Putting Shoulds in Their Place

Why is it so hard to do as you know you should with healthy eating choices , regular exercise and taking better care of yourself? No doubt, you’ve wondered about this countless times. It doesn’t seem to make sense that if you know what you should do, that you don’t do it or at least not often enough. Yet whenever you don’t do something you intended, there is a good – and valid – reason.

Think for a moment of one thing you know you should do, but don’t. Does the idea of doing it feel inspiring or enjoyable? Or does it feel more like drudgery or a chore? If it doesn’t elicit desire or at the minimum some enticement, than it makes complete sense why you would avoid it. Who wants to do something they don’t enjoy or find distasteful? In fact, to follow through on doing what you aren’t inspired to do takes enormous amounts of energy to overcome the reluctance or resistance. Few people have enough extra energy in their busy and stressful lifestyle to do that. And the guilt of not measuring up to the “should” they carry around on a pedestal further depletes what energy they do have.

When you don’t follow through on a should, this is an opportunity to investigate where the should is coming from and if the rules can be changed or relaxed.

Steps to Dealing with Shoulds

• Think of something you should do that you don’t.
  
• What is it about doing it you struggle with?


• In what way is that struggle valid, and what can you learn from your reaction?


• What might work better for you that is a positive and healthy alternative or solution?


• What would you enjoy more or be inspired to do that supports your real objective?
  

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New Years Mindset for Resolution Results

If you are like most people, regular exercise and healthy eating is more of a chore than a welcome part of your day. It feels like work, and most likely you find reasons not to follow through on your intention to exercise or prepare a healthy meal, or you find yourself doing yo-yo dieting or yo-yo exercising.

Instead of becoming frustrated, feeling guilty or giving up on fitness when you fail to stay on track, you can change your mindset about what it really takes to have a healthy lifestyle. You can break the rules without any guilt and create a better way to get and stay healthy and fit that keeps you motivated. With a change in perspective, you’ll develop a positive attitude and discover it is actually quite easy to make healthier choices and stick with your fitness routines. Here’s how to do that.

3 steps to Change Your Mindset
Become conscious when you make choices that don’t honor your body or yourself. For example, be aware when you overeat or eat food that doesn’t feel good to you physically. Notice when you choose not to exercise or exercise to the point of overdoing it. A great way to get started with this is to observe for one week all the times you start to feel full. This is eye-opening for most people.

When you do this, do not judge yourself, just notice with interest that it is happening and become curious about why that might be. If you judge yourself, you will see things as good or bad, all or nothing, black or white, and you won’t be able to see what is really driving your behavior.

Consider what is driving your choices and what you can learn from them. Assume you have a good reason worth understanding. Then you can be open to what the issue is, what good reason you have for doing what you did, and what strategies you can put into place that will help you reach your goals.

Most of the time, we sabotage our good intentions because we think we have limited or very rigidly defined options. This comes from dieting and fitness programs that specify what is and is not allowed and expect full compliance. Few people can do these well or stick with them, and the good news is there are many ways to get fit and healthy that are more realistic and enjoyable.

If you find you didn’t go to the gym, take a moment to consider why that is. Perhaps you don’t like going to the gym. If so, what else would you enjoy that gets your heart rate up and moving? What sounds like fun, would be motivating to be a part of, or you’ve done in the past and enjoyed? Perhaps you weren’t prepared to go to your class. What would help you be more prepared? Maybe you need a partner. How can you find one?

If you overate, why might that be? Maybe you didn’t get enough to eat earlier and you were so ravenous that you overate. If that happens frequently, how can you get a snack between meals or eat enough during the day. Perhaps you felt out of control because it was a food you think you shouldn’t have, creating a feeling of deprivation. If so, allow yourself to have that food in moderation, so it doesn’t have power over you. Maybe you kept eating, hoping to be satisfied or feel better, only to feel worse. In that case, find a way to eat what you enjoy in a healthier way so you are satisfied. You will eat much less naturally.

Choose foods or fitness activities that feel good to you physically. And start off easy so you can have success from week to week. If you set a goal you know you can reach because it is realistic, and then you reach it, you will be encouraged and self-motivated to do even more. One small step leads to more steps, and you won’t be fighting it but pushing yourself because it will feel so good. The goal isn’t perfection; it is to increase how good you feel physically and about yourself.

For healthy eating: Find ways to eat what you enjoy in a healthier way, and do this in stages. You don’t have to change everything in a day. You can start with breakfast or start with dinner, and begin using healthier ingredients when preparing foods you already enjoy. For example, make pizza with whole grain crust, low sodium tomato sauce, lower-saturated fat cheese, turkey sausage, and more vegetables. Choose healthier things that make the pizza taste yummy to you.

For regular exercise: Choose activities that get you active and be open to all the possible ways you can do that, from dancing to power yoga, Wii Sport to tennis, or kick boxing to aqua aerobics. There is so much to choose from when you open your mind to more than what you find in a gym.

When you change your mindset from Being Good and trying to measure up to doing what Feels Good to you and your body, you can finally succeed at having a fit and healthy lifestyle you can live with on your own terms. And you’ll be amazed to discover you will naturally choose healthier options because they feel better, and you’ll become motivated to do more than you ever thought possible when you set yourself up for success week to week.

Why Valerie Bertinelli Says What Really Matters Is How You Feel

Valerie is the poster child for Jenny Craig after losing 40 pounds, yet she says in a recent interview in Health magazine that what really matters to her is feeling good in her body and being healthy. When asked what’s better, looking good or feeling good? She answered, “Feeling good, without a doubt. When I feel good, I look better, because it shows from within.” And that is just what I would expect her to say.

Everyone who succeeds in losing some weight and keeping it off, even if they don’t get as slim as they once thought they wanted, will tell you that what really matters is how they feel, not how much they weigh. Most of them have tossed out their scale, just as I have. In the process of creating and maintaining healthier choices, you discover that you feel so much better, energized and positive. When you succeed at sticking with those choices, no matter how small they seem to be, you feel successful and are more confident in doing even more good things for yourself.

It is an interesting paradox. When you feel fat and out of shape, you will focus on your weight. When you feel in shape, good about yourself and able to maintain some weight loss as part of a new lifestyle, you will focus on how you feel. And that is what really counts.

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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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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Are You Exercise Resistant?

I get a lot of phone calls for help with exercise, and what most people want is a way to be more motivated to stick with their routine. That seems simple enough, but there is a lot more to being motivated than creating motivational tactics and getting someone to hold you accountable. Maybe the problem isn’t really motivation at all. Maybe it is exercise resistance.

The first step is to acknowledge and validate any feelings or beliefs you carry about exercise. Then knowing how these create resistance, you can make different choices or create new beliefs that respect your emotional needs and your physical health. In many ways exercise resistance is similar to emotional eating, in that unconscious feelings and thoughts are driving your behaviors and leaving you to feel out of control.

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Becoming Victim to the Scale

Last week a friend of mine was getting upset because she had done a hard workout but her scale didn’t budge. She wanted to see it go down two pounds and she was consumed by the fact that it didn’t. She’s a healthy size 6. She looks great and is fitting better in her clothes. But that doesn’t console her. All she is focused on is what it says on the scale and what she can do to change it.

She checks the scale regularly throughout the day to see if it has budged, and she feels euphoric if it has gone done and depressed if it hasn’t. The results run her life, her decisions about food and exercise, and how she feels about herself.

Yet she has a 50/50 chance of stepping on the scale and having it go down or up. And as much as she would like to believe, she doesn’t control the outcome on an hourly basis nor even on a daily basis.

This week get rid of your scale and stop being the victim. You don’t need a scale to tell you if you’re overweight and unhealthy. Free yourself to pay attention to how you feel physically and let that drive your decisions instead.

Taking Stress Out of the Holidays

Is your calendar full of to-dos, events, parties or travel plans? Any one of these added to your typical weekly schedule is enough to increase your stress level. Oddly enough, many people don’t perceive they are dealing with all that much stress. On a scale of 0 (no stress) to 10 (high stress), what is your level of stress?

You may think you know, but most of us regularly underestimate our stress levels. That is because we adapt to our conditions and gauge chronic stress as a relative measure of what becomes our norm. Chronic stress is an on going, continuous state of stress that comes from putting up with things, overworking, never feeling in control or caught up, worrying and seeing the glass as half empty, not making time for yourself, not taking care of yourself, not sleeping enough, not eating properly and not exercising. You may be dealing with a number of things listed here and taking it all in stride.

Feeling you have to get everything done by a certain date and done just right is a belief that sets the stage for chronic stress. If you don’t succeed in reaching your goals and end up feeling angry, upset or worried, you will further increase your level of stress. Instead you can choose to let go of doing it all and having everything perfect and take a moment to consider your options and what really matters.

What really does matter to you, your family and friends? Is it perfect presents, decorations and food? Or is it having time to visit, enjoying one another, sharing in the celebrations, laughing with loved ones and enjoying the holidays? I have struggled with this issue in the past, and this year I am letting go of the things I realize aren’t all that important. One of my favorite books that gives me needed perspective is Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff… and it is all small stuff by Richard Carlson. This makes a great stocking stuffer or gift in a pinch.

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The Hidden Side of Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 Diabetes continues to be in the headlines as a health crisis because more people are getting the disease and not enough of them are doing what it takes to minimize the complications that come with it. This is hard for those around them to understand. Friends, family and co-workers can’t grasp why it is so hard to get a healthier lifestyle if it means less suffering and pain. They wonder why those with cancer or other life-threatening diseases take action, while those facing diabetes seem stuck and unwilling to take better care of themselves. Are you one of those asking this question?

Unfortunately many of those at risk or who already have diabetes don’t understand it themselves. They don’t know why it is so hard to make changes or maintain better habits. It just is. But what so many of them do know is they feel misunderstood, frustrated and sick of dealing with the disease. The result is that millions of them simply give up trying and shut off their feelings, which leads to resignation and a denial of their situation.

As an onlooker, what we see is their denial and refusal to do more. What they are actually experiencing is something far deeper: the repression of their emotions. They are dealing with feelings (many that contributed to their eating habits, lifestyle and diagnosis) such as shame, unworthiness, not being good enough or perfect enough. Add to that fear, stress, and all their other painful feelings that are pushed down and out of reach. Hiding beneath the surface is a personal crisis driving their behaviors.

The way to address it is with a non-judgmental approach to lifestyle intervention that is flexible and slowly rebuilds confidence through small goals and successes and provides a place for feelings to be released and beliefs to be changed.

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Lowering Healthcare Costs by Increasing Prevention

A healthy debate is underway to determine what can be done to reduce the cost of health care spending by insurers, employers and individuals. While the primary focus is on the cost of healthcare services, not enough attention is being placed on preventive services for chronic diseases caused by unhealthy lifestyles.

The use of insurance premium discounts for nutrition, wellness and fitness programs are a great start, but these options don't work for many people. These are very often a prescribed set of guidelines with a focus on program compliance. While most people try to comply, the minority tend to succeed and the rest add the experience onto their list of been there, done that and hope not to do that again.

What is missing is a focus on funding programs that help people change their attitudes, reclaim their motivation and find things that are suited to their lives. The programs designed to do this are a blend of life coaching, fitness, nutrition, emotional eating and in some cases psycho therapy. Wellness or healthy lifestyle coaching is new to the healthcare field and understandably difficult to regulate, but it is time to offer the same discounts for coaching that are now offered for gyms, fitness programs and other wellness alternatives. Don't try to regulate coaching. Instead leave choice in the hands of those that know what works best for them. The results will speak for themselves in the reduction of chronic disease.

Don't Try to Rely on Willpower

Willpower is mind over matter, self-discipline and a resolution to control yourself. You probably know by now that willpower doesn’t really help you gain control over your eating or unhealthy lifestyle habits.

But are you blaming yourself for a lack of willpower instead of recognizing that willpower isn’t the right answer in the first place? Are you looking at someone else and judging them for their lack of willpower? People do it all the time, and it doesn’t help anyone. In fact it has the opposite effect. The more you, or someone else, exerts their will to force you to be better, the more you will resent it and ultimately resist it and do the opposite of what was intended. I’ll bet you can think of numerous occasions where this was true.

At a time when there is increasing pressure from employers, doctors and others to force people to lose weight and get healthy, there is an underlying belief that the problem with people who aren’t in shape is simply a lack of willpower. While anyone can will themselves to comply for a period of time, once they stop they will revert back to their old ways or even take on worse habits for an equal or longer period of time.

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What is a Healthy Lifestyle?

Have you ever noticed that your idea of having a healthy lifestyle isn’t often the same as someone else’s? It can mean very different things to different people, and that is healthy in itself. It can also be confusing.

The most obvious description of a healthy lifestyle is eating healthy foods and being aerobically active as a way of life. But seldom will two people make the same food choices and do the same activities. Ginny, for example eats raw foods and runs most days of the week. Margaret loves pasta and grilled food, and she has found that whole wheat pasta and lean meats are a healthy way of eating her favorite things. Her activities are kayaking, hiking, Tai Chi and gardening. Robert is an avid swimmer, dancer and hiker, and he eats a lot of complex carbohydrates. All of them are living healthy lifestyles, but they aren’t at all similar.

So how do you know if you are choosing healthy foods and activities? There are several ways of knowing.

• One way to start is be informed about the basics of healthy nutrition and aerobic activity and understand that these are guidelines, not rigid rules.
• Another way is to pay attention to what your body is feeling and do what feels best to you.
• A third way is to ask a professional you trust for advice and who listens when you say something doesn’t feel right.

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Welcome to the Ins and Outs of Healthy Living

Healthy Living is the phrase of the decade. Nearly every major organization that serves consumers promotes it. Most people know it is important. Yet the resources to help people adopt a healthier lifestyle is surprisingly limited. What is missing is an understanding of why behavioral change is so hard and what it takes to be motivated to stick with healthier habits for the long term.

That is why I am starting a blog about the ins and outs of healthy living. I see a gap in what is provided by healthcare practitioners, nutritionists, supplement providers and those who are focused on losing weight, fitness, diabetes, heart disease and other lifestyle related concerns.

In this blog I want to open the discussion with healthcare practitioners, psychologists, wellness coaches, organizations promoting healthy living, nutritionists, individuals and all others who see the importance of finding a way to help people choose healthier options and then stick with them as a way of living.

Join me in looking at healthy living from the inside out, with a focus on people's mindset and the options available to support them in being successful. I will share my own expertise as a Healthy Lifestyle Coach as well as my observations about healthy living programs, discussions and news.