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.
Cause And Effect
The Difference Between Causes, Symptoms and Effect
The next topic we need to understand so that things will begin to make sense is the difference between causes, symptoms and effects. Unfortunately this is one of the most ignored pieces of the whole weight loss puzzle.
Just like the Law of Attraction is true, there is also another Universal Law that is true for everybody and everything under the Sun. It’s the Law of Cause and Effect. Every effect has a cause, and likewise every cause will inevitably have an effect. Therefore your excess weight must have a cause. And your decisions, thoughts, emotions and actions (or the lack of it) must have an effect.
The adage of every diet is: “You eat too much, that’s why you’re fat. Ergo, you have to eat less and you will lose weight.” And this is the biggest misconception behind dieting and weight loss.
The diet approach sees the eating as the cause of your weight problem. I can tell you with absolute certainty: it hardly ever is. No healthy person can eat too much and too much of the wrong food, if there is not another issue. That’s another reason why diets make no sense at all. They don’t address the real problem.
More often than not the eating too much or craving the wrong food is just a symptom that shows you that there is something wrong either on your physical level (the body), your mind, your emotional level, or your psychological level.
Before we proceed, let me give you a definition of these 3 terms.
The cause is the reason, what is behind a problem, the source, the root and origin. The cause can be on one of the four levels, but most of the time it’s a combination of several causes on several levels.
Symptom
A symptom is a sign, an indicator, a warning signal. Its purpose is to alert you that there is something wrong, so that you can make the necessary changes.
Effect
This, of course, is the result, the visible effect, the reaction, or the outcome. In other words: the printout.
As soon as you understand these differences, you will stop searching for the wrong answers.
Most people mistakenly believe that poor eating habits and a lack of exercise were the causes of their weight issues. Again, the adage, ‘all you have to do is eating less and exercise more’ is utter nonsense. Sometimes an overweight person needs to eat less, but just as often or even more it’s not the eating that is the problem. Sometimes a person even needs to eat more at the beginning in order to lose weight.
Dr. James Carlson, a New York obesity physician told me and my webinar attendees how he and his patients lost weight by increasing the daily caloric intake up to 4000 and more calories per day. This is only one proof that counting calories is nonsense and will not bring you lasting results. Yet, millions of women are now following the false recommendation to reduce the calories and are deeply disappointed each time this approach doesn’t work.
Of course, healthy eating and exercise are very important for good health and weight, as you have heard before, and I’m the last person who would debate that. But…
healthy eating & dieting is not the same
a change in your eating habits plus exercise alone will hardly do a good long term job, if you want to lose excess weight for good
They will only bring short-term results, if you don’t address the real causes at the same time. I’m going to explain why in just a minute. But first let’s look at what causes, symptoms and effects are regarding weight.
Psychological imbalance, disharmony, disequilibrium, discontent, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, fear and anxiety, need for protection; lack of self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth; past trauma, abuse; an imbalance between receiving and giving, poor habit, and so on and so forth. Up to this point I have detected 58 possible causes.
Symptom
Over-eating or poor diet, lack of exercise, lack of some vital nutrients, toxins, parasites, hunger attack, cravings, sleeping problems, hormonal imbalance, an incapability of loving and taking care of yourself, etc. – these are all signs (symptoms) that there is something wrong and out of balance. Some of the symptoms can turn into causes, if unaddressed.
Effect (result)
Excess weight or obesity, sickness, problems, conflicts. Effects, too, can turn into causes if not addressed for a long time.
Symptoms are always trying to teach you something, they are your body’s warning signals. Symptoms show you that there is something wrong on another level. They indicate that you’re dissatisfied, frustrated, fearful, or that you’re subconsciously trying to protect yourself, etc. In fact, weight problems only want to teach you something and provide you with a necessary learning opportunity. When you ignore the symptoms, the warning signals for too long, you will eventually have the physical effect.
It’s your body’s way of communicating with you. The bad news is that as long as you ignore these signals, you can’t get long-term weight loss results. The good news is that eliminating the cause is often enough to turn things around. The symptoms (signals) are not needed anymore.
Most of the time there is a whole complex of several causes active in you, and therefore most of us have to dig a bit and eliminate several causes before we can strip those extra pounds for good.
Once you get that, it doesn’t matter how much you want to lose, as soon as the causes are eliminated, losing weight becomes easy, fast and effortless. The body has no longer a reason to send you signals after signals and to hold on to that extra fat.
On the other hand, if you can’t lose your weight for good, this is a sign that you have not found and eliminated the real cause of weight gain.
If you have read my last blog about causes, you already understand that overeating and craving the wrong food has a cause. Hence, the overeating and binging is not the cause of your weight struggles, but a symptom that there is something wrong on another level. The symptom cravings alone can have several possible causes.
So your poor eating and exercise habits are just symptoms that are trying to alert you of a deeper problem (i.e. toxic overload. lack of the right nutrients, parasites, emotional imbalance), and your excess weight is the outcome.
When you follow a diet, take diet pills, get a liposuction, or even worse, a lap band done, you’re simply trying to cut off the symptom. You can put on layers of make-up on an ugly face, but the next morning that person will still wake up with the same old, ugly face. Likewise, masking the symptoms is never going to bring you long term results. It can’t. Besides, by doing these things you’re damaging your health and deliberately destroying your health pillars and setting new and even worse causes for weight gain and other severe health issues.
Did you ever wonder why there are children born with terrible deformations and disabilities? Well, this can be the karmic consequence of plastic surgery or terrible body neglect, for example. We can’t pretend to know it better than our Creator without having to suffer the consequences. In many cases – especially in the very stubborn ones – the cause of severe weight issues can be karmic.
Unfortunately no surgery, no pill, no diet changes a bit in your real causes of your weight problems and they will remain effective, causing your body to gain the lost weight back soonest possible. So you are not only still having that extra weight again, but you’re also a lot unhealthier and have added several more health problems simply by trying to go the short route. And this will go on until you’ll understand what the body really wants to tell you and make some significant changes.
It can happen that a dieter solves her inner causes during a diet subconsciously and thus loses her weight without gaining it back. But this rarely happens. Most likely such a person has already done a lot of inner transformational work before starting the diet so that she doesn’t need her excess weight as a “growth teacher” anymore, like it happened for me.
Unfortunately these people often mistakenly believe that it was the diet that helped them lose their weight, but it was their inner work, something they suddenly got and solved on a conscious or subconscious level.
And, of course this also happens when a participant understands the correlation between her individual causes and her excess weight and solves the problem or problems on that inner level. Then you will not only see fast results, but also lasting results.
I remember one of my former participants who attended a weekend workshop of mine. That workshop was all she needed to understand the real issue behind her weight struggle. After that weekend workshop she moved out of the house of her sister where she had been raped by her brother-in-law, worked on her inner self-protection and lost weight without dieting. That one weekend course was enough for her to understand and solve the real cause.
The good news is that eliminating the cause is often enough to turn things around. The symptoms (signals) are not needed anymore and you can begin to lose weight almost effortlessly. This is exactly how I lost 65 pounds without even realizing.
One day I was standing in a store for clothes because I needed a new pair of jeans. I was totally shocked when I realized that my original clothing size didn’t fit anymore. It was too large. So I tried a smaller size…and it was too large as well.
Can you image the dumb face I had when I realized that even two sizes smaller didn’t fit anymore? Then I tried another size smaller and I was still loose. Then I tried a size I couldn’t ware since I was 15, and it fit.
First I thought that the clothing company had changed the numbering system. Now most people would be happy, but I simply didn’t understand and was puzzled at best. I didn’t understand because I had not realized up to that moment that I had lost weight, because for many years I only wore clothes that had those rubber bands that are flexible enough for weight fluctuation in any direction. Besides, I didn’t follow a diet or changed my exercise regimen, and since I didn’t weighed I did not realize that I had lost weight. In my inner perception of myself I was still fat. That’s why my dumb face. I simply didn’t understand what had happened.
It took me several years of studying behavioral psychology to understand why I had lost that weight without changing anything about my diet or exercise regimen. What I did was working with a psychologist on my inner issues and my self-love at that time, when I had to go through a divorce. That’s why I simply didn’t realize that I had lost so much weight. I never thought that working on my inner issues and on loving myself would help me lose weight. But fact is that I lost 65 pounds that way in the easiest and most effortless way you can imagine.
Most people make that process unnecessarily hard. They fight the symptoms – their real friends – without eliminating the actual causes, thus forcing the body to gain the weight back until the real problem will be resolved. Most people never get that, that’s why obesity is still on the rise despite of the thousands of diets and fitness programs.
It could be so simple. Instead of listening to their inner teacher they go out and get a gastric surgery, causing a new and additional problem for them and early death without solving their weight issues. The sad thing is that most people who get a gastric surgery done will gain their lost weight back after a while. And it could be much cheaper, simpler and easier…and much less painful.
Of course it seems easier to solve the problem on the physical level. But that seldom works. And if it does work, then only on the short term.
You can run away from your real problems for the rest of your life and suffer from your excess weight and the health problems this causes. But this will not get you slim in a healthy and lasting way.
Or….you can accept the obvious and transform the inner problems what is the real and only short cut and much less painful than yo-yo dieting.
So, tell me, isn’t that much easier, faster and simpler than going from diet to diet for years just to gain that lost weight back after a while?
Symptoms speak a very clear language. Once you understand that ‘language’ of your body, you will know exactly what to do or what to give to your body. I’m going to explain that in just a second. Let me use an analogy.
Most likely you have a driver’s license. Imagine that the oil lamp in your car goes on while you’re driving. This is a signal, or a symptom, if you like. It tells you that there is something wrong with your car. In most countries the burning of the oil lamp is a sign that there is no more oil in the car, what is a sign of severe danger for the engine. The burning of that oil lamp means, that you have to stop your car immediately and fill in some oil, otherwise the engine will break down.
So what do you do in such a situation?
You have three possibilities.
One is to ignore the signal and continue driving. The consequences are going to be very expensive and your car will need a new engine.
A second possibility is to smash the light bulb so that the light will go off, and the result will be the same: you’ll need a new engine or a new car.
The third alternative is to stop the car, fill in some oil and the lamp will go off. You have eliminated the cause and the symptom, the signal will stop automatically. No harm done.
In example one you simply ignore the problem and go on. Translated to your body you would completely ignore a pain, thirst, sleeping problems, or cravings.
Regarding the second example, this is exactly what you do when you take medication, follow a diet, or get a gastric surgery or liposuction done. You literally silence the symptom, the alarm signal, your real friend. The symptom (alarm light) may be gone for a while, but the real cause still remains. And as long as the causes remain, the problem will frequently pop up and come back over and over like a boomerang. You literally force the problem to pop up again and again, until the condition will be chronic or so severe that your body can’t survive any longer. This is the stage of all those frequent dieters who can’t lose any weight anymore no matter what they try, who have muscle pain, brain fog, fatigue and other alarming conditions. That’s a severe situation, and the sooner you’ll take care of the better. The longer you either ignore or fight the symptom, the louder the alarm signal will get.
The only way to solve a problem for good is by eliminating the cause. Once you fill in oil, there is simply no more reason for the oil lamp to burn, and it stops burning. Likewise there is no more reason for your body to hold on to some excess fat once you have eliminated the underlying cause. Your body knows that you got the message and can now stop the nagging.
Causescan be physical (such as acidity, toxic overload, hormonal imbalance, deprivation, etc.), it can be a certain emotional pattern, a particular thinking pattern or some subconscious issues or past trauma. How is a diet (any diet) supposed to do that job!?
Silencing the symptom does not solve the issue at all. That would be putting your head into the sand.
The sad fact is that most of us do to their body what they would never do to their car.
Why?
A car has a shorter lifespan than a person and you have to face the consequences much sooner. You know that you can’t afford buying a new car within the next 12 months. When it comes to your body we tend to think that we have enough time to fix and reverse the problem later. For some reason we tend to believe that we can get away with poor habits and an unhealthy lifestyle for until we’ll be retired. We tend to go the path of least resistance. We want to have the fun now and take care of our health later, forgetting that there is no fun whatsoever in being ill and overweight.
Many then calm their conscience and tell themselves that they eventually have to die of something anyway. They delude themselves into believing that their health is out of their hands and that it’s all up to their genetics – or worse, up to God. That is blasphemy. When we do stupid things and don’t take care of our health, we can’t blame God for the results. But, oh boy, do these people complain when they develop a chronic illness. They tell everybody who is willing to listen, how much their body aches.
We have been given free choice. We choose every second of our lives. We may be able to get away with poor habits for a while, but there will come the day when the bill will come due…for sure. The price for such a behavior has always to be paid by the individual herself. Therefore we shouldn’t complain. We had the choice in the past and, apparently, we have made the wrong choices.
Each choice brings consequences. Every cause has an effect and every effect has a cause. If we don’t like the consequences – for instance the consequence of being overweight – we have to choose and cause differently NOW. It’s that simple, really. We can change things at any time, as soon as we decide to take responsibility for our health.
When the oil lamp goes on in your car, then this is a sign that there is no more oil in the tank. So you know exactly that you have to instantly stop the car and fill in oil, because you know what the consequences would be.
When you receive an invoice, you do your very best to pay it within the 10 or 30 days period allowed for payment. You know exactly that if you don’t pay your bill in time, you will soon be charged with a reminder fee and interest. And if you still ignore it and don’t pay, you will face bankruptcy and you will lose your house, and all that for not paying a lousy bill. So, in order to prevent yourself from bigger problems, you pay your bills in time.
It’s exactly the same with the language of our body. Once you understand that principle, it will be easier for you to eliminate the causes instead of treating or silencing the symptoms.
We just have to take the time factor into consideration. Changes on the mental, emotional and psychological level can be made quite quickly, but we have to understand that the body needs time to adjust to those changes. So many overweight women have disturbed that lasting slimming process because they were impatient and stupidly went on another diet.
Now let’s talk about possible causeson all four lower levels.
Cause And Effect
Causes
Up to this writing I have found 56 causes of weight gain. This is not the place to talk about all of them. For that I shared the list with my subscribers lately.
In this article I want to share some of the most common ones to give you an idea. Some possible causes on the physical level, the first pillar:
Sign of accumulated acid
First of all Dieting/diets – yep, diets lead to weight gain for sure
Acidity
Toxins
Parasites
hormonal imbalance
Sleeping problems
Insulin resistance
On the emotional level it can be things like:
self-rejection
Self-rejection
Emotional imbalance
Lack of love, fear of being loved or not being loved
Inner void/feeling empty
Insufficient boundaries – not being able to say “no”
Too strong boundaries (fear of being close)
Unsatisfied hunger for life
Frustration
Imbalance in giving and receiving
Boredom
Not feeling valued
Living with toxic and negative people
Negative/distorted self-image
need of protection
The 3rd pillar is your mental level. On the mental level, possible causes can be:
Regular weighing
Negative thinking
Negative self-talk
False tips and misinformation
Misconceptions (i.e. it runs in the family, no matter what I do I just can’t get rid of those extra pounds, etc.)
Your mindset
And, on the psychological and spiritual level, it can be things like:
Violence
Violence
Trauma
Abuse
Unwillingness to forgive
karma
Of course, not every woman has all of the causes. However, every woman has several causes on several levels. Which ones are effective in your body? Your symptoms are your clues.
Now, understanding that there can be so many possible causes and culprits standing in your way to lasting weight loss, you may begin to understand why reducing a weight loss strategy to just two tactics – diet and exercise – is utter nonsense and CAN NOT work…EVER. It’s just a big waste of time. Of course, we need to lead a healthy lifestyle to remain healthy, but weight loss diets are far from being healthy. Moderate exercising should always be part of a sensible weight loss strategy – but please so not go about it the way they do it in The Biggest Loser. This is very dangerous.
You can’t remedy a traumatic situation that forced a subconscious mind to use fat for protection to let go of that protective shield through a diet, for example.
You can’t solve the problem with a diet when one of the causes is acidity, because every diet literally floods the body with acids what forces it to gain the lost fat back ASAP. Dieting and exercise make matters worse when your body is heavily over-acidic.
How on earth could a diet help, if you lack some vital nutrients?
You can’t hope to lose weight through a diet if your hormones or your brain chemistry are out of balance. That would only make the problem worse and would be a very ridiculous attempt.
When an imbalanced metabolism is your culprit, then diets are making matters way worse.
How can a diet change your mindset or your emotional patterns? It can’t. Exercise can change it to a certain extent, yet it would still not be enough.
Your subconscious mind will always sabotage your attempt to lose weight unless the cause has been taken care of. Then you can lose weight even without a diet. This is your chance to change your weight.
The necessary mindset shift – Tactics vs. Strategy
What is needed first and foremost is a mindset shift – not another diet.
The first step is to understand the difference between tactics and strategies. Tactics are short-term activities with the purpose to achieve some short-term results.
Strategies, on the other hand are combinations of several tactics that are well designed to bring the desired long-term results.
Diets are tactics and have short-term effects; they don’t lead to sustainable weight loss because they don’t address the real problem. A healthy way of eating is different from a diet and should certainly be part of an overall weight loss strategy that is designed to bring you lasting results. Please learn to distinguish between a diet and healthy eating. There is no such thing as a “healthy weight loss diet”. Either you eat healthy or you follow a diet.
Without a good overall weight loss strategy even eating healthily alone is not enough to get you slim for good. What you do instead is checking the possible causes and creating an integrated strategy for your weight loss that addresses your individual causes. In other words, you combine several well chosen tactics and create a strategy, your personal weight loss program, if you wish.
To illustrate the difference between tactics and a strategy: tactics may win a battle or two, but strategies win the war.
By creating a strategy you simply connect the dots.
Think Outside of the Box – Connecting the Dots
The necessary mindset shift is to start thinking outside of the Diet Box!
Look at yourself as a whole being. Therefore a holistic strategy takes care of body, mind, emotions and the spirit.
Whatever you do on the physical level will make you feel better and therefore also influences your emotional level. Just remember how you feel after a healthy meal with living food or after a 1-hour walk.
On the other hand what you do on the emotional level will also make your body feel better. Just think about a moment when you were very happy. You didn’t feel any pain and didn’t bother about your weight. You were just being happy and you felt good in your body.
When your emotions are high, you will find it hard to think negatively, therefore working on your emotional levels has also an impact on your mental level.
On the other hand, your thoughts directly influence your emotions within seconds. One moment you can feel happy and you could hug the whole world. Then one thought creeps into your mind and you suddenly begin to feel miserable. Of course the same is true when you have positive thoughts. When you feel bad and decide to think about what you can be grateful for, you instantly begin to feel better emotionally as well.
The 4th level is the unconscious mind or the level of your memories. When you have positive thoughts, this will also create new, positive memories.
And when you think about positive and happy experiences, your thoughts will be happy ones as well.
Going down memory lane has, of course, also an impact on your body. Depending on whether the memory is a good or a negative one, you will either feel well or not so good.
Likewise good physical experiences also create new, positive memories.
As you can see it’s absolutely impossible to only treat one level alone as they are strongly inter-connected with each other. You can turn this all around and start with negative memories. These will automatically bring negative thoughts, the negative thoughts will lead to negative (sad or angry) emotions and the negative emotions will make you feel bad physically, for instance give you a headache or elevated heart rate. In such moments many women tend to reach for comfort food.
You may now begin to understand why I continue saying that you need a weight loss strategy and not a tactic or two.
When you start working on the physical level you automatically also change – at least for a moment – the emotional level, the mental level and the psychological level (by creating new experiences and memories). Changes from the lower levels up have a smaller and shorter impact than the changes we make from the higher to the lower levels. And when I speak about “high” and “low”, I’m referring to the vibrational rate of each of these four levels.
Molecules vibrate higher than cells, atoms vibrate higher than molecules, and electrons vibrate higher than atoms. This is just plain physics. The psychological/memory level vibrates the highest and the body vibrates the lowest, that’s why it takes a while to see physical results.
When you eliminate the causes on the mental level you improve your physical level, your emotional level, and your psychological level.
When you transform the causes on your emotional level, you automatically help your body, your mental level and your psychological level.
And when you start eliminating all the problems on the physical level, you improve your mental, emotional and psychological levels as well.
Can you see now how working on all four levels is by far THE fastest way of losing extra weight?
Build a strong, solid foundation by designing a sensible weight loss strategy.
4 Pillars of sustainable weight loss
With the article Causes of Weight Gain and this one we have come to full circle now.
I have the hope that you begin to understand now the necessity to have a well-balanced weight loss strategy that goes beyond eating healthy and exercising. And it’s much easier than you may think and years faster than going from one diet to the next.
In the past you have gone from one diet or program to the next, each time abandoning what you have previously done. And I bet all this together has cost you way over $1,000. In fact, an overweight person spends about $50,000 in the average during her lifetime just to lose that excess weight, not to speak about the higher costs for XL clothes and the loss of money many have to suffer because they don’t get the higher paid jobs due to their extra weight.
So don’t you think it’s time now to change that and reduce the extra costs for XL clothes, for special ‘lite’ food, for supplements, books and programs that don’t work? Now you can change your strategy. Instead of doing one tactic after another, you add a few of them to one single strategy and follow that strategy until you will have achieved your weight goal.
Keep in mind that tactics may win a battle or two, but it’s the strategy that wins the war. Now you want to win the whole game, not just a little bit here and there. If you are determined to make 2016 the last year you will ever have to worry about your weight, then this is your chance. And don’t wait because, each time you start a new diet or program your motivation continuously decreases.
If you struggle with your weight, then you have probably already tried several things to lose it. Apparently nothing has helped so far long-term. In other words, by now you have probably found out by yourself that dieting may not be the solution. But what is the solution for weight issues?
Before I or anybody can give you a helpful answer we first have to look at another topic.
A few months ago I had to spend a month in a rehab clinic after a surgery. That clinic is specialized on vein and lymphatic problems. That was very interesting for me because over 80% of all patients in that clinic are obese.
While my physical therapist was working at my body we talked a lot, mainly about health and weight topics. Since most of her patients are obese I asked her one day, why, in her opinion losing weight is so difficult. Her answer was very interesting.
To be honest, from her I expected to hear an answer like, “Obese women eat too much.”“Obese women don’t like to exercise.” “Obese women have poor eating habits.” But to my big surprise she said that the single and most relevant reason for that issue was that overweight and obese people fail to look at the psychological causes. She added, “As soon as overweight people take care of their causes, they can lose weight.”
FINALLY another person who has come to the same conclusion I have! To hear this from an expert who treats 40 patients every week what makes about 1,800 patients per year meant a lot for me.
Of course, that physical therapist and I are not the only professionals who understand the connection between weight gain and psychological issues. In fact, we are in the best possible company (unfortunately that doesn’t mean that people would listen and understand).
Louise Hay lists four possible causes of being overweight:
Fear – the need for protection
running away from feelings
insecurity, self-rejection
seeking fulfillment
This alone should give you a better idea of the complexity of weight issues.
In my 32 years of working with 10,000+ weight-struggling women I have found over 50 possible causes so far. 47 of them I have listed in a report with the title Why You Can’t Lose Weight for Good – Possible Causes of Weight Gain and Yo-Yoing.
There is one simple reason why diets don’t work:
No diet or program will ever work until you will have recognized and eliminated the real cause or causes!
When we think about possible causes of weight gain we usually think about things like over-eating, lack of exercise, hormonal imbalance, lack of discipline…. But that’s only a tiny, tiny part of the whole picture.
Let’s not forget that we are whole beings. We are not our body – we have a body. That is a bigger difference than you may believe. We not only have a physical body of cells, but also finer “bodies” made of atoms, molecules, and electrons. These parts of us are invisible but not less important. The body – or the physical part – is pretty much just like the tip of the iceberg.
Our way of thinking has a tremendous effect on our healthy, our weight, our finances…our whole life. Then, of course, we also have emotions. Emotions and thoughts combined have a very powerful creative effect. The thinking, feeling and acting patterns we repeat over and over become habits which have an enormous impact on our weight. And then we have memories (conscious and subconscious). All these parts of the human being make us the individual we are, and they affect our body, our weight and our health.
One of the reasons why diets don’t work long term is the fact that people only look at the physical body and completely ignore the rest of the human being. The physical and visible part of our being is only a very little part of the problem. Therefore, a diet or any program that ignores the mental, emotional, and psychological part of the issue can never bring long-term results. We can’t ignore 90% of the problem and focus on the 10% and seriously hope that this will solve the problem.
In fact, over-eating is most of the time just a symptom; the real cause of weight gain is usually something else, for instance a hunger for life, for love, for recognition, for improvement. Unfortunately these issues are not often recognized and not taken into consideration for a sustainable weight loss strategy.
No matter how many diets you follow, how determined and disciplined you count calories, how many sacrifices you make, your weight will always bounce back if you don’t take care of the real, underlying causes of your weight problem. When these causes are being ignored for too long, they can add up quite a bit and make your attempts to lose weight more and more difficult with each year.
On th eother hand, simply resolving or eliminating the cause will often bring the desired results without even changing the diet or exercise regimen.
Here are nine examples of what a psychological cause of excess weight or obesity in women can be .
Example #1: After entering a romantic relationship with a partner, Bertha identified even more strongly with her role as a woman. Consequently, she developed a more feminine form. These curves have an erotic appeal. Her body reacted quite naturally to the new situation. If Bertha had recognized the reason behind the slight weight gain, and responded properly (accepted her body and enjoyed her femininity), her weight would not have increased more than a few pounds if she wouldn’t have started yo-yo dieting.
Example #2: Jessica did not have a steady boyfriend for a long time before she met her husband. Her marriage now gives her peace, quiet, safety, and security. This settled lifestyle gives her a sense of comfort – she is content, so to speak. Jessica’s body reacts to this peace, as she relaxes about everything. Her body gains a little weight. With that, her body signals to other men: “I am at home, I am not available anymore.”
Example #3: Erica’s self-esteem is very low. She feels that she must somehow be happy now that she has found a husband. But, in her deepest heart stirs something else – for Erica, yet unnoticed. But this part deep within herself is strong and self-confident and knows that there is no reason for those feelings of inferiority. Yet, because she has learned as a child that she was only loved because she was cute and well behaved, something starts to rebel within her. What if her husband just loved her too because she’s pretty, nice and “low maintenance”? So now, she needs to (unconsciously, because she is not aware of all this) find out. By gaining weight, she is suddenly not so cute and attractive anymore, no longer the sweet little girl. In this way, Erica wants to “test” her husband and find out if he really loves her or just her outer appearance.
Example #4: Even though Mary is very faithful to her husband, he tortures her again and again with jealousy. These outbreaks are very tiring to her, especially since she feels helpless and powerless against the allegations of her husband. She notices that no logical reasoning helps here. She wishes deeply that other men would not look at her that way, so her husband would have no reason to be jealous. Because she loves her husband very much, but knows no way out, her subconscious mind finds a solution. It causes the body to increase her weight and so lose its attractive appeal. From then on, Mary feels satisfaction and peace, as she is no longer noticed by other men. That way, her husband no longer has any reason for jealousy. However, the price is very high, because he finds her new appearance no longer particularly appealing either. Well, you can’t please everyone!
Example #5: Ruth has learned as a child, that she must not say “no,” or she would be punished. At the same time, she received from her mother the message that somehow, she should fulfill her conjugal “duties” with her husband. Now that she is married, she feels the sexual desires of her husband are often too demanding. Although she enjoys the sex, she is not always ready. Since she has never learned to say “no” verbally and she cannot stand up to her husband, her body says “no” in her behalf. She builds up a protective armor, so to speak, and gains weight.
Example #6: Norma’s situation is similar to Ruth’s. She has not learned to say no. On the other hand, she enjoys her body and sexuality. Before she married, she was quite free and could choose her lovers. But now she is only “reserved” for one man. To Norma’s mind it is quite clear that she wants to be faithful, but somehow she has difficulty getting used to the idea of having only one man in her life. She doesn’t trust herself completely. So she gains weight to keep men away. Again, the overweight serves as protection from male harassment on the one hand, and as protection from her own unconscious desires and feelings on the other.
Example #7: When Isabelle met her husband, he courted her intensely at first. He spoiled her with flowers, presents, caresses and compliments, and he called her every day. Isabelle interpreted this behavior as the great love of her life, and said yes to his marriage proposal. But as soon as they were married, the flowers, gifts and other tokens of love stopped. Isabelle believes that her husband no longer loves her. She misses the regular vows of love and affection from him. What’s more, increasingly, he is tense and busy with his professional career. While day after day she is sitting at home alone, bored as a housewife, Isabelle experiences increased cravings for sweets. For her the eating substitutes for love. And then something else happens. Her increased physical size, too, can no longer be ignored, which means that her husband has to notice her more now – she can’t be ignored as easily anymore.
Example #8: Rosmarie has been taken advantage of throughout her whole life. She is by nature a giver, and many people she met took advantage of her, including her family. This caused an imbalance between giving and receiving in her system. As an adult she had the constant feeling of coming short…she feels cheated by life. Therefore she also has the impression that life owes her something. On the physical level this results in constant hunger. At the same time she became very demanding. Often she felt so empty that to others she was like a big black whole that could take and take. In Switzerland we have a saying that goes like this: “She can’t get the throat full.” What that means is that such a person wants more and more and more, even if she can’t handle all that she receives. These people are takers in the truest sense of the word. Their throat can never be filled – it’s like a black, empty, bottomless pit. This is in most cases due to a lack of love in their childhood or other experiences of a lack of something. This can be food, but it’s mostly love and affection. Rosmarie’s way of giving and receiving is not balanced.
Example #9: Living with step-family, Linda has always been the black sheep of the family. Whenever somebody did something wrong, Linda was the one who was blamed. She was blamed for every fight and conflict in the family. There were many problems and a shameful history in Linda’s family, all of which were carefully swept under the carpet. By passing on the responsibility to Linda, the family could live with their blind spots quite comfortably. This allowed them to project everything negative onto Linda, rather than confront what needed to be changed in themselves. Instead, they could fault her and fight her. It was easier this way. They had singled out the “guilty” one. This is how Linda learned very early in her life, to carry other people’s problems on her shoulders. This pattern continues, not only within her family, but also with her friends and acquaintances. She takes the blame for problems and conflicts immediately and kind of automatically on herself – it has become her nature; it takes place on an entirely unconscious level. She has never learned to question whether others might also have their share of blame in a dispute or issue, or even realize that others tended to project their problems onto Linda. More and more, she felt like she was carrying the weight of the whole world on her shoulders. She could hardly breathe and felt depressed and immobile, like she was carrying a big, invisible burden. Her overweight condition simply reflected her role as a scapegoat. It also gave her the strength to be able to carry the burdens that were not hers. In the truest sense of the word, she needed broad shoulders in order to be able to carry all that.Some of these examples may sound familiar to you and others don’t. That’s normal. Not every woman has the same causes.
These examples may just give you a better understanding of the real and quite complex nature of being overweight. These are still just a few examples and a very small part of the problem. Now, just imagine that you wanted to remedy all these issues with one tactic: a diet. You instantly realize what a ridiculous attempt this would be.
But what is the solution?
Very simple.
Weed out the roots first
If we want to make lasting changes and become slim and healthy for good, we have to get to the roots of the problem and weed them out. As soon as these underlying causes can be resolved, there is no reason for the body to stay overweight and it begins to burn more fat.
This may sound very complicated, but it isn’t. The only crux is that in most cases the overweight person needs an expert who is not only familiar with the possible causes but can also lead her through the transformation process. Sometimes there is a lot to weed out before the body can stop the symptoms.
This doesn’t mean that you have to go through 10 years of psychotherapy or through a very painful transformation process. Most of the time we can transform even the biggest and worst causes within 1 and 3 weekly group coaching calls. Frankly, there is no faster, easier and more efforless weight loss method out there I know of.
I personally do that kind of transformation work through one-on-one coaching and group coaching sessions over the phone. Once the real cause (or causes) has been detected and transformed, the body has no more reason to hold on to its extra fat and can begin to burn it.
Here is a short interview with Deepak Chopra on “hunger”.
There is one major reason why it’s highly recommended to take care of extra weight and eliminate the causes right away. And this is something else hardly anybody else tells you.
The longer you are overweight and the more often your weight bounces back and forth, the more your body creates what is called lipedema.
Lipedema overgrowth of fat cells that occur in the legs and lower trunk. In many cases it also includes the arms or upper body as well. Lipedema is often thought to be simple obesity. Don’t confuse lipedema with “lymphedema,” the accumulation of lymph fluid in the interstitial areas, though.
What makes lipedema a big problem is the fact that in such fat tissue hormones are created that force the body to create even more of these fat cells. That way lipedema can grow pretty much in every direction and to this day no cure has been found.
The very best and least painful way to lose your extra weight for good is really toeliminate the causes ASAP.
Allow me just one final word.
Everybody wants to lose excess weight fast and effortless. Here is the most important weight loss secret:
Eliminating the causes is by leaps and bounds the fastest, easiest and most effortless way of losing weight. Period.
When you’re overweight, then your body needs healing in some form or another. Healing (weight loss) can and often has to happen on several levels in order to be effective.
One of the strongest healing powers is entirely free and you can get it anywhere and at any time…and it burns fat without exercise. All it takes is a decision of yours. I’m talking about humor.
Did you know…
…that laughter improves our sense of well-being?
…that it reduces tension, depression and anger?
…that it lowers the stress levels?
…that it reduces blood pressure?
…that it’s a great exercise for your heart?
…that it strengthens your immune system?
…and that it reduces pain?
Laughter is safer than any pharma pills and free of harmful side effects. Laughing is one of the easiest things you can do to promote healing and well-being. And well-being supports your weight loss process. It’s a known fact that patients who have a sense of humor and laugh often, tend to heal faster and better than those who don’t.
Dr. Frank Lipman said: “If health and wellness is your goal, skip irony, bypass sarcasm and make the conscious choice to add more joyous laughter into your day.” Isn’t it exactly irony and sarcasm overweight people are so good at? How about replacing this now with genuine humor?
He also shares 10 simple health-enhancing reasons to have a daily laugh:
Laughter helps boost your immune system by increasing T cell activity, those “killer cells” that help our bodies fight viruses and tumors.
Laughter helps lower blood pressure and cortisol levels, decreases pain and can also help stabilize blood sugar.
Laugher stimulates chemical changes in the brain that help buffer our bodies against the cumulative effects of stress.
Laughter burns a few extra calories: according to a recent university study, just 10 -15 minutes worth of chuckles throughout the day can burn up to 40 calories.
Laughter stimulates the release of endorphins, the mood-elevating brain chemicals behind the “runner’s high.”
Laughter helps reduce inflammation throughout the body – good news for your heart, brain and circulatory health.
Laughter “massages” internal organs – which is why it’s sometimes referred to as “internal jogging” – with effects similar to exercise.
Laughter provides a light workout for the heart, lungs, diaphragm and even the abdominal muscles.
Laughter releases tension in the muscles of the face, neck, shoulders and abdomen – all common areas where we tent to hold lots of tension
Laughter is physically and mentally therapeutic – an involuntary response that positively alters mood instantly – what could be better?
The thing is that your brain can never think two contradictory thoughts at the same time. It’s impossible for a negative thought to remain while you’re laughing. And in my last blog posts we talked about the effect negative thoughts have on our belief system and the effect our belief system has on our weight and health.
Laughing is contagious, irresistible and very attractive.
Humor lightens your burdens, inspires hopes, keeps you ground and focused.
Can you laugh your pounds of? I think you can.
So my “prescription” for today is to add laughter and humor into your life. Take life less seriously. Find one humorous thing each day. “Lighten up”.
“The nicest thing about a laugh is that so much of you has a good time.” –Marsha Perlman
You can make it a habit to read in a joke book or watch a funny video every morning to make it a great start of the day.
A good way is to be more around happy people. Children are great to have a lot of fun with.
In one of my last blog posts I talked about the power your words have in your life and how you can use that power for your weight loss. Today I want to take it a step further.
You see, when thoughts and words are used often enough, they eventually become beliefs. And beliefs are something you naturally believe in, whether or not they are based on truth and facts. For you they seem to be true. The more you believe in them, the more you act accordingly. And the more you act as if they were true, the more you create a physical “reality” around your beliefs.
And with every action you take in that direction, and with every “proof” you get for your belief, it becomes stronger and more powerful. So you operate every day based on what you believe were facts. Beliefs can grow so strong that they can completely mentally cripple a person.
Limiting beliefs are sneaky things and they affect you on a deep subconscious level; they can definitely hold you back from achieving your desired weight loss goal.
Yet, they are still nothing else but beliefs that have nothing to do with facts.
These are the top 11 self-limiting beliefs among overweight women:
I have a strong bone structure.
I’m too old
I’m not smart enough
It’s all about the calories
It runs in my family – it’s the genes.
I’m afraid of trying and failing
You have to have money to lose weight
I’ve already tried everything
I don’t feel that I really deserve to be slim and beautiful
I don’t have the willpower
It just doesn’t work for me
Now does one or several of these self-limiting beliefs resonate with you? Does one of these beliefs resonate more strongly with you over the others?
At this point I encourage you to look behind that curtain and put those beliefs under scrutiny. Take a closer look and find out how some of the little beliefs you hardly paid any attention to may be wreaking havoc regarding your health and weight.
Now let’s take a closer look at these self-limiting beliefs:
Fact: having a strong bone structure does not include having excess fat. Bone is bone and fat is fat.
Fact: you may have to take some more aspects into consideration when you’re past menopause, but that doesn’t mean that your body is operating under different “laws”.
Fact: being successful in any field has nothing to do with your IQ. Fact is that very often the less intelligent people have the greater successes because they’re not stopped by the mental concepts intelligent people often have. Besides, there are several forms of intelligence that most can’t be measured through IQ tests.
Fact: there is ample scientific proof that weight gain and weight loss has nothing to do with calories. This is a myth that has been debunked a long time ago. So let’s not go that route anymore. The only calories you really have to worry about are those empty calories. It’s the quality food that matters, not the quantity.
Fact: there is also enough scientific proof that genes can be over-ruled and even changed. Did you ever see families with very skinny kids and very fat kids? Both have the same parents and the same genes, yet some are slim and some are not.
Fact: if you don’t try, you can’t succeed. The biggest failure is not to try and to maintain the current status quo. Fear of failing is a very disempowering life strategy. The best way to fail is not to try. With over 50 possible causes of weight gain you may have to try several strategies (not diets – no matter what diet you choose, they don’t work) until you will find the one that addresses your individual causes.
Fact: the best weight loss strategies are free. Eating healthy costs way less than unhealthy eating. And if you believe that weight loss programs have to be expensive, try my 30-Day Triple Power Weight Loss Program where you learn how to eliminate pretty much every stumbling block and bad habit that has been standing in your way. Of course, there are $390 programs out there, but they’re not a bit better than my $49 program. So money can’t really be an issue.
Fact: obviously you haven’t. Try my 30-Day Triple Power Weight Loss Program and then you can probably say that you have tried everything. And if that one doesn’t work for you, then you’re definitely doing something wrong….or you have a cause for weight gain that was not yet found. In that case please stay tuned. I’m regularly publishing content about new-found causes of weight issues.
Fact: you are a child of God, and as such you deserve only the best this universe has to offer. Unfortunately the feeling of not deserving to be slim and beautiful is a very common pattern among women. The original blueprint of your body is slim, healthy and beautiful. And whenever you choose to, you can go back and realize your personal original slim blueprint.
Fact: we humans are very powerful beings…each of us. Just because some people have tried to keep you small in the past because they are small, that doesn’t mean that you can’t become the powerful being you once were or you are meant to be. Maybe what you need more than willpower is just the right support system.
Fact: what used to work one or two decades ago regarding weight loss doesn’t work anymore. Dieting and exercising alone doesn’t work for 90% of overweight people…so you’re not the only one who is struggling with those tactics. Since causes are very individual, the belief that what you have tried didn’t work for you may be partly correct. But that doesn’t mean that there is no solution. The only thing this means is that you have not yet found the right solution for you. There are so many new weight loss strategies on the market that address the weight problem on a deeper level.
Are you ready to finally let go of your self-limiting beliefs? In my 30-Day Triple Power Weight Loss Program we eliminate and transform one by one.
What are YOUR main self-limiting beliefs?
Please share them with us in the comment section and let me know how I can assist you in transforming them.
Frankly, I couldn’t care less about calories. I never counted a single calorie in my entire life. I rather use that time for cooking healthy meals.
Calories don’t say anything about the quality of the food. And health and weight loss is MUCH more about quality than about quantity. By eating the right quality food you will find quantity hardly to be an issue.
Before I’ll come to some healthy foods that can support your weight loss process, I have to remind you of the nonsense of the low-fat theory. Low-fat food has only one purpose: to make the purse of the food industry fatter. Because the more low-fat you eat, the more food you need to eat.
Fat has one very important function: it acts like a natural appetite suppressant. With natural, healthy fats you are full much faster and you automatically eat less.
So now that we have the low-fat myth out of or way, let’s look at some really healthy foods that can support your weight loss process.
Nuts and seeds are high in proteins what is crucial for your fat-burning process. Plus they contain a lot of natural fat what makes you feel full faster. Nuts and seeds make great snacks between the meals.
Avocados are very healthy and can also make you feel more full. Women’s Health magazine said, “The fiber, potassium, and healthy fats in the green stuff may curb your cravings so that you skip afternoon trips to the vending machine.”
A real miracle food for weight loss are blueberries. They are best known for their anti-aging effects and are very figure-friendly at the same time.
Women’s Health magazine also lists dark chocolate as figure-friendly and states that eating chocolate is associated with lower levels of abdominal fat. Frankly, I don’t know if this is true. We all have seen it so often in the past that one year a particular food was a strict no-go and only a few years later it was promoted as a real fat burner. As an informed reader of my newsletters you know that statistics can be manipulated…a method often used when sales go back drastically. Then suddenly that food becomes “healthy”. Like I said, I can’t tell if this is true about chocolate or not. Just keep in mind that chocolate contains sugar and sugar is a real toxin for everybody, not just for weight-struggling people. On the other hand I’m not a friend of strict “Eat-this-don’t-eat-that” diets either. Besides, I can’t see why cocoa shouldn’t be healthy. So I leave that decision in your hands. However, if you decide to have some chocolate from time to time, at least eat it slowly and enjoy every bit of it. The worst you could do for your weight is to cobble it down with a feeling of guilt. If you absolutely can’t be without chocolate and are willing to do without sugar, get dark xylitol chocolate.
How many years have you been told not to eat egg-yolk? Well, thank goodness I never fell for that one. Because whole eggs are loaded with appetite-curbing proteins, what makes them a great breakfast food. The cholesterol lie has been debunked for a long time now.
Mmmmm, salmon! One of my favorite source of proteins. It’s full of monosaturated fatty acids which increase metabolism to burn fat faster. If you want to lose weight effectively, you need a lot of natural Omega3.
Lots of leafy green vegetables (such as spinach, collards, Swiss chard, kale, salad greens, etc.). You can’t overeat on those and nicely fill your stomach without having to worry about the calories. Or you can use them for your green juices. These produce should grow in everybody’s backyard. I even grow them on my balcony and window sills.
Beans – especially black beans – contain considerable amounts of protein what makes it an ideal protein source for vegetarians. For sustainable weight loss we need large amounts of proteins. Please, just never eat canned beans. Beans are so cheap to buy and so easy to cook.
These are all produce (minus the dark chocolate) you could pretty much live from without lacking any vital nutrients. If you’re serious about eating healthy and losing weight in a healthy way, these could be your staples that can cover at least 80% of your body’s nutritional needs. And at the same time you will never have to worry about calories or amounts.
If you want to do a real great job, go organic with these foods. Food additives are some big contributors to weight gain. If you don’t let them get into your body, you will never have to worry about getting them out of your body. Be smart and save yourself a lot of time, money, and extra pounds by going organic.
For more valuable tips on how to lose weight AND keep it off, please check out this page.
Here it is: a clean plate, a new beginning, a new CHANCE to make it happen this time.
Will you take that chance or let it go by (again)?
The choice is – as always – entirely yours. So are the consequences.
Every January millions of people make New Year’s resolutions, and no one keeps them.
The question is, what’s stopping YOU from achieving your goals?
Be it a lack of time, lack of discipline, poor planning, trying to do too much…or too little…both, success and failure are still entirely in your own hands.
Who says that New Year’s resolutions can’t last? Mine do and the resolutions of my clients do last, and it’s easier than you may think. All you need to do is working around a few stumbling blocks and not to give up. It’s really easier and simpler than you may believe.
Goals generally can be extremely motivating. By nature you are a very powerful being, capable of accomplishing awesome things. And this is exactly what I encourage you to focus on: your inherited power (not your past failures).
The trick is to…
…set realistic goals
…choose a strategy that has a good chance to bring you the desired long-term (Regarding weight loss this means choosing a holistic strategy and staying away from diets.)
…ask yourself what you are unhappy about and what you absolutely don’t want anymore
…find your big WHY and what you really want instead (most of the time the big WHYs have something to do with your life purpose)
…make a plan/a strategy that contains healthy eating, some exercise, change of attitude and elimination of some psychological causes (which are some of the biggest reasons why the weight bounces back if not resolved)
…stick to that plan for a whole year (create a “stick-strategy” – no poor night’s sleep, no unpredictable occurrence, no sudden breakup, no stressful job can keep you away from your plan)
…make just one change at the time (“Do few things but do them well.” St. Francis)
…take charge (don’t wait for things to change or for a new diet pill to hit the market, there is no miracle pill – the greatest miracle are YOU)
…take consistent and daily action – no excuses (taking action gives you such a sense of confidence and makes you feel better – being in control of your weight and health is invaluable)
The worst thing you could possibly do is starting with a New Year’s resolution without having a clear plan. Not having a plan must lead to disaster and failure.
Would a clear and simple 30-day plan with tiny daily action steps help youovercome the biggest hurdles? I’m talking about a 30-day plan all of my past participants have learned to appreciate very much. Such a plan can really keep you on track. Check it out here.
So what do you want to achieve this year? Do you want to lose 10 pounds? 50 pounds? 100 pounds? It doesn’t matter how much excess weight you want to lose, you can do it. I’m here to assist.
The worst thing you could do is letting this chance pass by and hear me say in a year from now, “I told you so.” I told my readers 12 months ago, 24 months ago, 36 months ago….and I can certainly encourage you in 12 months again. But I’d rather see you succeed this year, because there is nothing more empowering than achieving your goals. Just go about them the right way. Stay away from diets and quick-fixes (because they are actually no-fixes).
What are your New Year’s resolutions? Are you facing any weight issues that seem insurmountable? Do you want to lose weight this year and make 2016 the last year you’ll ever have to struggle with your weight?
Let me know in the comments below and I’ll gladly assist you in your goal achievement process.
Recently I read an article by one of my peers who suggested you take a particular supplement instead of juicing. He went on telling how tedious juicing was and how much simpler and cheaper it was to simply take a teaspoon of the particular supplement he was promoting.
This sounds so intriguing and although I firmly believe that nature still provides the best food, it made me thinking.
It made me thinking why we need juicing and supplements at all. So I put together a list of advantages and disadvantages of juicing.
Disadvantages of juicing:
it’s expensive because it requires a lot of organic vegetables (it doesn’t make sense to juice with produce that had been sprayed with chemicals)
It’s quite a task to purchase large bags of carrots and charts full of greens every day
even if you have organic produce, it still takes a lot of time to wash and cut the vegetables and run them through the juicer; and if you don’t use organic produce, you even need to peel every piece; this is only realistic for stay-home mums, retirees, and unemployed people
if you’re over 30 years old and/or more than 20 pounds overweight, you need to start juicing slowly in order to prevent acid and toxins flooding your organism more than it can handle
our bodies are not designed to consume such concentrated food like juices are; we need fibers
in order to have the desired effect, juices have to be freshly juiced and be consumed within 24 hours; you can’t store them longer and bottled juices are more harmful than helpful
juicing creates a lot of waste and you have to through valuable food away that is rich in healthy fibers
juices are not really good to consume; to make them tasteful it requires quite some mixing, and you need to know which produce go together well and which doesn’t (there are vegetables I love eating, but when I juices that contain these produce are absolutely disgusting)
you need to learn first which fruits and vegetables go well together and which don’t
I don’t know how about you, but there are phases when my body completely refuses fresh juices
On the other side there are tremendous advantages in juicing nothing else can beat.
Advantages of juicing:
our bodies are so deprived because fruits and vegetables have lost between 30% and 80% of their nutritional value due to the current farming methods, and there is currently nothing else that can fill your empty vitamin deposits as quickly as juicing
many chronic diseases are caused or aggravated by a lack of vital nutrients and many of them can be easily reversed simply by juicing
juicing has an alkalizing and detoxifying effect what is great for young people and those who only need to lose a few extra pounds (if you’re older than 30 years and more than 20 pounds overweight, you need to know exactly what to do so that your body can deal with the flood of acid and toxins without creating more fat)
we are living in times where it’s not enough to just take one vitamin or one supplement (no matter how balanced they may be); our bodies lack vitamins, minerals, trace elements, enzymes, amino acids, phytohormones, etc.; all these things have to be consumed through food because only in food these substances are well enough balanced so that our bodies can really use them (an overload of some nutrients can lead to health problems, too)
juicing is a great way to start a cleansing and weight loss process
We all know that juicing was not meant to be the way we eat, and it’s not the final solution. Because of our ways of eating and time-saving cooking methods we have created a world that makes eating healthy a real challenge. Facts are…
…that we only want shiny and spotless produce (organic food can never look so perfect)
…that people want to cook their meals as quickly and easily as possible and increasingly purchase finished menus
…that using microwave ovens as the defrosting and heating method
…that makes eating healthy and keep the family healthy nearly impossible (at least long term).
But please, don’t let us complain. It’s us – every single person on this planet – who contributed to the lifestyle we currently have with all its advantages and health challenges. It’s always the consumer who dictates what we are being sold to. And only we have the power and the possibilities to change that.
How can you know whether your personal lifestyle is healthy or not?
The weakest link in the family will always become sick first.
As soon as one family member develops a chronic disease or cancer, the way you cook and eat is at least partially the culprit, and the health of your family can quickly and drastically be improved by changing your lifestyle.
Fact is – and you’re probably going to hate me for that, but keep in mind that I’m just the bearer of the message – that if we want to keep our families healthy, we have to cook from scratch, using all fresh, organic fruits and vegetables that are rich in vital nutrients. Convenience definitely jeopardizes our health.
Keeping yourself and the ones you love healthy starts with what is on your kitchen table…it starts with a healthy lifestyle.
“But I don’t have time to cook from scratch. I have a job, three kids and an elderly parent to take care of!” you may object.
I hear you. I really do. I used to be a single mom with my own business, and I know exactly where you’re coming from.
However, please keep in mind that the way we live is nothing but a series of choices. Maybe you have made the choice to purchase a house that requires both parents to have a job. Maybe you have chosen the false safety of a job over working from home and now you’re constantly afraid of losing your job, if you don’t work long hours. You have made choices regarding your budget. You have made choices regarding cars, televisions, and vacations. Sometimes it just requires a little bit of a cut down or a slightly simpler lifestyle and a family may be well able to live on one pay check and a smaller budget.
It’s all about setting priorities. Only you can decide what priority the health of your family has and what you’re willing to sacrifice for. This time of the year is the perfect time to reconsider your personal life priorities and make new choices.
What I’m saying is that we ALL constantly need to reconsider past choices. Many of us need to choose differently for the sake of their family’s health.
Currently I’m living in an apartment that comes with its own 500 square meter garden. When I moved in I decided to cut a little bit back on my work and use that time to grow my own produce. And I realized that just a small piece of land or backyard can easily save me $200 every month in food just for one person. Plus the organic food I grow myself is the healthiest you can get. Because my own vegetables are so full of vital nutrients, I need much less food to get my body satisfied. From a peer of mine I know that one acre of backyard is enough to almost fully feed a whole family of five.
I understand that many women just don’t think that they might have time for their own garden. But if something resonates within you with what I’m sharing here, then you may want to try and at least get your feet wet.
Before I moved to this place I started with pots on my balcony. I grew my own tomatoes, potatoes (you read that right), herbs and salads on my porch and balcony. If you have rich soil, you can easily grow a zucchini or cucumber plant on your porch or balcony. I even have several pillar fruit trees (they only have a stem but no side branches and require very little room) and berries on my balcony. The waste I get from juicing I utilize as mulch for my pots and beds and spray some living organisms over the compost for a faster decay. That way nothing is lost and nature beautifully provides me with more and more healthy food because my soil gets richer from year to year.
You can slowly grow into a healthy-food gardener. The first step would be to purchase a book about correct composting and organic gardening – maybe you would even find a book on organic pot gardening.
Then decide on one thing you would like to grow on your patio or in a bed in your back yard. This could be a few seedlings of spring salad (the sort you can constantly harvest the outer leaves and the salad keeps growing in the middle). This gives you and your family a healthy salad every day. Then you may want to grow some basil, chives and parsley to make the salad more tasteful and add some more vitamins. Very easy to grow is Swiss chard and you can constantly harvest the large outer leaves. The leaves are great for juicing and the stems are a delicious vegetable when cooked with onions and garlic.
If you’re not yet a gardener, then I recommend start slowly. Now is a good time to make plans for next year and start purchasing or creating the right containers. Also start composting now.
Please add your own ideas and experiences below. We are eager to learn from your experiences.
If you want to learn how to apply a healthy lifestyle step by step and stress free that works individually for you and your family, you may want to check out my 30-Day Triple Power Weight Loss Challenge.
Over the course of this year we talked about self-sabotage several times. I dare say that self-sabotage is one of the biggest obstacles keeping women from losing their weight and keeping it off. And the real bad news about self-sabotage is that it is almost to a 100% subconscious. In other words, we don’t even know if and when we are sabotaging our goals. That one fact makes losing weight a real challenge.
But for every challenge and problem there is always at least one solution.
Today I want to talk about ten possible ways to end your self-sabotage and to bring your weight loss success to the next level. The time for new orientation is perfect, because in a month from now you will begin to feel that strong inner desire to give your weight loss goal another try. Come January your motivation will peak and then you will be happy to have some new information and possibilities to finally get a handle on your excess weight.
Here are my 10 tips:
Hire a coach: this is by leaps and bounds the best, strongest, fastest, and most effective way of recognizing where you sabotage your own goal and learn how to end it. The better and more experienced your weight loss coach is the better and faster she can spot your hidden saboteurs and lead you to the path of accomplishment. This can be through live consultations or over the phone.
Joinagroupcoachingprogram: if you can’t afford a coach for yourself, then joining a group coaching is the second best solution. Although the coach has to divide her attention between several individuals, she can still spot your blind spots and lead you through the necessary transformation process. This too can either be through live consultations or over the phone.
The buddy system: if for whatever reason you don’t want to choose one of the first two options, then it’s highly recommended to at least find a buddy. The only disadvantage here is that your buddy most likely has her own blind spots and self-sabotage patterns. Besides, she may still be fixated on the dieting-exercise approach what will not bring you much further. But it’s still better than doing it alone, especially for the exercise part.
Schedule every single step and stick to it: if that’s not an option either, then you’d have to test your willpower. One way to do that is by scheduling every single step ahead of time and making it a habit to stick to it. For most women this works best, when they mark their calendars and reserve a time spot for whatever step they want to take.
Self-reflection: this is not an option – it has to be part of every way you choose. If you choose a coach – be it for one-on-one coaching or for a group coaching, your coach can spot your blind spots. Still, you need to do some self-reflection to accept those blind spots. If you go through the weight loss process alone, you’d have to be very good and experienced at self-reflection. It can be done.
Apply the 21-Day principle: Some months ago I offered you my free Weight Loss Habit Hack. In that free program there is the 21-Day principle included. The trick is to change habits one by one simply by sticking to one new habit for consecutive 21 days. Of course, in my free Weight Loss Habit Hack I share more information, but this is how it’s done in a nutshell. It’s easier to stick to one habit for three weeks than starting with a process you think you have to do for the rest of your life. Although you have to, it’s still easier psychologically just to think about the first 21 days. Once you’ll have accomplished that, it will have become a new habit and will be much easier to stick with it. If you didn’t get your own Weight Loss Habit Hack yet, you can claime your copy in the box at the right side of this page.
Jointhe30-DayChallenge: if you’re on a tight budget but still need some clear guidance and live support, then the 30-Day Triple PowerWeightLossChallenge may simply be ideal for you. It gives clear daily directions in baby steps so that your subconscious mind has enough time to adjust without sabotaging your weight loss process. And it costs less than $50. That program addresses several aspects of weight issues and it also comes with 4 weeks of live group coaching over the phone.
Consult a behavioral therapist: that is almost as good as having your personal one-on-one coach. A behavioral therapist can quickly and easily spot your self-sabotaging tactics and help you eliminate those. The only thing she can’t offer is the experience and expertise of a weight loss coach. So, after she has helped you eliminate your self-sabotage, you’ll be asking yourself, “What’s next? How can I proceed from here?” You can consider yourself lucky if you can find both professions in one person.
Stoptheexcuses: this possibility requires a lot of self-reflection. But when you’re used to self-reflection and honest to yourself, then this could be a great beginning. Once you have trained yourself not to use excuses anymore, you have eliminated a giant obstacle.
Stop the quick-fix mentality: believe it or not, but one of the biggest obstacles that are standing in women’s way to losing weight is their quick-fix mentality. As soon as they decide to lose some weight they want to achieve that instantly. Unfortunately many forget that they didn’t gain that weight within a month or two, and they also lack a deeper understanding of how their body really works. To make matters worse they hear daily that they could lose 10 pounds in as little as 10 days and thus are completely mis-lead by some greedy marketers and false gurus. When someone tells you that you can lose that much weight in such a short time, then he or she is a crook. Sometimes it may go that fast, sometimes it may go even faster, during some phases however it will be much less than that. And then there are months you will not lose any weight at all. This is normal and part of weight loss. Your body is not a machine. Too many then give up because they think that there was something wrong with them instead of questioning the diet or program. The sooner you understand that, the faster you can begin to make some real, serious, and lasting changes.
If you think that overcoming self-sabotage could be tough, then you have my full empathy. It is probably the toughest part of the whole weight loss issue. However, there is no way around, if you’re serious about losing your weight because fighting against yourself is very energy consuming. There is no diet that can overcome that obstacle in your behalf.
However, there are solutions to overcome those stumbling blocks. It’s not always easy, and I think every weight-struggling woman can testify that. But with those 10 steps you can achieve great results, especially with items #1, #2, and #8. Not every person is equal. Some need more time and others need less time. I have seen breakthroughs in my coaching programs in as quickly as two weeks. It all depends on how open and how willing you are to eliminate your personal saboteurs. And once those saboteurs are eliminated, the weight loss process goes much smoother, faster, and easier.
Here’s to your final weight loss success,
Angela B.
behavioral therapist and weight loss coach since 1984
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.
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?
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. 
