Fat Loss is All or Nothing

Many people have the illusion that they can perform exercises that will remove unwanted fat from specific areas of their body. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. It's impossible to perform, for example, abdominal exercises and expect to lose fat from the stomach area. Fat loss comes from the entire body. Sadly, though, this myth is helps to promote gimmicks and fads to millions of unsuspecting consumers. A little education lets us take control of our own weight loss plans.

How Do We Store Fat?

When we take in more calories than we burn, any excess carbohydrate, protein, and fat--which are not needed for energy, cell repair or normal biological functions--get stored in the fat cells of the body. We all store fat in different areas: Men typically store fat around the middle, while most women tend to be heavier in the hips and thighs. This is mostly genetic, so it's impossible to control where we gain and lose fat.

How Do We Lose Fat?

The body's preferred source of energy during activity is carbohydrate. However, during normal daily pursuits like work, shuffling the kids around, or walking the dog, we burn a combination of stored carbohydrate (glycogen) and fat. The ratios of carbohydrate to fat burning will vary depending on the type and intensity of the activity. For instance, when exercise is intense, the body will begin to use more carbohydrate, and with moderate activity, the body burns more fat. Regardless of when and how much fat is burned, though, it is released from all over the body. 

First On, Last Off

Excess fat will come off of the entire body through proper exercise and diet, though there is some debate about where fat loss will occur first. Some suggest that the first place you gain fat tends to be the first place it comes off. Just remember that everyone is biologically different, and fat gain and fat loss will be specific to an individual's body type. 

The important thing to remember is that spot-reduction doesn't work. Fat loss is an all-or-nothing commitment that takes dedication, consistency and effort. If your goal is to reach a certain weight then be patient as your whole body responds to your efforts. In time the fat will disappear from trouble areas. This is simply the result of an overall, healthy weight-loss plan. 

Burn Fat, Lose Weight Fast, Melt Fat Now: Enough Already. . . !

Learn to pay close attention to your behaviours around food, and you won't have to succumb to fad diets and marketing trickery ever again.

Everywhere I turn (probably because my mind is focused on dropping a few pounds right now) there are magazine and television ads touting their best advice on how to lose weight fast. "Look over here, our product kicks butt! This is the best way to lose weight! Buy now!" "Twenty pounds in three weeks, thirty pounds in one month. . ."

C'mon people. Are you kidding me?

I've been on holidays for the past couple of weeks--in more ways than one: too much food (good and bad), too much wine and beer, and not enough exercise have left me with an extra five pounds. (I don't really know for sure, because I no longer weigh myself--that became an obsession that's a topic for another blog). I just know that everything feels tight.

I'm not happy about it, but I know that I can fix it, and I'm doing that right now. I'm back to my regular workouts, which are pretty tough, and I've cut back on my food consumption. I eat healthy, whole foods, limiting my carb consumption, eating when I'm hungry, stopping when I'm full, blah, blah, blah. . .

How do I do it?

Over a lot of years, I've learned, through various techniques and trial and error, to quickly correct my bad behaviours, and settle right back into healthy, normal eating habits. These good habits are so ingrained that it's easy to retrieve them, and, as such, I'm feeling better already.

My point is that it didn't always work this way. Unfortunately, overindulgence is a nightmare for millions of people who struggle with food addictions and weight loss. They lose control once, and it's game over.

It doesn't have to be that way.

The power of our minds is not to be taken lightly. We're victims of our own conditioning, the food and marketing industries, and our addictions. (And, bad, crappy food contributes to our addictions to fat and sugar.)

I say victims, because at lot of what we think and do is out of our control. It's buried so deep within our subconscious minds that it feels like there's no hope. I know, 'cause I've been there.

One way to dig yourself out of the crap is through education. I know things now that trigger certain good behaviours that easily correct bad, unhealthy behaviours. I know things now that make me repulse at my old eating habits, so that I no longer indulge. I know things now that keep me on track and on target with goals and aspirations related to health and fitness. If I didn't know these things, through my personal education and experience, I'm sure I'd be spiraling through the same hell I suffered so long ago.

One of my goals for this blog -- and my writing -- is to educate. I strongly believe that on the other side of education and knowledge is freedom. That freedom is what we all strive for. No matter what our thing is, we want to be free of it. Free from the pain; free from the suffering; and, free from the aversion it brings.

We all strive for health and happiness. All of us. We're no different than the rest. But we're rooted and trapped in our minds and don't know the way out. There is a way out, though, but it's not through the door we used to.

The way out starts from within. Sadly, we're conditioned to relieve our suffering through outside sources. Things. But until we begin to look inside, at ourselves, we'll never find relief for our pain and suffering.

Something to think about. Something to ponder. . .

Please let me know what you think. Share your story. Feel free to comment on this and other posts so that we all know we're not alone!

Cheers
Janet

Beginning Steps: Starting Your Weight Loss Program

As mentioned in the previous post, the best weight loss program is one that helps to create and maintain healthy habits for life. Sounds easy, but it's not. Our minds are complex machines with highly, refined tools that enable us to operate safely and efficiently in our chaotic world.

Unfortunately, those very tools that allow us to drive a car, ride a bike, or move through our morning routines without thinking, are driving our obsessive, compulsive behaviours around food. But there is a solution.

Behaviour change starts with the understanding that our behaviours are subconsciously, mastered programs that lie beneath the surface of our selves. By now, if you've read my previous posts, you get what I'm talking about. Our chemical addictions and subconscious, emotional drives are making us fat, unhappy, and feeling out of control.

Can we change?

The good news is that all behaviours can be changed. That includes our impulsive drives to eat too much bad food (high in salt, fat, and sugar).

The first step to changing any behaviour is to become aware. We have to know and understand what triggers cause us to react; what behaviours are present when we act; and, what emotions are at hand when we indulge. All we have to do is stop and think. Here's how to begin.

Taking Charge: Overruling the bad guy

When we fail at talking ourselves out of the cheesecake, or side order of fries, were acting (or reacting) with our subconscious minds. Remember, the decision to indulge isn't really a decision at all. It's a deeply ingrained, automatic behaviour that was created over time, with lots of memory and repetition. It's a habit. It's beyond our control.

So, in order to change, we need to take control. We need to step into consciousness. When we're conscious, the subconscious mind can't operate. What a great opportunity to work on creating new habits. Because, really, that's all we're trying to do: replace old habits with new habits. We do this by waking up. By becoming aware of our thoughts and actions. And, we begin to consciously contradict what we're about to do, or, sometimes, what we've already done.

Waking from a dream

Our subconscious minds rule ninety-five percent of our days. Frightening, so let's change it.

Say you're at a social event, or the cottage for the weekend, somewhere where there's lots of food (usually bad) and drink available. It's difficult to resist. Our drive to overindulge comes from our subconscious. But this is the real world. This is how you have to live. Temptation is all around, and it's going nowhere fast.

So, instead of politely pretending that you don't want to dive face-first into that bowl of ice cream, you need to take control. You need to consciously replace the old wants and desires with a new perspective. In order to coexist with the triggers and stimuli that temp us into overindulgence, we need to learn how to master new behaviours around food. It's not easy, but it can be done. And, it's the only way to stop the dieting and compulsive eating cycle for good.

Permanent weight loss means in with the new and out with the old

Changing behaviours is simply creating new habits while fizzling out the old ones. Say you have a routine (or habit) of picking up a disgustingly, calorie-dense snack, loaded with fat, salt, and sugar every time you stop at your favourite coffee shop. You can't go in and just buy a coffee. You know you shouldn't get a snack. You're not hungry, because you just had lunch an hour ago, but you simply can't resist.

The first step in changing that automatic behaviour (or habit) is to become aware that you're doing it. As soon as you walk into the coffee shop and say, "Hmmm, every time I come here, I come out with a snack that I know I shouldn't have and deeply regret it later. . ." you're changing your brain. You're halting the automatic behaviour, even for a second, and creating new connections in your brain.

Let's go deeper

Thinking about your feelings of disgust and regret and consciously knowing how you'll feel about your purchase all contribute to the act of awareness. This is good. This is the beginning of change. Even if you absolutely can't stand the temptation and buy a donut, you've momentarily short-circuited the neurological process of the bad habit.

Furthermore, each time you go into the coffee shop with those conscious thoughts about the emotions, actions, and consequences of your temptation, and you leave with just a coffee, you're neurologically strengthening your new behaviour and weakening the old one. So, guess what might happen over time. . . ?

My challenge to you. . . O.K. I dare you!

Try this for a week, and then another week, and before you know it, you'll have mastered a new behaviour. If you give in to temptation, that's O.K. You're human, and this is hard. The same chemicals and brain centres that are responsible for drug addiction are active here. We need to start thinking of this as the addiction that it is and treating it as such. 

With constant effort and repetition of new behaviours, though, you will prevail. I'll continue this discussion in the next few posts, but, for now, I urge you to begin your journey by challenging yourself this week. Take one bad behaviour (one at a time), and practice replacing it with a new behaviour of your choice.

It helps to turn the old behaviour into the enemy. For example, every time you go to eat foods laden with sugar, fat, and salt (highly processed, unhealthy foods) tell yourself how disgusting they are, and that you can't possibly put them into your body. Tell yourself that your body is precious, the only one you've got, and it deserves better.

Eventually, with time, effort, and consistency, your new behaviour will become habit and you'll react to it subconsciously, just like the old one. Oh, and by the way, the old behaviour is now quashed, not gone, mind you, but quashed!

Good luck with your challenge. Please comment or email me at info@janetjstone.ca if you have any questions about any of this. I'm happy to help.

Cheers, Janet

The Best Weight Loss Diet: How to end the dieting cycle for good

The best weight loss diet is a combination of making permanent change for life, and changing our behaviours around food. The hunt for weight loss diets that perpetuate the dieting cycle continue to consume people in their desperate search for a solution to weight management.

Weight management starts with the internal belief that you are a thin, healthy person, and, from there, you can adopt lifestyle behaviours that fit with who you really are. I've heard so many overweight people say that they're a thin person on the inside. "This fat person is not who I am," they say. So how do we take that conscious belief and make it a reality? We begin on the inside where our behaviours around food originate.  This is our control centre, where our current eating habits lie.

Becoming Conscious: Why are we overweight?

How can we possibly find a solution for change until we know how we got where we are, until we understand the behaviours that continue to drive us to overeat and crave the wrong foods? I believe there are two primary influences (outside of psychological convictions) that have contributed to our society of overweight over-eaters:

1. The reward centre in our brains is overloaded with the proliferation of high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt, processed foods. We're so far gone (physically addicted) when it comes to gaining control over our chemical drives around processed food that these bad, obsessive behaviours are ingrained. So, we're forced--over and over--into desperate, dieting techniques that merely add to our demise.
   
   These behaviours will not go away until we consciously change. So, unless your new weight loss diet begins with the foundation of permanent change, you'll, inevitably, go back to your old ways. Eventually the weight will come back, and you'll begin the cycle again.

1. We eat too much.
   One reason we eat too much is that we simply can't stop for the reasons I've stated above: we're addicted. Secondly, because portions sizes and portion control are out of whack, we've become completely out of touch with our bodies. We no longer know what it feels like to be hungry; to feed our bodies simply because they need and are asking for nourishment.
   
   We clean our plates no matter how much food is put on them. Unfortunately, super-size has become the norm. And, we eat as though we can't get more, forgetting that there is an abundance, and we'll eat again in four or six hours. We forget that any excess will get stored as fat and that we'll work twice as hard to get it off than to have pushed ourselves away from the table.

What we need is an attitude adjustment

Dieting is dieting. It's deprivation and starvation. No wonder it takes so much will power and strength to begin a "diet" on Monday morning. It's horrible! And no way to live. 

My question to you is this: When you start that diet, do you think about what will happen after it's finished? When you've lost the weight, how will you eat? What will you eat? How will you deal with grocery shopping and temptation and celebration? How will you react when bad food is available to you? How will you choose what to do?

I can answer all of those questions for you. The only behaviour you know is what got you in this mess in the first place. The overeating, poor decisions, and bad reactions to situations will not change unless you change them.

Dieting is not a long-term, permanent solution.

Dieting doesn't create new, positive behaviours around food. It doesn't teach you how to say no and feel good about it. It doesn't teach you how to enjoy a treat now and then and get right back to healthy eating--not dieting--the next day.

Dieting only makes you want food more because you've suffered and deprived your body of what it needs to be healthy. The only successful weight loss plan is the one that embraces whole, healthy, unprocessed foods as a permanent way of life. A plan that changes core beliefs about food and teaches us how we can enjoy food as the beautiful, nourishing part of life that it is.

Five Best Ways to Lose Weight - For Good

Change is difficult, but not impossible. Unfortunately, though, when it comes to dieting, we tend to opt for the fastest, easiest ways to lose weight, hoping that some new, miracle, weight loss program will be the one. Not so.

Permanent lifestyle change is the only effective way to lose weight and keep it off. If you want to stop the viscous cycle of weight gain and weight loss, you must start looking at weight management as a long-term (forever), lifestyle change. It's the only means to creating permanent, healthy behaviours that allow you to break from emotional eating and dieting insanity.

If you're looking for permanent, lifestyle change, which I hope you are, then I'll share my five top and very effective steps towards permanent change. When we choose (and it is a choice) to eat healthy, whole foods, and live an active lifestyle, we can easily stay within five pounds of our "happy weight" for life.

I don't diet anymore. I adjust. And, in future posts, I'll teach you the techniques that I've successfully used for years that help me to not only maintain a healthy weight, but to make minor adjustments if things start to slide.So, without further ado, here are your five steps to permanent change:

Five steps to permanent change

1. Make one change a week
   Change can be overwhelming. Make it easy by choosing one thing you want to change, and do it for a week. For instance, you can decide to consciously eat more fresh fruits and vegetables and less processed foods than you normally do. Once you are comfortable with this new behaviour, you can choose another one and try it for a week. Slowly, over time, your new behaviours will become an easy part of your daily routine.
   
   
2. Plan, plan, plan
   You won't succeed unless you have a plan. Planning requires conscious thought. Becoming conscious of what you do and why is a vital part of any process of change. Know what you have coming up for the week and make a rough plan. But remember: life happens. Nothing is ever written in stone. Allow yourself to adjust to unknown circumstances. However, planning groceries and meals and exercise will prevent the inevitable failings that come without have a plan. Besides, when you have a plan, you've already made the decision to follow through.
    
3. Start thinking, acting, and being your dream
   This is vitally important for success. Thinking and acting like the person you eventually want to be creates connections and memories in your brain and body that will eventually become permanent, fixed ways of being. So, when you get up in the morning, you are that thin, active person who makes healthy choices all day. You are in control of your life. And, when things get in the way, which they will, you are training yourself to consciously act upon them, not subconsciously react to them.
   
   
4. "Check yourself"
   When discussing awareness, a very wise Buddhist nun called, Robina Courtin,  often repeats the phrase, "check yourself". I love it, and have adopted this as my own mantra when negative, subconscious reactions creep into my day. I'll remind myself to consciously "check" my reactions to situations and the emotions attached to them. The more we can pull ourselves away from our subconscious thoughts and behaviours, the easier it is for us to change.
   
   And, finally:
   
   
5. Be kind
   Unfortunately, we take better care of others than we do ourselves. We tend to berate, bash, and beat ourselves as we make mistakes, when we easily forgive and encourage others for the same things. We can't move forward until we learn to accept who we are, and to love who we are unconditionally. That means that we allow ourselves the grace to be human. That means that we don't strive for perfection, but that we strive to be the best that we can be. Mistakes an integral part of being human, and they are vital part of growth. Learn to use them as allies, not enemies.

Take these five tips and post them where they can be seen. For me, they are a constant part of daily life, and the reason why permanent change was possible.