Real Health Nutrition

I’m going to give you my absolute, very best weight loss secret.  If you do this one thing you are GUARANTEED success.

Ready?

Be Consistent.

That’s it.  It’s very simple.  And very hard.

There is something very old fashioned about consistency.  It brings to mind my grandpa, day in day out, putting on his hat and his overcoat and going to work.  Or my grandmother, always in her apron,  making us ham and jello with celery in it.  Or my father, meticulously grooming our lawn on Saturday mornings.

In fact, when I think of consistency, I notice my mind goes back a generation, because looking around it is harder to find.

Nowadays, we can make a meal in a minute, send a text in seconds, buy a gift with a click of a mouse.

What is the cost of doing more things less well?

We have the attention span of a cocker spaniel, and lose focus very, very easily.  We want things RIGHT THIS MINUTE.  We attempt to forgo the process for the results.

The cost is loss of character.

Woody Allen said “90% of life is just showing up.”

Consistency is just showing up.

You may not bat 1000 every time, but at least step up to the plate.  And step up as often as you can.

Consistency, and not force, will get you where you want to go (remember the tortise and the hare?)

Dang it! I muttered as I stumbled down the stairs at 4:30 am, hitting my recently sprained toe on shoes I had placed at the bottom, hoping they would magically migrate north to my closet.  I scratched at flea bites on my arm, tripped over my grandson’s high chair, and made my way to the front porch.  I hissed loudly (and unkindly) at my dog Gina to quit doing what dogs do, which is bark at unseen things in the wee hours.  Gina usually sleeps inside, but because of her house guests (fleas!), she had been banished to the porch.   It had been a long week.  I really, really wanted a good night’s sleep.  “Sheesh,”  I said aloud to my sorry self. ” Why can’t I catch a break?”

But even as I said that, that calm, reasonable voice inside me said, “Eileen, breaks aren’t caught–they are made.”

I immediately realized the import of that.  Sometimes I forget, and feel like I am caught in the vortex of my life, as if some tornado has swooped down out of the blue, rendering me helpless and flailing. I pictured my local weather man, arms swooping east and west,  explaining that tornadoes are caused by weather systems colliding.  (Seinfeld fans know what happened to George when his worlds collided…)  I wasn’t a victim of happenstance.  I had created the very reality I found myself standing in.  After an abbreviated pity party, I took stock.

• I was the one that didn’t take an extra minute to take my shoes upstairs
• I neglected to do what was necessary to prevent the flea infestation
• I hurt my toe because I didn’t take the time to find my shoes before I went in the yard (and fell in a small hole–blame husband here).  Come to think of it, my shoes were probably on the stairs.

What is the point of this sad tale?  The point is we don’t catch breaks–we make them. I have many clients who rank getting healthy as very important, but their actions don’t evidence this.  Their life is a whirlwind,  and they feel  helpless to make their health a priority.  “As soon as the kids are back in school,” or “when the holidays are over,” or “when my company leaves,” or my favorite, “when my life settles down.”

We have created and ranked the activity in our life.  We have created a weather system of flailing furry.

Once I am willing to admit I have created my present situation by my own choices, I am ready to take responsibility for my life.  (Notice I said responsibility and not BLAME.  Blame is where we go when all we want to do is feel bad and stay stuck.)  Taking responsibility is actually very empowering.  It also feels like a very grown up thing to do.

So shifting from pitiful to powerful I will:

• Deflea the dog
• Commit to spending 15 min a day picking up around the house as part of my bedtime routine
• Go to be earlier tonight and tomorrow to catch up on sleep

You deserve a break today.  So make one for yourself.

The bulk of life, I am convinced, is maintenance.  Maintaining, I am sorry to say, is not nearly so invigorating as beginning. We’ve all been there–the thrill of the new job, project, hobby, relationship.  Beginnings fire off all kinds of hormones like endorphins which make us feel happy and positive, and adrenaline, which makes us feel energized and invincible.  Maintaining can feel more like shoveling your walkway during a snow storm.  Tell me again why I am doing this?

Whether you’ve spent 3 hours cleaning out a closet or your inbox, an entire weekend working on a relationship or your garden, or an hour at the gym, the truth is such things are oblivious to homeostasis, and will require your diligence sooner rather than later.   To quote one of my favorite poems, The Station, there is no one place to arrive at once and for all– “The Station is an illusion–it constantly outdistances us.”  Your house will never be completely  clean.  Neither will your inbox.  Weeds grow really fast.  So does your waistline.

Have you ever seen one of those acts where many plates are kept spinning on thin spindles–the performer races from one to the next with the goal of all the plates spinning at the same time?  This also is an illusion.  You will never get to the point in your life where all the plates are spinning smoothly–that is, your health is excellent, your lawn is mowed, your spouse and kids adore you, your work is satisfying, your investments are sound, you have glowing skin and a great haircut, your golf swing has never been better, and you are sleeping so well you have time to go to your book club AND volunteer for your favorite cause.

The reality is, some plates will be spinning, some will be wobbly, and some, despite your best efforts, will crash into a million pieces at your feet.

Insert Deep Breath.

The secret lies in knowing which are the most important plates to keep spinning at this particular point of your life.  You may need to remove a few, delegate a few, and even (gasp!) let a few crash.   I am convinced that it is not lack of willpower that prevents us from reaching our goals, so much as a lack of focus, AKA too many plates spinning at once.

Less plates=easier maintenance.   To eliminate snow shoveling, move to Tucson.

If you are overweight, and have a hard time losing weight, I suspect you may be undernourished in one of three ways.  One:  you aren’t getting the proper quantity of food.  Two:  you aren’t getting the proper quality of food.  Three:  Your soul is starving.

Ironically, if you don’t eat enough calories for your body, you will NOT lose weight.  My clients protest vehemently upon seeing a suggested menu, “This is too much food!”  I patiently ask them to trust me, and they return in two weeks having lost a significant amount of weight.  The body is equipped with a magnificent survival mechanism.  It is the same mechanism that kept our ancestors alive through famines, plagues and holocausts.  In order to protect against starvation, your metabolic system becomes very efficient, throttling down to a bare minimum.   A low calorie diet is counterproductive.

Secondly, you may be  starving yourself nutritionally.  Your body is desperate to get the nutrients it needs.  It doesn’t take a lot of broccoli to get your daily Vitamin C, but it takes a whole lot of cheese doodles.  If you insist on fueling your machine with cheese doodles, your body, in deep resignation, will crave lots of them.  Empty calories=too much food=weight gain.

Thirdly, what you may not realize on a conscious level is that what you are really hungry for is not food.  You want peace, not potato chips.  You want fufillment, not fudge.  You want companionship, not cookies.  Getting in touch with what you are really hungry for is critical to reducing the stress hormones that keep you fat and the emotional eating that doesn’t begin to touch the hunger of your soul.  What are you REALLY hungry for?

Remember:  STARVING + DEPRIVATION ≠ WEIGHT LOSS.  The body is not a calculator, but a complex system of organs and hormones and glands affected by the quantity of food you eat, the quality of  food you eat, and the wellness of your soul.

Be well.

I love my clients.  Every single one of them.  I feel so honored by their trust, touched by their candor, inspired by their determination.  To me they are Olympians, doing brave and heroic feats, pushing past the setbacks, frustrations, limitations.   I would give them all gold medals if I could.

I always begin my sessions by daring my clients to hope, and hope they do.   It is the steady undercurrent of hope that draws them against the tide of their own doubts.  The tide of past diets failed.  The tide of unkind words and childhood wounds.   The tide of self-sabotage.  The tide of social sabotage.  The tide of I’m just too tired/old/fat to do this.  The tide of lies and half-truths.

Yep, they fall, and stumble.  They sometimes eat cookies in the pantry.  Or cake at the office.  Or beers at a party.  Sometimes they forget to eat.  Are too tired to move.  Too discouraged to care.

Sometimes they lose sight of the goal, because in the now it is just plain hard.  Learning to take care of ourselves is harder than we thought.

Keep your eyes on the goal, says the coach.  Keep your eyes on the goal.  It’s ok to fall, just don’t stay down.  Gently, ever so gently, brush yourself off.  Take a deep breath.  You can do this.

I know this, because I have watched you, with great pride.  I relish every little victory, because really, there are no little victories.  Do what you can, then do a little more.  The finish line is just around the bend.  The band is preparing to play.  The flags are in readiness for raising.

Your Best Life is just ahead.  Go get it.

Quite a few of my clients are in their forties and fifties.  For many, it is as if they have awakened out of a Rip Van Winkle-like  slumber in a body they barely recognize.  As they rub the sleep of their youth from their eyes, they are shocked and dazed at the state of their disrepair.  “I don’t know how I got this way,” is a refrain I hear often.

Yet, as we talk, it is apparent how they got that way.   Step,  by step,  by step.  Priorities shift, self-care slips.  Realizing one no longer has the agility or metabolism of a 20 year old is a little like the feeling Dorothy had when she said, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

So we wake up and realize the rules have changed. We are not 20 anymore.  We can’t eat and drink anything we want.  We can’t stay up all hours of the night.   We can’t sit on our butt for 12 hours a day without it becoming very large.

We’re not in Kansas anymore.

In my early forties, I went to my physician, a woman also in her forties, for a check up.   She pronounced vehemently, “The forties suck!”  What was I to do with such encouragement?

I decided as I left her office, that I wasn’t going to drink the Kool-Aid of pessimism about getting older.

For me, there is a big difference between acceptance and settling.  Acceptance is a one of the gifts of aging well.  It makes us kinder and gentler with ourselves and others.  It causes us to appreciate our body, and take better care of it.   Settling, on the other hand,  is putting up with what I should never put up with.  It is resignation.  For me, settling is the S-word, a very bad word indeed.

I refuse to settle for inactivity, weight gain, ill health, lethargy or malaise in my 40′s.  To me, it is just not acceptable.  I honestly believe that I can be Younger Next Year (a great read, BTW).  I honestly believe there is a lot of life ahead, and just as I no longer settle for low quality food, I refuse to settle for a low quality life.   I will not be imprisoned  or limited by the choices I have made about my health and my body.  I can choose differently.

I can choose health.  Every single day, that is a choice I must make.

So whether you are forty or fifty– or twenty with a body that feels and looks much older than it is–wake up and take action to improve your health.

It may not be Kansas, but smack dab in the forties,  I’m here to tell you, The Land of Oz ain’t so bad.

A silly little poem with a big point…..

There is a place called the Land of Should.
I visit there as oft as could.
I should do this, I should do that
I really should not be this fat.

I should jog and eat my greens
I should fit into my jeans
I should shop and I should cook
I should read that self-help book.

I should hit the gym first thing
Eat my oats, meditate and sing
Pack a lunch for work to take
And skip the office birthday cake.

I should drink more water, give up sweets
And all those other starchy treats
Limit stress, No Alcohol?
That doesn’t make much sense at all.

But just past the Land of Should
Is another Land that’s really good
It’s called the Land of Yes, I Want To
I feel its power through and through.

Suddenly, it’s not what I “Should”
But what I “Want”–now that feels good.
Yes, I want to be healthy and lean
Energetic, cheerful, and just plain seen.

I want a life that’s full as can be
I want a life where I am really me
I want vim and vigor and vitality
And no limits placed on me.

So go past the “Should” to the “Want-to”
It worked for me and it will work for you
Connect to what you want that’s good
And bypass that old Land of Should.

I’m thinking of renaming my weightloss approach to “Losing Weight Without Giving Up Chocolate”…..because, well, it works! I’m willing to give up certain things in the name of wellness, but chocolate is not one of them.   A day without chocolate is like a day without air…dead and lifeless.  Yep, I’m that serious about my chocolate.

Cacoa (pronounced kuh-KOW) beans are seeds from the fruit of the Theobroma Cacao Tree.  See–when you are eating chocolate you are eating a seed–think sunflower, pumpkin, etc…everyone knows seeds are HEALTHY.

The cacoa bean is rosted and ground into a thick chocolate liquor (non-alcoholic, sorry!).  If hardened, we get unsweetened chocolate, aka baking chocolate.  The fat that is pressed our of the liquor is cocoa butter.  Cocoa powder is the result of the dried and sifted remains of the liquor.

Cocoa contains flavonoids–powerful antioxidants that protect the body from harmful molecules called free radicals (they may be FREE but they do RADICAL things to the body).  Here are some other benefits:

• contains antibacterial agents that fight tooth decay (tell that to your dentist!)
• just the smell of cocoa raises theta brainwaves, resulting in relaxation
• cocoa butter contains oleic acid–that’s the same good stuff that is in avocados which raises your HDL (good cholesterol)
• cocoa raises serotonin levels (who needs Prozac? give me chocolate!)

Not all chocolate is equal, however. Those semi sweet chocolate chips in your Tollhouse Cookies?  Sorry, only 35% cocoa.  Milk chocolate has even less at 10% cocoa. And white chocolate?  No chocolate at all.  Sorry to have to tell you this.

Higher cocoa percentage equals more flavonoids, less sugar and a more intense, delicious flavor.    Aim for a minimum of 65% cocoa. If it doesn’t say the percentage on the package, don’t buy it.  Currently, I am up to 85% cocoa, and LOVE it.  This is for heavy lifters only, though, so work your way up gradually so you don’t get hurt.

To lose weight, keep your serving size around 100 calories/day. Target sells some great chocolate in individual portions, which helps minimize overconsumption.  Which is easy to do with chocolate.

Chocolate….your true friend on your way to wellness.

Breathe! Smile! Enjoy!