So many overweight women are struggling with their weight…unnecessarily hard and long because they have the wrong mindset regarding weight loss. They don’t take the time factor into consideration.
In our mind we can lose weight effortlessly and almost instantly. But the body needs more time to achieve such a goal.
I know there are peers of mine out there who are brainwashing you with the idea that you can lose weight quickly. They show you images of other people who lost weight and tell you that they lost x amount of weight in x amount of time. Those numbers then stick in your head as a “fact”. They are in your brain and you begin to believe – consciously or subconsciously – that you can lose the exact same weight in exact the same time. To your brain, such a before/after picture is PROOF that the method works. And that’s exactly the big mistake and a lie either these “experts” are telling you or a lie you are telling yourself out of wishful thinking.
But that never happens.
People then often reach to drastic tactics to get the promised quick results such as diet pills, liposuction and the very dangerous gastric surgeries and thus make matters worse. All these are quick fixes but they don’t solve the real problem.
3 Reasons Why You Should Learn to Set Realistic Goals
First of all, each person’s body is differently with different needs and problems. Although we all have basically the same kind of body, we are different in many ways. Some bodies need more time for digestion, others have a slow metabolism, still others have some hormonal challenges, some have different enzymes for digestion, others need more time to burn fat during exercising…and so on.
That’s why it’s very dangerous to hear about people who have lost 10 pounds in 10 days, for example. These numbers get into your brain and subconscious mind and will stick there. You then automatically begin to compare yourself with those people whose success story you have read or heard. This then becomes your unconscious “ceiling”. You simply can’t think beyond those numbers anymore and you can’t push through that glass ceiling anymore. It’s set in your system like a thermostat of your heating system.
Secondly, it took time for your body to accumulate that fat…most of the time we are talking about years and decades of fat accumulation. The longer you are carrying around some extra weight, the harder it will be for your body to reverse it and the more time it will require. The body needed time to create that fat and it will need time to burn it. The results you can get through weight loss diets are never realistic. You will lose a lot of water and maybe even some fat, but if you don’t change the cause, both that water and fat will come back, often quicker than you have lost it.
Thirdly, your current weight is another number that sticks to your subconscious mind and whenever you go on a diet, your subconscious mind will do everything to get back to that number. It’s like with your air conditioner. When you set it to a certain degree, the system will constantly adjust the temperature. When it gets warmer than you chose, the system will cool down; when the room gets colder, the system will heat up. It’s the same with your weight because your body doesn’t understand that you want to get rid of that extra weight and it will always bounce back unless you eliminate the real causes.
For all these reasons it’s very important that you set realistic goals. Before we come to that, I want to briefly share with you what happens on your psychological level when you don’t get these promised quick results.
The Consequences of Setting Unrealistic Goals
At the beginning you have big hopes and you’re all hyped up. Then, when you gain the weight back or don’t lose as much as you had been promised, you lose hope. Losing hope is a very dangerous thing and quickly leads to depression what creates another downward spiral.
Then, of course, you blame yourself or beat yourself up. After all, those other women accomplished their goals and the “expert” promised that you can achieve the same. Ergo, it must be your fault. And you can back up that logic with the fact that there were situations when you didn’t stick a 100% to the program. Again, ergo it must be your fault.
After a while, you then begin to lose faith in yourself. You just don’t seem to be able to achieve a goal…you don’t trust yourself anymore. So since you can’t achieve that one simple weight loss goal, maybe you’re too stupid to achieve other goals. Right? (I know how harshly women can talk to themselves.) Again, a negative downward spiral begins.
Then kicks in self-pity. Since you “failed” in your understanding, then you probably don’t deserve to be slim, healthy and beautiful. You are doomed to stay overweight for the rest of your miserable life. In other words, you have given up.
Before you even think about setting a new weight loss goal, I highly recommend to reverse that process: give up self-pity, gain back faith in yourself (no, you can’t wait until you will finally achieve your weight loss goal, you have to have faith in yourself first), stop self-blame and gain back your hope. There are sustainable solutions. You just have to allow that mindset shift to happen.
As long as you put your hope in diets, the next disappointment is inevitable.
Stop searching on the outside.
80% of your weight loss success is an INSIDE job.
Of course, you can hire a coach for that process and most likely you’ll have to. Yet you still have to go through the process. There is just no short cut. The answers are within you.
Set Realistic Goals
Then set a REALISTIC goal. Choose how much weight you want to lose and then leave it up to your body how much time it will need to accomplish that desired goal. Your body might surprise you and you can lose that weight much faster than you thought. And there is also a 50% chance that your body may need more time than you think. When you choose a time frame within which you want to shed those pounds, disappointment is certain. You then will lose hope, be disappointed and frustrated and your brain will add another failure to your already existing pattern.
Adding a time to your weight loss goal is not realistic because at this point you can’t know what really forced your body to accumulate fat in the first place. It can very well be that the real, underlying cause goes years back or that it is something you never thought about. For example, if the cause is a hormonal imbalance, it can take years to balance that back.
What I recommend to my clients is to ALWAYS give themselves at least one entire year, no matter how little weight they want to lose. Remember, lasting weight loss is to 80% an inside job.
If you are obese, then it would be more realistic to give yourself two or three years. The fat burning process can be much faster than that, but if I understand you correctly, you want to lose your extra weight for GOOD and not just temporarily. In other words, you want to make sure that all aspects that lead to your weight gain in the first place will be removed from your entire system: body, mind and spirit, especially from your subconscious mind.
Therefore, the by leaps and bounds fastest way is by keeping away from the diet approach, by setting realistic goals and by giving yourself enough time.
Just think about. What is fast about losing and gaining and losing and gaining? Many overweight women go on like that for over a decade. That’s neither fast nor quick nor sustainable. That is no weight loss at all, because at the end of the day you haven’t lost anything. You’re just a year older and back to your old size…or even a size bigger.
It is truly my hope that you begin to understand why going for the quick fixes is a shot in your own foot.
Therefore my friend, patience is one of the first attributes you will need for your maintainable weight loss success. We are talking about a long-term goal here. We are not talking about a few weeks or months, we are talking about your healthy LIFE….a maintainable healthy lifestyle you can easily follow through with for the rest of your life without starving and without stress.
Learn to set realistic goals!
It’s crucial for your weight loss success.
*****
Are your health and weight loss goal worth five to fifteen minutes of your time every day?
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Did you know that from your body’s perspective weight gain is a life saving mechanism?
In my last blog post I scratched the surface of the acid-alkaline imbalance and the toxins.
In its wisdom, our body stores acid and toxins away in fat tissue.
Why does it do that?
Because, if toxins and acid would get into the blood stream and the vital organs, we would quickly die. Storing these substances in the fat tissue does the organism the least harm. Of course, the body knows that it begins to look ugly, but this is the lesser of two evils.
Fortunately the body knows exactly what it has to do and it does that without fail….as long as it is mainly healthy. Of course, when the toxic and acidic load gets too much, there comes a point when the body can no longer deal with.
“I think now we are in the experimental time with all of human creation in genetically modified, and irradiated, and sprayed with pesticides, Monsantos injecting into seed round up ready alfa alfa seeds and corn and all of these stuff that have pesticides injected right into it, so you eat the pesticide when you eat the food. And we are in a experimental world right now, we don’t know the nightmares that we are creating.” –Cherie Calbom
Let me repeat that:
We don’t know the nightmares that we are creating for ourselves, our weight, our health, and our longevity.
Thank goodness our body is smart and it follows exactly the rules of nature….without fail…..24/7……365 days a year.
Isn’t that a good reason to be very grateful to our body and to love it deeply?
But you and I know that most overweight women are far from being appreciative toward their bodies.
When you buy a new car, you probably decide to use premium gasoline because the car runs longer with the better quality fuel. You know that if you would use the cheaper regular fuel your car would die sooner and you don’t want to buy a new car earlier than necessary. Besides, repairs would cause even higher costs. You treat it well to prevent it from getting rusty. You get regular oil changes and the breaks tested. You treat it well and clean it well. So you are wise and you do what’s best for your car.
When the oil lamp goes on, you take the car to the garage and get the leaky oil tank fixed. You pump gas before it’s completely down because you don’t want to walk miles to the next gas station. You treat your vehicle wisely and take care well.
But how about your body?
Do you eat organically grown fruits and vegetables? Do you eat clean animal products from grass fed and organically fed animals? Do you eat foods that haven’t been tampered with and genetically modified just for the sake of bigger profits? Do you take your time to lovingly cook a healthy meal or do you just throw a pre-made pizza or an aluminum box with lasagne into the microwave oven?
Are you taking care of your body well? Do you love, pamper it, thank it, shine it?
“And it’s the same way with us, we can say, well this food it’s cheaper or tastes better or whatever and I would just rather do this, but what is happening to our bodies when we do that? They are dying.” –Cherie Calbom
What is very interesting is that we often treat our cell phones, TV sets and cars wiser than we treat our own body.
Why is it that people don’t get that?
The consequences come faster and are costly. When the body aches, you can go to the doctor and get a pain killer or a sleeping pill.
The body is saying, “Hey, wak up, wake up, I’m in stress, I need your help!” It’s constantly trying to communicate with us for our best survival.
But we don’t wake up. We don’t listen. People complain about the pain, about their headaches and sleeping problems. And then they go to the doctor and say, “I need a pill”. They don’t consider that their headache, pain or sleeping problem might be caused by a toxic or acid overload. And by taking pills that are loaded with toxins they make matters even worse.
“Often times we go to the doctor and they give us a pill and the pill has side effects, and then they give another pill to people and then another pill because it creates other side effects and they never get to the root of what caused the problem in the first place. Was the body screaming for help, either saying you are giving me too much of this bad stuff and not enough of what I need to create a healthy body?” –Cherie Calbom
Symptoms like headache, fatigue, sleeping problems, etc. are really all just signals, warning signals sent from our body.
Here too, I like to use the analogy with the car. When suddenly the oil lamp goes on, you have three choices: you can change the oil, you can smash the lamp so that it doesn’t burn anymore or you can ignore it. If you ignore it, the car will break and you will either need a new motor or a new car. You would only do that once and then never again. You can also smash the light bulb so that it doesn’t burn anymore, but that’s only symptom treatment, it doesn’t treat the cause. For every kind of problem you need to solve, you always have to look at the cause. The symptom is nothing but a warning signal that wants to encourage you to look at the cause and to eliminate the causel problem.
When you are faced with a symptom, you have three choices to deal with the symptom:
a) You can ignore it.
b) You can silence it (by taking pills).
c) You can eliminate or reverse the cause.
With your car you do that, you take care of you car. But most of us forget that symptoms like a headache or weight gain, for example, is nothing but a signal as well. It’s a lamp that goes on and tells you, hey, be careful, take care, there is something you have to change. But people take pills. You would be surprised how well many people can live without ever taking a pill.
Weight gain is a SYMPTOM too!
You don’t need to get a gastric bypass. You don’t need to take appetite suppressants. You don’t need to buy pre-maid and packaged ‘Light’ food. You don’t need a 1000 calorie diet.
All you need is common sense and love and respect for your body.
“We’ve been given on this earth all that we need for our good health, the herbs and the plants and the green leaves and the fresh vegetables and the whole grains that haven’t been tampered with, genetically modified and then if we are not vegan then clean animal products that are grass fed and pure and that was given to us on this earth. It’s time to go back to whole foods, that’s what gives our body that vibrant health and life.” –Cherie Calbom
But what can you do, you may ask.
Well, I’m glad you asked, because then there is hoope for you.
Keep your common sense and apply a healthy lifestyle. The answers are all there provided in nature.
Good health!
*****
A few years ago, I did over two dozen interviews with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author Cherie Calbom. She is an expert in healthy eating and juicing. If you want to hear the whole interview with Cherie, 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.
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.
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!
**********
Is your health and weight loss goal worth five to fifteen minutes of your time every day?
If you want to learn a process that leads you to constant weight loss success by baby stepping, check out my Facebook group.
You can get a feeling for the 4 Pillars of Weight Loss process for free. Simply join my closed Facebook group where you can go through the process by taking tiny daily baby steps completely stress free and still make tremendous progress.
“Remember, happiness doesn’t depend on who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.”–Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955, Writer and Lecturer
Neither does happiness depend on your weight and shape.
Yet we can see more slim happy people than heavy happy people. Overweight people often mask their lack of self-esteem with humor and cynicism what can make them fun to be around, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re happy, and the happiness they demonstrate is not genuine. Of course, there are the exceptions, but today we are not talking about those.
I’m sure you have heard the adage, you are what you think. And that is a very fundamental truth.
We ARE what we think.
The thinking is part of how we create our circumstances and health. Whatever we think often enough will become – wanted or unwanted – reality.
Every thought creates a matching emotion and these two energies combined act like an arrow, bringing you to what you have just said in the fastest way possible. Just think a certain thought often enough and allow the according emotions to linger, and you’re creating the matching circumstances…positive or negative.
We literally think and feel our life into realization. And, of course, the same is true with our weight and health.
When you think about your weight and fattening foods all the time, don’t be surprised when you’re getting heavier or bounce back after a diet.
When you constantly criticize how you look like, that’s what you’re going to get more of very soon.
When you weigh yourself every day and agonize over your current weight…that is exactly what you’re attracting more of.
Condemning, complaining, rejecting, disliking, focusing, agonizing, and criticizing…this is a sure ticket to more of the same.
Think, “I’m fat” and that’s what you are going to manifest.
Your thoughts and emotions are the seeds you plant and the weight is the results.
You can’t saw weeds and expect to get beautiful, delicious tomatoes. If you saw salad, you will not harvest asparagus. If you saw beans, you will not have a beatiful, tall and strong oak tree.
When you saw beans, you’ll get beans. When you saw carrots, carrots you will get.
The right thinking is so crucial for your weight loss success that it’s an important part of all of my programs. Following a diet and an exercise plan without changing how you think and feel about yourself would be a ridiculous attempt and not bring you the desired lasting results. Because what you think and how you feel about yourself has a stronger impact on your weight than what you eat.
“What you think and how you feel about yourself, has a stronger impact on your weight than what you eat.” –Angela Buhri
When I started as a weight loss coach 37 years ago my slogan was, “Weight loss begins in your head.” And that statement is still true today. In fact it’s so true that since then so many entrepreneurs have copied it all around the world. Suddenly everything “begins in the head”. To this very day that slogan is still in use in many industries. Although their copying doesn’t reflect that their success begins in their heads (people who need to copy and model others can never be really successful), the statement is still true. Any kind of success begins in our heads.
If you don’t believe me, make a little test. Look at yourself in the mirror, weigh yourself and look at all the extra fat that is hanging there. Now try to go for a walk or a jog. How motivated are you to do something about that extra fat? If you’re like 90% of us, the chances are very slim that you’ll be motivated to do something about. Only about 10% would instantly feel motivated to get a handle on their handles right away. Most people feel stuck, helpless and slowed down by focusing on their weight.
For all these reasons, never focus on what you don’t want. Instead look at the current situation with an open and realistic eye WITHOUT going the “OMG, I’m so fat” route. Don’t judge, don’t criticize, don’t condemn. It’s what it is. Own it. Just take notice of what currently is and then make a firm decision about what you want instead. Create a clear vision of your weight goal and your dream body. And henceforward you only focus on your goal and the progress you’re making.
Is your health and weight loss goal worth five to fifteen minutes of your time every day?
If you want to learn a process that leads you to constant weight loss success by baby stepping, check out my Facebook group.
You can get a feeling for the 4 Pillars of Weight Loss process for free. Simply join my closed Facebook group where you can go through the process by taking tiny daily baby steps completely stress free and still make tremendous progress.
“I don’t have time” is another lie we have come to believe was true. It’s not true and yet, how often do we all use it!? We have all been given 24 hours every day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year. And the greatest gift we were given when we came into this world is the FREEDOM to use these 24 hours as it pleases us. Well, this is not exactly true. Let me put it this way: we have been given the CHOICE of how to make the best of our 24 hours a day. So it is not about time, but about our prioritiesand how we use our time. It is a CHOICE, not a fact.
I recently saw a post on facebook that said it so clearly that it forces you to stop and think again:
“Of course you would die for your kids. But would you live healthy for them though?”
Using this gift of time for making money is certainly not a wise choice. I know, we all need money and some of us work so hard and yet make hardly enough to make ends meet. But we cannot use this as an excuse for not making a better and wiser use of our gift of time. The situation we are in is a result of the choices we have made in life, whether or not we like the outcome.
I recently saw a cartoon, about a doctor asking his patient, “What fits your busy schedule better, exercising 1 hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day?” Ouch!
Using the excuse, “I don’t have time” to take care of our health is about the most stupid excuse we can ever make. If we do not take care of our health appropriately – and excess weight is a disease –, we automatically shorten the time we have on this planet. We shorten our life. Ask yourself how much time you could gain if you would stop watching TV for a while, watching funny YouTube videos, chatting on social media (the most time waste of all) or playing games on the internet.
Statistics tell us that an average adult watches television eight years of his or her entire life. Eight years! And I guess it even gets worse with social media. Just imagine what you could accomplish in eight years and how your body would look like if you just used a small part of it to take care of your health, to exercise and move your body.
“I can’t afford it”
Similar to “I don’t have time” or “I can’t,” this is another classic excuse. And still, this is widely BELIEVED to be true by millions of people. I have no doubt that you could show me your bills, your paycheck, your cost of living, and your budget to prove the accuracy of this statement. I was living below the poverty line for years, so I know what it’s like to have more wishes than money.
The quote, “You can either make money or you can make excuses, but you can’t do both” is very much true. The one excludes the other. While some use the excuse “I can’t afford that,” others go out and make the money they want and need. There are always better paying jobs available – even in bad economic times. There are even jobs for chronically sick people who have to work from home. You can work for me, if you need more money. We are living in a Universe of abundance. It is not life that makes us poor, but our own belief system and our excuses.
How about this?
You can either lose weight or you can make excuses, but you can’t do both.
Please ask yourself the following question again:
“Can I afford NOT to take better care of my weight and health?” Let me repeat this:
Can you?
I cannot answer this question for you. Only you can answer it for yourself.
Do you know how much time you have left? No one knows. And even if you have a lot of time left in this life (although when we come to the end of our lives we suddenly feel that it was never enough), is your current life so good that you would want to go on with it until the end?
Choices
Like time, money or the lack of it is not a fact but a matter of priorities. We all do have money, otherwise we would be dead by now. If we cannot earn it, we get it from the government or through some form of social assistance. The truth is that we are making choices every day for what we want to spend our money on. We have our priorities in life and according to these priorities we spend our money. For instance, if your TV broke down today, what would you do to buy a new one? How about your car? Isn’t it interesting that most people find a way to get a new car or a new TV set, but very few go that extra mile to invest in their health, unless they are absolutely forced to?
What would you say if I told you that I have proof that it is not the lack of money that is holding you back from reversing your weight? There is so much evidence of that truth that I do not even know where to begin.
Many, many experiences with people have proven to me over and over again that it is not about the money. And it is not about a lack of time either. 80% of the whole slimming process has to come from within anyway. And this does not cost a dime. How much cheaper than gratis can it get? Keep in mind, you obviously had enough time and money to become overweight. Reversing this weight won’t take up more time than becoming overweight.
When people ask me how long the weight loss process would take, I usually say that it might take between six months and two years, depending on the weight a person wants to lose. Sometimes it can be done faster, sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes a person can lose her weight within a very short time, but this can only happen when that person has done a lot of inner transformation in the past and is able to let go almost immediately. So, it could happen even as quickly as within a few months. It happened to me. Experience shows that losing weight can be fast, easy and effortless, if you go through the process and don’t try to take the fast route.
It depends on numerous factors, such as the ability to let go, the faith, the beliefs, the determination, how easily a person can spot inner blockages, insight into and understanding of their inner causes, etc. It depends on so many things on which I have no control. Only the client alone can determine how soon or fast this will happen. And this is something that cannot be done with the intellect. It must come from the heart. That’s why working with an experienced coach can drastically reduce the time it takes to achieve your final goal.
Now this answer of mine gives many of the weight loss clients another excuse: “It takes too long.” How long do you guess it took the weight to build up? Your excess weight did not appear within a month and it will not go away and stay off within a month. If lasting weight loss is your goal, you have to get clear about that. Your body needed time to accumulate fat and it will need time to burn it off.
And here is another provocative question. How long does it take to lose that weight by yo-yo dieting?
Forever!
One step forward and two steps back – as this is the normal result of the dieting approach – does not get you anywhere but heavier. So you didn’t gain anything by going the fast route.
Just ask yourself this: “Where will I be and how will I feel in a year from now, in five years from now, in ten years from now, if things will go on like this?”
Excess weight can only be reversed by you in cooperation with the body in order to make it last. And the reversing process takes time. So let me ask you again, “Where will you be and how will you feel in a year/five years/ten years from now if you go on like this?” I can give you the answer: At the very same point where you are right now, if not worse, with a few more pounds accumulated and some more health issues. Face it!
But where will you be in a year from now if you stop the excuses right now, start the weight loss process today using a real weight loss strategy vs. a short-term diet? You certainly will not be at this point anymore, and you will definitely have learned a lot. If you do it the right way (by eliminating and transforming your root causes), you most likely will have lost dozens and dozens of pounds by then, and enjoying a slimmer body and better health in general. The results will depend on how quickly you allow yourself to get to the core of the problem. If you do it right, most people will have achieved their final weight goal within one year and the very heavy ones within two to three years.
Just think back how fast the last 12 months went by and imagine where you could be today had you started 12 months earlier. This thought process will immediately get you on the right track and give you the motivation you need to start right away.
So do you think it would be worthwhile to undertake that journey?
Would it be worth your while to take some time, to apply some of the things you learn through what I share in my facebook group, in blog posts, teleclasses and workshops, to spend some money for your health, to do some exercising, etc.?
And most of all, can you afford not to do it?
I wish you good luck on your way to a slimmer body and better health! If you choose so, I will always be in your boat.
Angela B.
P.S. Are you ready to say goodbye to your excuses? Are you ready to say goodbye to some of the fattening habits and turn them into slimming ones? Are you ready to forget the excuses, “I don’t have time”, “I can’t afford”, or “I can’t now” now and give yourself a real chance to finally get rid of your excess weight once and for all?
Is your health and weight loss goal worth five to fifteen minutes of your time every day?
If you want to learn a process that leads you to constant weight loss success by baby stepping, check out my Facebook group.
You can get a feeling for the 4 Pillars of Weight Loss process for free. Simply join my closed Facebook group where you can go through the process by taking tiny daily baby steps completely stress free and still make tremendous progress.
Here is the story of Bertha, the figure I use often in my books because I think that her weight loss story is extraordinary and can inspire many of my readers.
Bertha is a 55-year old woman who became obese during the time of a severe personal famine. At some point of her life she was robbed and lost everything she had, including her last dollar in the pocket. During that time all she had was some flour, so she was lucky enough to bake her own bread what really saved her life.
Unfortunately that much bread eaten over months – as at it later turned out, over years – was not received well by her body and as a perfectly slim person she began to gain weight very fast. Although she only had 4 slices of bread with nothing on it per day, her weight literally exploded. Within only two months she had two dress sizes more, although she was starving.
By the way, this is proof that you can eat very little, but if you eat the wrong food – food that is wrong for your body – you can gain tremendous amounts of weight. Bread may not have had such a terrible effect on another person, but Bertha is a blood type 0, and for her bread was really the worst choice of all. Of course, in that situation it was still life saving for her and better than nothing.
To make a long story short, for years she remained in poverty and was forced to eat poorly what got her obese within only a few years. Twice a year she needed a new dress size. All that time Bertha knew that eating healthy would be the solution for her dilemma. She knew perfectly well how she could lose that extra fat, but she didn’t have the means to afford a healthy lifestyle.
For the coming years she wished, and hoped, and tried, and did everything within her limited means to change the situation on several levels. She visualized a fertile garden full of healthy vegetables, yet nothing happened. That situation lasted 18 years.
There were many situations when Bertha wanted to give up and accept what seemed to be the obvious.
A few months ago Bertha hit a new low point. She had to move because she couldn’t sleep where she lived but hardly had the energy to look for a new place, let alone to pack and move. That was a moment when she once again reflected on her life. She realized that at the current situation she had pretty much just one way to go: down. She felt trapped and had no idea what else she could do to change her terrible situation.
She was desperate for more energy and realized that gigantic storage of “fuel” in her body that – once released and properly burned – could give her a tremendous energy boost. That was the moment when Bertha made such a strong decision to do whatever it takes to burn that extra fat and change her life completely. She swore that she would do whatever was necessary to get her slim…and she meant it. For her it was now or never.
That was the magic moment for Bertha, and to this day she can’t believe how much has changed since.
Suddenly, a friend of her decided to give her $200 every month for healthy food until she would be in a better situation.
Soon after she found the apartment of her dreams that came with a half-an-acre backyard. With the money from her friend she immediately purchased organic seeds and started her own garden with vegetables, greens, herbs, berries and fruits. Only a few months later she can now harvest all kinds of salads, herbs, peas, and soon she will pick her first zucchini. That little yard is everything she needs to feed her almost all year round with the best and healthiest organic food once things begin to grow.
To fully understand the miracle, you need to know that Bertha lives in a country where most people are forced to rent apartments because there is not much space for all the people. Having your own yard is usually only possible for those with more money. Because there is so little land in her country, land is a luxury only the rich and wealthy can afford. And of course we know that Bertha is far from being rich, yet in a way she is wealthy now with her garden that provides her with everything she needs in the best possible quality without needing much money.
Since she moved she sleeps much better what gives her more energy. The daily work in the garden builds muscles and she is outdoors several hours every day, enjoying fresh air.
All this happened only within a few months where one homerun followed the next. From the hind side – and knowing how Bertha was living for 18 years before that – this is a miracle. She can hardly believe it, and everybody around her can hardly believe it.
She is finally eating more and healthier. She sleeps more. Her exercise is working in the yard every day. She is quickly moving toward living a healthy lifestyle.
And here is the best news.
Drum rolls please…..
Since then Bertha has lost a whopping 19kg/41lbs.
Remember, she is eating more, she is sleeping more, and she is enjoying her backyard and the outdoors. That’s pretty much everything she has changed. No more starving, no counting calories, no restrictions, no puffing and huffing at the gym…
This is the MAGIC of a strong intention. All it takes is a firm decision.
This is a vital part of everybody’s weight loss success. Without that you lack the foundation for your success…and this step has to be taken at the beginning. Once you have that, it will literally carry you through the whole process; and what once was hard and difficult becomes now easy and effortless.
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” — William H. Murray
In my 30-Day Triple Power Weight Loss Challenge: Habits the participants learn to make such a firm decision and to feed their intention at the beginning of the program. Then, within 30 days we eliminate as many inner and outer obstacles as possible, change bad, fattening habits and learn new and healthy ones. For those with a strong determination these 30 days are everything they’ll ever need to turn their weight issues around forever. If you want to learn more, please check out this site: http://www.angelabuhri.com/howtoeliminatefatteninghabits/
Thirdly, your current weight is another number that sticks to your subconscious mind and whenever you go on a diet, your subconscious mind will do everything to get back to that number. It’s like with your air conditioner. When you set it to a certain degree, the system will constantly adjust the temperature. When it gets warmer than you chose, the system will cool down; when the room gets colder, the system will heat up. It’s the same with your weight because your body doesn’t understand that you want to get rid of that extra weight and it will always bounce back unless you eliminate the real causes. 
Then, of course, you blame yourself or beat yourself up. After all, those other women accomplished their goals and the “expert” promised that you can achieve the same. Ergo, it must be your fault. And you can back up that logic with the fact that there were situations when you didn’t stick a 100% to the program. Again, ergo it must be your fault.
https://cdm.weightlossexpertsrevealthetruth.com/lm-4-pillars-of-lasting-weight-loss603eyu39
Therefore my friend, patience is one of the first attributes you will need for your maintainable weight loss success. We are talking about a long-term goal here. We are not talking about a few weeks or months, we are talking about your healthy LIFE….a maintainable healthy lifestyle you can easily follow through with for the rest of your life without starving and without stress. 
Are your health and weight loss goal worth five to fifteen minutes of your time every day? 
Let me repeat that:
But how about your body?
All you need is common sense and love and respect for your body. 
Good health!
