Getting Your Groove Back

Ahhhh another school year. Whether you have kids or not, the change in temperature and shorter days reminds us all that is time to get refocused and back to work – or back to the gym and regular workout routines and healthier foods. But just like kids, you probably don’t want to go back and you put it off for a day and than one more day. And the next thing you know it is the holidays and you never did start exercising or eating better. And of course you can’t get started once the holidays begin, so you wait until New Years when you feel more uncomfortable, overweight and disappointed in yourself. Is this a familiar story? It doesn’t have to be.

Why not create healthy routines you look forward to instead of dread. To succeed long-term in getting back into shape, maintaining your health and achieving a great feeling in your body means creating a lifestyle that fits your life, not the other way around. Forcing something to work that you really resent or is more than you can really take on isn’t likely to last.

Determine instead what is realistic for you and your body. Start by creating realistic daily practices that slowly change your lifestyle so that eating better and regular exercise get easily incorporated in your planning and schedule.

Now that fall is in the air, what simple steps can you take that are appealing and realistic to get your groove back?

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Envisioning Wellbeing for Yourself

Have you ever thought about what wellbeing or wellness means to you? If you could envision yourself at your personal best and experience your life in a way that feels really good, what would that include or what would that look like?

I recently was asked this question, and it did make me stop and think. It’s funny because I focus on living and feeling my personal best to walk my talk in my business, but this takes it a step further. I realized it was more than about my health, fitness and self care. It is also about what I want to experience from life. I want to be delighted in every moment. For me this means feeling my personal best, being fully present in the moment, receiving the best life has to offer with gratitude, giving my gifts to others in the world, and cherishing the time I have with friends, families, colleagues and my pets. These things are what I envision my wellbeing to be. What about you?

Creating a vision of what you want in your life becomes something to aim for. It isn’t wishful thinking beyond what you can have. You can decide which part of this picture is important enough to work towards now. Start by setting three and six months goals to reach milestones that will eventually get you there. You can even get started by setting specific weekly goals to reach these interim targets. Creating a vision of what you want in your life, milestone goals and weekly goals is the same process used by wellness, life, dream and career coaches to assist clients in moving towards a better life. You can do this for yourself.

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Conquer Exercise Resistance - Open Tele-Program

I’m offering a one hour open call on How to Address Exercise Resistance
Join me Wednesday, July 23rd at 8pm ET.

Do you plan to exercise but then don’t do it?
Do you wish there was a better way to stick with your routine and reach your goals?

Join me to learn what will help you exercise regularly and feel good about it.

We will talk about:
- What makes exercise so hard
- How to change your mindset
- How to select motivating activities
- How to get yourself started
- Tips for just doing it
- Ways to measure success
- How to stick with your routine

There will also be time to answer your questions.

Click here to register for dial-in details.

Get the help you need to get started and stick with your fitness routine.
If you missed this event, get the recording afterwards here

Experience Life

I got a call out of the blue from a local magazine that wanted to include me as an area business owner with an opinion about the best TV show, radio station, magazine and spare time activity. How exciting. I love this sort of thing.

My favorite show is Charlie Rose, who is brilliant in his ability to host, interview and be a peer to historians, editors, CEOs, playwrights, authors, producers, heads of state, justices and nearly anyone else you can think of. I marvel at his range of knowledge, memory for details, ease of manner and delightful exchange.

The best radio station is local and plays a wide range of music that is seldom played on the major stations and features artists from around the world and plays a mix from jazz to country.

What I like to do best in my spare time is share a good meal with friends and with it lots of laughs.

My favorite magazine is Experience Life, and it is one I encourage you to check out for yourself. A client introduced me to it a while ago and it is by far the best magazine on how to live a healthier lifestyle, enjoy fitness and discover ways to eat well with pleasure.

It is eye-opening, inspiring, thought-provoking, hip, and on the leading edge of health and fitness thinking. They do this without being too technical or boring, and instead make it exciting to consider the many aspects of healthy living. I consider it as well done and refreshing as Oprah magazine and as the best resource for changing your outlook on feeling and looking your personal best.

Every month the editorial staff seems to come up with yet another outstanding selection of in depth topics that amaze me. The articles are informative, well written and useful. I just read my latest issue over the weekend and tore out all the articles I want to keep. What is left are a handful of pages.

I can’t recommend Experience Life magazine enough. Pick up a copy at Barnes & Noble or Borders, or visit them on line at Experience Life.

If you like it as much as I do, tell your friends, write a comment on Amazon, or encourage your local bookseller to carry it. I’m sure you will agree it is that good a magazine and worth promoting to ensure its success.

Dealing with the Realities of Fat Camp

Right now, thousands of overweight children are away at fat camp. They are expecting to lose weight, have fun and gain self-esteem; and that is just what the camps promote. Some kids went by choice and others were told to go, and right now many of them probably wish it was over. You would too if you knew what was really going on at many of these camps, or perhaps you do know if you watched MTV’s Real World Fat Camp episodes this past winter. What I watched made me cringe and worry about the impact the experience was going to have on these young people long-term.

They had to be publicly weighed and measured, and many were clearly upset by the experience. It would seem to me the last thing you would do is set the stage for more shame in a kid who is overweight, since self-criticism and self-hatred are drivers of emotional eating, low self-confidence and exercise ambivalence.

All the girsl and boys, even those at four hundred pounds, were required to perform high exertion exercises while out in the heat and sun. No personal trainer I know would do that with unconditioned adults, much less those who are obese. Not only is this risky, many of the children were clearly miserable and struggling with what was being asked of them. Again I had to wonder what the mental and emotional impact of doing extreme boot camp-style exercising would be on these girls and boys.

As I continued to watch the show the children dealt with another challenge. To eat, they had to climb a steep hill where the food hall was located. The kids hated this hill and many of them opted not to eat to avoid climbing it. No surprise, all they talked about was food and how hungry they felt. They were obsessed with finding ways to get food they couldn’t have. The emotional impact of being deprived and feeling guilty when eating forbidden food is a primary cause of overeating and bingeing that can last a lifetime. It seemed to me this camp was setting the stage for long-term dysfunctional eating and not a healthy relationship with food or good nutritional habits.

The reality of most fat camps is they are doing more damage than good, yet the MTV reality show was such a hit that Camp Pocono Trails is having one its best summers ever.

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Staying Fit Beyond 40

Something happens right around the time you turn forty. Your body suddenly seems to change and you don’t feel as in control with your weight, health or energy. It’s as if everything starts to catch up with you or what used to work no longer does. When I turned 42 that is just what happened to me. My diet no longer worked to keep the weight off, my lack of fitness meant I couldn’t get my baggage into the overhead bins and I was feeling more pain when I moved. Added to that, my stress was making me too sick to function. I felt like everything was out of control.

I was fortunate and discovered a way to take back control, which changed my lifestyle, body and career. The answer wasn’t to do as much cardio as I could, follow restrictive diets or focus most of my time on strength training. That didn’t work, which might seem confusing. It seems to work for those who are younger. Yet overdoing anything or doing them to extremes after a certain age tends to backfire and take a toll on your body.

What works is a balanced approach to fitness that you can do consistently. The two key words here are balance and consistency. Consistency is what matters if you are going to succeed at getting and then staying fit, healthy and in control of your weight. Even if you are consistently just doing a little bit, you will be more successful than if you start and stop healthier habits and exercising.

A balanced approach to fitness feels so good you want to do it regularly. The emphasis is on variety, choosing things you enjoy, doing what feels good physically, stopping when you don’t feel well, and stretching yourself a bit without overdoing it. The way to start is gradually, focusing on what you know you can do and building your confidence with each success, knowing you can do a little more. What I learned is the more did, the more I could do and the more I wanted to do to improve my fitness and health. I also learned that because it was balanced, I could easily integrate the changes into my lifestyle and stay consistent. That is how I have been able to stay fit beyond 40 these past seven years and it is proving to be the answer for many others. How can you begin to introduce a balanced approach into your lifestyle?

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Confidence in Your Ideal Size

Have you seen the Jenny Craig commercials on TV or their ads in magazines recently? Queen Latifah is quoted as saying she’s “size active” and encourages people to take the first step to their ideal size. Valerie Bertinelli says she found her ideal size and is “size surfer girl” now that she’s in shape enough to surf. This new campaign by Jenny Craig is helping women to focus on feeling good in their healthier bodies and about themselves, no matter their size or weight. Finally!

Their focus isn’t to help women get down to a size 2, but to discover what is healthy and realistic for them. Jenny Craig’s former spokesperson, Kirstie Alley, got to a size (I think it was a 10) that was comfortable for her to maintain and feel good about. She was happy with that. It worked for her, and what we are hearing is that Queen Latifah, Valerie, and role models such as Oprah are content to be fit at a healthy size they can live with.

So why do so many of us strive to be under a size 8 or ideally a size 0? Perhaps it is because we are reminded constantly by the media’s attention on celebrities that anything larger isn’t desirable, beautiful or sexy. Sadly, even the celebrities that look like they have perfect size 0 bodies confess they are unhappy with something about their features. That isn’t good news for the rest of us. Or is it?

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The Perfectionist Trap

How often have you resolved to have a healthier lifestyle by eating better, exercising more, getting enough sleep, taking a multivitamin or reducing your stress, and you start a routine to do one of these things? Yet for one reason or another you stop doing it. You may not even be sure why. Life got in the way.

Do you give up fairly easily because you didn’t do everything right as planned, you missed a few days or you couldn’t do what you set out to do for a whole week? Do you assume you failed because you didn’t do it all perfectly? Who says you failed. Where does that belief come from? Beliefs, if they don’t make sense for you, are things you can change. You can give yourself permission to do what you can, to learn from what gets in the way, and to do what is more realistic for you.

Life always gets in the way, and it is virtually impossible to always eat well and avoid wanting to indulge now and then. It is equally difficult to always fit in your exercising or always get in the full amount of activity planned. The best thing to do when things interfere with your best laid plans is to roll with the flow and make decisions that most honor your needs, knowing you don’t always have full control. When you do that, you can let go of those events or challenging days without judgment and focus on today and setting new goals for the upcoming week.

What matters isn’t about being exact, perfect and doing things just so. It is about setting an intention, doing the best you can, not judging yourself but observing with interest what happened and why, then learning what works better and renewing your intentions based on new insights.

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Becoming Free of Fear by Looking at it Differently

Earlier this week I was listening to a teleclass on becoming free of fear, hosted by Francine Allaire who runs the online Daring Community (thedaring.com). The site is for women who dare to live a passionate, empowered life. Her guest expert on facing fears, Lisa Fredette, said a couple of things that resonated with me.

I’m not ashamed to say I have fears, particularly after hearing that everyone does – even those who are most admired for seeming fearless. Lisa pointed out fear is a gatekeeper of our comfort zone, and when we step outside of the zone we get uncomfortable. Immediately I could picture my zone and what did and didn’t make me comfortable.

It is so easy to believe I’m the only one who has fears, since this isn’t something people discuss, and I am the only one who struggles with them. Lisa helped me see that I can choose to be uncomfortable, get in touch with the underlying beliefs and feelings, and move past the fear. If I look at my life, I can see this has worked before. I just didn’t recognize the process.

She has identified common triggers and processes for working through fear, and she has an affordable 4 week tele-workshop starting this coming Monday the 19th in the evening. If you want to know more about it, go to: http://thedaring.com/dare-to-soar/events-virtual. You’ll see her program listed under my own upcoming tele-program on Emotional Eating.

It is by facing the fear, we can be our best selves.

In Control of Your Appetite

Do you ever wonder why you can’t seem to stop eating or what it will take to get control over your appetite? If you’ve tried appetite suppressants, you already know that isn’t the answer.

There is an answer that does work. It is doing the opposite of suppressing your appetite. I know that may not be the answer you were expecting, but it is true. The more you try to suppress your desire and need for food, the more you will overeat or feel out of control around food. Right now, as summer approaches, there are lots of advertisements for products to help you avoid feeling hungry so you can eat less and slim down. Nice idea, but that only leads to pigging out when you finally do eat. What ever calories you thought you were saving earlier in the day are fully spent later on.

You are much better off eating when you get hungry and then stopping when you are satisfied, just before you get full. I call it conscious eating. Others call it mindful eating, and this week Melinda Beck of the Wall Street Journal wrote about it in her Health Journal column and on line forum. She was amazed that by being more aware of her hunger and the experience of eating she was more easily satisfied with less food.

It sounds simple to eat when you are hungry, but if you’ve been ignoring your hunger for a period of time it can be tougher than it sounds. What can be challenging is to recognize when you do get hungry. It can also be hard to know when you get full if you haven’t been paying attention to that either.

Stop and consider how hungry or full you are right now. Do you know? Just what does it feel like when you get hungry? Do you know when you overeat and get full?

This week pay attention to your hunger levels and let them guide you to eat just the right amount of food your body needs. If you eat when you are hungry and stop before getting full, you won’t need to count calories or points. You will be eating in alignment with your metabolic requirements and feeling in control of your appetite.

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What's Up with Weight Watchers?

I’ve been intrigued by the new Weight Watchers advertisements. Have you seen them? They now say that diets are bad and it is better to enjoy eating and to change our relationship with food. I couldn’t agree more.

They have adopted a new tag line, Stop Dieting, Start Living which comes right out off the website of Dr. Michelle May, author of Am I Hungry?, who espouses the same non-dieting, intuitive eating and healthy living concepts that I write and talk about. It is great to hear that Weight Watchers, the icon of dieting, now agrees and publicly promotes a change in thinking.

In one ad headline the company boldly states “Diets are Mean” and the subtext says “Weight Watchers isn’t a diet.” In another ad they say, “Diets take away the things we love, then make us hate ourselves for loving them. Weight Watchers teaches you to replace deprivation with moderation, so you can finally learn how to lose weight and keep it off. And then love yourself like crazy for it.” They are absolutely right, but do they back up what they are saying?

If Weight Watchers wanted to really help people stop dieting and start living, they would eliminate the weigh ins and the plans all together. Instead they would teach people to listen to their hunger signals for portion control, learn how it feels when they eat different types of foods in order to discover that healthier foods feels better, and encourage self acceptance at any size.

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Overcome Emotional Eating - Open Tele-Program

I’m offering a one hour open call on How to Overcome Emotional Eating.
Join me Wednesday, May 21st at 8pm ET.

Do you think you may be eating comfort foods to feel better or turning to food when you aren’t hungry? Are you ready to overcome emotional eating and feel better about the way you eat?

I’m going to talk about:
- What is emotional eating
- How to identify emotional eating in yourself
- What drives you to overeat
- What you might really want
- How to stop emotional eating
- What tools work to manage it
I am also going to leave enough time to answer your questions.

Click here to register
Get the help you need to feel back in control around food?

If you missed this event, get the recording afterwards here

Bursting is the New Interval Training

There seems to be a new term floating around called bursting. Have you heard about it? I was asked about it when I did my tele-class on metabolism, and it is worth understanding.

Bursting is another term for interval training, commonly done to get more out of aerobic conditioning. Interval training includes short “bursts” of high intensity effort followed by periods of low intensity recovery, which is repeated a number of times. High intensity is generally the point when you can’t hold a conversation.

These periodic bursts overloads your cardiovascular (circulatory and respiratory) and skeletal (bone) systems, which is actually how they get stronger and more fit. Bursts also get your heart rate up higher than if you were aerobic in an extended steady state, which helps you burn more calories in a shorter period of time.

You can’t sustain higher intensities for very long, nor do you want to. It would be too hard on your body. Instead short bursts are typically followed by longer periods of recovery, during which the body regenerates energy for the next burst and it adapts to the higher intensities.

The recommended ratio of effort to recovery is 1:3 for those just starting out, such as 1 minute of harder effort followed by 3 minutes of a lower intensity to recover. It is also suggested that those who are unconditioned still be able to talk during high intensity bursts. Then as you get fit, you can increase the intensity levels and shorten the ratio to 1:2 or 1:1. You can also add bursts periodically into your current aerobic routine and get good results.

What is new since I was certified in the field is the idea that it is safe and even highly effective to continue shortening the recovery time as you progress in your fitness. Once you are comfortable at 1:1 you could then go to 2:1 (twice the work to recovery) or even 3:1. But you have to be careful and listen to your body. This is what I didn’t do so well a couple of weeks ago. I did it for too long. At these higher rates, designed for athletes, it is common to only do 4 minutes (20 seconds extreme effort to 10 seconds rest repeated 7-8 times) along with a 5 minute warm up and cool down. You also need a day or so of recovery each time you do any high intensity interval training.

I’m going to experiment further with the right ratios and mix it up a bit. You can do the same.

Obsessed with Being Thin

What exactly changes in your life when you are a size 0 or even smaller? Do you get more friends, feel more loved or attain greater happiness? I’ve been wondering that after watching yet another celebrity, who seemed to have a gorgeous body, slim down to the point she is skeletal. The beautiful Katie Holmes has gone from sexy and stunning to looking anorexic. You have to wonder what she thinks this will get her. Wasn’t she enough as she was? Who is judging her? I don’t think it is Tom Cruise who fell in love and married her for being Katie.

I wonder the same thing with people who call me fixated on being a certain weight. Nearly everyone is obsessed with their weight and what the number is on the scale. Yet this number is for your eyes only. Almost no one knows what size clothes you wear or what the scale says when you get on it. The numbers you are focused on doesn’t mean anything to the people around you, unless you’ve made it a big deal. Instead they are more worried about their own numbers, and you probably have no idea what they are or what they “should” be for them.

Think about it. No one cares if your scale says 210, 175, 135 or 110 – or what ever magic number you are fixated on. They don’t care or know what size clothes you wear. They may be concerned if you are grossly overweight, but their concern is for your health not your size. Or they may be judging you for your size, but they would probably judge you anyway.

This week stop obsessing about your own weight and consider if you know or care what others around you weigh. Then ask yourself why you care so much about the numbers on your scale. If you are healthy, fit and feel good about yourself, what difference does it make what they are? It doesn’t.

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Follow The Spring in Your Step

It is spring and a time when our bodies want to move and get out into the fresh air. If you are like me you may be feeling antsy to get out and do something, yet it may not be enough to actually get you out. Consider what might be holding you back.

The easy answer is bad weather. But even in good weather many people who say they want to get out find they resist it. If this is you, what else besides the weather is holding you back? It could be that you can’t think of anything that sounds appealing or doesn’t seem too boring. Walking is an easy and great way to get out, but it doesn’t appeal to everyone. It doesn’t have to. I’ve had people tell me they don’t like to walk, but they assume that it is pretty much their only choice (particularly if they aren’t fit) and that they should walk.

If you don’t like to walk, then you won’t want to do it regularly and you will resist being active. Consider other outdoor activities that sound more interesting or enjoyable to you.

If you are fit, there are countless possibilities and many outdoor programs available to help you discover new ways of enjoying the outdoors and extending your potential.

Maybe you already know about your options, but you still have some resistance to being active outside. I have been in this situation, and for me I don’t like to be out mid-day because of my fair skin and susceptibility to heat exhaustion which limits some of my choices. But I can choose to be out earlier or later in the day.

Sometimes the resistance is hard to identify, because it is an unconscious belief or feeling. It may stem from anxiety about trying something new or and it may simply be you aren’t used to being active outside and need a buddy to give you ideas, confidence and support. If you ask yourself what you are feeling or what you believe about being active outdoors, you will likely get some insights.

This week, follow the spring in your step and consider ways you would enjoy being more active outdoors.

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