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:
Currently, the world seems to be hidden under a gigantic clowd of fear, worry, and panic. The news channels seem to have only one topic: Coronavirus. It seems like the world has come to a screaching halt. There are so many different and even contradictory reports about the spreading of the Coronavirus what leads to even bigger confusion. Although the death numbers more sound like normal numbers like with any other winter flu to me (people are dying at any time of the year, not only during a so-called pandemy) the media publish new numbers every day. And the worst numbers are the added up ones what makes it look like quite a daunting number.
Corona-Gift #1: Relaxation Island
Hello and welcome!
During such a situation that is very stressful for many of us, I decided to give you a gift my clients usually have to pay for. May this help you get through the current corona crisis with less stress.
As you may know, stress is making matters worse not better. Stress is even adding on pounds and we want to prevent that from happening.
As a former stress-relief therapist I have created this short 10-minute relaxation for you to use as often as you like. If staying healthy is important to you, I recommend to do it three times during the day (although not directly before going to bed).
It takes some time until the body will react to, but once it will, you can be certain that your immune system is getting stronger daily.
Here is your gift:
Don’t use this relaxation tape shortly before going to bed becasue it increases your energy. The best times are upon waking up before breakfast, before lunch and before dinner.
Corona-Gift #2: 13 Tips to prevent yourself from getting sick
Almost all governements worldwide have issued various protective measures and implemented restrictive orders for the the people, which are, “Wash your hands”, “Sneeze into your ellbow”, and “Stay at home”. If we are facing a real pandemy, this seems quite rudimentary advice to me.
The importance of effective prevention and the appropriate strengthening of the immune system is hardly mentioned by the media, authorities and experts. Although this should be our very first concern. But the media are more concerned about which celebrity got infected and how much toilet paper they have to produce to cover the increased demand.
Prevention should always be given attention in the winter months anyway, but nobody seems to care about prevention for the 99,99999% of the people who are healthy.
Here are the most sensible preventive steps that can help your body to remain immune for viruses and to activate its fabulous self-healing power in case of an infection.
13 Steps how to remain healthy and give Corona no chance:
1.) Keep in mind the following fact: the body is perfectly capable of warding off any viruses and bacteria IF it has everything it needs. Therefore, as long as you are taking well care of your body and its immune system, you don’t have to worry about viruses. Just feed your body the right food.
2.) One of the best preventions is keeping an optimistic mindset. While fear weakens our immune system, positivity strengthens it. That doesn’t mean that we have to adopt a Polyanna mindset, but it means to be conscious about how we think and feel. Thoughts and emotions are energy, and if you are familiar with the law of attraction, you understand that we always attract what we are afraid of. Therefore, if you do not want to attract the Coronavirus, you should not even think about it, let alone allow fear, anxiety and panic to dominate your thinking and emotions.
Each time you realize that you are being fearful, stop and take a few deep breaths. Then shift your thinking to something else, preferrably to something you can still be grateful for. For instance, you can be thankful that you have more time with your family now, that you have more time for yourself, that you now finally can read that book you never had the time for, that you can meditate and relax every single day, that you can finish tasks you never had the time for and so on and so forth. Or you can simply be grateful that you and your loved ones are healthy and alive.
3.) To be on the safe side, follow the hygiene instructions of your government. Your own protection is only one part why I add this to my list. The second part is that when you follow these instructions, nobody can blame you for being irresponsible. Besides, a correct coughing and sneezing etiquette is always a good idea and should simply be part of good manners.
4.) Deep abdominal breathing has a profound effect on the flow properties on the blood. The blood then can transport more oxygen to the organs what increases the detoxification process what keeps your organs healthier. If you are not allowed to leave the house, step out on your porch or balcony or open the windows several times a day. Then hold your face up to the sun and breathe deeply for 10 minutes. Make sure that you breathe into your abdomen and breathe out deeply again. Imagine that your breathing is like the waves of the ocean: coming and going, coming and going, coming and going…. Do that several times a day. “Before and after” haemograms always proof clearly a big difference. While the red blood cells are often clumped together before the breathing exercise, they can float freely afterwards (no more clumping).
5.) Stress is one of the biggest contributing factor to any disease. Nothing weakens our immune system faster than stress. Therefore stress relief is the call of the hour. Although it may seem like normal to be stressed in such a worrisome time, the necessity to stop and refrain from what’s going on is life saving. Besides, most of us have more time now since we can’t leave our homes. So why not take advantage of this situation by giving your immune system a boost and practice to relax? With my last message I have sent you a gift, an audio with a relaxation session you can do at any time. Just don’t do it while driving or working with heavy machines. To do it properly you need to lay or sit down, close your eyes and allow your nervous system to completely let go. In that process of relaxing and letting go your immune system can recharge itself beautifully. The more often you practice this relaxation, the better you get and the faster and easier you can relax, even in times of stress. You can use my relaxation audio (it only takes 9 minutes) or any other relaxation method you may like. Just do it on a regular basis several times per day.
Here is the audio “Relaxation Island” (Corona-Gift #1) again:
Don’t use this relaxation tape shortly before going to bed becasue it increases your energy. The best times are upon waking up before breakfast, before lunch and before dinner.
6.)Fresh air and exercise is another way of improving your immune system. The combination of fresh air, sunlight and movement is simply ideal. Besides, it makes you feel great, happy and strong. Oxygen is more important than food. If you are one of those individuals who can’t go to work, it might be a great idea touse that time and go for a daily one-hour walk, play with your children outdoors, go on a bicycle tour or hiking tour. You will see that afterwards you will feel like all the power is back in your hands….and it is.
7.) Did you ever hear that a lack of sleep will lead to weight gain? So now you have the chance to sleep more (ideally 8 hours per night) and by doing so you can improve your immune system and at the same time lose weight. Especially during the flu season good and enough sleep is very much recommended.
8.) It’s no secret that a healthy and balanced diet supports our immune system. Health begins in our intestine, and optimal digestive function as a prevention of flu-like infections is crucial. A light and well-balanced diet – fresh and light meals, cut back on the carbs, eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruits, herbs, wild plants, sprouts and seeds – will aid your intestine to do a better job what will aid your immune system. Also cook from scratch and give your microwave oven a break. Microwaved food is dead and altered, thus toxic – your body simply can’t recognize it as food and stores it in fat cells to keep it away from the vital organs. This cloggs up your entire system, weakens the immune system, toxifies the body and leads to weight gain. If (since) you have more time now, there is no reason to use the microwave oven.
9.) When I was a child, each winter we had to swallow fish oil capsules in order to stay healthy. Gosh did I hate that. But today I understand why this was necessary. Thank goodness we have better alternatives nowadays. Vitamin D, E and C in high dosage are very important during the flu season. The combination of these two substances has proven to be very effective for the long-term strengthening of the immune system. This is a very important part of preventing a flu. But make sure that you get supplements from natural sources and not syntetically manufactured ones. Rather pay a few dollars more in your health food store than for supplements from the drug store. Together with vitamin D3 you should also take K2. And please don’t hesitate to add an Omega3 supplement.
10.) Besides the vitamins, minerals also play an important role for a healthy immune system. Zinc in particular increases the body’s defense mechanism and the protection of the lung – very important when facing the Coronavirus. Selenium is a strong antioxidant mineral and essential for various functions of the immune system and also for detoxification and cell protection.
11.) Many medicinal plants have an immune-strengthening, protecting and antioxidant effect. For prevention use products with echinacea, thyme, parsley, rosemary, basil, mint, ginger, turmeric, oregano, liquorice, rockrose, elderberry, rosehip, and horseradish. These plants can be ingested as tinctures, teas, in capsules or fresh in meals. The good news is that some of the mentioned herbs are great additions for the kitchen and improve every meal in taste. Nothing beats a salad with a handful freshly chopped parsley and basil or a pesto with fresh oregano. Why not take advantage of the unplanned “vacation” to experiment with new, healthy menues?
As soon as you begin to feel some flu-like symptoms, take 40 drops of echinacea tincture in a glass of water every two hours during the entire day until the symptons will be gone. Most of the time the flu will take its leave before it can really break out. If these symptoms don’t go away within a day or two, call the doctor. Keep in mind that the mentioned herbs are for prevention.
12.) The better your body can release toxins, acid and slag, the healthier your body remains. And to get rid of those in the fastest way possible, your body needs a lot of pure water (nothing added to it). If you are at a normal weight, three liters (102 oz or 300ml) per day is enough. But if you are overweight, you need four liters (135 oz. or 400ml or 1 gallon) of water daily. Add a small pinch of a healthy, organic salt to every third glass of water but nothing else. If you live in a city or in an area where you depend on community water, you should ideally filter your water. If you are not used to drink so much water, first replace all other drinks you usually drink during any given day with water. Then increase the amount of water slightly from week to week (for instance, increase your daily water intake for 500ml/17 oz. every week until you will have the three or four liters).
13.) Speaking of prevention we shall not forget one of the biggest contributors to illness. The virus has always been around and part of the winter flus. So why is it more severe this year? The problem is that the governments do not yet understand the severe danger of radiation (EMF). Some scientists are warning us from microwave radiation for many years, some even for more than two decades. So far that radiation has gone up linear, slightly increasing from year to year through cordless phones, mobile phones, Wi-Fi and all technical devices that communicate wirelessly. The cell phone and smart meter technology is based on microwaves and as we know, microwaves heat. Over the years the radiation was increased only slightly but regularly and steadily so that most people didn’t feel a difference. But last year in many western countries they began the roll-out of 5G which is said to be 17 times stronger than 4G. And that lead to a rapid increase of microwave radiation all around the planet and in the entire atmosphere.
Therefore, for the sake of prevention I highly recommnd to go hard-wired and reduce the use of cell phones, wireless phones, Wi-Fi, smart phones, robots, etc. to an absolute minimum and only for emergency cases if nothing else will work. At this time of your life you don’t need to be available 24/7 anyway, unless you have to work from home. But maybe even then your boss could call you on your land line. This will help your immune system to recover.
The electromagnetic radiation of such devices weakens the defence and detoxification ability of our organ systems and cells and impairs the regenerative and self-healing powers. Giving your body and immune system a break from radiation will be a very welcome change and help your body to improve its immune system and keep you healthy. Isn’t this the most important thing right now anyway?
Don’t forget the joy of life. Like attracts like! We can only attract the same Energy we send out through our thoughts and emotions. Negative thoughts and emotions bring back negative situations and circumstances and vice versa. If you start your day with a feeling of gratitude that you are alive and healthy and go through your day with joy and enthusiasm – by celebrating feelings of friendship, love, trust, hope, faith, and strength – that’s exactly what you will get. Pay very close attention to your thoughts and emotions and softly the negative ones into a more positive direction by changing your thinking. Pay very close attention to the information and news you are currently consuming. Don’t allow to get inundated. News are seldom positive and can make us feel helpless and hopeless. This is not helpful at all. Negative emotions have been proven to weaken our immune system. Whenever you feel helpless or hopeless, turn your attention back to gratitude, people you love and life-enhancing things.
And let’s not forget laughter – it’s said to be the best Medicine!
Aids for acute cases Should you have to stay in bed with symptoms of cold and fever, there are still several things you can do to support your body in the healing process.
Herbal teas with ginger, thyme or sage strengthen the immune system and free the respiratory tract. Camomile tea reduces the Inflammation. Drink a lot of these teas.
American Ginseng supports the lungs.
You can also apply a warming chest ointment from the drugstore or pharmacy.
Inhale with thyme, eucalyptus oil, American ginseng root or baking powder.
The intake of Umckaloabo (tincture) or acetylcysteine (available from the pharmacy) promotes the expulsion of mucus.
With bronchitis and pneumonia, potato, onion and mustard seed poultices have been found to be very effective.
If your symptoms do not improve, you should consult your naturopath, homeopath or doctor for individual advice.
As disasterous the effects of the corona virus are for the economy may be, there is still an advantage most people don’t realize. This crisis is forcing us to look at some things closer and change a few things in our lives for the sake of our health and the health of our loved ones.
Don’t allow the death numbers to impress you. Compared to the world population this is a minimal number. Of course each life counts, but please keep in mind that the people who die are old and/or have other diseases of which they probably would have died anyway. This may help you keep things in perspective. Follow the instructions of your government (just to be on the safe side) and on top of that try to implement these 13 steps to strengthen your immune system. This should get you a long way.
Corona-Gift #3: 17 Steps to healthy weight loss during Covid-19
Yesterday I read in the newspaper that because of the home quarantine people begin to gain weight. That doesn’t surprise me. Of course one issue is that people are sitting around more and move or exercise less. Then they also tend to eat more junk food because this gives them kind of a cozy feeling. But then there is also another psychological component to that.
In such a time where we are being told that our life is in danger – regardless whether this is true or not – we choose to prevent ourselves from starving by allowing the body to add more fat. This is a totally unconscious agreement between our brain and the body and is part of our survival mode. But that doesn’t mean that your weight gain is a given. You can still choose. You can over-rule your subconscious mind by becoming aware of. More about that in a minute.
Crisis always contains chances. And the Covid-19 crisis is no different. Everybody who is at home quarantine has received the gift of more time. And with that time we can do wonderful things and apply some new weight loss habits.
17 Steps how to lose weight during the Corona Crisis (instead of gaining weight)
Since most of the instructions above that lead to better health and a stronger immune system also lead to faster and easier weight gain, I highly recommend to keep applying the 13 Tips in my gifts #1 and #2 above. These steps will also aid your weight loss.
The next step is really to become aware of what’s going on subconsciously and then make a decision. As soon as you do that, it’s no longer subconscious and you gain the control back. That’s how you can over-rule your subconscious mind.
Tell your body that you are perfectly capable of taking care of its needs even during such a crisis and that there is no need to shovel in junk food to gain and store fat. You have to tell your body that in an assertive and determined tone and it will understand you.
Of course, you then will have to deliver on the promise so your body will learn to trust you when you say that you are taking care of it. One way to do that is by giving it the healthiest possible food your money can currently buy. This has to include a lot of fresh greens, salads, vegetables and fruits. The more fresh food the better.
Since sleeping is very crucial for healthy weight loss, I want to repeat that step here again. Make sure that you sleep between seven and eight hours every night. Do not underestimate the power of a good night’s sleep.
Just because you have to stay at home doesn’t mean that you can’t get out and get some fresh air. This is simply essential for effective weight loss. Your body needs a lot of oxigen to burn fat. If you have the opportunity to go for a walk in a nearby park or if you live in the Country, go for a daily walk of between 30 and 60 minutes. I hear you say that you still have to work from home despite of corona. Yes, that’s right, but since you don’t have to commute to work and back you gain time. That time should ideally be spent for your body in order to remain healthy And why not also use that time to lose some extra fat? That way you demonstrate your boss that you are able to take responsibility and he or she will appreciate that.
If you have a yard – whether you have children or not – play outdoors a lot.
When the weather is wet and cold, you can also move in the house. If you are so lucky to have stairs in the house, you can climb the stairs up and down. Just keep in mind that for the sake of weight loss, any kind of exercise has to be done at least 30 minutes. That means that you would have to walk up and down the stairs several times. To make this more interesting and to prevent boredom, you can use motivating music while exercising this way.
Speaking of music, dancing really intensive for at least 30 minutes is another way to exercise and it’s fun. Dance in a way that makes you sweat.
The good news is that many things that provide weight loss are actually free, and so is water. Water is a great help for weight loss. The bodies of overweight people have a higher need of water, therefore try to increase your water intake. Now is a very good time to train your body to hold more water. Three liters per day is a minimum. You will see that you will be less hungry.
Years ago I began to make weekly meal plans. That habit is now making my life significantly easier and helps me to eat healthier. Every day I know exactly what to cook and when I go shopping I don’t just fill the cart with food but I fill it with healthy food I know I will actually need during the week. This not only forces me to make healthier choices but also saves me money because I have to throwe away less food.
Cooking from scratch can be really fun. Spoil the body with healthy food instead of purchasing pre-cooked stuff that contains lots of sugar, carbs and toxins. I never liked cooking until I realized how much more tasty my meals get when I use fresh herbs. There is no comparison to pre-made meals. After cooking from scratch during four weeks of home quarantine it will become a desire to keep cooking that way after the crisis will be over. And thus you will find good ways to keep that healthy lifestyle beyond the Covid-19 crisis. After all, millions of European women still cook from scratch three meals per day and every day, although many of them have their jobs as well.
Don’t eat microwaved food because it’s void in nutrients. I know they told us that microwaved food contained the most vitamines over other cooking methods, which is only partly true. That means that the vitamins can be found in the food. But what they don’t tell you is that food that has been defrosted or heated in the microwave is being altered in a way that your body can’t recognize it as “food” any longer, and thus it becomes toxic for the body. Because your body doesn’t understand what to do with that “matter” it stores it in fat cells labeled as “toxic” what leads not only to a little bit weight gain but to massive weight gain and obesity.
Reduce the starchy carbs. Since you are now eating more vegetables and fruits, you will not need any starchy carbs anyway.
Some of the biggest stumbling blocks are snacks. It’s so easy to grab some sugary snacks or a bag of potatoe chips, especially when working from home. By eliminating them from your home completely helps your tremendously to make better and conscious choices. Unsalted nuts, for example are very healthy and you will only need a few of those to reduce your hunger. Then, again drinking a glass or two of water reduces the appetite as well and you will see that you will need way less food (and money). One of the healtiest snacks are apples, but only if it’s organically grown. One apple is enough between two meals.
I think by now we are all aware of the fact that stress leads to weight gain. You can easily reduce stress drastically by applying #2, #4, #5 and #7 of my Corona-Gift #2 above. Fresh air, deep breathing, regular methodical relaxation and good night’s sleep help reduce stress tremendously and although it may seem like costing time, at the end of the day these tactics help you reduce time. The Managers of some Fortune 500 companies I used to work with are not only allowed to relax regularly during the work time, they are also encouraged to do so. This for a very good reason. Relaxed employees are much more effectice than the stressed ones. Therefore, whatever you do to reduce stress in your life will increase the quality of your work and you can do much more.
Visualize. Imagine how you are slim and happy. Do that one a day for a couple of minutes.
Simple? Yes. Simple and effective.
Like I said earlier, we have been given a gift: the gift of more time. This gives us the great chance to implement some new and better habits and get rid of some old, fattening habits. It would be a shame not to take advantage of that gift of life.
Leading a healthy lifestyle has always been the best way of lasting weight loss.
Just in case that you might think that you already knew all that, I believe you. But how many times did we Forget About even the simplest Things because life was creaping up on us and then suddenly realized one day that we have forgotten what we wanted to do? And don’t we all need some motivation from time to time? So see this as a friendly reminder from me.
Especially during such an unprecedented time the world has never seen before we tend to run through the days mindlessly not realizing the chances this may bring. And when that happens, it is so easy to feel powerless and that we have lost control over our lives and health.
Now it’s time to be gently lead back to a healthy lifestyle and to gain your control back.
Take care….and stay healthy, slim and happy! You are worth it!
Corona-Gift #4: 3 Secrets and 4 Elements of Lasting Weight Loss
Gift #4 is the recording of a class I did about three years ago. So far nobody ever had access to this recording. This is my gift to you so you can learn what the four elements of a sensible and powerful weight loss strategy are.
With this gift we are going more into depth regarding lasting and healthy weight loss and also integrate the psychology of losing weight (it’s the psychology of weight loss that makes it last, by the way).
Corona-Gift #5: Weight Loss Experts Reveal The Truth
At the end of the webinar (Corona Gift #4) you have the chance to claim your $144 gift.
P.S. If you have any questions regarding Covid-19 and how to keep yourself and your loved ones healthy during these unprecedented times, please post them below and I will answer them personally.
Recently, a young man, whose parents were coaching clients of mine 30 years ago, contacted me on Facebook. He told me that what his parents had learned from me was often a subject at their table and that my words had led his parents through many difficult life situations. I hear this increasingly even from clients I haven’t seen in 10, 20 or 30 years, which made me think.
My coaching “career” started as a child when adults told me their most personal and private problems and sorrows. In the end, they were often shocked when they realized how much they had told a child of only 10. Their explanation was always that I was such a good listener.
My official coaching career started in 1978 after I realized that being a teacher for children was not my life purpose, but I did enjoy being a teacher for adults (happy parents = happy children). Yet, I never really thought that my work was important; helpful, yes, but not important, like having food or earning money. I had no idea how wrong I was. My clients came for a few sessions, solved their problems or achieved their goals and then I never saw them again. That was the reason why I began to believe that my work was only helpful but not important. But when I realized how long my clients could go with the principles I taught them a mindset shift happened in me.
Soon after I started my life coaching business in 1984, I got hired by two different women’s magazines to run regular weight loss courses for their readers. And because women told their husbands about what they had learned in my courses, soon after, I was hired by the Swiss Teacher’s Association and by several European Fortune 500 companies to coach their middle and upper management. One of the major Swiss insurance companies hired me on a monthly basis to coach their sales representatives. Companies paid $7,000 a day for my services, which was more than $1,200 per working hour. And there is a good reason for that: coaching helped their managers and salespeople to become more successful in their profession and in life – their management gained more self-confidence, which enabled them to bring more of themselves into the workplace and got healthier what saved the company a lot of money. I have heard many stories of how my coaching has helped teachers to make their students better students and solve their problems on several levels; parent to be better parents with less stress; and entrepreneurs to be more successful. At some point, I realized that for many people, my services were as important as food and built the foundation of their successful profession and a better and more fulfilling life.
Not only my clients benefited but also their families. One client, who attended one of my weight loss courses, taught her husband my principles, which prevented him from losing his job. Parents taught their children how to deal with stress and to become more successful in life. Many of the over 10,000 people that have followed my courses and group coaching improved their health significantly, lost weight, and achieved major goals that seemed to be out of their reach. Others found and realized their life purpose and are now making a difference in other people’s lives as well. Frankly, only by writing this down and formulating it out did I begin to see the real benefit of my work (we baby boomer women often tend to be too modest about our work). Things we are naturally good at we often don’t perceive as special or important because to us it’s so normal.
“You can give a poor man a fish to feed him for a day,
or you can teach him to catch fish and feed him for life.”
Since so many business people (mainly businessmen) are telling me how important hiring one or even several coaches is important for their lives, health, and professional success, I decided to look at the topic more closely. I was surprised how much evidence exists on the benefits of coaching. Numerous people report that coaching positively impacted their careers as well as their health and personal lives.
Benefits that are often mentioned are:
It’s easier to take the right action towards achieving goals
Find better jobs or career
Have more life satisfaction
Become more self-reliant
Reduce stress
Feel more self-empowerment
Take greater responsibility and accountability
Become more productive and effective in their goal achievements
(Source: Ken Blanchard Companies)
Through a class, external behavior may change for a while, but it needs to be supported by changes in their internal thought processes, which requires working with either a coach in a one-on-one coaching setting or group coaching.
The benefits of coaching are many: 80% of people who receive coaching report increased self-confidence, and over 70% benefit from improved work performance, relationships, and more effective communication skills. 86% of companies report that they recouped their investment on coaching and more (Source: ICF 2009). Now imagine what will happen when we can transfer these numbers to your weight loss and speed up the process between 70% and 86%. Even I as a coach of 3 decades was not aware that coaching has such a strong impact on people (I never did the math).
Since coaching brings companies such tremendous benefits despite the costs – getting me hired, paying for the hotel plus all the expenses for their staff, me, and my assistant cost a company $41,000 to $45,000 for one weekend workshop – we may want to reconsider the personal benefits of having a coach. No company would pay such an amount repeatedly if it was not worth every penny. Most of these business clients were men. In 10 years of doing business coaching, I’ve only had three women in total. On the other hand, in my weight loss workshops I had only 2 male participants among thousands of women in my entire career. So why is that? Not only men have a stress-laden life. Not only men need to earn their living. Not only men have to take care of their health and prevent weight gain. So how come that mostly men benefit from business coaching while almost only women thought that they needed to lose weight?
One reason is certainly that women are more modest in their professional and don’t see the necessity to spend money on their growth, and secondly, women are more used to doing it all by themselves, and getting support hardly comes into their minds. On top of that, women tend to being over-critical with themselves and are more willing to invest in their personal development. A large percentage of women – especially overweight women – have a deep feeling of not being deserving. Lastly, men think more in terms of ROI than women and are not afraid of spending money on their business success, while they are much less interested in spending money for their personal growth.
Now that we have been talking about the benefits of hiring a coach in general, let me share with you some health and weight loss benefits:
Lifestyle changes go beyond “eat less, move more”
It helps shed pounds
Helps dodge heart disease
Helps reduce stress significantly and increases the ability to cope with stress
Habit transformation
Lasting change of mindset
Increased self-confidence
Self-empowerment
Implementing a healthy lifestyle
Looking and feeling younger
Long-term weight loss
Improve the relationship with your body
Increased motivation throughout the entire weight loss process and beyond
Body, mind, and spirit relationship
Transformation of the causes of over-eating and poor habit
Improve the relationship with your body
So, when is it a good time to hire a weight loss coach?
The quick answer is, whenever you realize that you need or want to lose weight…the moment you realize that there is something you want to change.
Unfortunately, most women need a stronger motivation to allow them such an investment. Usually, women consult with me after they have tried about every diet and exercise program on the planet and realized that the result was rather a net gain than weight loss. They call me when they have reached the end of their rope and don’t have any more answers left or because their health insurance labeled them as “overweight” or even “obese” and raise their rates.
Basically, hiring a coach is most appreciated by women who…
…are busy and have no time to waste
…are goal and result-oriented and want to lose weight fast
…understand the real value of coaching
…are very busy and have no time to waste
…are willing to spend some money for faster results
…understand their own value
…understand their responsibility towards their own health
…are sick and tired of the trial and error approach
Generally, you can say that the sooner a woman hires a coach, the less coaching sessions she will need. The more trial and error and dieting you have gone through, the longer it will take. Going the cheap way is seldom the solution.
When considering hiring a coach, there are mainly two aspects to take into consideration:
The time factor
The investment factor
The faster you want to achieve your weight goal, the more it pays to invest a little bit more at the beginning because, at the end of the day, the whole weight loss process gets much cheaper than by going from diet to diet. Being overweight has never been a low-cost way of living anyway. Investing in the beginning can save you much money.
There is a good reason why the most successful people in the world attribute their success to their coaches and mentors. Hiring a coach can be one of the most effective ways of achieving your goals in life.
For a short time I’m offering a small number of FREE One-on-One Weight Transformation Coaching Sessions for those women who are determined to transform their weight now. Click on the image below to reserve your spot.
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Angela Buhri’s personal approach of weight loss coaching is based on several methods of behavioral psychology (University of Giessen, Germany), adult education (Inst. for applied psychology, Zurich, Switzerland), her professional knowledge of goal achievement, her own weight loss history, and her 34-years experience of working with thousands of overweight women.
Humans are whole beings of body, mind, and spirit, and Angela’s approach is a holistic one in the real sense (holistic = whole, including body, emotions, mindset, and spirit).
As a behavioral therapist, she understands that each condition has causes. To this point, she has detected 58 possible causes of weight gain and the foundation of Angela’s weight loss coaching is cause transformation. Detecting the individual effective causes and helping her clients eliminate them make the results maintainable.
To make an apointment for a free coaching session send an email to info@sheslimfast.com.
Among all the quick-fix and new diet seekers there is, from time to time, a subscriber who instantly gets what my message and sustainable weight loss is all about, uses the principles outlined in my programs, and has the most stunning results that surprise even me.
One of these individuals with an amazing success story is Bertha.
Bertha is a 62-year old woman who has been suffering from obesity for 20 years. Like most of my subscribers, she tried everything and actually ate very healthy and small amounts. I often told her that she might even be undernourished because she eats so little, but she assured me that she was not hungry for more.
Despite her healthy lifestyle and daily juicing, she just could not lose a single pound for years. Recently, she learned the reason.
Bertha met a natural practitioner who found out Bertha’s real cause of being obese. Not even I knew about that particular cause….now it’s number 58 on my list of possible causes of weight gain.
Once Bertha took care of that cause, she lost 66lbs./30kg. in 5 months without dieting!
So, what was Bertha’s personal cause?
I will tell you in a few days. In the meantime, let’s first talk about causes so that you understand the principles behind this “miracle” (which is not really a miracle at all, once you understand the basics).
You probably don’t remember my last blog post I published before I retired. It was a very in-depth article (almost a small book) about possible causes of weight gain and how extra weight melts off effortlessly once the causes have been eliminated. Those readers who were smart read that article from top to bottom and instantly applied what they learned. That article included ALL the answers an overweight person will ever need to know to lose her extra weight for good. I’m very glad that Bertha read that article and took it to heart. Today she couldn’t be happier she did.
New ideas always require a little bit more time to reach people’s minds. History is full of these stories. Every new idea has to go through three stages:
being ignored or ridiculed
being opposed and fought against
being accepted as obvious and normal
In Switzerland, my home country, my work has reached stage three and has become pretty common knowledge among 20-30% of the people. In many other countries, the awareness of the cause-and-effect theory of weight issues is still on stage one.
The sad truth is that most overweight women are still searching for some form of a quick fix: fad diets, pills, gastric surgeries, etc. and don’t realize that these are tactics that are inevitably keeping them on the LONG and painful route….and don’t realize that the real answer is so close. And this hurts.
It hurts me to see how millions of women are suffering and struggling with their weight while losing weight and keeping it off could be so much easier.
How much easier can it be than eliminating the real cause and then watch how your body is doing its fat-burning job because the need for that extra fat has gone? The body only keeps that extra fat because it wants to tell you something (maybe even scream at you) until you will finally listen, hear its message, and then take the RIGHTaction, which is very seldom a weight loss diet.
Now ask yourself, do you want to continue searching, struggling, and yo-yo dieting? Or do you want to find your real, personal cause of weight gain, eliminate it and see your extra fat melt away effortlessly?
In a couple of days, I’m going to continue this story.
In the meantime please post your ideas below in the comment box what you think might Bertha’s cause of being obese might have been. The person who will guess it right, will win a free one-on-one coaching session over the phone with me.
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.
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.
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:
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
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:
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
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.
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else!” –Lawrence “Yogi” Berra, Baseball Player and Team Manager
When you plan a journey, there are two fix points you need to know: the starting point and the arrival point.
You would never call your travel agent and order a ticket to “somewhere else”. Neither would you tell the agent that you want to fly to Paris without telling her from which airport you want to leave.
In both situations you would never arrive. You would either end up somewhere you didn’t want to go or simply stay where you’re at.
And there is a third decision you need to make before your travel can begin. You need to decide how you want to travel. Do you want to fly with a plane, a helicopter or a hot-air balloon? Do you prefer to travel on the land by car, bicycle, train, bus, or by foot? Or do you choose the water to travel? There are several travelling methods you can choose from. In other words, you need a map and a travel plan.
If you want to travel a long distance, for instance a whole continent, you’d better be prepared to use several means of transportation; at some point you may even have to walk.
Now what does that have to do with your weight loss?
If you’re very overweight, your journey is like unexplored territory. You may have taken some short trips in the past hoping that this would get you to your final destination and inevitably you got discouraged and frustrated because it didn’t.
And this is exactly the big mistake.
You have to plan the journey ahead of time. And depending on the length of the journey you better choose some sensible “transportation” means.
Also mind your expectations. If you only need to lose five to ten pounds, then a 1-month diet may get you to your goal, at least temporarily. But if you need to lose 20, 30, 50, 100, or 200 pounds, you need a whole different strategy. With each 10-pound step you have to choose a more complex and thorough strategy for long-term success. And you have to take your time. Don’t think in monthly terms. No matter how little you want to lose, think about one year of inner transformation, IF you want to keep your lost weight off. The weight loss itself may take faster, but you need to make sure that the new weight will be maintainable, therefore you want to get everything out of your way that lead to weight gain in the first place. And if you have to lose more than 100 pounds, you better take yourself two to three years to make the weight loss sustainable.
Then, of course, you want to know your final goal. “Somewhere else” is not a goal. “Less weight” is not a goal. In order to arrive at your destination you need to know exactly where that’s going to be. Otherwise you’ll never have the satisfaction of having “arrived”, and you need that for your motivation to follow through.
State clearly what you want and where you want to go, for instance, “I want to weigh 120 pounds.” Choose a realistic goal that matches your body.
Of course you can achieve your final weight goal without knowing how much you currently weigh or what the measures are. But think about, losing weight can be a tedious endeavor and depending on how much weight or inches you want to lose can take quite a while. If you’re very heavy, this process may take up to three to five years. In order to have the willpower to follow through you need to have some short-term successes.
During that time you need successful milestones you can check off from time to time. Successes are strong motivators, especially when you choose to take that journey alone (I hope you won’t, because then it could literally take you forever). Knowing where you started and achieving sub-ordinate targets will give you evidence of success and motivation to move on. That doesn’t necessarily need to be the scale. I personally prefer taking measurements. Measures are more reliable than the weight.
Now take yourself 15 minutes and sit down with a piece of paper and a pen. Take a glass of water. Determine your current weight and measure the circumference of several body parts. This is your starting point.
Then decide what your realistic weight goal could be in terms of weight and dress size. If you are not sure, ask yourself at which weight you felt best in your body. Write that goal down.
The third step is to decide what strategy could get you there and what to “pack” for the journey. This is where most people struggle. The only two tactics for weight loss most people know are dieting and exercise, and diets are only for short-term goals and exercise are long-term goals – you don’t see immediate results. But the heavier you are, the less likely these two tactics will do the job. Ask yourself, whether you have to reduce your stress, sleep more or better, detox and cleanse your body, or what else your body needs to release that extra fat.
Then you also want to decide who you want to have in your boat. It took me 38 years to detect 59 possible causes of women weight problems and how to address them. Most women only know what they are doing wrong but they don’t know the real root causes because they are always subconscious. But it’s exactly the psychological root causes that provide you from losing your weight for good until they will be addressed. Of course you can go on that journey alone, but my experience of working with over 10,000 women showed me over and over that women run in circles when they are trying to lose weight. And that doesn’t get you anywhere.
If you don’t know what else could help you to achieve and keep your final weight goal, feel free to send me an email to info@sheslimfast.com and we can discuss your individual situation. I know 59 causes of weight issues and can give you direction how to eliminate them. Or you can join my FREE Facebook group that is currently one of my most successful programs.
Happy planning and arriving!
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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.
What I have experienced for myself and often hear from my participants is that they don’t like to look at themselves in the mirror and in shopping windows. Most of them then begin to see all the negative things about themselves: the muffin top, the bad hair, the posture, the fat hips, the too small or too large boobs, the fat ass (their words, not mine), etc. And what they tell me about their bodies is way worse than what I’m repeating here.
Overweight women can be very harsh about their own bodies. Many of my clients tell me that they kind of feel, that when they say all these bad things about their body, other people won’t say them. So this is really a way of protecting themselves from being hurt. It hurts less to say negative things about oneself than hearing them from others. But no matter who says these terrible things about your body, it always hurts…and it has an effect on your weight and the ability or disability to lose it.
Our subconscious mind is not only an intelligent being, it also has ears. Whatever you say or think about your body, your unconscious hears that. Your subconscious is a 100% obedient to what you say; and when you say all these terrible things about your body, your subconscious instantly gets to work to manifest exactly that physiccally.
But that’s not the worst. Your body is an intelligent being as well, adhering completely and a 100% to the laws of creation and nature. And when you think or say all these negative things your subconscious mind wants to manifest but which are against your body’s onw blueprint, this leads to an enormous conflict for your body spirit.
The problem is that you most likely then will blame the body when you gain more fat because your subconscious thought that this is what you wanted. This leads to a situation of mistrust between you and your body that makes matters much worse and can extend the weight loss (weight gaining) process forever. It literally causes a vicious cycle that spirals down from negative thinking to negative emotions what always have a direct impact on our bodies and down to your subconscious mind whose job it is to bring everything you’re saying and thinking into physical reality.
Your unconscious doesn’t know that you’re saying or thinking these things because you don’t want them. It can’t distinguish between a joke and a command or a complaint and a command. To your unconscious every thought and spoken word is a command to realize. And if you complain about your body or weight, your subconscious mind mistakenly believes that this is what you want and obediently realizes even more of what you don’t want. And at the same time your body is deeply disappointed when it hears such harsh words about it and it stops cooperating and collaborating with you. But it’s exactly your body’s FULL cooperation and collaboration you need.
Especially feelings of insignificance lead to energy blockages in our bodies what makes losing weight harder. Such energy blockages first have to be released before the body can begin to lose weight.
Now just think about, if you would talk about another person the way you’re talking about your body, would that person be motivated to assist you in your personal goals? Not unless she’d be a masochist. If you have pets you communicate with regularly, you know that they can understand you. Since our body is very much like an animal, it can understand you as well.
Just be aware that you’re not talking just to you. You are talking to your subconscious mind and to your body at the same time. Both have “ears”. The conflict between you, your body and your subconscious mind could not be bigger. So how on earth do you think you could ever lose weight with all that negative self-talk and the conflicts you are creating within yourself?
As long as you can’t look at yourself in the mirror in a friendly, gentle and loving way, I recommend you avoid looking at yourself in the mirror as much as possible…at least for the moment. At the same time take yourself a few minutes every day where you consciously look at yourself in the mirror and tell your mirror image what you like about her. There is always something beautiful in every person. This is the only way you can win your body’s trust back.
I know, this is not an easy assignment for many. I’m pretty sure that you’re going to have difficulties at the beginning. Please, do it anyway. It will soon get easier. And one day there will be the moment when you can look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you’re the most beautiful woman you have ever seen…and you’ll mean it. I’m not talking about the narcissistic way of thinking that you were the greatest person on the planet and show off whenever you have the opportunity. I’m not talking about arrogance and cockiness. I’m talking about real, deep, honest and pure self-love. That’s the moment when you, your subconscious and your body will become a team. And that’s the moment when your body can begin to realize its perfect blueprint…slim and healthy.
Once you’ll cut through all the self-criticism, you’ll never be the same person anymore. Your self-image will have completely changed, and with it your outer body.
Just know that it will take your body longer than your mind to change. So please be patient with your body and don’t beat it up if it can’t lose weight within a month just because this is your wish. Take responsibility and be aware that you have mistreated your body with bad food and a lack of exercise, with your negative self-talk and a whole bunch of bad habits for YEARS. Now it’s time to get in charge and be a kind yet determinded “boss” to your body and subconscious. After all it took you until now to finally get in charge of your weight the right way, and you can’t expect your body to change immediately.
So be patient. Don’t push things.
Have fun and enjoy the process. I’ll talk to you again next week. In the meantime please feel free to post your comments, questions and everything you want to share with me on this page below this article.
Here’s to your slim and healthy body,
Angela B.
P.S. If you want to learn more about how to change your thinking and behavioral habits, please check this page.
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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.