Lies, Lies, and More Lies!

Admit it, you're lied to several times a day, if not a hundred! And by who? Yourself! Yes, that's right, and even worse, you listen to those lies and eat them right up - pun intended!

Here are just five lies we tell ourselves which discourage us from reaching our health goals, or from even stepping out in faith to start the journey in the first place! Once you realize you've been lied to, you can then step out in truth! And from this day forth, see if you can pinpoint other lies as they pop into your mind...

1. LIE: You really can't do this. Who are you kidding? You've tried a zillion diets before. You're just too fat, too beyond help. You just need to live this way.

TRUTH: You CAN do this. If you've ruled out health issues (thyroid, pituitary tumors, etc.), then it's possible to achieve weight loss, but even more importantly, it's possible to achieve better health! Here's a scientific fact:
decreased calories (better nutrition) + increased exercise = weight loss (better health).
Follow the formula and you're a winner!

2. LIE: I just want to lose some weight so all I have to worry about is restricting my food.

TRUTH: The reality is you can choose to only restrict your food intake and not necessarily make more nutritious choices, and choose not to implement exercise into your life. And you might lose some weight. But two things will occur: You won't keep the weight off (it'll come back, and usually with a vengeance!) AND you haven't improved your health. To be truly healthier, there should be an increase in your cardiovascular endurance; a building and strengthening of muscle; and good nutrition pouring into your body to feed it efficiently, to regulate your blood sugar levels, to give it a wide array of minerals and vitamins, and to provide the types of foods which will benefit your digestive system.

3. LIE: I tried to watch what I eat and I even moved my tush for three weeks, only to lose a measly 1 pound. It's just not worth it.

TRUTH: ANYTIME you do something healthy, it's worth it!!! Whether you see the pounds come off or not, you're better off exercising and eating healthier foods than if you didn't!! You strengthen your heart, build muscle, and build endurance. It's a win, win. If you have this attitude, you won't lean toward discouragement over slow weight loss because your focus will be overall health, and not just numbers on the scale! Eventually, you'll retrain your metabolism and you will lose weight on your journey to better health. Just persevere!

4. LIE: I'm not that bad. Sure, I'm bummed I can't fit into my favorite jeans, but it's okay.

TRUTH: While that may be the truth for some of you, for the majority of us, it's just an excuse to put off hard work. And deep down, we are very bothered and sad that we've let ourselves get into this state. Honestly, but realistically, assess how you feel about your overall health and weight. It seems as if we were young and fairly in shape and then BAM, one day we woke up, and found ourselves 30, 40, 50 + pounds heavier than in our youth! Just like that! But it wasn't overnight; it was ever so insidiously gradual like the frog in the boiling water. We became acclimated to each 5- and 10-pound gain, until we're where we are today. Change IS hard. Exercise IS hard. Modifying what we love to eat IS hard. Yes, yes, and yes. But don't focus on what's hard and run from it. Focus on what's right and good for you, and then do it!

5. LIE: I'll just start buying low-fat, sugar-substitute foods to achieve weight loss.

TRUTH: Yes, those things can help you get over hurdles if you find you will cheat if you can't have something sweet, etc. However, in the long run, if we're talking health - those things don't constitute nutritional food - and you have slyly found a way to get your cake and eat it too! However, it won't work. You haven't changed your mind or your body to focus on nutrition and health - you've only tried to fool it by "substituting" one bad thing for a lesser bad thing. Please don't forget the importance of fresh fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, low-fat dairy, grains, legumes, and even water! And I'm not talking artificially flavored water either! Just pure, plain, refreshing water. Don't get caught up in the "diet" mentality where you're filling your body with artificial sugars and flavorings just so you can say you're eating low-fat and "no sugar"! Permanent weight loss and better health will occur when you're willing to put value on nutrition and exercise.

Go ahead. Grab hold of the truth, reject the lies, and start your journey toward health today!

Plan Ahead: How to Stay on Track During the Holidays!

The holidays are looming ahead, and we all know what that means..... FOOD FEST! EAT TILL YOU BUST! Believe it or not, it all starts sooner than Thanksgiving...it starts so innocently with Halloween. You know... that innocuous pillowcase bag of goodies that Johnny brings home from trick or treat? Before you can even tuck little Johnny into bed after his sugar high, his goodies turn into your temptation's worst nightmare! You hear screaming coming from the bag: "Chooooocalllllllate here! Choooooocallllllate - free for the taking!" And suddenly, you have an out-of-body experience as you hear yourself telling Johnny not to worry about his bag, "I'll put it in a good and safe place for you so nobody gets into it. " You can almost hear yourself cackle with laughter like the 10-year-old witch who came knocking at your door earlier in the evening! Of lesser significance, but equally tempting, are the bowls of candy corn and chocolates your skinny co-worker places next to your computer this time of year, let alone the treats you need to make for Johnny's third-grade class!

Only a few weeks later is Thanksgiving. Yep, cooking and baking and baking and cooking - and a little, or a lot, of test-tasting along the way! Apple pies, pecan pies, pumpkin bars, carrot cake, zucchini bread, sugar cut-out cookies... (by the way, some of the listed desserts contain fruits and vegetables - they do NOT constitute a healthy serving of either!!!!!) The actual day is filled with indulgence - gorging yourself until you sit at the table with the button to your pants undone. Of course, sitting around the table visiting isn't exercise. So it's a double whammy. And if you have friends and relatives who travel a distance to your home, then you will spend the next few days continually preparing yummy treats for your guests, with the visiting revolving around eating, LOTS!

Lo and behold, the Christmas season pounces upon us immediately after Thanksgiving. Not only is the day itself another feast-laden event, but the weeks leading to it are inundated with Christmas dinner parties, work parties, Christmas baking, Christmas cookie exchanges, co-workers being generous with their homemade concoctions, cocktail parties, etc. etc. etc.

Let's top it all off with New Year's Eve and New Year's Day - just to plunge the knife in a little deeper and give it a twist! The average person gains 10 pounds during the holiday season. Ten pounds! That's a whole dress size!

The POSITIVE part of all this - is it doesn't have to be this way!!!!! You can stop the holiday-binge cycle that you're used to. We've all done it. It's part of American holiday tradition! Food, food, and more food. Sit and watch football, sit and visit, sit and eat. But you can start NEW traditions. A new way of celebrating holidays. And the beautiful thing about that? You can start teaching your children, by example, a better, healthier way to manage the holiday season!

You may be thinking, "Gee whiz, it's only the end of September and we're talking holidays already?" But remember, this battle for a healthier you is waged in the mind first. Take the time NOW to plan, to organize, and prepare yourself for the season that will be here before you can say, "Snickers!" With that, let's get down to the nuts and bolts. What exactly can you do to arm yourself against this holiday onslaught??? Here's some fab Web sites with great ideas:

http://www.netwellness.org/healthtopics/diet/nutribyte2003dec.cfm

http://www.ynhh.org/online/nutrition/advisor/holiday_eating_tips.html

http://www.thedietchannel.com/Holiday-Eating-How-To-Avoid-Gaining-Weight-During-The-Holidays.htm

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Fall is here in my part of the world. The nights are cold, hoodie sweatshirts are perfect attire for the day, crackling bonfires light the weekends, and the leaves are holding their annual colorfest. So as I see this change in season, it reminds me that winter is around the corner. And with winter, the dreaded New Year's Eve resolution.

I HATE New Year's Eve resolutions! I understand the rationale....a new beginning, a new chance to start over, a new outlook on life. I've held several of my own. Aside from the statistics that show the majority of us don't stick with those resolutions (including myself!), I think there's something to be said for NOT feeling forced to make a change in our lives just because everyone else is! Hopefully, we should act upon changing when the need is there - not wait for a particular time of the year to fit it in!

That said, don't put off tomorrow what can be done today! If you've been feeling the need to change your fitness and health habits, do it NOW. Don't wait for January 1. There truly IS no time like the present. Start slow - don't conquer the world in one day - but by all means, start! Quit beating yourself up for your past mistakes, for making past decisions that put you where you are today, and instead, grab hold of today and tomorrow. Choose today to continue living the way you have in the past, or make a course correction and grab hold of a different future.

My father used to say that I could have the "world by it's tail." That I could "do anything I wanted." To an extent, some of that is true. So why not grab hold of the true part?! Yes, we all make daily decisions. So take those daily decisions you make, in particular those having to do with your fitness and health, and begin to make different ones - better ones. Again, you don't have to conquer this mountain at once. Mt. Everest is climbed by putting one foot in front of the other. Choose ONE thing today that you will change in your lifestyle choices, and DO it. Do it that way today, tomorrow, and the next. Think simple things: Take the stairs instead of elevator. Park farther away in the parking lot; don't waste 10 minutes circling for that close spot when you could walk for only two minutes from a further spot. Don't put food in your mouth after 7 p.m.....not even popcorn or cereal! Drink an extra glass of water than what you're used to. Pack a bag of carrots in your lunch. Walk 30 minutes. Hide the remote or better yet, give it to a neighbor for a set amount of time for safe keeping, but tell them not to give it to you, even when you come begging with a plate of brownies as a bribe! And when you feel you've made your one change well enough over a bit of time, pick the next modification you can make. On and on it goes, until over time, you realize that you have indeed kept to a "resolution." Remember, slow and steady wins the race!

One other word of encouragement: Try picking one "food/nutrition" habit and one "exercise/get your body in motion" habit to modify. That way, you'll work on both aspects of health (nutrition and exercise) to produce a healthier YOU.

START TODAY!

Run a 5K??? YES! You Can!!

Depending on your current fitness level, running a 5K may sound insurmountable. The important thing is to honestly assess your potential and plan accordingly. If you've been leading a sedentary lifestyle, and you're 25 + pounds overweight, your immediate goal will have a softer edge. The goal might be to start walking 20 minutes a day. After a few weeks, increase to 30 minutes and so forth. Keep doing that, and you WILL get to the point where running a 5K is totally possible!!! For those of you who have been moderately active, running a 5k is a goal you can reach for right now. No more waiting. No more excuses! What I think about is the feeling I'll have after I complete such a goal: confidence, achievement, success. Great, great feelings. But for most of us, we wonder how do we go from walking a few days a week to actually competing in a 5K race? Well, there's LOTS of information on the Web to help you. I want to start equipping you find the information you'll need to motivate yourself, to encourage yourself, and to give you ideas into the health world that you never thought about before!

This first Web site is great! It's all about how to train and get yourself to the point that you're fully capable of running in a 5K race:

http://health.msn.com/dietfitness/runningarticlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100166036

This second link is a "running" Web site - with loads and loads of great information! But it doesn't just discuss running itself.....there are tabs to click for info on "motivation", "nutrition & weightloss", and "training" among a few.

http://www.runnersworld.com/0,7118,,00.html

Go ahead, I dare you. Take the plunge. Get more knowledge about what you can do to get healthier in both nutrition and exercise, and then DO IT. Give yourself the knowledge you need to succeed. You can do it!!!

Thoughtlife Leads to Action!

Okay, here we go again....let's repeat something worth repeating: Getting healthy begins in the mind! Your body will follow whatever your mind tells it to do. And it's not just with exercise or eating healthier, either. Refraining from using your credit card, biting your tongue before someone bites you back, or writing those thank-you cards from last Christmas....all these things CAN be done. But it's a matter of WILL they be done. Will your mind play the game of convincing you why you shouldn't, or can't do such things? If so, you've got the battle of the mind going on. You act upon your thoughtlife. Let me say that again: YOU ACT UPON YOUR THOUGHTLIFE. Therefore, where do you allow your thoughts to go? You're not a victim! You can give into certain thoughts, or fight them. So in honor of that idea, I thought it would help to make a list of ways to motivate yourself to exercise and strive for health. Please refer back to this over, and over, and over as needed.

You CAN do it! Hit this link to read about some great ideas (keep in mind this article is geared toward men, but the principles listed can be applied to all).

http://health.msn.com/dietfitness/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100169435&GT1=10412

Need Motivation?

If you're looking at this blog, you've shown that you have an interest in your health...and most likely, this isn't the first time a "weightloss" article has caught your eye. Maybe you've struggled for years with trying to lose weight. Maybe you're prone to those magazines in the grocery aisle that claim "Lose 20 lbs This Week Without Giving Up Your Faves". If so, let me encourage you.

First, congratulations on acknowledging you need to do something different in your life as far as your health goes. Being aware of a problem is the first step toward solving it!

Second, you need to begin evaluating exactly what your problem is! And it's easy here to gloss over reality. "But I exercise every day for 30 minutes"....except for when I'm too tired to do it one day, or the babysitter fell through so I couldn't do it today, or I started my period yesterday so I skipped it... You get the picture. We generalize and tell ourselves that our eating habits aren't that bad or that we indeed move our bodies. But if you're overweight, outside of some health issue such as a thyroid condition, then you probably aren't being totally honest with the reality of your daily habits. So, if you're painfully honest with yourself, do you have a problem with eating before bed, or eating too much fast food, or drinking three sodas a day, or eating mostly processed foods - rarely fresh or raw foods, or eating until you're stuffed, or choosing portion sizes fit for a king, or eating all your kids' leftovers for fear of "waste not, want not", or driving in a parking lot for 15 minutes waiting for a close parking spot, or waiting for an elevator for five minutes when stairs would only take two, or finding after dinner, you mostly enjoy your remote control for company until bed? Be brutally honest here. So what if the answer doesn't cast you in the best light? YOU'RE the only one asking the question, so YOU'RE the only one who needs to know the answer! But it's imperative you evaluate yourself....you can't make improvements if you don't know where to improve!

Third, resist the "easy" way out. Those advertisements promising weightloss while still being able to eat all your favorite foods... C'mon, you're not that gullible are you??? Or ads telling you to take one pill a day and watch the fat melt off? Let's engage the brain. There is an order to our human bodies, a logical, scientific way our bodies operate. Here's a formula: Decreased calories + exercise/movement = weightloss. OR: Change one poor eating habit + exercise/movement = better health. Simple. It's not a glitzy slogan and it involves self-discipline, so it's a hard sell. But it's truth. Don't lie to yourself any more. Be willing to embrace truth, and once you've discovered truth, act upon it. You didn't get in your unhealthy state overnight - and you're not going to get your health back overnight. Be patient, but be true to yourself.

Fourth, let me encourage you to focus on the big picture. Don't be deceived into the tunnel vision of the weightloss mentality. Set your sights and your goal on improving your health! If you're only concerned about weightloss, you'll load up on diet sodas and eat processed "nonfat" cookies, and be tempted to skip exercise since you're eating "nonfat" foods, etc. If you focus on health, you'll begin to be discerning in what you choose to put in your mouth....you might pass on a diet soda in lieu of a water. You might choose whole-wheat toast instead of white. A big bowl of strawberries might suffice for dessert instead of "nonfat, low-sugar" ice cream. AND, you'll still realize the value of moving your body (exercise) since that is part of the equation to a stronger, healthier body.

Fifth, you CAN do this. Every year, there are thousands of women who begin to take control of their health and change their lives for the better. They say no to lying to themselves about the reality of their daily habits and they begin to show respect for themselves by caring for their bodies. The impetus for change is different for each woman - but something clicks within that causes the desire and motivation to make a lasting change. For me, it was my mother's and sister's death. For you, it might be not being able to keep up or play with your children, maybe your children's friends have made comments about their mommy, maybe you're beginning to experience health problems and realize it's because of choices you've made in the past, or maybe it's as simple as seeing age taking it's toll on an out-of-shape body. Again, the reasons will vary, but you need to dig down deep within yourself and find the reason why it is worth making this effort toward a lasting change. If you have to, write it down, post it on the mirror in the bathroom, or on your scale. Remind yourself as often as necessary WHY you need to better your health...

Respect yourself! You are valuable and worth the effort!!!!!