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.

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.

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.