Choice

Choice based on what we already know will always result in what we know, so if you want something new and different you need to know something new.

How this translates to conscious eating is that if you want to change your habits permanently then you need to understandand them - where they come from, how they manifest in your life and what triggers them - when you understand that you will know something new and be able to make different choices.

Does Eating Healthy Mean Deprivation?

In a simple word answer NO!

Depriving yourself of your favorite foods will only lead to cravings and binging. If you allow yourself a little of what you want when you have the desire then you are more likely to satisfy the desire and less likely to eat to excess.

Eating healthily is a part of self care and Self Care means being kind to yourself and finding a balance.

Would you continually deny a child ice-cream in the midst of summer?

Would you let them have one every time they ask (every hour!)

Just think how you would respond to a child and treat yourself the same way.

Buen proveche!

Treats - does it have to be food?

We had a conversation on one of my telecourses this week around food being used as a 'treat'. And as I was 'googling' an image for this blog, using the search field 'treat' all that came up were images of cakes and chocolates. I find this really interesting.

Why is it that when we think of rewarding or treating ourselves for something well done, it involves food?

As with everything in our life, our habits develop from an early age and the more unconscious our habits are then the more likelihood that the habit is very old...
Can you remember back to your childhood, to when you did something well or behaved in a manner that was judged as good? how were you rewarded? was it with food?

I remember quite often hearing the phrase 'if you're a good girl and be quiet I'll buy you chocolate' 'if you eat up all your dinner then you can have a desert'. Basically I was learning that sweet yummy things like chocolate and cake were 'rewards' for being a 'good little girl' - so it only follows that in my subconscious mind I am going to make this association, it might come up when I feel I have achieved something or even if I feel a failure - as a way of 'cheering me up'.

If you find that you reach for food to deal with your emotions wither positive or negative you might want to explore the childhood habits and family beliefs around this.

When you become aware of using food as a reward or treat I would like to invite you to sit, think and listen to your body for a few minutes before reaching for this food. Give yourself time to think what it is that you would really like as a treat.

Weight Loss Plateau - Is it emotional?

As some of might know I'm always looking for the underlying psychological causes to our health issues and I think a weight loss plateau might also come into this category.

If you are someone who has reached a plateau for a while then maybe there is an emotional block to moving forward.

When I did some work on this for myself some years ago, my explorations revealed that holding on to weight was a form of psychological 'protection' for me. Fat meant being safe, that 'I couldn't be 'got'.', and only by recognizing and acknowledging this was I able to let it go and move on.

So if you think this might apply to you then ask yourself the following questions...

• Why did I put the weight on in the first place?
• How did it serve me? (e.g. helped me cope with a breakup, de-stress etc.)
• If I was to reach my ideal weight, how would my life change?
• What or who might I have to let go of that maybe I'm not ready to?
• Who do I think I'll become when I lose the weight?

If you want to explore these more then e-mail me for your complimentary Conscious Eating coaching session.

5 Tips for moving past the Plateau

1. Persist - just hang on in there! If you're sticking to your regime then it is coming off, just maybe not enough for the scale to see right now.
2. Check for hidden calories, it is surprising how many calories can be hidden in a teaspoon of this or a pinch of that - be honest with yourself.
3. Increase muscle building exercises - Muscle burns fat!
4. Revisit your goals and motivation for losing weight in the first place and ask yourself if maybe you have reached a plateau because that is where you body feels most comfortable.
5. ACCEPT that you are where you are, ACCEPT that your body is resting from weight loss right now, ACCEPT that you are eating for health whether or not you are losing weight, ACCEPT YOURSELF FULLY. Refusal to accept the reality of where you are right now will build into stress and likely be the cause of 'why do I bother' binges.

Who really knows what foods agree with YOUR body?

I've been thinking some more about the blood group diet and I'm still curious how such a generalisation can be good for everyone. Whilst our blood group might be the same, our life and health experiences are not so how do those get taken into account?
I was speaking to a women a couple of days ago who was praising this diet as it suggested to her not to eat white bread and cows milk. These are actually, products that are commonly known not to be the best for us - white bread because the flour has been processed so much there is no goodness left in it and...well...surely any animal milk is designed to be drunk by the baby of that species and so cows milk surely is designed for drinking by baby cows? what do you think?

The other thing I've been pondering on is the diagnosis by a machine of what one should or shouldn't eat. Some vegetarian friends of mine went to see a local homeopath/naturapath and he used some machine on them which said they need to eat meat and fish. There was no testing of blood or other internal physical condition and so I'm wondering how too this works. How can a machine 'listen' to a body's needs better than the owner of the body?

Fad Diets versus Listening to YOUR Body

A friend brought me a copy of a blood group diet the other day for me to see what foods were recommended and what were thought detrimental to my particular blood group.
As a vegetarian, and someone who not only doesn’t eat meat but dislikes it intensely I was surprised to see that it recommended several kinds of meat including bunny rabbit! and scavenging bottom feeding seafood like prawns, whilst my staple breakfast of banana and almonds were not.

This, to me is just another reminder to listen to MY body and to not blindly listen to information published for profit by someone no matter what their qualifications.

There is much information out there and all sorts of ‘diets’, some that have been written by doctors and have been proved to be not only ineffective long term but detrimental to one’s health and are preying on the many people who are looking for the ‘miracle’ or ‘quick fix’ diet.

I’m not saying don’t use these, I’m just saying don’t take blindly, the information. Just because someone has letters after their name does not necessarily mean they have your best interest as heart – especially if what they are sharing with you means financial profit for them.

There is much healthy eating information published by organisations such as Heart Foundations, Cancer Research and the Nutritional Society who willingly share their information for free. Government websites for different countries also publish advice and information.

One thing for sure that you need to hear is that there are no ‘quick fixes’ so stop looking for them!

The only sure way is to listen to your body, get to understand what your body can tolerate and what it cannot and when it is full and when it is hungry and when you are eating for your body or eating because of your emotions. And learn a little about nutrition, about why sugars, most fats and refined products are so unhealthy and why raw, unprocessed foods are so good.

The only sure way to lose weight and feel healthy in your body is to make a PERMANENT change to your eating. This doesn’t mean depriving yourself of the occasional snack or your favourite food but eating these in moderation and teaching yourself to ‘like’ the foods that better support you.

Giving up smoking and putting on weight!

Are you someone who has given up smoking and then put on a load of weight?

• Do you find yourself thinking you'd be better off smoking and being slimmer rather than cigarette free and fat?

The answer to this dilemma in principle is really quite simple - it's about understanding 'habits'.

You cannot simply drop one habit and expect it and everything associated with it to go away, you need to understand why you had that habit in the first place and how it was serving you. When you know how it was serving you and what it is you are REALLY needing at these moments then you will be empowered to choose a different way of getting this need met. Rather than dropping a habit you will be replacing it with another, preferable a more healthy one.

Basically what is happening when you find yourself putting on weight after giving up smoking it is because you are now 'munching' when you used to 'smoke' . However, rather than just trying to now stop 'munching' as well, what if you looked more deeply into this at what you are really wanting here. Why do you have the need to smoke or eat, what is it 'covering up'? For example, a common reason to smoke is to relieve stress, so if you can identify what it is you are stressed about and what HEALTHY option you can find to DE STRESS then you will have cracked this and you will have found a way to replace an old unhealthy habit with a new one. For all new habits to become habits they need to be 'practised', so don't give up when the old cravings come back, just notice what thoughts are attached to this and what it is that you REALLY need here and give this to yourself.

And if you want to look deeper into this and understand and change some of your habits then e-mail me for a complimentary coaching session.

Weekend eating Versus Weekday eating

After writing last Friday's blog on seasonal eating it left me thinking about how we can also often eat differently at weekends compared to during the week and so this is where my focus went this weekend.

Why should eating be any different or more difficult to control at different times of the day, week, month or year?

I have had several conversations on this topic over the past couple of months and the consensus seems to be that it is harder to stick to 'healthy eating' regimes at weekends because that's when the family get together - parents are usually not at work and kids not at school.

...But what about those of us who are single and still have this challenge of unhealthy or over eating at weekends?

...And what about those in employment where 'weekends' are not 'weekends', for example emergency services - fire/police ambulance, just to name a few. Even when I worked shifts, Sundays always seemed to be a day for 'pigging out' - in the summer it meant large quantities of icecream and in the winter cooked breakfast baguettes.

So this leaves me with the question - Is it the change of activities at weekends that causes the difficulty in maintaining 'diets' or healthy eating? or is this just the excuse we tell ourselves and in fact it is yet another limiting belief that we have 'hooked' into?

Usually our unhelpful habits are triggered by either a limiting belief, as mentioned above or an unmet need and what I actually identified for myself this past weekend is that my eating WAS emotional and triggered by unmet needs. Having become exceptionally busy over the past month except for weekends I now feel at a loss and alone especially on Sundays and as a way to compensate for these feelings yesterday, I overate. How interesting this was to witness and to do in full consciousness, knowing that I had a choice to go and find something else to do or someone to be with that would have taken me away from the need to emotionally eat. Yet I chose to eat unhealthily.

So my challenge to those of you who find weekends tough to maintain healthy eating is to spend sometime thinking and journalling and explore what is REALLY going on for you. Once you know the truth you will be empowered to change it, or not.

Size Really does Matter

Just look at the differences between portions sizes NOW and 20 years ago

I was making my lunch the other day, totally conscious.

Conscious of both the excessive amount of veg I put in the oven, the excessive amount of olive oil I poured over it and the excessive amount of noodles I cooked.

Why did I do this I asked myself?

Well, olive oil is a 'good' oil and If I hadn't cooked all the veg then I would have had to throw the rest away because it's been in the fridge too long and if I didn't use all the noodles I would have put back in the cupboard an amount too small for a portion...and anyway...it will save me having to cook dinner tonight.

What interesting excuses I am using to overeat - all attached to limiting beliefs of course.
So what if i have to throw food away, so what if I put a small portion of food back in the cupboard and why deprive myself of dinner just because I overate at lunch!

Does this story sound familiar?

Do you have similar habits?

How conscious are you of your portion size and how that fits in with your 'healthy eating'?

Healthy Eating Habits

Introducing Healthy Lifestyle Habits


Habits cannot simply be dropped they have to be replaced by something else so if you find yourself simply wanting to not do something anymore think what can I replace it with?

Habits take about 30 days to change so you need to practice persistence. If you are finding it difficult to change the habit then there is something deeper like an unmet need or limiting belief that you haven’t yet identify, however you don’t need to wait until it is identified to move forward – changing your habit and replacing it with a more supportive and healthy one will simply be initially, a change of behaviour rather than a shift.

Practice lovingly letting go of your old habits when they appear. Acknowledge how they have supported you up until now. Embrace the choice you are now making to let go and do things differently knowing that the old way is always there if you wish to choose it.

I am your constant companion.
I am your greatest helper or heaviest burden.
I will push you onward or drag you down to failure.
I am completely at your command.

Half of the things you do you might as well turn over to me
And I will do them – quickly and correctly.

I am easily managed – you must be firm with me.
Show me exactly how you want something done and
After a few lessons, I will do it automatically.
I am the servant of great people, and alas, of all failures as well.
Those who are great, I have made great,
Those who are failures, I have made failures.

I am not a machine though I work with the precision of a machine
Plus the intelligence of a person.
You may run me for profit or run me for ruin –
It makes no difference to me.

Take me, train me, be firm with me, and
I will place the world at your feet.
Be easy with me and I will destroy you.

Who am I?
I am a habit.

- Businesssuccessbuilder.com