wagon

Don't skip meals: It's tempting to skip meals because you want to cut back on the calories. The problem with skipping meals is that by not eating now, you're going to be hungrier later, and that increases the chances you'll overeat at your next meal and once again deviate from the plan. You must have your 3 balanced meals. You must reset your hormones to balance again!

Drink water: Drinking your daily water intake it will help flush out all of those toxins.

Be prepared: To go through the detox again.  Remember you are the one that fell off the wagon and indulged.

Have rest: Be kind to your body, how would you feel if you were hit by a bus literally. Get some sleep!

What you must remember is that you made a decision to change your lifestyle.  You made a promise to yourself to see something all the way through to the end. Regardless of what is “going on”, there are different ways to deal with your emotions other than running to your old ways.  I am not one to say “oh poor thing, don’t worry about it”, I tell my clients, “move on, but let’s get to the underlying cause of why it keeps happening”.

You are what you eat and I am sure you certainly don’t want to look like a chocolate bar because you had far too many moments of not caring about your initial decision to change your lifestyle!

It is about re conditioning your mind to learn how to cope with these things, how to combat the cravings, learning how to deal with the urges and how to control that “ego” of yours!

Be congruent with your promises you make to yourself! You can DO THIS!

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The Beck Diet Solution

I really dislike the word “diet”, hence why I was very hesitant in buying this book!  I am glad I did though.

Losing weight – that’s the easy bit!  It’s keeping it off and training that brain of ours to work with us not against us!

For me, keeping the weight of this time is going to be different!  I have also learnt how to deal with those "food pushers". Yes you all know who I am talking about.  It is such a wonderful joy to know that when I say "no" my mind instantly accepts that answer!

It is about knowing how to lose weight successfully, with confidence and most importantly, to keep it off forever! 
 

Let’s talk about The Beck Diet Solution. It is the first book that teaches dieters how to apply the proven benefits of Cognitive Therapy to dieting and weight loss: how to think differently, change your eating behaviour, and lose weight permanently. In fact, Cognitive Therapy is the only psychological method shown to help dieters keep off excess weight once they lose it.  This book is very popular amongst my clients and is certainly helping them through their weight loss program.

The Beck Diet Solution will change the way you think about eating and weight loss forever! Written by world-expert Cognitive Therapist Dr. Judith S. Beck, The Beck Diet Solution is a remarkable six-week program that gives you all the tools you need to train your brain to think like a thin person. This breakthrough approach, which works in tandem with any nutritional diet plan shows you how to make the kinds of positive, long-term thinking and behavioural changes necessary to lose weight and to maintain your weight loss, not just for the short run but for the rest of your life!

Simply put: The Beck Diet Solution teaches you the skills you need to diet successfully and to keep the weight off permanently.

You will discover Dr. Beck's strategies for ensuring long-term weight loss based on over 20 years of successfully coaching dieters in her practice including ways to:

Learn to stick to any diet.
Make cravings go away fast!
Resist tempting foods.
Deal with trigger eating situations.
Say, No, thank you, to food pushers.
Put an end to emotional eating.
Conquer every excuse to overeat.
Find time to exercise.
Lose weight and keep it off for a lifetime!

Give yourself the mental and emotional foundation you need to succeed with The Beck Diet Solution. 

I would suggest you buy and read this book before starting any weightloss program.

Enjoy

Marg xx

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Letting go of the "large" person and seeing YOU

 

I thought I would get a little personal with our blog today and talk about the tricks our minds play on us when we lose weight.

It is especially hard on my loved ones when they can clearly see what I look like now, but I don't. I think unless you have been in “my shoes”, people do not realise the emotional downside to being overweight almost your entire life to becoming healthy. You do not know how to look at the world, or yourself, any differently. 

Sometimes I look into the mirror and think, "Wow, look how far you've come!," but a lot of the times, I still see the old me in my head and honestly forget. It is hard to remember, when all you have ever really known is a world in which you are obese/overweight.

When I go into stores, I always grab a large. Sometimes I get all "aha, you've lost weight!" mode and give myself a mental pat on the back while I grab a medium, only for the medium to be too big. So yes I am training my brain to realise it can actually go and pick up an extra small or a small. This experience can be very daunting and confrontational!

Why does this happen? Let’s look at the “science”.  Source from: Sandra Blakeslee, Matthew Blakeslee

There are findings about how your brain maps your body, the space around your body, and your social world.  Body maps reveal how your mind and body interact to create a sense of being a whole, independent, embodied individual. It also shows how easily that sense can cause confusion, and how you can bring it back into balance when it falls out of sync.

To grasp the concept of a body map, ask yourself, how do you know your hand belongs to you? You might answer, "Well, I just know. I can feel things through it and command it to move how I want."

This deep sense of control does not just pop into your mind. It arises from a masterpiece of coordinated activity between various maps of your body - that are etched into the thinly layered surface of your brain. For example, your brain has a fundamental touch map, with swaths of tissue dedicated to mapping touch sensations. When someone taps you on the shoulder, you know it was your shoulder and not your neck because the cells that make up your shoulder map become active while the cells in your neck maps stay quiet.

Right next to your touch map is a second fundamental map, which handles not sensation but movement. You can choose which finger to wiggle because each finger is represented separately in your motor map. The cells in the chosen finger map fire, sending commands down to your muscles to make the intended movement happen.

Beyond these two basic maps you have many others that map your muscles, joints, bones and insides, as well as your immediate plans, goals, and your body's enormous library of "muscle memories." Your brain also maps the space around your body. Wave your arm up over your head, out to your side and down to your leg. Each point of that space is mapped inside your brain in relation to your body.

In other words, your brain contains an extensive network of body maps that are always interacting - the vast majority of it occurring outside of consciousness - to give you that misleading self-evident sense that, yes, every part of your body, inside and out, belongs to you, is accurately understood and perceived by you, and is there when you need it.

This view of yourself is not entirely unfounded, but it provides an explanation on what is happening under the hood -- details that can have big consequences for leading you down the garden path into denial, delusion or unwarranted self-scorn.

To grasp why you may still feel large after losing weight, I would ask you to consider two particular body maps that can strongly conflict, giving you the sense that you are doomed to be large. One maps the internal felt position of your body. The other is a distributed map concerning your beliefs about your body.

The first map, called the body schema, is based on signals from your muscles, bones, tendons, skin, and joints that tell your brain where you are located in space and how your body is configured. This map is dynamic, meaning it changes from moment to moment as you move around in the world. It also contains memories of how your muscles engage to produce different actions and postures. And it incorporates your ability to balance your body against the force of gravity.

When you lose a significant amount of weight, your body schema will update itself accordingly. The unconscious signals coming up from your body into your brain reflect a thinner, lighter, more flexible self. Your clothes fit differently; your jeans are looser etc.

And yet, like millions of others who have successfully toned up and slimmed down, may still feel large. The signals from your thinner body schema are not penetrating all the way up into consciousness. Sure, you notice you look somehow thinner in the mirror, a little bit, maybe, but that is not how you feel. You feel large, and you continue to see your former self because another body-mapping system is trumping your schema. It is called the body image, and it is composed of a more widely distributed collection of mental images, memories, beliefs and opinions about your body.

Your body image stems primarily from experiences in childhood and adolescence. We all have political and religious beliefs and we also have beliefs about our body – sound familiar “I am fat and unattractive; my body is disgusting and frightening; and so on - are built up from what you see around you, what people who are close to you say, and how people in your society behave. For example, a young girl who is teased mercilessly about being flat chested may never think of her body as being normal. A little boy who is teased for having pop-out ears may never, despite later changes in proportions to his face, stop seeing a freak staring back at him through the looking glass.

Thus your body image, held in memory and language circuits throughout your brain, can easily overwhelm your slimmed-down body schema. You get discouraged and regain the weight you can't stop believing any other way. Your yo-yo dieting begins another new cycle.

Fortunately, there are ways to restore this schema-image disconnect. For example, wobble boards used by personal trainers bring your body schema into sharp relief, forcing you to attend to the signals you may normally tune out because they frighten or discomfit you. You could also find a therapist who you can talk with about these issues.

A colleague had suggested (which has helped me so much) is find an old photograph of yourself (at your biggest) and pop it to the left of your mirror, then find a photo of where you want to be (be realistic in finding one, and cut a photo of your head from another photo and place it on top of that body photograph) to the right of your mirror. When you get dressed of a morning, stand in between those two photographs.  You will see where you were, where you are and where you want to get too.

I also found some great tips by Lavinia Rodriguez, which I am now implementing in my every day life to overcome this craziness!  

• Learn to accept yourself based on the overwhelming evidence coming from the outside world who views your body more realistically than you do.
• Decide that you are going to trust other people (the world in general - not a single person) more than yourself when it comes to how big your body is since they are more accurate than you are at it.
• Work on accepting that although you perceive yourself and feel fat, it is not true because there is too much evidence to the contrary.
• Remind yourself at every instance that it is impossible to suddenly be fatter than you were a few moments ago so it has to be a distortion.
• Use self-talk to keep reminding yourself that the distortion will change as you learn to accept yourself unconditionally and trust that the problem has nothing to do with the size of your body.
• Focus on other things in life that bring enjoyment and activity.
• Dare to do the opposite of what your mind is telling you. If your mind is telling you to not go out because you are fat, purposely go out. If it says not to wear something because you're too fat, purposely wear it.
• Trust that you can get past this and recover.
• Get a life apart from your body size.
• Leave the past behind.

After implementing some of the suggestions above, I must say today for the first time in a long time since shedding such a big amount of weight, I felt slimmer and actually saw myself "tiny".  It was such a shock but yes it does happen.   Here is a photo after a Makeup Masterclass with Michael Brown.  I would obviously like to think it wasn’t because we glammed ourselves up with makeup, but it is actually me now (which I am believing more everyday).

Me in the black (of course)

I really believe the most important thing is, do not be so hard on yourself.  Enjoy your achievements and love life!

Marg xx

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