Millions of women are coming to the awareness that diets might not work. In several blog post I mentioned the advantage of having a weight loss strategyvs. just having a diet.
You are a whole being of body, emotions, mind, and spirit. And the causes of weight gain can happen on all these four levels. This is the reason why it’s not enough to just eat healthy most of the time. It’s not even enough to diet and exercise. Therefore, a sensible weight loss strategy integrates all four levels. Of course, healthy eating (the opposite of dieting) and exercise should be part of your weight loss strategy. This may help you lose a little bit of weight temporarily but not for good.
“You could eat the best foods every day, but if you don’t exercise, you are not going to be healthy. Or you could eat the best food, and you could exercise an hour a day, but if your thoughts are always negative, if you are always harboring thoughts of doubt, worry, anger, guilt, jealousy, helplessness and hopelessness, there is no way you’re ever going to be vibrantly healthy.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
It’s body, mind and spirit. The body reflects the mind, the mind reflects the spirit.
The body is a good place to start because whatever you do on the physical level will lead to fastweight loss. And what you do on the psychological and spiritual level will lead to lasting weight loss. That’s why you’d be wise to address all levels.
Dr. Susan recommends starting by taking loving care of your body day in and day out. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming; we’re not talking about huge changes in your life. In fact, you can make massive progress by taking baby steps every day. It’s really the simple lifestyle changes you choose to make regarding what you eat, how you deal with stress, how often and the kinds of exercises you do, how much you sleep, and how much water you drink.
Then, the next level will be to change the thinking regarding your body, weight, and food.
You may moan about the fact that losing weight for good is a little bit more complex than just dieting. But as soon as you realize how much more effective a weight loss strategy is than dieting, you will begin to love it. It’s not complicated and – again – it can happen by taking baby steps and simple changes. Besides, what is fast about yo-yoing?
So many overweight women are torn between feeling guilty and feeling helpless. And in either state, you couldn’t be further from the concept of being the CEO of your own health and weight.
What you must understand is that each of us chooses every second of our life through the subconscious choices we make (mostly through our habits), and thus we create our own reality. From the moment you wake up, you are choosing the thoughts you think, what you can have for breakfast, how you are with people throughout the day and how you want to treat your body.
By being the CEO of your own health and weight, you begin to make conscious choices every day that will move you closer to your weight goal. This path is much more effective than the subconscious one, where you allow your thoughts and emotions to go their way. This makes all the difference between feeling like a victim of a cruel fate and by feeling empowered and in control over our health and life.
Our current life is the result of the countless choices we have made in the past regarding the foods we ate, the thoughts we thought, whether or not we moved, etc. And if you don’t like how your life is heading or where it is right now, you’ve got to make some different choices now. It’s really that easy. You can do it.
Here is a possible lifestyle recommended by Susan Smith Jones:
Choose the best food for you
Cultivate a holistic lifestyle
Celebrate your blessings – cultivate an attitude of gratitude
Take responsibility for your health and weight
Choose the first 40 minutes of your day wisely because it sets the tone for the entire day (positive, healthy, happy, relaxed)
Make these five steps part of your weight loss strategy, and you will already be a step closer to your desired weight goal.
*****
A few years ago, I did an interview with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial.
What the whole diet industry is telling you is that diets were the solution for weight loss because of the calorie in vs. calorie out theory, but that theory is wrong and an utter lie. The fact is that dieting is not a cure for excess fat. Of course, healthy eating should be part of any sensible weight loss strategy. But dieting is not a healthy approach and causes many health issues.
One of the very important topics Dr. Susan Smith Jones talked about in our interview was the control mechanism for weight loss.
After you finish a diet, you may have lost some fat, but you have not lost your tendency to get fat. According to Dr. Susan, what we eat does not change muscle metabolism.
Most women are not happy with the shape of their bodies because most people go about it the wrong way by dieting. A woman I know is a fan of the vegan lifestyle, and she tries to convince every person she meets to go vegan as well, and she is very pushy about that. Although she is short and very thin, her body has a terrible shape. This is one of the typical results of a vegan lifestyle, and it’s the most harmless of all results.
Dr. Susan clearly says that diets don’t work, and she recommends, “You want to throw away any diet book you might have that tells you that you can lose weight and keep it off without moving a muscle.”
After you finish a diet, you may have lost some water, muscle mass, and maybe even a little fat, but you haven’t lost the TENDENCY to get fat.
Here is what you need to understand about metabolism:
The control mechanism for being overweight is not diet; it’s muscle metabolism.
“Your base for metabolic rate is the rate at which your body utilizes energy. In other words, how many calories you’re burning throughout the day.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
The higher your metabolism, the more fat you burn and the easier it is to lose weight, provided that everything else is working properly. To this, Dr. Susan adds that you can feed your muscles and your bodies with the best supplements, but if exercise is not part of the plan, you are not going to burn all the calories you need. And you will probably not have the nicely shaped body you want.
As we age, if we don’t keep lots of good lean muscle tissue on our body by working out, then the metabolism goes down. So the key to controlling metabolism is exercise. Exercise must be part of a good, sensible and effective weight loss strategy. Never settle for one tactic only.
To have a nicely formed body, we need aerobic exercise like walking, cross-country skiing, hiking, jogging to burn fat out of the muscles. And then we need to do some weight training to build up muscles which, in turn, increases the metabolism.
In my work as a weight transformation coach, I realized that about 50% of overweight women hate exercise. I was one of them for many years. But I promise, once you begin to do just a little bit of exercise, and if you do it daily no matter the weather, you will begin to like it, and then after a while, you even begin to need it, and it will get super easy to follow through with your exercise plan. To make it easier, Dr. Susan recommends the buddy system, especially at the beginning. When you know that your friend is waiting around the corner at 7 am, it’s easier for you to get out of your bed.
To begin with, just choose those activities you like the best. Most people can find something that they like to do. And if you can’t take 30 minutes or an hour a day, start with as little as 15 minutes per day. Even the busiest person can squeeze in 15 minutes. The main thing is that you do it daily without fail for the first 30 days. As soon as you realize that it works, you can find ways to increase the time or exercise for 30 minutes or 15 minutes twice daily.
Just in case you are one of the super busy women whose first reaction to this recommendation is, “But I can’t afford to take so much time for exercise every day,” let me ask you a question. What will happen in ten, twenty or thirty years if you don’t exercise regularly now? I’m sure you will come up with several health issues right away. And you’d be right.
Therefore, the question should not be, “Can I afford to take time for daily exercise?” Instead, the question should be, “Can I afford not to exercise daily?” What many people just don’t realize is the costs of a sedative and busy life.
If you want to lose weight, a minimum of half an hour of aerobic exercise every day is the minimum. Then make it a commitment to add some muscle training three times a week for 30 minutes consistently for the next six months. Within those six months, your body will add ten extra pounds of lean muscle tissue, and these ten pounds of muscle tissue will burn 500 more calories a day. These muscles will help you lose weight faster.
And here is an additional bonus. If you do as recommended, you can look 15 to 20 years younger within only one year. And this is according to major studies done at Duke University. Can you get that? Just exercise for one year and build 10 pounds of muscle tissue and look 15 to 20 years younger. It will work, no matter your current age. Isn’t that a no-brainer!?
Please remember what Dr. Susan said regarding choosing to be the CEO of your body and life. Therefore, adding that kind of exercise to your weight loss strategy could be the first step to being the CEO of your body and life. All it takes is a commitment.
We are creatures of habit, and when you get in a rut of doing the same things day in and day out, it may take some effort to change the habits. Just keep in mind that your current “rut” was created by your past choices and habits. So now, you can choose to implement new habits and create a new daily procedure. The right kind of exercise should always be part of our overall weight loss strategy.
*****
A few years ago, I did an interview with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial.
When it comes to weight loss, there are three things over which we really have control in life. One is what we think, one is what we eat, and the third one is how we move and exercise. And it all begins with your attitude. If your life is set up in a way that doesn’t allow you that freedom – provided you’re an adult – then you’re in bigger trouble than you may think.
“Attitude is the mind’s paintbrush, it can color anything.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
We all like to think that our thoughts are just happening without us. When we eat, we either eat what our sweet tooth, the media, our life circumstances, or the time of our lunch breaks dictate. And the exercise part is being dictated by time and excuses…we either don’t have time or use that as an excuse.
But the fact is – and there will come a time in your life when you will painfully realize that we and only we are in charge of our thoughts, the food we eat and what priority our health has in life.
If you are a spiritual person, please make the following visualization. Imagine that you have just gone through death, and now you are standing face to face in front of God. Imagine that he asks you how you were thinking about his gift, your body, throughout your life and you would say, “Well, dear God, I couldn’t really decide what to think, my head just kept thinking without my interference.” Do you really think that God would respond, “Poor thing, you were so burdened with a disobedient brain. Of course, then it was all your brain’s fault and not yours.”
God’s next question then is, “Now tell me, dear, how have you been taking care of that gift of mine, your body? Did you feed it with the best food, and did you move it regularly as it needed to be moved?” And you would answer, “Well, you see, dear God, the situation is this; I was so busy with my job that I could only eat microwaved food, and there was simply no time to exercise. When I came home from work, I was too tired to go out for a walk.” And then, of course, you would expect God to say, “Oh dear me, you were really burdened, and I fully understand that you simply could not eat healthily and not move your body as it was supposed to be your duty.”
Or would God say something like, “Well, my lovely daughter; I gave you a brain to think; I gave you a heart that connected you to me what gave you instant access to me at any second of the day whenever you wanted; I gave you a body to be my agent in your city, and I gave you the freedom of choice so that you could learn by making mistakes. But you didn’t use my gifts well and gave your power away to bad habits, other people, circumstances, and excuses. You didn’t pass this test, and you will have to go back and do it better next time.”
So tell me, which scenario makes more sense and is more likeable?
We are in charge of our thinking, our emotions, the words we say and the actions we take.
Here is a test for you to find out whether or not you are in charge of your thinking, your emotions, your words, and your actions.
Is your life exactly the way you had dreamed it when you were young, and is it exactly the way you want it to be?
If your answer is a wholehearted, ‘Yes,’ then you’re probably doing a lot right.
But if your life isn’t the way you want it to be, then look at your thinking, your habits, and the actions you take. If your health is not what you want it to be, look at how you’re treating your body.
If you wake up in the morning and immediately think, “Gosh, what shall I wear today? I’m wondering whether the spaghetti I ate for last night’s dinner showson my scale today.” Then the next thing you do is step on the scale, and there is a 50:50 chance that you will not be happy with your weight. So your thinking goes around all the reasons why you’re not happy with your body and this determines your mood of the day.
You may believe that your weight determines your attitude and that this was normal. But it’s actually the other way around. The mind always influences the body. Therefore, before taking care of our weight, we have to take care of our mindset. It begins with your attitude!
“The greatest discovery of this generation is that the human being can change his life just by changing his attitude.” –William James
The thing is, when you decide to do something – like eating healthier and going for a daily walk – and then you don’t follow through with it, you lose self-control, you lose self-esteem, and you lose your integrity…step by step, each time you don’t follow through with what you said you would do.
When you don’t follow through with what you say you’re going to do, you probably think, “What does it matter! Nobody knows!” But that’s not true. YOU know. And not following through with your promises to yourself takes a hit on your integrity.
And even if nobody knows what you promised yourself, because of the fact that YOU know, you change your energy, your vibrations. You ooze the energy, “I can’t keep my commitments,” and subconsciously, people around you will recognize and stop trusting you without knowing why. They just have a bad gut feeling about you.
Commitment to a weight loss program – of course, it has to be one that has the chance to bring you lasting results and no diet can ever do that for you – can lend stability to your everyday life. Because, with each daily action, you reaffirm your commitment, and that brings a feeling of empowerment and increased self-esteem. Now, instantly, your energy changes and people around you can sense that as well.
It’s through our everyday behavior that we get serious results and create a life we want and like.
“Commitment means you ‘ve got to get past your excuses, follow through on what you say you are going to do, make your word count and be responsible and accountable.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
There is one exception: weight loss diets, and I highly recommend to better make a commitment not to follow a weight loss diet. They are designed in a way that it’s simply not possible to follow through because your body lacks vital nutrients and will sabotage your attempt to follow through with the diet. You simply can’t win with any weight loss diets. Therefore, you should first do some research to find out what really works and be willing to give your weight loss process time. Any quick fix can’t work long-term, and what you want is long-term success. You want your diet to be a healthy one that provides your body with everything it needs. You want a healthy lifestyle you can implement. You want maintainable weight loss. For such a goal, you have to be willing to give yourself enough time.
Once you find such a strategy, make a commitment to follow through with it, get past your excuses, and take action every day until you reach your weight goal. And I promise you; you will be stronger than ever before. Make your word count and be responsible and accountable.
So you’ve got to follow through on what you say you are going to do if you want to lose your weight for good.
*****
A few years ago, I did an interview with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial.
In my last blog post I shared with you a few highlights of the interview I did with Dr. Susan Smith Jones.
During that interview with Dr. Susan, we also talked about the fact that she looks 20 years younger than her age. And she added, “This is how most people should be looking.”
The thing is that when we carry extra weight, it creates major stress on every system, every organ and cell in our body, and it ages us quickly. So we must get the extra weight off if we want to look younger than our age! Frankly, is there any woman out there who would rather look older?
As a next step, we must choose to make our health the top priority in our life. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “Health is your greatest wealth.” The only way to take care of our greatest wealth is by showing by the actions we take every day that our health, weight, and life is our top priority.
To that, Dr. Susan adds, “Yourlife and all of its magnificence is a reflection of how you feel about yourself. So you’ve got to plant those seeds of high self-esteem and support them with every action you take every day. Because you deserve the best life has to offer you.“
And she keeps saying, “Sometimes, people would say to me – like they pull me over in the middle of a talk during the intermission – they’ll say, ‘Susan I like what you say, but you know what? I can’t start eating better ‘till next month because I am under too much stress, my birthday is coming up, it’s my anniversary, or I can’t exercise for at least two weeks because I am going away on a holiday or vacation and it’s my church’s bake sale’.”
I have heard those excuses over and over, and so has probably pretty much every weight loss coach or expert on the entire planet.
The truth is, my friend, that you are never going to get to your desired achievement in your life until you have some self-discipline. And by that, Dr. Susan recommends to “…following through on what you say you are going to do.”
If you sometimes feel that the steering wheel of your car just turned into the fast food restaurant, then you have lost control. And this is not how it’s supposed to be, and this is not how we can become the ‘CEO of our health, weight, and life.’ We – and I have to include myself in this – have to have some control and discipline in our lives.
When we don’t keep our word with whatever it is, we lose faith in ourselves…each time a little bit more. We lose self-esteem, and at a deep level, we don’t feel that we deserve the best in life. And, according to Dr. Susan, this causes depression.
When your energy goes down, and your emotions go down, and you feel depressed, what do you then do? In those situations, so many women often select foods that match their lower emotional level. Then it becomes a vicious cycle of being depressed, eating the wrong foods, gaining weight, being even more depressed, eating more of the wrong foods, and gaining more weight until the day comes where she feels completely out of control.
Dr. Smith Jones says that we can stop this vicious cycle by choosing to love ourselves and show by every action we take every day that we deserve the best.
We deserve to feel powerful and under control, we deserve the best food, and we deserve to be slim and healthy.
Let’s not forget that there is always something we could use as an excuse. The time to eat healthily or to go for a walk is never perfect. It’s never the right time unless we decide that it’s the right time now.
So let’s stop making excuses and ask ourselves who is supposed to have control over our health, weight, and lives. Is it the next baking sale, the next birthday party, the Drive-Through, a current depression….or is it you?
*****
A few years ago, I did an interview with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial:
Many women feel like the victim of a cruel fate, of poor genes, or habits they can’t control. Such an attitude makes it very hard to be successful with any maintainable weight loss method.
In an interview I once did with bestselling author Dr. Susan Smith Jones, she said, “Most people live in what I refer to as like victimhood. Most people would rather complain and get upset or angry, but then they don’t choose to take the action required.”
No matter how often we visualize, how much we hope, how sincerely we pray, and how many times we repeat our affirmations, maintainable weight loss will not happen unless we take action…the RIGHT kind of action.
The good news is that no matter what you have done in the past, no matter how many mistakes you have made, at any day and any time, you can decide that this is a new beginning. Nobody forces you to keep living by the past; nobody forces you to worry about the future.
“As you live the best you can each day with a positive attitude, you can change your life,” says Dr. Smith Jones.
Any change and any goal achievement begin with the choices we make every day. Dr. Susan recommends choosing what is best for you to celebrate your life and cultivate the best life you can. This begins with cultivating a good relationship with yourself. “Treat yourself with the respect that you deserve.”
She encourages everyone to step up to the plate and take your new position as the CEO of your body, weight, health, and life because you are the only person in charge of your body. Today, you can decide that this is a new beginning for you and affirm, “I deserve to be happy and healthy. I deserve the best.”
You can stop your pain and weight struggling right here and now and make new choices that have the potential to change your health and weight for good.
To achieve that – and to claim back the power over your own body and weight – Dr. Susan Smith Jones recommends choosing to be the “CEO of your body and life.”
Dr. Susan keeps explaining, “What you need to realize is that your body is an amazing feedback machine, and your beautiful body is always talking to you. Now, if you get a headache, your body might be trying to tell you something like you are eating too much food, or you’re eating junk food, or you’re not getting enough sleep, or you’re not getting enough water or whatever it is. But you’ve got to listen to your body’s messages to you with an open heart and an open mind. And then – here’s the most important thing – you’ve got to take some action. So know that your body is always talking to you, and you’ve got to pay attention. What we are talking about here is living more mindfully because the sad truth is that most people get up in the morning, and they are sort of on automatic pilot until they go to bed at night. You’ve got to pay attention.”
When you look at all the commercials on TV and the advertisements in magazines and newspapers, the advertisers are trying to tell you that they have a miracle pill, powder or potion, and we’ve come to believe that things outside ourselves are the keys to health and well-being. And whatever you are suffering from, be it headache, constipation, sleepless nights, diarrhea, indigestion, skin rashes, high blood pressure, weight gain–you fill in the blank-you then first try to self-medicate before going to the doctor. Thus, we have become a self-medicating society or world because we don’t really understand how our body is trying to communicate with us, trying to give us the correct answers for a healthy, slim, long, and happy life. And because we are impatient and want instant relief without taking care of the body’s needs first, we make matters worse by going the wrong route.
“So each of us needs to be reminded that we are magnificently equipped to meet life’s problems when supplied with the simple and easily obtainable requisites of health,” Dr. Susan recommends. So we’ve got to realize that our human body is remarkable and a wonderful feedback machine.
We are supposed to be the CEO of our body, and we’ve got to listen more to what it’s saying to us. Because – and here comes one of the secrets no weight loss coach has ever told you before – your body already has most of the answers for your weight loss success, especially when the cause of your weight gain is a physical one.
The body knows what it needs to burn fat faster and better, if we cared to listen, and if we cared to do the right things.
*****
A few years ago, I did several interviews with other health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial:
Did you ever wonder why losing weight with a diet is quite fast and easy, but why you soon gain that lost weight back after a while…equally fast and easy?
If you have read my last blog post Causes of Weight Gain, then you have begun to understand that the weight issue is quite a complex thing – not complicated, just complex.
This is very good news. Because, once you understand what is standing in your way to a sustainable slim body personally, you know exactly what to do. That moment your search for the right diet, pill or answer stops immediately and your weight loss process becomes much more effective and efficient.
In this blog post I’m going to spill the beans and share with you some of the most important insights I have gained over the course of the 32 years as a weight loss coach. This can give you a better understanding of the real nature of weight issues and you begin to understand what you really need.
The real nature of human beings
The most important and crucial thing to understand is the real nature of your being.
You are not only body, but also mind, emotions, and spirit. The easiest way to understand what I mean is by visualizing a building with four pillars.
The building of your health – and weight – stands on four pillars.
One pillar is your physical pillar (the body), one pillar is the emotional pillar (the emotions you have daily and how you react emotionally to certain things and situations), the third one is the mental pillar (your thinking, what you think, say… your mindset), and the last one is your psychological pillar.
One of the biggest problems regarding weight loss is the misconception that you were the physical body.
You are not your body – you have a body. You are a spiritual being in a physical body. That’s a bigger difference than you may think. As soon as you understand that your physical and visible body is only a part of the equation – like the tip of the iceberg –, you will find it much easier to find the right weight loss solution that really work for you and that will bring you the desired lasting results.
The problems for you begin when you treat your weight exclusively on one pillar: the physical body, what most overweight people do by dieting and exercising. That’s why the dieting approach is so very frustrating. In fact, it’s the hardest way possible with no real chance of bringing you lasting results.
Even on the physical level there can be many causes of your weight problems beside poor eating habits and a lack of exercise.
Now let me ask you a question.
What happens to a building, if one of four pillar gets weak, breaks or falls away?
Not much, as long as the rest of the building is stable and strong. It may not be leveled perfectly anymore, and with every heavy storm it may get a crack here and there. It’s just not so resistant to strain or stress anymore, but it still has a good chance to stay for a while.
It’s the same with our health and weight. When one of the four pillars is temporarily weakened, we may face some headache, a flue once or twice a year, or a few pounds of weight gain. Maybe you can’t sleep so well as you could some years ago…yet nothing serious.
Now what will happen when two pillars are broken? The building suddenly is in severe danger of not surviving the next heavy storm. Most likely it will collapse before the next storm. Translated to your health this could be some stubborn overweight, muscle pain, joint pain, chronic headache, a heart disease, regular heart burn, two to four flues every year, allergies, and so on and so forth.
As soon as three pillars break or disappear, the whole building will collapse completely. It can’t stand on one pillar. It’s not possible.
It’s exactly the same with our health. The more symptoms and diseases you have and the heavier you are, the more is your whole health building in danger. This is the point where you have serious chronic diseases like fibromyalgia, diabetes, loss of your teeth, or other life-threatening diseases, such as cancer. You may even be obese (not just overweight), and consequently it will take you longer to bring your weight back to a healthy weight.
On the other hand, the healthier and more stable your whole health building is, the faster your body will react to even slight changes.
Of course, when the last pillar breaks, the building does no longer stand at all. For the human body this would mean death.
Again, translated to your health, the less you’re taking care of your body (eat unhealthy, diet, don’t exercise, don’t sleep enough, smoke, eat toxic food, etc.), the more you have negative thoughts, the more your emotional state is on the negative side, and the more you think about your sad past, the faster you’re going to become severally sick, the faster you’re going to age, and the sooner you’re going to die.
On the other hand, the better you take care of your body, the more positive your mindset, the more gratitude and love you feel, the more you have forgiven all those who have hurt you in the past, and the more you’re living in the now, the faster your physical body can heal, the faster you’ll lose weight, the slower your aging process and the longer you’re going to live a good, healthy and happy life – a quality life.
The best and happiest life you have, when these four levels of your being are so aligned like four horses that are pulling a wagon. Imagine if just one of these four horses would want to run in another direction. This would lead to a chaos. The same is true for your health and happiness. If only one of your lower levels is not in alignment, problems and health issues are certain.
The good news is that the reins of your personal “wagon” are entirely in your own hands. All you have to do is to take the reins and lead.
Therefore, good health and weight loss are to a great extend in your own hands, although it may often not feel that way. If it doesn’t feel that way to you, then it’s because you don’t know the truth about sustainable weight loss.
All you need to begin with is understand the correlation between these four levels and take care of them in a conscious way. Eat healthy, exercise regularly, make sure that you sleep well and enough, get your hormones balanced, detox and cleanse your body regularly, take care of your pH, think positively, be grateful and loving, forgive, find and fulfill your life purpose, let the past go and live in the here and now…and you will not have much to complain about in your life. And, as a result, your weight will eventually automatically commute in a healthy and perfect weight that is right for you and your body, just like the four horses.
By the way, this is exactly what a normal, healthy, and wealthy life looks like.
Pretty simple and straight forward.
Cause And Effect
The Difference Between Causes, Symptoms and Effect
The next topic we need to understand so that things will begin to make sense is the difference between causes, symptoms and effects. Unfortunately this is one of the most ignored pieces of the whole weight loss puzzle.
Just like the Law of Attraction is true, there is also another Universal Law that is true for everybody and everything under the Sun. It’s the Law of Cause and Effect. Every effect has a cause, and likewise every cause will inevitably have an effect. Therefore your excess weight must have a cause. And your decisions, thoughts, emotions and actions (or the lack of it) must have an effect.
The adage of every diet is: “You eat too much, that’s why you’re fat. Ergo, you have to eat less and you will lose weight.” And this is the biggest misconception behind dieting and weight loss.
The diet approach sees the eating as the cause of your weight problem. I can tell you with absolute certainty: it hardly ever is. No healthy person can eat too much and too much of the wrong food, if there is not another issue. That’s another reason why diets make no sense at all. They don’t address the real problem.
More often than not the eating too much or craving the wrong food is just a symptom that shows you that there is something wrong either on your physical level (the body), your mind, your emotional level, or your psychological level.
Before we proceed, let me give you a definition of these 3 terms.
The cause is the reason, what is behind a problem, the source, the root and origin. The cause can be on one of the four levels, but most of the time it’s a combination of several causes on several levels.
Symptom
A symptom is a sign, an indicator, a warning signal. Its purpose is to alert you that there is something wrong, so that you can make the necessary changes.
Effect
This, of course, is the result, the visible effect, the reaction, or the outcome. In other words: the printout.
As soon as you understand these differences, you will stop searching for the wrong answers.
Most people mistakenly believe that poor eating habits and a lack of exercise were the causes of their weight issues. Again, the adage, ‘all you have to do is eating less and exercise more’ is utter nonsense. Sometimes an overweight person needs to eat less, but just as often or even more it’s not the eating that is the problem. Sometimes a person even needs to eat more at the beginning in order to lose weight.
Dr. James Carlson, a New York obesity physician told me and my webinar attendees how he and his patients lost weight by increasing the daily caloric intake up to 4000 and more calories per day. This is only one proof that counting calories is nonsense and will not bring you lasting results. Yet, millions of women are now following the false recommendation to reduce the calories and are deeply disappointed each time this approach doesn’t work.
Of course, healthy eating and exercise are very important for good health and weight, as you have heard before, and I’m the last person who would debate that. But…
healthy eating & dieting is not the same
a change in your eating habits plus exercise alone will hardly do a good long term job, if you want to lose excess weight for good
They will only bring short-term results, if you don’t address the real causes at the same time. I’m going to explain why in just a minute. But first let’s look at what causes, symptoms and effects are regarding weight.
Psychological imbalance, disharmony, disequilibrium, discontent, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, fear and anxiety, need for protection; lack of self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth; past trauma, abuse; an imbalance between receiving and giving, poor habit, and so on and so forth. Up to this point I have detected 58 possible causes.
Symptom
Over-eating or poor diet, lack of exercise, lack of some vital nutrients, toxins, parasites, hunger attack, cravings, sleeping problems, hormonal imbalance, an incapability of loving and taking care of yourself, etc. – these are all signs (symptoms) that there is something wrong and out of balance. Some of the symptoms can turn into causes, if unaddressed.
Effect (result)
Excess weight or obesity, sickness, problems, conflicts. Effects, too, can turn into causes if not addressed for a long time.
Symptoms are always trying to teach you something, they are your body’s warning signals. Symptoms show you that there is something wrong on another level. They indicate that you’re dissatisfied, frustrated, fearful, or that you’re subconsciously trying to protect yourself, etc. In fact, weight problems only want to teach you something and provide you with a necessary learning opportunity. When you ignore the symptoms, the warning signals for too long, you will eventually have the physical effect.
It’s your body’s way of communicating with you. The bad news is that as long as you ignore these signals, you can’t get long-term weight loss results. The good news is that eliminating the cause is often enough to turn things around. The symptoms (signals) are not needed anymore.
Most of the time there is a whole complex of several causes active in you, and therefore most of us have to dig a bit and eliminate several causes before we can strip those extra pounds for good.
Once you get that, it doesn’t matter how much you want to lose, as soon as the causes are eliminated, losing weight becomes easy, fast and effortless. The body has no longer a reason to send you signals after signals and to hold on to that extra fat.
On the other hand, if you can’t lose your weight for good, this is a sign that you have not found and eliminated the real cause of weight gain.
If you have read my last blog about causes, you already understand that overeating and craving the wrong food has a cause. Hence, the overeating and binging is not the cause of your weight struggles, but a symptom that there is something wrong on another level. The symptom cravings alone can have several possible causes.
So your poor eating and exercise habits are just symptoms that are trying to alert you of a deeper problem (i.e. toxic overload. lack of the right nutrients, parasites, emotional imbalance), and your excess weight is the outcome.
When you follow a diet, take diet pills, get a liposuction, or even worse, a lap band done, you’re simply trying to cut off the symptom. You can put on layers of make-up on an ugly face, but the next morning that person will still wake up with the same old, ugly face. Likewise, masking the symptoms is never going to bring you long term results. It can’t. Besides, by doing these things you’re damaging your health and deliberately destroying your health pillars and setting new and even worse causes for weight gain and other severe health issues.
Did you ever wonder why there are children born with terrible deformations and disabilities? Well, this can be the karmic consequence of plastic surgery or terrible body neglect, for example. We can’t pretend to know it better than our Creator without having to suffer the consequences. In many cases – especially in the very stubborn ones – the cause of severe weight issues can be karmic.
Unfortunately no surgery, no pill, no diet changes a bit in your real causes of your weight problems and they will remain effective, causing your body to gain the lost weight back soonest possible. So you are not only still having that extra weight again, but you’re also a lot unhealthier and have added several more health problems simply by trying to go the short route. And this will go on until you’ll understand what the body really wants to tell you and make some significant changes.
It can happen that a dieter solves her inner causes during a diet subconsciously and thus loses her weight without gaining it back. But this rarely happens. Most likely such a person has already done a lot of inner transformational work before starting the diet so that she doesn’t need her excess weight as a “growth teacher” anymore, like it happened for me.
Unfortunately these people often mistakenly believe that it was the diet that helped them lose their weight, but it was their inner work, something they suddenly got and solved on a conscious or subconscious level.
And, of course this also happens when a participant understands the correlation between her individual causes and her excess weight and solves the problem or problems on that inner level. Then you will not only see fast results, but also lasting results.
I remember one of my former participants who attended a weekend workshop of mine. That workshop was all she needed to understand the real issue behind her weight struggle. After that weekend workshop she moved out of the house of her sister where she had been raped by her brother-in-law, worked on her inner self-protection and lost weight without dieting. That one weekend course was enough for her to understand and solve the real cause.
The good news is that eliminating the cause is often enough to turn things around. The symptoms (signals) are not needed anymore and you can begin to lose weight almost effortlessly. This is exactly how I lost 65 pounds without even realizing.
One day I was standing in a store for clothes because I needed a new pair of jeans. I was totally shocked when I realized that my original clothing size didn’t fit anymore. It was too large. So I tried a smaller size…and it was too large as well.
Can you image the dumb face I had when I realized that even two sizes smaller didn’t fit anymore? Then I tried another size smaller and I was still loose. Then I tried a size I couldn’t ware since I was 15, and it fit.
First I thought that the clothing company had changed the numbering system. Now most people would be happy, but I simply didn’t understand and was puzzled at best. I didn’t understand because I had not realized up to that moment that I had lost weight, because for many years I only wore clothes that had those rubber bands that are flexible enough for weight fluctuation in any direction. Besides, I didn’t follow a diet or changed my exercise regimen, and since I didn’t weighed I did not realize that I had lost weight. In my inner perception of myself I was still fat. That’s why my dumb face. I simply didn’t understand what had happened.
It took me several years of studying behavioral psychology to understand why I had lost that weight without changing anything about my diet or exercise regimen. What I did was working with a psychologist on my inner issues and my self-love at that time, when I had to go through a divorce. That’s why I simply didn’t realize that I had lost so much weight. I never thought that working on my inner issues and on loving myself would help me lose weight. But fact is that I lost 65 pounds that way in the easiest and most effortless way you can imagine.
Most people make that process unnecessarily hard. They fight the symptoms – their real friends – without eliminating the actual causes, thus forcing the body to gain the weight back until the real problem will be resolved. Most people never get that, that’s why obesity is still on the rise despite of the thousands of diets and fitness programs.
It could be so simple. Instead of listening to their inner teacher they go out and get a gastric surgery, causing a new and additional problem for them and early death without solving their weight issues. The sad thing is that most people who get a gastric surgery done will gain their lost weight back after a while. And it could be much cheaper, simpler and easier…and much less painful.
Of course it seems easier to solve the problem on the physical level. But that seldom works. And if it does work, then only on the short term.
You can run away from your real problems for the rest of your life and suffer from your excess weight and the health problems this causes. But this will not get you slim in a healthy and lasting way.
Or….you can accept the obvious and transform the inner problems what is the real and only short cut and much less painful than yo-yo dieting.
So, tell me, isn’t that much easier, faster and simpler than going from diet to diet for years just to gain that lost weight back after a while?
Symptoms speak a very clear language. Once you understand that ‘language’ of your body, you will know exactly what to do or what to give to your body. I’m going to explain that in just a second. Let me use an analogy.
Most likely you have a driver’s license. Imagine that the oil lamp in your car goes on while you’re driving. This is a signal, or a symptom, if you like. It tells you that there is something wrong with your car. In most countries the burning of the oil lamp is a sign that there is no more oil in the car, what is a sign of severe danger for the engine. The burning of that oil lamp means, that you have to stop your car immediately and fill in some oil, otherwise the engine will break down.
So what do you do in such a situation?
You have three possibilities.
One is to ignore the signal and continue driving. The consequences are going to be very expensive and your car will need a new engine.
A second possibility is to smash the light bulb so that the light will go off, and the result will be the same: you’ll need a new engine or a new car.
The third alternative is to stop the car, fill in some oil and the lamp will go off. You have eliminated the cause and the symptom, the signal will stop automatically. No harm done.
In example one you simply ignore the problem and go on. Translated to your body you would completely ignore a pain, thirst, sleeping problems, or cravings.
Regarding the second example, this is exactly what you do when you take medication, follow a diet, or get a gastric surgery or liposuction done. You literally silence the symptom, the alarm signal, your real friend. The symptom (alarm light) may be gone for a while, but the real cause still remains. And as long as the causes remain, the problem will frequently pop up and come back over and over like a boomerang. You literally force the problem to pop up again and again, until the condition will be chronic or so severe that your body can’t survive any longer. This is the stage of all those frequent dieters who can’t lose any weight anymore no matter what they try, who have muscle pain, brain fog, fatigue and other alarming conditions. That’s a severe situation, and the sooner you’ll take care of the better. The longer you either ignore or fight the symptom, the louder the alarm signal will get.
The only way to solve a problem for good is by eliminating the cause. Once you fill in oil, there is simply no more reason for the oil lamp to burn, and it stops burning. Likewise there is no more reason for your body to hold on to some excess fat once you have eliminated the underlying cause. Your body knows that you got the message and can now stop the nagging.
Causescan be physical (such as acidity, toxic overload, hormonal imbalance, deprivation, etc.), it can be a certain emotional pattern, a particular thinking pattern or some subconscious issues or past trauma. How is a diet (any diet) supposed to do that job!?
Silencing the symptom does not solve the issue at all. That would be putting your head into the sand.
The sad fact is that most of us do to their body what they would never do to their car.
Why?
A car has a shorter lifespan than a person and you have to face the consequences much sooner. You know that you can’t afford buying a new car within the next 12 months. When it comes to your body we tend to think that we have enough time to fix and reverse the problem later. For some reason we tend to believe that we can get away with poor habits and an unhealthy lifestyle for until we’ll be retired. We tend to go the path of least resistance. We want to have the fun now and take care of our health later, forgetting that there is no fun whatsoever in being ill and overweight.
Many then calm their conscience and tell themselves that they eventually have to die of something anyway. They delude themselves into believing that their health is out of their hands and that it’s all up to their genetics – or worse, up to God. That is blasphemy. When we do stupid things and don’t take care of our health, we can’t blame God for the results. But, oh boy, do these people complain when they develop a chronic illness. They tell everybody who is willing to listen, how much their body aches.
We have been given free choice. We choose every second of our lives. We may be able to get away with poor habits for a while, but there will come the day when the bill will come due…for sure. The price for such a behavior has always to be paid by the individual herself. Therefore we shouldn’t complain. We had the choice in the past and, apparently, we have made the wrong choices.
Each choice brings consequences. Every cause has an effect and every effect has a cause. If we don’t like the consequences – for instance the consequence of being overweight – we have to choose and cause differently NOW. It’s that simple, really. We can change things at any time, as soon as we decide to take responsibility for our health.
When the oil lamp goes on in your car, then this is a sign that there is no more oil in the tank. So you know exactly that you have to instantly stop the car and fill in oil, because you know what the consequences would be.
When you receive an invoice, you do your very best to pay it within the 10 or 30 days period allowed for payment. You know exactly that if you don’t pay your bill in time, you will soon be charged with a reminder fee and interest. And if you still ignore it and don’t pay, you will face bankruptcy and you will lose your house, and all that for not paying a lousy bill. So, in order to prevent yourself from bigger problems, you pay your bills in time.
It’s exactly the same with the language of our body. Once you understand that principle, it will be easier for you to eliminate the causes instead of treating or silencing the symptoms.
We just have to take the time factor into consideration. Changes on the mental, emotional and psychological level can be made quite quickly, but we have to understand that the body needs time to adjust to those changes. So many overweight women have disturbed that lasting slimming process because they were impatient and stupidly went on another diet.
Now let’s talk about possible causeson all four lower levels.
Cause And Effect
Causes
Up to this writing I have found 56 causes of weight gain. This is not the place to talk about all of them. For that I shared the list with my subscribers lately.
In this article I want to share some of the most common ones to give you an idea. Some possible causes on the physical level, the first pillar:
Sign of accumulated acid
First of all Dieting/diets – yep, diets lead to weight gain for sure
Acidity
Toxins
Parasites
hormonal imbalance
Sleeping problems
Insulin resistance
On the emotional level it can be things like:
self-rejection
Self-rejection
Emotional imbalance
Lack of love, fear of being loved or not being loved
Inner void/feeling empty
Insufficient boundaries – not being able to say “no”
Too strong boundaries (fear of being close)
Unsatisfied hunger for life
Frustration
Imbalance in giving and receiving
Boredom
Not feeling valued
Living with toxic and negative people
Negative/distorted self-image
need of protection
The 3rd pillar is your mental level. On the mental level, possible causes can be:
Regular weighing
Negative thinking
Negative self-talk
False tips and misinformation
Misconceptions (i.e. it runs in the family, no matter what I do I just can’t get rid of those extra pounds, etc.)
Your mindset
And, on the psychological and spiritual level, it can be things like:
Violence
Violence
Trauma
Abuse
Unwillingness to forgive
karma
Of course, not every woman has all of the causes. However, every woman has several causes on several levels. Which ones are effective in your body? Your symptoms are your clues.
Now, understanding that there can be so many possible causes and culprits standing in your way to lasting weight loss, you may begin to understand why reducing a weight loss strategy to just two tactics – diet and exercise – is utter nonsense and CAN NOT work…EVER. It’s just a big waste of time. Of course, we need to lead a healthy lifestyle to remain healthy, but weight loss diets are far from being healthy. Moderate exercising should always be part of a sensible weight loss strategy – but please so not go about it the way they do it in The Biggest Loser. This is very dangerous.
You can’t remedy a traumatic situation that forced a subconscious mind to use fat for protection to let go of that protective shield through a diet, for example.
You can’t solve the problem with a diet when one of the causes is acidity, because every diet literally floods the body with acids what forces it to gain the lost fat back ASAP. Dieting and exercise make matters worse when your body is heavily over-acidic.
How on earth could a diet help, if you lack some vital nutrients?
You can’t hope to lose weight through a diet if your hormones or your brain chemistry are out of balance. That would only make the problem worse and would be a very ridiculous attempt.
When an imbalanced metabolism is your culprit, then diets are making matters way worse.
How can a diet change your mindset or your emotional patterns? It can’t. Exercise can change it to a certain extent, yet it would still not be enough.
Your subconscious mind will always sabotage your attempt to lose weight unless the cause has been taken care of. Then you can lose weight even without a diet. This is your chance to change your weight.
The necessary mindset shift – Tactics vs. Strategy
What is needed first and foremost is a mindset shift – not another diet.
The first step is to understand the difference between tactics and strategies. Tactics are short-term activities with the purpose to achieve some short-term results.
Strategies, on the other hand are combinations of several tactics that are well designed to bring the desired long-term results.
Diets are tactics and have short-term effects; they don’t lead to sustainable weight loss because they don’t address the real problem. A healthy way of eating is different from a diet and should certainly be part of an overall weight loss strategy that is designed to bring you lasting results. Please learn to distinguish between a diet and healthy eating. There is no such thing as a “healthy weight loss diet”. Either you eat healthy or you follow a diet.
Without a good overall weight loss strategy even eating healthily alone is not enough to get you slim for good. What you do instead is checking the possible causes and creating an integrated strategy for your weight loss that addresses your individual causes. In other words, you combine several well chosen tactics and create a strategy, your personal weight loss program, if you wish.
To illustrate the difference between tactics and a strategy: tactics may win a battle or two, but strategies win the war.
By creating a strategy you simply connect the dots.
Think Outside of the Box – Connecting the Dots
The necessary mindset shift is to start thinking outside of the Diet Box!
Look at yourself as a whole being. Therefore a holistic strategy takes care of body, mind, emotions and the spirit.
Whatever you do on the physical level will make you feel better and therefore also influences your emotional level. Just remember how you feel after a healthy meal with living food or after a 1-hour walk.
On the other hand what you do on the emotional level will also make your body feel better. Just think about a moment when you were very happy. You didn’t feel any pain and didn’t bother about your weight. You were just being happy and you felt good in your body.
When your emotions are high, you will find it hard to think negatively, therefore working on your emotional levels has also an impact on your mental level.
On the other hand, your thoughts directly influence your emotions within seconds. One moment you can feel happy and you could hug the whole world. Then one thought creeps into your mind and you suddenly begin to feel miserable. Of course the same is true when you have positive thoughts. When you feel bad and decide to think about what you can be grateful for, you instantly begin to feel better emotionally as well.
The 4th level is the unconscious mind or the level of your memories. When you have positive thoughts, this will also create new, positive memories.
And when you think about positive and happy experiences, your thoughts will be happy ones as well.
Going down memory lane has, of course, also an impact on your body. Depending on whether the memory is a good or a negative one, you will either feel well or not so good.
Likewise good physical experiences also create new, positive memories.
As you can see it’s absolutely impossible to only treat one level alone as they are strongly inter-connected with each other. You can turn this all around and start with negative memories. These will automatically bring negative thoughts, the negative thoughts will lead to negative (sad or angry) emotions and the negative emotions will make you feel bad physically, for instance give you a headache or elevated heart rate. In such moments many women tend to reach for comfort food.
You may now begin to understand why I continue saying that you need a weight loss strategy and not a tactic or two.
When you start working on the physical level you automatically also change – at least for a moment – the emotional level, the mental level and the psychological level (by creating new experiences and memories). Changes from the lower levels up have a smaller and shorter impact than the changes we make from the higher to the lower levels. And when I speak about “high” and “low”, I’m referring to the vibrational rate of each of these four levels.
Molecules vibrate higher than cells, atoms vibrate higher than molecules, and electrons vibrate higher than atoms. This is just plain physics. The psychological/memory level vibrates the highest and the body vibrates the lowest, that’s why it takes a while to see physical results.
When you eliminate the causes on the mental level you improve your physical level, your emotional level, and your psychological level.
When you transform the causes on your emotional level, you automatically help your body, your mental level and your psychological level.
And when you start eliminating all the problems on the physical level, you improve your mental, emotional and psychological levels as well.
Can you see now how working on all four levels is by far THE fastest way of losing extra weight?
Build a strong, solid foundation by designing a sensible weight loss strategy.
4 Pillars of sustainable weight loss
With the article Causes of Weight Gain and this one we have come to full circle now.
I have the hope that you begin to understand now the necessity to have a well-balanced weight loss strategy that goes beyond eating healthy and exercising. And it’s much easier than you may think and years faster than going from one diet to the next.
In the past you have gone from one diet or program to the next, each time abandoning what you have previously done. And I bet all this together has cost you way over $1,000. In fact, an overweight person spends about $50,000 in the average during her lifetime just to lose that excess weight, not to speak about the higher costs for XL clothes and the loss of money many have to suffer because they don’t get the higher paid jobs due to their extra weight.
So don’t you think it’s time now to change that and reduce the extra costs for XL clothes, for special ‘lite’ food, for supplements, books and programs that don’t work? Now you can change your strategy. Instead of doing one tactic after another, you add a few of them to one single strategy and follow that strategy until you will have achieved your weight goal.
Keep in mind that tactics may win a battle or two, but it’s the strategy that wins the war. Now you want to win the whole game, not just a little bit here and there. If you are determined to make 2016 the last year you will ever have to worry about your weight, then this is your chance. And don’t wait because, each time you start a new diet or program your motivation continuously decreases.
Frankly, I couldn’t care less about calories. I never counted a single calorie in my entire life. I rather use that time for cooking healthy meals.
Calories don’t say anything about the quality of the food. And health and weight loss is MUCH more about quality than about quantity. By eating the right quality food you will find quantity hardly to be an issue.
Before I’ll come to some healthy foods that can support your weight loss process, I have to remind you of the nonsense of the low-fat theory. Low-fat food has only one purpose: to make the purse of the food industry fatter. Because the more low-fat you eat, the more food you need to eat.
Fat has one very important function: it acts like a natural appetite suppressant. With natural, healthy fats you are full much faster and you automatically eat less.
So now that we have the low-fat myth out of or way, let’s look at some really healthy foods that can support your weight loss process.
Nuts and seeds are high in proteins what is crucial for your fat-burning process. Plus they contain a lot of natural fat what makes you feel full faster. Nuts and seeds make great snacks between the meals.
Avocados are very healthy and can also make you feel more full. Women’s Health magazine said, “The fiber, potassium, and healthy fats in the green stuff may curb your cravings so that you skip afternoon trips to the vending machine.”
A real miracle food for weight loss are blueberries. They are best known for their anti-aging effects and are very figure-friendly at the same time.
Women’s Health magazine also lists dark chocolate as figure-friendly and states that eating chocolate is associated with lower levels of abdominal fat. Frankly, I don’t know if this is true. We all have seen it so often in the past that one year a particular food was a strict no-go and only a few years later it was promoted as a real fat burner. As an informed reader of my newsletters you know that statistics can be manipulated…a method often used when sales go back drastically. Then suddenly that food becomes “healthy”. Like I said, I can’t tell if this is true about chocolate or not. Just keep in mind that chocolate contains sugar and sugar is a real toxin for everybody, not just for weight-struggling people. On the other hand I’m not a friend of strict “Eat-this-don’t-eat-that” diets either. Besides, I can’t see why cocoa shouldn’t be healthy. So I leave that decision in your hands. However, if you decide to have some chocolate from time to time, at least eat it slowly and enjoy every bit of it. The worst you could do for your weight is to cobble it down with a feeling of guilt. If you absolutely can’t be without chocolate and are willing to do without sugar, get dark xylitol chocolate.
How many years have you been told not to eat egg-yolk? Well, thank goodness I never fell for that one. Because whole eggs are loaded with appetite-curbing proteins, what makes them a great breakfast food. The cholesterol lie has been debunked for a long time now.
Mmmmm, salmon! One of my favorite source of proteins. It’s full of monosaturated fatty acids which increase metabolism to burn fat faster. If you want to lose weight effectively, you need a lot of natural Omega3.
Lots of leafy green vegetables (such as spinach, collards, Swiss chard, kale, salad greens, etc.). You can’t overeat on those and nicely fill your stomach without having to worry about the calories. Or you can use them for your green juices. These produce should grow in everybody’s backyard. I even grow them on my balcony and window sills.
Beans – especially black beans – contain considerable amounts of protein what makes it an ideal protein source for vegetarians. For sustainable weight loss we need large amounts of proteins. Please, just never eat canned beans. Beans are so cheap to buy and so easy to cook.
These are all produce (minus the dark chocolate) you could pretty much live from without lacking any vital nutrients. If you’re serious about eating healthy and losing weight in a healthy way, these could be your staples that can cover at least 80% of your body’s nutritional needs. And at the same time you will never have to worry about calories or amounts.
If you want to do a real great job, go organic with these foods. Food additives are some big contributors to weight gain. If you don’t let them get into your body, you will never have to worry about getting them out of your body. Be smart and save yourself a lot of time, money, and extra pounds by going organic.
For more valuable tips on how to lose weight AND keep it off, please check out this page.
Whatever you change in your body – of course, it got to be the right things – can lead to fast weight loss. But these results seldom last.
But what brings the lasting results?
The best, fastest, easiest, and surest way to get the lasting weight loss results you desire is by eliminating the psychological, inner causes.
But where to begin?
How do you know what your individual psychological causes are?
I admit that’s the biggest part and that’s exactly the point why losing weight for good hasn’t been easy for you.
However, the good news is that most weight-struggling women have very similar inner causes. There is a common pattern. One of the very common ones is a hunger for life. This is very likely especially for those women a problem who are hungry a lot.
A hunger for life is very much an issue of many overweight people, especially women. Somehow they have fallen short on experiences in life they wish they could have made. The reason why this can be found more often in women than in men can be found in the fact that despite of the female emancipation for women the family comes first. They often have children, a husband, and a job what keeps them busy almost 24/7. There isn’t much time for self-growth and self-improvement.
If you belong to that group of women you may often feel kind of a hunger without knowing exactly what you’re hungry for or what you’re craving. And instead of feeding the hunger for life you may simply feed your stomach with more food than your stomach can digest.
I hear so often that life is about having fun. That’s not true. Nobody becomes happy simply by having fun all the time.
What life is about is learning and making lots of different experiences. And, yes, some experiences can be really fun, yet we shouldn’t do them for the sole purpose of having fun, but for the purpose of becoming richer in experiences. It’s not about having things. It’s about living life to the fullest with all its facets. It’s about living a balanced life.
If a hunger for life is one of the inner issues for you, something within you may resonate while you’re reading this…either in a positive or a negative way. If the reaction is rather negative, then you can be pretty sure that you’re suppressing your ‘hunger’. You ignore it…you don’t want to see and feed it. There must be a reason why you don’t allow yourself to be aware of your particular hunger for life. Maybe this was something that was ‘forbidden’ as a child, or maybe you’re so caught up in your daily chores that you think there was no time for you.
Whether your resonance is positive or negative, you can do something against and feed your hunger without overeating.
In a first step, ask yourself if there is anything in your life you wish you had done or experienced (i.e. going to college, sky diving, learning to dance, having a child (or more children), meeting with a particular person, to love more, etc.)? Is there something in life that you’re hungering for?
By the way, this isn’t about making a bucket list – it’s the opposite. It’s a list of things that make you feel more alive and more yourself. It’s a list of things that can satiate your hunger for life while you’re still young enough to enjoy it. This list is more about what you’re longing for emotionally or mentally.
Allow yourself to dream.
Allow yourself to be honest about your deepest desires.
Then you rate your dreams between one and ten, number one being least important and number ten being so important that you couldn’t forgive yourself if you didn’t at least try.
The next step is to search for a solution so that you can do the one thing on your list with the highest rate. If you can’t do it now, then plan it and also plan how you want to go about that goal. Visualize yourself having realized that goal and how you will feel that moment once you’ll have achieved or done that.
Feed your hunger for life now, and you will reduce your hunger for food.
If you need assistance for that process, check out this page. This is part of the transformational work we do in my 30-day challenge and the weekly group coaching sessions.
There are a quickly growing number of weight-struggling women who realized that diets are not the solution for maintainable weight loss and who are now searching for healthy alternatives. This is quite a process and it’s a necessary first step to healthy and sustainable weight loss success.
The second step is very often not so easy yet even more critical for your slimming progress. That step is to completely turn away from the diet mentality.
The third step is developing a deep desire of slimming in a natural and healthy way.
So let’s assume that you have already gone through that process of fully understanding why diets are not the solution, of completely letting go of the diet mentality, and of developing a deep desire to find healthy alternatives.
If that is you, you are ready to learn healthy ways that really work long term.
So here are 15 healthy and very powerful alternatives to the dieting approach:
Regular cleansing & detoxification – One of the main reasons why your body is forced to create excess fat are toxins. As soon as you begin to cleanse your body strategically, your body can begin to reduce that excess fat. But please be aware that doing it once will not do the job. You have to cleanse one organ after the other in a strategic manner and repeat that cycle until your body has let go of the excess fat.
pH balancing – Just like the body needs to create fat in order to store toxins and other detrimental substances away from vital organs, it deals the same way with acid. An overweight body is always over-acidic. Regular and strategic alkalizing is therefore vitally important.
Juicing – This is a great method to alkalize your body. When you choose that step you have to make your own daily juices fresh, you need organic produce and 80% of the produce should be green-leavy vegetables. However, there are two rules regarding juicing for weight loss. Number 1: don’t use it exclusively, only in combination with other methods. Number 2: if you’re over 30 years old or want to lose more than 10 pounds, do not juice fast. Combine the juicing with healthy eating, drinking a lot of water, and doing some exercise.
Exercise – Exercise alone can let you go a long way, but not all the way down to your ideal weight. It not only burns fat and improves the metabolism, it also shapes the body, if you do it right. For weight loss you need both, aerobic exercise and muscle training.
Eliminate the psychological causes – With all the actions you take on the physical level you can lose a lot of weight, but if you want to keep it off, you also need to eliminate the inner causes.
Increase your water intake – Water is very important for your healthy weight loss. Your body needs water to get rid of waste, toxins, and acid. Plus another bonus of water is that it fills your stomach and you need less food. Very often, when we feel hungry we’re really just thirsty anyway.
Zero sugar – If you cook and bake yourself, then this is an easy one for you. Simply replace sugar with xylitol in the exact same amount and you can enjoy your home-made desserts free of remorse.
Eat gluten free – This one is harder for many women because gluten have become such a major part of our eating habits. For decades we have been told that we need a lot of carbohydrates to stay healthy. Now we know that this was false information. The mean thing is that our body has become so used to starchy carbohydrates that we often act like addicts when it comes to reducing or eliminating gluten. Yet for many of us gluten is a real culprit and eliminating gluten from your diet may be a necessity to lose your extra weight for good. If you want to be sure whether or not gluten is a problem for your body, you can get a blood test done.
Sleep improvement – One of the ‘musts’ for sustainable weight loss is the quality and the quantity of your sleep. In order to stay healthy and lose any excess fat you need seven to nine hours quality sleep per night.
Leading an overall healthy and well-balanced lifestyle – This should be a no-brainer. Instead of dieting it’s much more important to lead a healthy lifestyle in any regard. This includes healthy eating. When it comes to weight, balance is key.
Healthy eating – Instead of dieting learn to imply a healthy way of eating. This includes cooking from scratch (no or very little boxed, canned, bottled, pre-cooked, or packaged food). 70% of your meals should be row vegetables.
Change of focus and mindset – You know the adage that what you focus on you increase. It’s the same with your weight. When you focus on your extra weight, this is what you’ll get more of. Develop a positive mindset regarding food, your weight, and your body.
Visualization – This is a very powerful tool. Visualize yourself being slim, healthy , happy , and wearing the clothes you can once you’ll have reached your ideal weight.
Supplementation – If you have a full-time job and a very busy lifestyle you may want to add some meal-replacement supplements from time to time. But you should only replace one meal per day maximum. And, please keep in mind that once you’ll have lost your extra weight you would have to continue using the meal replacements in order to remain slim. Therefore I only recommend this step for the busiest women. Cooking from scratch doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to cook for hours. I’m a busy entrepreneur with 12 to 15 hour workdays. I cook all my meals from scratch and most of the time it doesn’t take me more than 15 minutes to cook a meal. Or if you have to eat out, you could eat a large plate with a mixed row-food salad. That doesn’t require more time than eating an unhealthy meal.
A combination of all of that – One tactic alone will hardly do a good long-term job. Therefore I recommend combining several of these steps and create your personal healthy weight loss strategy. Then follow through with that no matter what. Follow through with that strategy for at least a year.
And here is a very powerful bonus tip. Change your habits. It’s the habits that make you gain your old weight back. For lasting weight loss you will have to make some lasting changes in your habits. There is no way around.
If you need more in-depth instructions for each of these steps and/or encouragement from a group, you are welcome to join my 30-Day Triple Power Weight Loss Challenge.
Please post your comment or any questions you may have.
You hear about a great success story with awesome before and after pictures. The testimonials are simply stunning and your inner desire to look as great as all those women on the pictures look gives you such a strong motivation to achieve the same goal and look just as great if not greater.
You have a clear vision of yourself how you want to look like as a slim person and you’re totally fired up to take action.
And then you get stuck and you have no idea why you can’t move forward although your motivation is so strong. And that’s the moment when even the strongest and most disciplined person is likely to give up…unless she changes the direction.
There are three most common culprits that can completely sabotage even the strongest determination and willpower.
The wrong method/diet for your type
A lack of information on the HOW
Some of your old, stubborn, poor habits that tend to come back to you like a boomerang
Most people mistakenly believe that they knew exactly what to do: eat less and exercise more. But even if that was true, what should they eat or not eat? So many women follow a diet not realizing that the diet they’re following is exactly the wrong one for their type. And what exercise is the best for them? Not every kind of exercise and sport is for everyone.
Although they know exactly what they want, most people get stuck right there permanently. They have absolutely no idea how to get from being overweight to slim even though they thought they knew. Yet they don’t realize that they’re counting on the wrong strategy.
And then there are the few people who know what to do – eat healthy according to their type, exercise the right way, focus on their goal instead of the current weight, eliminate some of the causes that led to weight gain in the first place. Yet some of them still fail. They don’t succeed because they unconsciously sabotage their progress. They don’t realize what they’re doing and that they’re literally standing in their own way. Some take on too little…others take on too much and quickly get exhausted. Both groups end up making zero progress.
The biggest reason for failure and giving up are old, poor habits. How often did you decide to give up on a particular habit, you were totally motivated and so sure that this time you will succeed, and then come afternoon and you were right back in your old habit?
The result I can see most of the time is that women then blame themselves, call themselves losers with no willpower and discipline whatsoever, and they give up their plans…at least for now…until they find another diet. Because the next time they’ll see a sales letter or video with all those great testimonials and before and after pictures, they will be fired up again and start all over, ending with the same frustration a few days or weeks later.
One thing is certain: we can never make any changes without first changing our habits. And deep within we all know that we can’t solve a problem coming from the same situation and mindset that originally caused the problem. And old, poor habits can be some of the toughest things to overcome. If your plans haven’t worked so far with your current particular lifestyle and your particular issues, it will simply not work…at least not long-term. What needs to be changed is the foundation.
This is where a group of like-minded people can help. Or you may want to consider working with a coach who is experienced in recognizing how you sabotage your weight loss success without realizing.
Either way, you know exactly what action steps to take and how to overcome your hurdles. That way keeping your commitments becomes easier and step by step you begin to see your fat melting away and your dream weight coming closer. It’s the support system and the sounding board others can be for you that has the best chance to get you to the point you want to be.
With either, a group or a coach staying patient will be easier because you see and feel regular progress. And patience is crucial for long-term weight loss success.
Take action now. First become aware of your current stumbling blocks and poor habits, and then decide whether you need a group of supportive people or a coach – or maybe even a combination of both. If you’re not sure what you particularly need, you can send me an email to info@sheslimfast and we can discuss your individual situation.
May you succeed this time and make 2021 the last you ever had to struggle with your weight!
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Is your health and weight loss goal worth five to fifteen minutes of your time every day?
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“You could eat the best foods every day, but if you don’t exercise, you are not going to be healthy. Or you could eat the best food, and you could exercise an hour a day, but if your thoughts are always negative, if you are always harboring thoughts of doubt, worry, anger, guilt, jealousy, helplessness and hopelessness, there is no way you’re ever going to be vibrantly healthy.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
You may moan about the fact that losing weight for good is a little bit more complex than just dieting. But as soon as you realize how much more effective a weight loss strategy is than dieting, you will begin to love it. It’s not complicated and – again – it can happen by taking baby steps and simple changes. Besides, what is fast about yo-yoing? 
Our current life is the result of the countless choices we have made in the past regarding the foods we ate, the thoughts we thought, whether or not we moved, etc. And if you don’t like how your life is heading or where it is right now, you’ve got to make some different choices now. It’s really that easy. You can do it. 
A few years ago, I did an interview with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial.
Dr. Susan clearly says that diets don’t work, and she recommends, “You want to throw away any diet book you might have that tells you that you can lose weight and keep it off without moving a muscle.”
To have a nicely formed body, we need aerobic exercise like walking, cross-country skiing, hiking, jogging to burn fat out of the muscles. And then we need to do some weight training to build up muscles which, in turn, increases the metabolism.
If you want to lose weight, a minimum of half an hour of aerobic exercise every day is the minimum. Then make it a commitment to add some muscle training three times a week for 30 minutes consistently for the next six months. Within those six months, your body will add ten extra pounds of lean muscle tissue, and these ten pounds of muscle tissue will burn 500 more calories a day. These muscles will help you lose weight faster.
You may believe that your weight determines your attitude and that this was normal. But it’s actually the other way around. The mind always influences the body. Therefore, before taking care of our weight, we have to take care of our mindset. It begins with your attitude!
Commitment to a weight loss program – of course, it has to be one that has the chance to bring you lasting results and no diet can ever do that for you – can lend stability to your everyday life. Because, with each daily action, you reaffirm your commitment, and that brings a feeling of empowerment and increased self-esteem. Now, instantly, your energy changes and people around you can sense that as well.
The truth is, my friend, that you are never going to get to your desired achievement in your life until you have some self-discipline. And by that, Dr. Susan recommends to “…following through on what you say you are going to do.”
We deserve to feel powerful and under control, we deserve the best food, and we deserve to be slim and healthy.
Many women feel like the victim of a cruel fate, of poor genes, or habits they can’t control. Such an attitude makes it very hard to be successful with any maintainable weight loss method.
When you look at all the commercials on TV and the advertisements in magazines and newspapers, the advertisers are trying to tell you that they have a miracle pill, powder or potion, and we’ve come to believe that things outside ourselves are the keys to health and well-being. And whatever you are suffering from, be it headache, constipation, sleepless nights, diarrhea, indigestion, skin rashes, high blood pressure, weight gain–you fill in the blank-you then first try to self-medicate before going to the doctor. Thus, we have become a self-medicating society or world because we don’t really understand how our body is trying to communicate with us, trying to give us the correct answers for a healthy, slim, long, and happy life. And because we are impatient and want instant relief without taking care of the body’s needs first, we make matters worse by going the wrong route. 
“So each of us needs to be reminded that we are magnificently equipped to meet life’s problems when supplied with the simple and easily obtainable requisites of health,” Dr. Susan recommends. So we’ve got to realize that our human body is remarkable and a wonderful feedback machine. 
