by IcennaEmach | Jan 10, 2011 | Uncategorized
Stop the nonsense! Today’s top health coaches believe the smart person’s way to fitness and weight loss is all about making meaningful connections. It appears the days are short lived for the “Do this – don’t do that kind of mentality.”
Healthy living, fitness, and weight loss are about bringing meaning to our lives. We are, I am happy to report, stopping the vicious cycle of nonsensical diets and exercise regimens that are so pervasive in our TV dominated culture.
Keyed to today’s consumer’s new attitude, this weekly six week series will get you feeling good, looking good, and losing weight. Created to put you in charge, this non-gimmicky approach is for those savvy readers who are weary of the tidbit dieting approach and are ready for a more authentic method called lifestyle change!. Here’s how we start.
Read the rest of today’s article to get an overview of the new attitude practices you’ll be using. Then for the entire week put no pressure on yourself other than reading the recommendations daily and allowing them to seep into your consciousness. Osmosis dieting? No! However, we have to set the stage for you to get your head on straight and thinking clearly. If you really feel compelled, make a few lifestyle changes but set no strict guidelines today.
Use movement as inspiration. The act of moving our bodies makes us feel better about ourselves. Movement has the capacity to inspire a vision of how we want to live. Movement makes us feel better in general. It sparks a desire to do better at whatever we do. This is the power of movement. Why not use it rather than some weight loss shake offered by promoters who know if they divert our attention long enough, they’ll make some sizable cash.
Think progress not perfection. Coach Kate Larsen said it best when she titled her book Progress Not Perfection: Your Journey Matters. Often seeking perfection in attaining weight loss sets us up for failure. Perfectionism should never be used as an excuse to stop trying. Do what is attainable and reachable realizing the goal is not to be perfect but to be persevering. After all, isn’t perfectionism just another word for quitter?.
Focus on what really matters in weight loss. Don’t be sidetracked about whether you should eat celery or carrots, more protein or vegetables. Don’t get hung up on dieting details. Here’s the only detail you need to know: You will lose weight if you eat three quarters to half of what you normally eat during most meals of the day. That’s it. Don’t clutter your minds with information that will not significantly cause weight reduction.
Weigh yourself again and again. It’s OK. A daily “weigh in” compels us to be aware. You will hear different opinions on this, but those who weigh themselves daily, lose weight. And the reason they do is that it forces them to be aware and make the necessary lifestyle changes. Weigh daily. Don’t be an afraidy cat.
Live joyfully while losing weight and getting fit. Sounds a little hokey but it’s true. Do not discount the impact positive living and attitude has on one’s ability to change. Make your life beautiful. Have a good time with family and friends! Cultivate a positive attitude. Your happiness will be your reward. Your positive attitude will ensure success
Next week I’ll expand on movement as inspiration. For this entire week make, lifestyle changes only if you feel compelled. Don’t worry about specifics. Just get going! And don’t get all-anxious. Fake it until you make it. We’ll take it one week at a time. I am confident you will be feeling good, looking good and performing great in much less time than it may have taken you in the past to lose weight – gain it back – then lose it again. You’ll look better too!
Until next week…
Our Wealth is in Our Health,
Kim
www.bodysmartinc.com
by IcennaEmach | Jan 3, 2010 | Uncategorized
”The main reason diets fail, and health, fitness, and wellness goals are not achieved, is that our mental discipline weakens in an attempt to lose weight and become fit in a small span of time. Ironically, we consider ourselves weak willed and undisciplined when our dieting and exercise goals fail.” K. Miller
As a Health/Fitness coach and trainer in the St. Augustine, Florida area for over 10 years, I’ve seen many health trends come and go. Until a year or two ago, I received many exercise and health related questions from people seeking to obtain the “single” best approach to health. For example, “What is the best exercise?” “What is the best food?” “What is the best abdominal exercise?” And Etc. To most of us today, even novice exercisers, these questions appear narrow in scope and too basic for real health change to occur.
With the New Year here, this is a good time to summarize health observations. Specifically, I’ve noticed an ever increasing number of people gaining a better sense of what it means to be healthy and fit. They, it appears, are taking a broader and less superficial view than in previous years of what it means to be healthy and well.
There are many health observations that I could write about, but the three featured below were chosen because they represent an awareness that transcends superficial fitness practices and provide a hopefulness that I believe is necessary for real health change to occur.
Observations
1. We Use a Multi Tiered Approach to Health. People are savvy in what they require from a competent trainer. Years ago, a trainer needed only to be competent in putting a client through a vigorous routine without getting him or her injured. Today, this approach is fast disappearing. Trainers today must have an awareness and appreciation for engaging their clients in a more holistic approach to health, wellness, and fitness in order to keep up with the increased needs of their client base.
2. We Understand Exercise Cannot be Used to Mitigate Poor Eating Habits. The new attitude today is, ” I worked out hard today, let’s not mess things up by eating poorly.” People have adapted this new attitude because they are looking at food not merely as calories to be burned through exercise, but nutrition to be gained through proper eating habits.
3. We Realize The Best Exercises Are The Ones We Actually Do. There are certainly best approaches to take as it relates to a well balanced fitness program. It should include various aspects of fitness from cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength and endurance, to flexibility, balance, and body composition. And, they should include the more wellness oriented aspects of health, such as stress reduction, nutritional needs, and relationships with friends and family. However, if we are not ready to tackle the full demands of what it means to be healthy and well, then pick one exercise and do it well.
It’s amazing how focusing on one activity can change the heart and mind of an individual. In my earlier days of training clients, I used this singular approach successfully by putting one through an intense, but manageable workout with the hope that their minds would become open to engaging in other aspects of health and wellness. It’s still a great approach, and can be used as the basis of jump starting any lifestyle change! Try it yourself and drop me an e-mail at [email protected] letting me know how you are doing.
by IcennaEmach | Jun 6, 2009 | Perspectives in Aging Well, Uncategorized
In his book, The Brain that Changes Itself, Norman Doidge, M.D. writes, “competitive plasticity explains why our bad habits are so difficult to break or “unlearn.” Most of us think of the brain as a container and learning as putting something in it. When we try to break a bad habit, we think the solution is to put something new into the container. But when we learn a bad habit, it takes over a brain map, and each time we repeat it, it claims more control of that map and prevents the use of that space for “good habits.” That is why “unlearning” is often harder than learning, and why early childhood education is so important-it’s best to get it right early, before the “bad habit” gets a competitive advantage.”
Not Surprisingly We Are Conditioned to Fail
Often we are conditioned by advertisers to believe feeling better, looking better, and achieving a vital vigorous lifestyle are easily achieved tasks. Unfortunately, this type of thinking leads many people astray and more apt to act quickly,rashly, and consequently with a high failure rate when looking to overcome various adverse health habits that have been learned over a lifetime.
Slow, Progressive, Consistent Behavior Achieves Results For a Lifetime
The reason many people eventually fail in their weight loss and other health goals is they have not achieved a healthy, slow, patient, and consistent behavior change process that allows the brain to adjust to it’s new neural pathway patterns and brain map. Mr. Doidge proposes we must make space for our new habits, but not only must we make space for these habits, we must emphasize the manner in which we do so. Care and consideration for how we implement changing our “bad” health habits is paramount to making lasting lifestyle changes, and fortunately many of today’s savvy consumers are not buying into self denial, superhuman willpower, and hard to sustain dietary and exercise routines. These smart consumers are leaving many of these “dark age dieting techniques” to their unaware counterparts.
Think about this analogy the next time considering losing weight or making behavior lifestyle changes: An amateur or professional golfer and tennis player learns not in one day, but over a lifetime of practice, can you consider that the future of our wellness is no different. We learn and unlearn best like the golfer and tennis player who practices and “unpractices” his skills for a lifetime.
by IcennaEmach | May 17, 2009 | Burn Baby Burn, Uncategorized
What happened to her?
She wants me to walk 14 miles a day to lose weight.
I’m worried about her!
I better tell her she’s taking this weight gain thing far too seriously!
Such is the feedback to my last two weight loss issues. Now I know how the playwright felt when a review read “There was only one thing that weakened the play. They opened the curtain.” But, there was an objective to the direness I wanted one to feel in reading the past two issues.
The objective was to point out that it is easy to gain weight, but hard to lose weight, and because of this, we would be wise to utilize preventative weight gain measures such as weekly weighing and logging of caloric intake. The illustrations were intended to expand awareness of what occurs when one gains weight quickly yet expects to lose the added weight just as swiftly. It appears I accomplished this! I even have death threat e-mails to prove my astuteness in bringing full awareness to my Fit Through the Ages readers.
In part, our problem with weight loss has to do with our expectations. It is easy for all of us to consume additional calories. Eating a delicious pie ala mode may take only 5 minutes, and is pure enjoyment, but burning the calories will take two hours of what some term exercise misery! If we gain a pound of body fat in a short period of time by consuming too many calories, should we expect to lose the pound in the same amount of time it takes us to gain it?
The explanation in the last two blogs on weight loss frankly illuminates how much one needs to exercise, or reduce calories by, to lose a pound in 3 short days was certainly preposterous. However, consider the irony of this with our own weight loss goals. That is, that many of us expect to lose weight as rapidly as we gain weight. Who is going to walk 14 miles daily for three days in addition to working out in the gym for an hour daily, and all the while consuming only 1,100 calories on each of three days? Unfortunately, this is the reality when the goal is quick fat weight loss.
Viewing typical information in different ways helps to put things into proper perspective. Weight loss is about putting things into this proper perspective.
Think about this:
It is easier to gain weight than it is to lose weight.
It is easier to maintain weight than it is to lose weight.
And, it is easier on the body, mind, and spirit to maintain weight loss when done slowly, deliberately, and smartly than it is to lose weight quickly only to gain it back. The days of quick weight loss with no sense of sustaining lifestyle changes will soon be a perspective of the past. Our challenge is to act smartly, and with a sense of continual progressive lifestyle changes that deepen our convictions to do more for ourselves than just lose weight.
