My personal love week is coming to an end. My husband and I have spent the last five days celebrating our 21st Anniversary. As we head out today to share some love, I encourage you to take action to give yourself some love. Not long ago, I watched a woman grab her stomach and say, “This is why I want to lose weight.” It sounded like self-criticism. It sounded like frustration. It sounded like disgust. Often, women will make the decision to lose weight when the pain of being where they are is greater than the fear of change. And most women fear the process of losing weight. This makes total sense because in the past, it’s been hard. You have to endure hunger and deprivation. You have to endure body shame. But the problem with approaching weight-loss with a foundation of fear and anger is that it isn’t sustainable. When you make it torture, you endure until you meet your goal and then you go back to your old patterns—only to regain the weight. Then you are faced with having to lose the weight—again. And losing the weight is even more difficult because now you have the memory of how hard it was. You know the horrors you are facing and you just can’t make yourself go there. Who can blame you! Who wants to voluntarily suffer over and over again? Is it any wonder that every fiber of your being fights the very idea of diet and exercise? To change your results, you have to change how you approach the problem. How much easier would it be to release the weight if you actually enjoyed the actions you were taking? What if moving […]
Change Your Beliefs to Change Your Body
How likely are you to even try to achieve something if deep down you don’t even believe it is possible? What if the thing holding you back from experiencing optimal wellness is your belief that you don’t have it? “Wait a minute,” you might say. “I don’t have optimal wellness. How can I believe anything other than the fact that I don’t have it?” And there is the problem. Most people approach life with the expectation that they will “believe it when they see it.” They want hard facts, statistics, and reality to back them up. “Show me the money,” they say. But this defies every spiritual guidance and practice. What is faith other than believing that all things are possible? That when you ask, it is given, and that it is up to you to “believe it and you will see it?” Often people pray by continually asking for the same thing over and over again. By asking more than once, you are essentially telling All-That-Is (God, the Universe, Source Energy, Higher Coach—whatever works for you) that not only do you NOT have what you are praying for, but that you don’t believe or have faith that what you are asking for is coming. The first step to creating optimal wellness is then to believe that it is even possible. You have to disregard the evidence around you and trust that the wellness you have asked for can—and is!—yours. It is truly a leap of faith. But for most women, that leap is a precipice too large to jump. Instead, it is far easier and more successful to build a mental bridge to the belief that not only is optimal wellness possible, but it’s yours if […]
Tips for Believing You Can Achieve the Body You Want
Do you believe that optimal wellness is achievable? How likely are you to achieve something if you don’t even believe it’s possible? In order to achieve it, you have to be open to the idea that optimal wellness can absolutely be your natural state of being. Achieving anything first begins with the belief that it is possible. If you don’t believe it, how hard are you going to work? How much are you willing to try before you give up? How much will you sabotage your own efforts to prove yourself right? One of the most famous examples of harnessing your belief is Thomas Edison. It would take him almost two years of failed attempts, new discoveries and prototypes before he would find success in creating the carbon filament light bulb. After Edison’s seven-hundredth unsuccessful attempt, he was asked by a New York Times reporter, “How does it feel to have failed 700 times?” He responded, “I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.” It is said he tried over 6,000 different carbonized plant fibers looking for a carbon filament for his light bulb. Do you think he would have continued undaunted if he didn’t believe that he would ultimately find the solution that would work? How can you begin stretching your beliefs to accept that wellness and well-being are possible? There are many, many ways, but here are a few: Disregard what others have told you. Unless it is a Universal Truth, meaning it is true no matter who, no matter where, […]
A New Thought to Create a New You
“I don’t like vegetables.” A client said this to me the other day. I have found that this is a pretty common sentiment among women who have struggled with their weight. You may have a lifetime of evidence that most vegetables are, “Blagh.” When you go on a diet or try to eat healthier, you may take vegetables like medicine, forcing yourself to eat them. Meal times become something to endure rather to savor. At the very least, those meals are not soul-satisfying. And here you are trying to fulfill your resolution to lose weight in January—what many feel is the peak of the winter-vegetable doldrums. Is it any wonder that so many resolutions fail? What if you are dealing with a limiting belief? What if you could shift your perspective about vegetables just enough that you could see a path around this obstacle to create the radiantly healthy body you want? One way to do this is to think about how you could make eating vegetables fun. This might look like: Trying new recipes Adding a cup of spinach to your smoothie Experimenting with vegetables you’ve never tried before What if you could prove to yourself that you actually do enjoy vegetables in some form or fashion? Maybe even love some of them? How might that alter your success at releasing the weight–for good? How often do we limit ourselves because of an opinion, judgment, thought, idea, or past experience that we just assume is absolutely and completely True? For instance, how many of you have ever heard, “You have to clean your plate because there are starving children somewhere in the world?” Do you think that’s a limiting belief? How true is it that your cleaning […]
15 Ways to See Your Body as Beautiful
I used to hate my body. Almost all of my thoughts about my body were negative—and harsh! I constantly told myself how ugly I was, how awful I looked compared to everyone else, how weak, soft, and poorly functioning my body was. I focused almost exclusively on my body’s flaws. And for years, I struggled with losing and regaining the same 30 pounds over and over again. Oh, I knew how to diet and exercise, but I just couldn’t make the changes stick. After 35 years of struggling with my weight, I knew there had to be another way. So I tried something drastic. I decided to change my thoughts. It wasn’t until I started changing my thoughts that I started to see lasting changes in my body. Since 2009, I’ve lost 34 pounds–and best of all, I’ve kept it off! Today, I love my body! I love my body and life more than I thought possible. Believe it or not, your body reflects the thoughts you are thinking. And you may be seriously underestimating the incredible power of your thoughts. Reflect on the kinds of thoughts you think about your body—and life!—most of the time. Are you primarily focused on how fabulous your body is, how hard it’s working on your behalf, how beautiful it is, how strong and fit it is, and how much you love it? Or are you saying things like I used to say? Are you frustrated and angry at your body because it doesn’t look like you want it to look, or how you think it should look? Are you on the verge of giving up on ever getting the body you want? When you look at your body, does […]
Signs of Progress
One year ago today, I published my first blog on this site. That was me lining up my thoughts and beliefs with my actions and desires, and saying a big “Yes!” to the future I envisioned. Since then, I have not only published a wellness tip and a blog six days a week, but I have interacted with you fabulous readers, read some amazing writing on others’ blogs, been inspired and hopefully given inspiration—maybe even to you. I also successfully dealt with my own wellness challenges—including a major surgery—improved my nutrition, and have maintained my weight and fitness level. In addition, I completed my coaching certifications and my business has taken off—I’ve even hired a business coach to help me with it. I’m super excited about the changes I have coming as a result, including a new website, coaching programs, e-book, beach-side Love Your Way Slim retreat, and much, much more! More importantly, I love my life—and the people in it—more than I ever dreamed possible! My intention with this blog has been—and will remain—to inspire and provide value to you fabulous readers. Each blog is an expression of how much I appreciate your time, your energy, where you are in life and on your wellness journey, our connection, and Who you are as a person. Thank you for all the follows, likes, awards, support, and comments. They have all been felt and appreciated. And the greatest honor of all has been your letting me know when a blog has moved or inspired you. And I especially want to thank all you readers who have been with me from those early days. Knowing you were reading and cheering me on made all the difference in […]
How True is That?
While I’m hanging out with my folks celebrating my birthday, I’m sharing one of my favorite blogs that you may have missed. One of the things that holds us back from creating the body and life of our dreams is accepting those limiting beliefs that we have picked up from others as truth. How likely are you to achieve something if you don’t even believe it’s possible? If you’re feeling stuck regarding releasing weight, it can be helpful to look at the beliefs you’re holding and examine if they’re accurate or not. For instance, how many of you have ever heard “You have to clean your plate because there are starving children somewhere in the world?” Just about everyone, right? This is how our parents or grandparents often got us to eat—and to eat things we didn’t want to eat. Do you think that’s a limiting belief? How true is it that your cleaning your plate is going to benefit any of those starving children? Logically, it makes no sense that my overeating will help anyone else. In fact, this belief can actually be harmful. Cleaning your plate teaches you to disregard your body’s guidance that it’s had enough, and eating too much food is at the heart of being overweight, which has serious health consequences. At the core of this belief is often a concern about wasting food. But the truth is extra food in your body is just as wasteful as putting it in the trash. You can either waste it, or you waist it. A lot of times, seeing the flaws in your thinking is enough to help you move beyond it. But changing a long-standing belief can also impact underlying values. […]
You Can Change the Past
What came first, the chicken or the egg? While I don’t have the answer to that one, I can tell you the thought or belief comes before the experience. If you can accept that as true at least the majority of the time, it can change your life. Even if you are just willing to believe it’s possible and will look at some of your life experiences differently as a result, it can have a profound impact on your happiness—and how well you achieve your goals. Most people are unwilling to see their past experiences with any other interpretation than the one they gave it in the moment and have been recounting for years. They think, “That experience was hurtful to me. End of story.” But what if it’s not? What if it’s your very interpretation that is keeping that painful experience alive for you? That is limiting you? That is holding you back from the body and life of your dreams? Don’t believe me? I’ll give you an example of how I shifted an interpretation of a painful experience to one that now inspires me and fills me with appreciation. When I was in the 7th grade, my brother called me “Buffalo Butt.” Now this is typical older brother stuff, right? But to me, that nickname was incredibly hurtful. I felt diminished. For many, many years I carried the belief in my heart that my bum was unattractive, unworthy, less than, and that was the painful story I told myself and believed to my core. But what if you take the emotional pain and judgment out of the picture for a moment and look at the experience as a gauge of where my thoughts […]
You Are So Beautiful!
What is beautiful to you? Does it involve a certain body weight or shape? A certain wellness level? When you look in the mirror do you see your definition of beauty smiling back? I often hear clients focused on wanting to change how others see women and judge beauty. There is much frustration that women on television and in ads are significantly thinner than average. People point to pundits’ criticisms of specific bodies. There are many photos of past sex symbols who were less than lean tied to complaints about the changing definition of beauty. But how likely is it that you are going to change society, or the modeling, television, or advertising industries? Wouldn’t it be easier to focus on your own judgments and definition of beauty? Until you are so pure in your appreciation of every woman’s body and beauty that a critical thought is never entertained, until your actions align 100 percent with your personal definition of wellness, and you can look in the mirror with not only appreciation but adoration, you have no power to change anyone else. You may want others to deem you—or more women—as beautiful, but before that can happen, you must judge yourself as beautiful first. And you must allow everyone else to have their own definition of beauty. This is the sticking point for most women. You have to stop looking outside of you for self-esteem, appreciation, and acceptance. Those are things you have to give to yourself. It is only when you began making these internal changes that you will begin to see lasting external changes. To do this, you have to begin: Letting go of the fear of other people’s judgments. Aligning your actions […]
How’s That Working Out for You?
“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” Albert Einstein What if the entire Universe is conspiring on your behalf? What if you have tribes of Universal cheerleaders supporting you in every conceivable way? What if no matter what may be happening in your life right now, everything is playing in your favor? If you fully accepted that this is a friendly Universe, would you give up a little control? If you knew everything was working out for you, would you relax and let go of fear? Would you allow yourself to have more fun? Would you be open to taking more risks? If you believe that this is a hostile Universe, letting go of control can be one of the scariest things you can do. It’s like putting yourself at the mercy of the enemy. I know because I used to believe the Universe was out to get me. I couldn’t get a break. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was a victim to people and situations. It wasn’t until I began giving up control, surrendering, and trusting my well-being that I began to fully experience it. It’s one of those dichotomy’s of life: You have to give up control to gain it. You have to feel appreciated to be able to receive the appreciation of another. You have to feel beautiful before you can hear and believe the compliments you are given. Whatever you believe—the Universe will provide you evidence of that belief. Open your mind and look for all the reasons everything is working out for you instead of all the reasons it isn’t. Make lists of the […]
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