I tripped an old emotional booby trap on Friday evening. A split second of feeling judged by a woman I was talking with triggered a cascade of self-criticism. And I’ve been talking myself through the painful self-judgment all weekend. Believe it or not, this is an old defense mechanism. As a kid, I somehow came to the faulty conclusion that if I mentally thrashed myself soundly enough this would somehow ward off painful criticism from others. This is WAY worse than having someone else negatively judge me. It lasts much longer and is much more painful than what anyone else could dish out because I know where all my tender soft-spots are. The truth is I am loved by All-That-Is (God, the Universe, Source Energy—whatever works for you.) All-That-Is NEVER has a negative thought about me . . . or you! When I judge myself, beat myself up, see myself through anyone else’s eyes, believe that I am “less than” in any way, I’m telling the Universe that She is wrong. That’s the reason self-doubt and self-criticism feels so darn bad. Any time our thoughts and beliefs are in disagreement with what Source KNOWS, we feel bad. Even though I understand this, I still woke up with the pain of this old mental pattern. Much of my weekend was spent in self-care and meditation to release this old negative energy. In the past, a bout of this kind of self-punishment would result in my eating hitting the skids. I would use food to soothe the pain of the constant stream of self-judgment that was playing in my mind like a background soundtrack. When you already feel like a failure, why even try to eat healthy? […]
The Struggle to Release Weight Is a Sign You Are Doing it Wrong
Often, my Wellness Tips of the Day and blogs are as much for me as my Fabulous Readers. Today is definitely one of those days. Stop Struggling. Let go of trying to control your body—and life. Accept where you are and focus on appreciating your wellness right now. Co-creating your body and life with Source (God, the Universe, All-That-Is—whatever works for you) is a balance of taking control of your inner Queendom AND letting go of control of HOW your wellness will play out. You can’t tell God how to do Her job. (Even when it comes to your body.) You know you’re trying to control when you are: Focused on only 1 outcome as acceptable (i.e. You may have arbitrarily decided that you have to be a certain weight or look a certain way to accept yourself as slim and attractive, totally discounting what is healthy and optimal for your body.) Judging the results as unwanted or not good enough (You wanted to lose 5 pounds in a week and the 2 pounds you did lose feels like failure.) Judging yourself—or others—as wrong/bad/a failure (Your partner doesn’t want to eat the same foods as you, so you make their food choices “wrong.”) The action you do take is hard. (Everything literally feels like a struggle) Feeling negative emotion (Disappointment, frustration, sadness are all signs that you have an expectation of how things “should” play out that isn’t being met—and you aren’t giving the Universe room to work.) It seems counter intuitive, but to create the body—and life—you want you have to relax and let go of the struggle. Your thoughts can hold you fast in the very place you don’t want to be […]
How Did the Last Thing You Ate Taste? Savoring is Key to Being Slim
How did the last thing you ate taste? Can you really remember? How did you feel about what you ate? “What’s this got to do with releasing weight,” you might ask? Way more than you may imagine! If you feel resentful, deprived, or guilty about what you are eating, you are actually harming your body—even if what you are eating is supposed to be “healthy.” These negative emotions are literally releasing a chemical cascade in your body that is impacting you at the cellular level. Eating a piece of cake that you feel guilty about once in a while probably isn’t going to hurt you. But if you are chronically feeling deprived because you have to miss out on your favorite foods, or “know you shouldn’t eat this, but . . .” you eat it any way, you are stressing your body—and making it harder to release the weight. Researchers have found that the stress hormone cortisol and adrenalin that you release with those negative emotions make it easier to gain—and harder to release—weight. Now think about eating over the sink, in your car, or gobbling down a meal trying to get to your next task as quickly as possible. Most women aren’t taking the time to really taste and enjoy their food. I’m as guilty of this as anyone. Wolfing down my food became a habit during my days as a newspaper reporter. Facing a daily deadline made me feel like I had no time for anything else. And it’s still a habit I have to continually monitor. Not paying attention to how you feel as you eat your food, or eating too quickly makes it easy to overeat before your stomach signals […]
You Are Too Sexy for Those Big Old Pants
A client shared this message yesterday: I can’t tell you how much I love this! There is nothing more fabulous than a woman seeing results and claiming her right to look good and feel sexy. Often the women I work with “hide” in clothes that are too big. They wear these big clothes long after they release weight. There can be many reasons for this. In some cases, they may literally dread clothes shopping. I totally get this. Clothes shopping used to be a nightmare for me. And nothing was worse than shopping for a pair of jeans. I might literally try on 50 pairs of jeans trying to find the one that didn’t emphasize all the wrong places. There were many shopping trips that I ended up in tears. I can pinpoint when this started to change. Around this time in 2010, after losing about 30 pounds, it was clearly time to invest in some smaller clothes. While I was excited, those old negative thoughts about shopping started to bubble up. “I’m never going to find anything that fits and looks good.” “Nothing looks good on me.” “My body doesn’t look like most women’s and things just don’t work on me.” Etc. By the time the weekend shopping trip came around, I was in a full-blown panic. Sure enough, the first store I went to didn’t have anything that I thought looked good—even though I was fitting into size 6 pants. That alone should have sent me over the moon! That old sense of dread returned as my husband drove me to a department store, and I was tempted just to go home and order some pants online—my old standby. Why put myself […]
Time to Get Real. The Women You Compare Yourself to Don’t Even Look That Good
One of the things that can kill your weight-loss momentum—or keep you from even starting to take control of your wellness—is comparing yourself to others. Consciously or not, we do it all the time. Magazines, television, movies, social media, etc., etc., all have pictures of women who are impossibly beautiful. Too much time looking at these pictures and the next time you look in the mirror your “flaws” seem to stand out even more. That’s why I love this blog that shows that celebrities don’t even look as good as they look in the pictures. http://denisesalceda.com/youre-not-perfect-and-thats-okay/ Many women compare themselves to an unattainable standard . . . of beauty, success, having to have it all, etc., etc. No wonder it feels so bad! But even if you are comparing yourself to your best friend, this may not be serving you. A quick way to determine if comparing yourself to anyone else is beneficial or not is to look at how it makes you feel. Does looking at someone else’s journey: Inspire you? Convince you that you can get the same results? Make you feel like you are that much closer to achieving your goals? If so, by all means continue to look and be inspired. But, if looking at someone else’s journey makes you feel . . . Defeated before you even begin, Frustrated that they have it and you don’t, Unworthy because you aren’t pretty enough, have the right body, aren’t doing it “right,” or haven’t made enough progress fast enough, . . . than it does not serve you to keep looking. Part of enjoying your wellness journey is recognizing just how unique your body, perspective, and life are. No one else has your body or face. No […]
What to Do When You Would Rather Stay In Bed than Workout
The hardest part of a workout sometimes is just getting started. I’ll be perfectly transparent. This morning was one of those times for me. I don’t even have a good excuse. There was no meeting to rush to or overexertion the day before that required rest. In fact, I’d already given myself the weekend to rest my body. On a surprisingly chilly July morning, I was reluctant to leave my nice warm bed snuggled up with a dog, and then I lingered over “compelling” Facebook content. Honestly, I was trying to get my head in the game. I was trying to remind myself of WHY I wanted to get up and how I wanted to feel today. As my time allotted for working out dwindled, I turned off my iPAD and literally had to repeat out loud, “I will feel so much better after I work out. I will be so happy after I’m finished. I will be so grateful that I did this.” I went upstairs and had a fabulous workout. So how did I get myself up those stairs to get my workout in? I know from experience that making my workout a priority will boost my energy and help me get more done than if I skipped the 30 to 40 minute commitment. That time invested in moving my body pays off in WAY more productivity. That is one of my compelling reasons WHY I get up and do my workout and eat healthy foods. Having a compelling reason WHY you want optimal weight and wellness is key to motivating you to find a way to get the required action done, regardless of what is going on around you. Let’s say […]
How to Power Up Your Diet and Exercise
We’ve all heard of the mind, body, spirit, connection, but how much spiritual energy do you bring to your wellness goals? Do you make the connection between optimal wellness and your sense of life purpose and meaning? For most people, the answer is not so much. Wellness, to many, is just about diet and exercise. This makes perfect sense, when you think about it. We can easily see the connection between doing physical things and the impact it has on our physical body. For example, the fewer calories you take in and the more calories you use typically results in a reduction in weight. Only, for most women, it’s not that easy. There wouldn’t be millions spent on diets and workout gadgets if it were. One of the reasons it is so challenging is that if you don’t feel a purpose in what you’re doing, or it’s not in some way connected to your values, you aren’t going to take much positive action. Without engaging spiritual energy, you may even take counter-action to sabotage yourself. I’m sure no dieters out there can identify with having a hard time sticking to a food plan, or bingeing, or just plain giving up. Tapping into your spiritual energy is about connecting what you are doing to create optimal wellness (diet and exercise) with Who you believe you are, and how your purpose, vision, goals, values, and desires affect it. The more you integrate your inner beliefs and purpose with your actions, the more spiritual energy you will have to succeed. One of the ways that I tap into spiritual energy is that I believe my body is a gift for which it is appropriate to be grateful. While […]
How to Get Non-Stop Personal Direction to Help Get the Body You Want
Your thoughts are keeping you from getting the body you want. I know that’s a bold statement. The truth is, every action is preceded by a thought. So if you are struggling with the actions of consistently eating healthy foods or moving your body, your thoughts are subtly sabotaging your actions—and you may not even be aware of it. This is like having the parking brake on as you are drive to your destination. It makes forward momentum hard. It feels like there’s something wrong. What may be going on is that you are accepting the negative messages from your inner critic . . . . as true. And you feel bad. It feels so bad because the part of you that loves and adores you (God, Source, Higher Self, All-That-Is—whatever works for you) knows that your self-criticism is completely and 100 % bogus. It feels so bad because you are basically telling the Creator of All Things that She is wrong to love you. Struggling with losing and regaining the same 30 pounds over and over again is often a sign that your inner critic has been given reign over your inner Queendom. You are unknowingly giving your inner critic more power over this are of your life than All-That-Is. Symptoms of this include: Feeling body shame when you look in the mirror. Being overly critical of specific body parts. Wanting to hide under the covers when you have sex with your partner. Feeling impatient when the weight doesn’t drop off instantly. Stop right there! These flimsy arguments offered up by your inner critic are NOT true. Search your thoughts with the bright light of Truth. This might look like: Recognizing that your […]
How to Feel Slimmer . . . Right Now!
Have you ever lost weight, but after you met your goal you still felt fat? When you looked in the mirror, did you still catalog all your physical flaws? Did you notice new problems, like loose skin or a softer belly? How quickly did you gain back the weight? Our thoughts and feelings are much more powerful than most people understand. If you feel fat, or focus primarily on what’s wrong with your body rather than what’s right, it’s almost impossible to lose the weight—and keep it off. To truly be the slim, strong, and fit person you want to be, you have to feel slim, strong, and fit . . . at least most of the time. Feeling slim is critical to being slim long-term. And no amount of diet and exercise is going to alter your self-perception. That is a change that has to come from the inside out. Most people see themselves through filters of self-criticism, limiting beliefs, assumptions about past experiences, and self-created interpretations or judgments about themselves, other people, or situations. Those filters make it easier—or much, much harder—to follow through with the actions necessary to create the body you want. Just think about how much easier is it to resist those chocolate chip cookies if you are feeling confident and excited about being slim, strong, and fit versus seeing yourself as fat and telling yourself that you’re never going to have a beautiful body no matter how hard you try? What’s the point of resisting if you are never going to achieve your goal anyway? So you eat the cookies. Maybe a lot of them. But how can you go from seeing yourself as flawed and fat to […]
How to Be Slim AND Happy
Is there a part of you that believes you can either be slim OR happy? This further translates into the belief that to do all the things you need to do to be slim you will have to: Be hungry. Feel deprived. Miss out on good times with friends and family. Always be rigid in your food choices. Never miss a workout. Is it any wonder that you can’t maintain your weight-loss efforts? You can only be hungry, deprived, and too rigid for so long before a part of you seriously rebels. It’s the part of you that knows life is supposed to be fun. That being healthy is supposed to add to your life, not detract from it. That you are meant to fully experience life, not just eat kale. But just as you aren’t meant to make being healthy so rigid you can’t endure it, you also can’t be healthy if you face each meal like it’s your last and ignore your body’s need to move. With everything that works in life, there is balance. You are out of balance if you: Only work and never play. Make having sex your primary goal. Have money as your only desire. Work, sex, and money all add to our lives. They become problems, however, when it is all or nothing. The same is true in how you approach wellness. It is not that either you are getting in X number of workouts a week and eating perfectly, or you are a sloth who is fat and lazy. Creating optimal wellness is about persistence NOT perfection. When you know that you will be able to eat any food that you want—just not as often as […]
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