What the whole diet industry is telling you is that diets were the solution for weight loss because of the calorie in vs. calorie out theory, but that theory is wrong and an utter lie. The fact is that dieting is not a cure for excess fat. Of course, healthy eating should be part of any sensible weight loss strategy. But dieting is not a healthy approach and causes many health issues.
One of the very important topics Dr. Susan Smith Jones talked about in our interview was the control mechanism for weight loss.
After you finish a diet, you may have lost some fat, but you have not lost your tendency to get fat. According to Dr. Susan, what we eat does not change muscle metabolism.
Most women are not happy with the shape of their bodies because most people go about it the wrong way by dieting. A woman I know is a fan of the vegan lifestyle, and she tries to convince every person she meets to go vegan as well, and she is very pushy about that. Although she is short and very thin, her body has a terrible shape. This is one of the typical results of a vegan lifestyle, and it’s the most harmless of all results.
Dr. Susan clearly says that diets don’t work, and she recommends, “You want to throw away any diet book you might have that tells you that you can lose weight and keep it off without moving a muscle.”
After you finish a diet, you may have lost some water, muscle mass, and maybe even a little fat, but you haven’t lost the TENDENCY to get fat.
Here is what you need to understand about metabolism:
The control mechanism for being overweight is not diet; it’s muscle metabolism.
“Your base for metabolic rate is the rate at which your body utilizes energy. In other words, how many calories you’re burning throughout the day.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
The higher your metabolism, the more fat you burn and the easier it is to lose weight, provided that everything else is working properly. To this, Dr. Susan adds that you can feed your muscles and your bodies with the best supplements, but if exercise is not part of the plan, you are not going to burn all the calories you need. And you will probably not have the nicely shaped body you want.
As we age, if we don’t keep lots of good lean muscle tissue on our body by working out, then the metabolism goes down. So the key to controlling metabolism is exercise. Exercise must be part of a good, sensible and effective weight loss strategy. Never settle for one tactic only.
To have a nicely formed body, we need aerobic exercise like walking, cross-country skiing, hiking, jogging to burn fat out of the muscles. And then we need to do some weight training to build up muscles which, in turn, increases the metabolism.
In my work as a weight transformation coach, I realized that about 50% of overweight women hate exercise. I was one of them for many years. But I promise, once you begin to do just a little bit of exercise, and if you do it daily no matter the weather, you will begin to like it, and then after a while, you even begin to need it, and it will get super easy to follow through with your exercise plan. To make it easier, Dr. Susan recommends the buddy system, especially at the beginning. When you know that your friend is waiting around the corner at 7 am, it’s easier for you to get out of your bed.
To begin with, just choose those activities you like the best. Most people can find something that they like to do. And if you can’t take 30 minutes or an hour a day, start with as little as 15 minutes per day. Even the busiest person can squeeze in 15 minutes. The main thing is that you do it daily without fail for the first 30 days. As soon as you realize that it works, you can find ways to increase the time or exercise for 30 minutes or 15 minutes twice daily.
Just in case you are one of the super busy women whose first reaction to this recommendation is, “But I can’t afford to take so much time for exercise every day,” let me ask you a question. What will happen in ten, twenty or thirty years if you don’t exercise regularly now? I’m sure you will come up with several health issues right away. And you’d be right.
Therefore, the question should not be, “Can I afford to take time for daily exercise?” Instead, the question should be, “Can I afford not to exercise daily?” What many people just don’t realize is the costs of a sedative and busy life.
If you want to lose weight, a minimum of half an hour of aerobic exercise every day is the minimum. Then make it a commitment to add some muscle training three times a week for 30 minutes consistently for the next six months. Within those six months, your body will add ten extra pounds of lean muscle tissue, and these ten pounds of muscle tissue will burn 500 more calories a day. These muscles will help you lose weight faster.
And here is an additional bonus. If you do as recommended, you can look 15 to 20 years younger within only one year. And this is according to major studies done at Duke University. Can you get that? Just exercise for one year and build 10 pounds of muscle tissue and look 15 to 20 years younger. It will work, no matter your current age. Isn’t that a no-brainer!?
Please remember what Dr. Susan said regarding choosing to be the CEO of your body and life. Therefore, adding that kind of exercise to your weight loss strategy could be the first step to being the CEO of your body and life. All it takes is a commitment.
We are creatures of habit, and when you get in a rut of doing the same things day in and day out, it may take some effort to change the habits. Just keep in mind that your current “rut” was created by your past choices and habits. So now, you can choose to implement new habits and create a new daily procedure. The right kind of exercise should always be part of our overall weight loss strategy.
*****
A few years ago, I did an interview with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial.
When it comes to weight loss, there are three things over which we really have control in life. One is what we think, one is what we eat, and the third one is how we move and exercise. And it all begins with your attitude. If your life is set up in a way that doesn’t allow you that freedom – provided you’re an adult – then you’re in bigger trouble than you may think.
“Attitude is the mind’s paintbrush, it can color anything.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
We all like to think that our thoughts are just happening without us. When we eat, we either eat what our sweet tooth, the media, our life circumstances, or the time of our lunch breaks dictate. And the exercise part is being dictated by time and excuses…we either don’t have time or use that as an excuse.
But the fact is – and there will come a time in your life when you will painfully realize that we and only we are in charge of our thoughts, the food we eat and what priority our health has in life.
If you are a spiritual person, please make the following visualization. Imagine that you have just gone through death, and now you are standing face to face in front of God. Imagine that he asks you how you were thinking about his gift, your body, throughout your life and you would say, “Well, dear God, I couldn’t really decide what to think, my head just kept thinking without my interference.” Do you really think that God would respond, “Poor thing, you were so burdened with a disobedient brain. Of course, then it was all your brain’s fault and not yours.”
God’s next question then is, “Now tell me, dear, how have you been taking care of that gift of mine, your body? Did you feed it with the best food, and did you move it regularly as it needed to be moved?” And you would answer, “Well, you see, dear God, the situation is this; I was so busy with my job that I could only eat microwaved food, and there was simply no time to exercise. When I came home from work, I was too tired to go out for a walk.” And then, of course, you would expect God to say, “Oh dear me, you were really burdened, and I fully understand that you simply could not eat healthily and not move your body as it was supposed to be your duty.”
Or would God say something like, “Well, my lovely daughter; I gave you a brain to think; I gave you a heart that connected you to me what gave you instant access to me at any second of the day whenever you wanted; I gave you a body to be my agent in your city, and I gave you the freedom of choice so that you could learn by making mistakes. But you didn’t use my gifts well and gave your power away to bad habits, other people, circumstances, and excuses. You didn’t pass this test, and you will have to go back and do it better next time.”
So tell me, which scenario makes more sense and is more likeable?
We are in charge of our thinking, our emotions, the words we say and the actions we take.
Here is a test for you to find out whether or not you are in charge of your thinking, your emotions, your words, and your actions.
Is your life exactly the way you had dreamed it when you were young, and is it exactly the way you want it to be?
If your answer is a wholehearted, ‘Yes,’ then you’re probably doing a lot right.
But if your life isn’t the way you want it to be, then look at your thinking, your habits, and the actions you take. If your health is not what you want it to be, look at how you’re treating your body.
If you wake up in the morning and immediately think, “Gosh, what shall I wear today? I’m wondering whether the spaghetti I ate for last night’s dinner showson my scale today.” Then the next thing you do is step on the scale, and there is a 50:50 chance that you will not be happy with your weight. So your thinking goes around all the reasons why you’re not happy with your body and this determines your mood of the day.
You may believe that your weight determines your attitude and that this was normal. But it’s actually the other way around. The mind always influences the body. Therefore, before taking care of our weight, we have to take care of our mindset. It begins with your attitude!
“The greatest discovery of this generation is that the human being can change his life just by changing his attitude.” –William James
The thing is, when you decide to do something – like eating healthier and going for a daily walk – and then you don’t follow through with it, you lose self-control, you lose self-esteem, and you lose your integrity…step by step, each time you don’t follow through with what you said you would do.
When you don’t follow through with what you say you’re going to do, you probably think, “What does it matter! Nobody knows!” But that’s not true. YOU know. And not following through with your promises to yourself takes a hit on your integrity.
And even if nobody knows what you promised yourself, because of the fact that YOU know, you change your energy, your vibrations. You ooze the energy, “I can’t keep my commitments,” and subconsciously, people around you will recognize and stop trusting you without knowing why. They just have a bad gut feeling about you.
Commitment to a weight loss program – of course, it has to be one that has the chance to bring you lasting results and no diet can ever do that for you – can lend stability to your everyday life. Because, with each daily action, you reaffirm your commitment, and that brings a feeling of empowerment and increased self-esteem. Now, instantly, your energy changes and people around you can sense that as well.
It’s through our everyday behavior that we get serious results and create a life we want and like.
“Commitment means you ‘ve got to get past your excuses, follow through on what you say you are going to do, make your word count and be responsible and accountable.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
There is one exception: weight loss diets, and I highly recommend to better make a commitment not to follow a weight loss diet. They are designed in a way that it’s simply not possible to follow through because your body lacks vital nutrients and will sabotage your attempt to follow through with the diet. You simply can’t win with any weight loss diets. Therefore, you should first do some research to find out what really works and be willing to give your weight loss process time. Any quick fix can’t work long-term, and what you want is long-term success. You want your diet to be a healthy one that provides your body with everything it needs. You want a healthy lifestyle you can implement. You want maintainable weight loss. For such a goal, you have to be willing to give yourself enough time.
Once you find such a strategy, make a commitment to follow through with it, get past your excuses, and take action every day until you reach your weight goal. And I promise you; you will be stronger than ever before. Make your word count and be responsible and accountable.
So you’ve got to follow through on what you say you are going to do if you want to lose your weight for good.
*****
A few years ago, I did an interview with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial.
Many women feel like the victim of a cruel fate, of poor genes, or habits they can’t control. Such an attitude makes it very hard to be successful with any maintainable weight loss method.
In an interview I once did with bestselling author Dr. Susan Smith Jones, she said, “Most people live in what I refer to as like victimhood. Most people would rather complain and get upset or angry, but then they don’t choose to take the action required.”
No matter how often we visualize, how much we hope, how sincerely we pray, and how many times we repeat our affirmations, maintainable weight loss will not happen unless we take action…the RIGHT kind of action.
The good news is that no matter what you have done in the past, no matter how many mistakes you have made, at any day and any time, you can decide that this is a new beginning. Nobody forces you to keep living by the past; nobody forces you to worry about the future.
“As you live the best you can each day with a positive attitude, you can change your life,” says Dr. Smith Jones.
Any change and any goal achievement begin with the choices we make every day. Dr. Susan recommends choosing what is best for you to celebrate your life and cultivate the best life you can. This begins with cultivating a good relationship with yourself. “Treat yourself with the respect that you deserve.”
She encourages everyone to step up to the plate and take your new position as the CEO of your body, weight, health, and life because you are the only person in charge of your body. Today, you can decide that this is a new beginning for you and affirm, “I deserve to be happy and healthy. I deserve the best.”
You can stop your pain and weight struggling right here and now and make new choices that have the potential to change your health and weight for good.
To achieve that – and to claim back the power over your own body and weight – Dr. Susan Smith Jones recommends choosing to be the “CEO of your body and life.”
Dr. Susan keeps explaining, “What you need to realize is that your body is an amazing feedback machine, and your beautiful body is always talking to you. Now, if you get a headache, your body might be trying to tell you something like you are eating too much food, or you’re eating junk food, or you’re not getting enough sleep, or you’re not getting enough water or whatever it is. But you’ve got to listen to your body’s messages to you with an open heart and an open mind. And then – here’s the most important thing – you’ve got to take some action. So know that your body is always talking to you, and you’ve got to pay attention. What we are talking about here is living more mindfully because the sad truth is that most people get up in the morning, and they are sort of on automatic pilot until they go to bed at night. You’ve got to pay attention.”
When you look at all the commercials on TV and the advertisements in magazines and newspapers, the advertisers are trying to tell you that they have a miracle pill, powder or potion, and we’ve come to believe that things outside ourselves are the keys to health and well-being. And whatever you are suffering from, be it headache, constipation, sleepless nights, diarrhea, indigestion, skin rashes, high blood pressure, weight gain–you fill in the blank-you then first try to self-medicate before going to the doctor. Thus, we have become a self-medicating society or world because we don’t really understand how our body is trying to communicate with us, trying to give us the correct answers for a healthy, slim, long, and happy life. And because we are impatient and want instant relief without taking care of the body’s needs first, we make matters worse by going the wrong route.
“So each of us needs to be reminded that we are magnificently equipped to meet life’s problems when supplied with the simple and easily obtainable requisites of health,” Dr. Susan recommends. So we’ve got to realize that our human body is remarkable and a wonderful feedback machine.
We are supposed to be the CEO of our body, and we’ve got to listen more to what it’s saying to us. Because – and here comes one of the secrets no weight loss coach has ever told you before – your body already has most of the answers for your weight loss success, especially when the cause of your weight gain is a physical one.
The body knows what it needs to burn fat faster and better, if we cared to listen, and if we cared to do the right things.
*****
A few years ago, I did several interviews with other health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial:
Did you ever wonder why losing weight with a diet is quite fast and easy, but why you soon gain that lost weight back after a while…equally fast and easy?
If you have read my last blog post Causes of Weight Gain, then you have begun to understand that the weight issue is quite a complex thing – not complicated, just complex.
This is very good news. Because, once you understand what is standing in your way to a sustainable slim body personally, you know exactly what to do. That moment your search for the right diet, pill or answer stops immediately and your weight loss process becomes much more effective and efficient.
In this blog post I’m going to spill the beans and share with you some of the most important insights I have gained over the course of the 32 years as a weight loss coach. This can give you a better understanding of the real nature of weight issues and you begin to understand what you really need.
The real nature of human beings
The most important and crucial thing to understand is the real nature of your being.
You are not only body, but also mind, emotions, and spirit. The easiest way to understand what I mean is by visualizing a building with four pillars.
The building of your health – and weight – stands on four pillars.
One pillar is your physical pillar (the body), one pillar is the emotional pillar (the emotions you have daily and how you react emotionally to certain things and situations), the third one is the mental pillar (your thinking, what you think, say… your mindset), and the last one is your psychological pillar.
One of the biggest problems regarding weight loss is the misconception that you were the physical body.
You are not your body – you have a body. You are a spiritual being in a physical body. That’s a bigger difference than you may think. As soon as you understand that your physical and visible body is only a part of the equation – like the tip of the iceberg –, you will find it much easier to find the right weight loss solution that really work for you and that will bring you the desired lasting results.
The problems for you begin when you treat your weight exclusively on one pillar: the physical body, what most overweight people do by dieting and exercising. That’s why the dieting approach is so very frustrating. In fact, it’s the hardest way possible with no real chance of bringing you lasting results.
Even on the physical level there can be many causes of your weight problems beside poor eating habits and a lack of exercise.
Now let me ask you a question.
What happens to a building, if one of four pillar gets weak, breaks or falls away?
Not much, as long as the rest of the building is stable and strong. It may not be leveled perfectly anymore, and with every heavy storm it may get a crack here and there. It’s just not so resistant to strain or stress anymore, but it still has a good chance to stay for a while.
It’s the same with our health and weight. When one of the four pillars is temporarily weakened, we may face some headache, a flue once or twice a year, or a few pounds of weight gain. Maybe you can’t sleep so well as you could some years ago…yet nothing serious.
Now what will happen when two pillars are broken? The building suddenly is in severe danger of not surviving the next heavy storm. Most likely it will collapse before the next storm. Translated to your health this could be some stubborn overweight, muscle pain, joint pain, chronic headache, a heart disease, regular heart burn, two to four flues every year, allergies, and so on and so forth.
As soon as three pillars break or disappear, the whole building will collapse completely. It can’t stand on one pillar. It’s not possible.
It’s exactly the same with our health. The more symptoms and diseases you have and the heavier you are, the more is your whole health building in danger. This is the point where you have serious chronic diseases like fibromyalgia, diabetes, loss of your teeth, or other life-threatening diseases, such as cancer. You may even be obese (not just overweight), and consequently it will take you longer to bring your weight back to a healthy weight.
On the other hand, the healthier and more stable your whole health building is, the faster your body will react to even slight changes.
Of course, when the last pillar breaks, the building does no longer stand at all. For the human body this would mean death.
Again, translated to your health, the less you’re taking care of your body (eat unhealthy, diet, don’t exercise, don’t sleep enough, smoke, eat toxic food, etc.), the more you have negative thoughts, the more your emotional state is on the negative side, and the more you think about your sad past, the faster you’re going to become severally sick, the faster you’re going to age, and the sooner you’re going to die.
On the other hand, the better you take care of your body, the more positive your mindset, the more gratitude and love you feel, the more you have forgiven all those who have hurt you in the past, and the more you’re living in the now, the faster your physical body can heal, the faster you’ll lose weight, the slower your aging process and the longer you’re going to live a good, healthy and happy life – a quality life.
The best and happiest life you have, when these four levels of your being are so aligned like four horses that are pulling a wagon. Imagine if just one of these four horses would want to run in another direction. This would lead to a chaos. The same is true for your health and happiness. If only one of your lower levels is not in alignment, problems and health issues are certain.
The good news is that the reins of your personal “wagon” are entirely in your own hands. All you have to do is to take the reins and lead.
Therefore, good health and weight loss are to a great extend in your own hands, although it may often not feel that way. If it doesn’t feel that way to you, then it’s because you don’t know the truth about sustainable weight loss.
All you need to begin with is understand the correlation between these four levels and take care of them in a conscious way. Eat healthy, exercise regularly, make sure that you sleep well and enough, get your hormones balanced, detox and cleanse your body regularly, take care of your pH, think positively, be grateful and loving, forgive, find and fulfill your life purpose, let the past go and live in the here and now…and you will not have much to complain about in your life. And, as a result, your weight will eventually automatically commute in a healthy and perfect weight that is right for you and your body, just like the four horses.
By the way, this is exactly what a normal, healthy, and wealthy life looks like.
Pretty simple and straight forward.
Cause And Effect
The Difference Between Causes, Symptoms and Effect
The next topic we need to understand so that things will begin to make sense is the difference between causes, symptoms and effects. Unfortunately this is one of the most ignored pieces of the whole weight loss puzzle.
Just like the Law of Attraction is true, there is also another Universal Law that is true for everybody and everything under the Sun. It’s the Law of Cause and Effect. Every effect has a cause, and likewise every cause will inevitably have an effect. Therefore your excess weight must have a cause. And your decisions, thoughts, emotions and actions (or the lack of it) must have an effect.
The adage of every diet is: “You eat too much, that’s why you’re fat. Ergo, you have to eat less and you will lose weight.” And this is the biggest misconception behind dieting and weight loss.
The diet approach sees the eating as the cause of your weight problem. I can tell you with absolute certainty: it hardly ever is. No healthy person can eat too much and too much of the wrong food, if there is not another issue. That’s another reason why diets make no sense at all. They don’t address the real problem.
More often than not the eating too much or craving the wrong food is just a symptom that shows you that there is something wrong either on your physical level (the body), your mind, your emotional level, or your psychological level.
Before we proceed, let me give you a definition of these 3 terms.
The cause is the reason, what is behind a problem, the source, the root and origin. The cause can be on one of the four levels, but most of the time it’s a combination of several causes on several levels.
Symptom
A symptom is a sign, an indicator, a warning signal. Its purpose is to alert you that there is something wrong, so that you can make the necessary changes.
Effect
This, of course, is the result, the visible effect, the reaction, or the outcome. In other words: the printout.
As soon as you understand these differences, you will stop searching for the wrong answers.
Most people mistakenly believe that poor eating habits and a lack of exercise were the causes of their weight issues. Again, the adage, ‘all you have to do is eating less and exercise more’ is utter nonsense. Sometimes an overweight person needs to eat less, but just as often or even more it’s not the eating that is the problem. Sometimes a person even needs to eat more at the beginning in order to lose weight.
Dr. James Carlson, a New York obesity physician told me and my webinar attendees how he and his patients lost weight by increasing the daily caloric intake up to 4000 and more calories per day. This is only one proof that counting calories is nonsense and will not bring you lasting results. Yet, millions of women are now following the false recommendation to reduce the calories and are deeply disappointed each time this approach doesn’t work.
Of course, healthy eating and exercise are very important for good health and weight, as you have heard before, and I’m the last person who would debate that. But…
healthy eating & dieting is not the same
a change in your eating habits plus exercise alone will hardly do a good long term job, if you want to lose excess weight for good
They will only bring short-term results, if you don’t address the real causes at the same time. I’m going to explain why in just a minute. But first let’s look at what causes, symptoms and effects are regarding weight.
Psychological imbalance, disharmony, disequilibrium, discontent, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, fear and anxiety, need for protection; lack of self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth; past trauma, abuse; an imbalance between receiving and giving, poor habit, and so on and so forth. Up to this point I have detected 58 possible causes.
Symptom
Over-eating or poor diet, lack of exercise, lack of some vital nutrients, toxins, parasites, hunger attack, cravings, sleeping problems, hormonal imbalance, an incapability of loving and taking care of yourself, etc. – these are all signs (symptoms) that there is something wrong and out of balance. Some of the symptoms can turn into causes, if unaddressed.
Effect (result)
Excess weight or obesity, sickness, problems, conflicts. Effects, too, can turn into causes if not addressed for a long time.
Symptoms are always trying to teach you something, they are your body’s warning signals. Symptoms show you that there is something wrong on another level. They indicate that you’re dissatisfied, frustrated, fearful, or that you’re subconsciously trying to protect yourself, etc. In fact, weight problems only want to teach you something and provide you with a necessary learning opportunity. When you ignore the symptoms, the warning signals for too long, you will eventually have the physical effect.
It’s your body’s way of communicating with you. The bad news is that as long as you ignore these signals, you can’t get long-term weight loss results. The good news is that eliminating the cause is often enough to turn things around. The symptoms (signals) are not needed anymore.
Most of the time there is a whole complex of several causes active in you, and therefore most of us have to dig a bit and eliminate several causes before we can strip those extra pounds for good.
Once you get that, it doesn’t matter how much you want to lose, as soon as the causes are eliminated, losing weight becomes easy, fast and effortless. The body has no longer a reason to send you signals after signals and to hold on to that extra fat.
On the other hand, if you can’t lose your weight for good, this is a sign that you have not found and eliminated the real cause of weight gain.
If you have read my last blog about causes, you already understand that overeating and craving the wrong food has a cause. Hence, the overeating and binging is not the cause of your weight struggles, but a symptom that there is something wrong on another level. The symptom cravings alone can have several possible causes.
So your poor eating and exercise habits are just symptoms that are trying to alert you of a deeper problem (i.e. toxic overload. lack of the right nutrients, parasites, emotional imbalance), and your excess weight is the outcome.
When you follow a diet, take diet pills, get a liposuction, or even worse, a lap band done, you’re simply trying to cut off the symptom. You can put on layers of make-up on an ugly face, but the next morning that person will still wake up with the same old, ugly face. Likewise, masking the symptoms is never going to bring you long term results. It can’t. Besides, by doing these things you’re damaging your health and deliberately destroying your health pillars and setting new and even worse causes for weight gain and other severe health issues.
Did you ever wonder why there are children born with terrible deformations and disabilities? Well, this can be the karmic consequence of plastic surgery or terrible body neglect, for example. We can’t pretend to know it better than our Creator without having to suffer the consequences. In many cases – especially in the very stubborn ones – the cause of severe weight issues can be karmic.
Unfortunately no surgery, no pill, no diet changes a bit in your real causes of your weight problems and they will remain effective, causing your body to gain the lost weight back soonest possible. So you are not only still having that extra weight again, but you’re also a lot unhealthier and have added several more health problems simply by trying to go the short route. And this will go on until you’ll understand what the body really wants to tell you and make some significant changes.
It can happen that a dieter solves her inner causes during a diet subconsciously and thus loses her weight without gaining it back. But this rarely happens. Most likely such a person has already done a lot of inner transformational work before starting the diet so that she doesn’t need her excess weight as a “growth teacher” anymore, like it happened for me.
Unfortunately these people often mistakenly believe that it was the diet that helped them lose their weight, but it was their inner work, something they suddenly got and solved on a conscious or subconscious level.
And, of course this also happens when a participant understands the correlation between her individual causes and her excess weight and solves the problem or problems on that inner level. Then you will not only see fast results, but also lasting results.
I remember one of my former participants who attended a weekend workshop of mine. That workshop was all she needed to understand the real issue behind her weight struggle. After that weekend workshop she moved out of the house of her sister where she had been raped by her brother-in-law, worked on her inner self-protection and lost weight without dieting. That one weekend course was enough for her to understand and solve the real cause.
The good news is that eliminating the cause is often enough to turn things around. The symptoms (signals) are not needed anymore and you can begin to lose weight almost effortlessly. This is exactly how I lost 65 pounds without even realizing.
One day I was standing in a store for clothes because I needed a new pair of jeans. I was totally shocked when I realized that my original clothing size didn’t fit anymore. It was too large. So I tried a smaller size…and it was too large as well.
Can you image the dumb face I had when I realized that even two sizes smaller didn’t fit anymore? Then I tried another size smaller and I was still loose. Then I tried a size I couldn’t ware since I was 15, and it fit.
First I thought that the clothing company had changed the numbering system. Now most people would be happy, but I simply didn’t understand and was puzzled at best. I didn’t understand because I had not realized up to that moment that I had lost weight, because for many years I only wore clothes that had those rubber bands that are flexible enough for weight fluctuation in any direction. Besides, I didn’t follow a diet or changed my exercise regimen, and since I didn’t weighed I did not realize that I had lost weight. In my inner perception of myself I was still fat. That’s why my dumb face. I simply didn’t understand what had happened.
It took me several years of studying behavioral psychology to understand why I had lost that weight without changing anything about my diet or exercise regimen. What I did was working with a psychologist on my inner issues and my self-love at that time, when I had to go through a divorce. That’s why I simply didn’t realize that I had lost so much weight. I never thought that working on my inner issues and on loving myself would help me lose weight. But fact is that I lost 65 pounds that way in the easiest and most effortless way you can imagine.
Most people make that process unnecessarily hard. They fight the symptoms – their real friends – without eliminating the actual causes, thus forcing the body to gain the weight back until the real problem will be resolved. Most people never get that, that’s why obesity is still on the rise despite of the thousands of diets and fitness programs.
It could be so simple. Instead of listening to their inner teacher they go out and get a gastric surgery, causing a new and additional problem for them and early death without solving their weight issues. The sad thing is that most people who get a gastric surgery done will gain their lost weight back after a while. And it could be much cheaper, simpler and easier…and much less painful.
Of course it seems easier to solve the problem on the physical level. But that seldom works. And if it does work, then only on the short term.
You can run away from your real problems for the rest of your life and suffer from your excess weight and the health problems this causes. But this will not get you slim in a healthy and lasting way.
Or….you can accept the obvious and transform the inner problems what is the real and only short cut and much less painful than yo-yo dieting.
So, tell me, isn’t that much easier, faster and simpler than going from diet to diet for years just to gain that lost weight back after a while?
Symptoms speak a very clear language. Once you understand that ‘language’ of your body, you will know exactly what to do or what to give to your body. I’m going to explain that in just a second. Let me use an analogy.
Most likely you have a driver’s license. Imagine that the oil lamp in your car goes on while you’re driving. This is a signal, or a symptom, if you like. It tells you that there is something wrong with your car. In most countries the burning of the oil lamp is a sign that there is no more oil in the car, what is a sign of severe danger for the engine. The burning of that oil lamp means, that you have to stop your car immediately and fill in some oil, otherwise the engine will break down.
So what do you do in such a situation?
You have three possibilities.
One is to ignore the signal and continue driving. The consequences are going to be very expensive and your car will need a new engine.
A second possibility is to smash the light bulb so that the light will go off, and the result will be the same: you’ll need a new engine or a new car.
The third alternative is to stop the car, fill in some oil and the lamp will go off. You have eliminated the cause and the symptom, the signal will stop automatically. No harm done.
In example one you simply ignore the problem and go on. Translated to your body you would completely ignore a pain, thirst, sleeping problems, or cravings.
Regarding the second example, this is exactly what you do when you take medication, follow a diet, or get a gastric surgery or liposuction done. You literally silence the symptom, the alarm signal, your real friend. The symptom (alarm light) may be gone for a while, but the real cause still remains. And as long as the causes remain, the problem will frequently pop up and come back over and over like a boomerang. You literally force the problem to pop up again and again, until the condition will be chronic or so severe that your body can’t survive any longer. This is the stage of all those frequent dieters who can’t lose any weight anymore no matter what they try, who have muscle pain, brain fog, fatigue and other alarming conditions. That’s a severe situation, and the sooner you’ll take care of the better. The longer you either ignore or fight the symptom, the louder the alarm signal will get.
The only way to solve a problem for good is by eliminating the cause. Once you fill in oil, there is simply no more reason for the oil lamp to burn, and it stops burning. Likewise there is no more reason for your body to hold on to some excess fat once you have eliminated the underlying cause. Your body knows that you got the message and can now stop the nagging.
Causescan be physical (such as acidity, toxic overload, hormonal imbalance, deprivation, etc.), it can be a certain emotional pattern, a particular thinking pattern or some subconscious issues or past trauma. How is a diet (any diet) supposed to do that job!?
Silencing the symptom does not solve the issue at all. That would be putting your head into the sand.
The sad fact is that most of us do to their body what they would never do to their car.
Why?
A car has a shorter lifespan than a person and you have to face the consequences much sooner. You know that you can’t afford buying a new car within the next 12 months. When it comes to your body we tend to think that we have enough time to fix and reverse the problem later. For some reason we tend to believe that we can get away with poor habits and an unhealthy lifestyle for until we’ll be retired. We tend to go the path of least resistance. We want to have the fun now and take care of our health later, forgetting that there is no fun whatsoever in being ill and overweight.
Many then calm their conscience and tell themselves that they eventually have to die of something anyway. They delude themselves into believing that their health is out of their hands and that it’s all up to their genetics – or worse, up to God. That is blasphemy. When we do stupid things and don’t take care of our health, we can’t blame God for the results. But, oh boy, do these people complain when they develop a chronic illness. They tell everybody who is willing to listen, how much their body aches.
We have been given free choice. We choose every second of our lives. We may be able to get away with poor habits for a while, but there will come the day when the bill will come due…for sure. The price for such a behavior has always to be paid by the individual herself. Therefore we shouldn’t complain. We had the choice in the past and, apparently, we have made the wrong choices.
Each choice brings consequences. Every cause has an effect and every effect has a cause. If we don’t like the consequences – for instance the consequence of being overweight – we have to choose and cause differently NOW. It’s that simple, really. We can change things at any time, as soon as we decide to take responsibility for our health.
When the oil lamp goes on in your car, then this is a sign that there is no more oil in the tank. So you know exactly that you have to instantly stop the car and fill in oil, because you know what the consequences would be.
When you receive an invoice, you do your very best to pay it within the 10 or 30 days period allowed for payment. You know exactly that if you don’t pay your bill in time, you will soon be charged with a reminder fee and interest. And if you still ignore it and don’t pay, you will face bankruptcy and you will lose your house, and all that for not paying a lousy bill. So, in order to prevent yourself from bigger problems, you pay your bills in time.
It’s exactly the same with the language of our body. Once you understand that principle, it will be easier for you to eliminate the causes instead of treating or silencing the symptoms.
We just have to take the time factor into consideration. Changes on the mental, emotional and psychological level can be made quite quickly, but we have to understand that the body needs time to adjust to those changes. So many overweight women have disturbed that lasting slimming process because they were impatient and stupidly went on another diet.
Now let’s talk about possible causeson all four lower levels.
Cause And Effect
Causes
Up to this writing I have found 56 causes of weight gain. This is not the place to talk about all of them. For that I shared the list with my subscribers lately.
In this article I want to share some of the most common ones to give you an idea. Some possible causes on the physical level, the first pillar:
Sign of accumulated acid
First of all Dieting/diets – yep, diets lead to weight gain for sure
Acidity
Toxins
Parasites
hormonal imbalance
Sleeping problems
Insulin resistance
On the emotional level it can be things like:
self-rejection
Self-rejection
Emotional imbalance
Lack of love, fear of being loved or not being loved
Inner void/feeling empty
Insufficient boundaries – not being able to say “no”
Too strong boundaries (fear of being close)
Unsatisfied hunger for life
Frustration
Imbalance in giving and receiving
Boredom
Not feeling valued
Living with toxic and negative people
Negative/distorted self-image
need of protection
The 3rd pillar is your mental level. On the mental level, possible causes can be:
Regular weighing
Negative thinking
Negative self-talk
False tips and misinformation
Misconceptions (i.e. it runs in the family, no matter what I do I just can’t get rid of those extra pounds, etc.)
Your mindset
And, on the psychological and spiritual level, it can be things like:
Violence
Violence
Trauma
Abuse
Unwillingness to forgive
karma
Of course, not every woman has all of the causes. However, every woman has several causes on several levels. Which ones are effective in your body? Your symptoms are your clues.
Now, understanding that there can be so many possible causes and culprits standing in your way to lasting weight loss, you may begin to understand why reducing a weight loss strategy to just two tactics – diet and exercise – is utter nonsense and CAN NOT work…EVER. It’s just a big waste of time. Of course, we need to lead a healthy lifestyle to remain healthy, but weight loss diets are far from being healthy. Moderate exercising should always be part of a sensible weight loss strategy – but please so not go about it the way they do it in The Biggest Loser. This is very dangerous.
You can’t remedy a traumatic situation that forced a subconscious mind to use fat for protection to let go of that protective shield through a diet, for example.
You can’t solve the problem with a diet when one of the causes is acidity, because every diet literally floods the body with acids what forces it to gain the lost fat back ASAP. Dieting and exercise make matters worse when your body is heavily over-acidic.
How on earth could a diet help, if you lack some vital nutrients?
You can’t hope to lose weight through a diet if your hormones or your brain chemistry are out of balance. That would only make the problem worse and would be a very ridiculous attempt.
When an imbalanced metabolism is your culprit, then diets are making matters way worse.
How can a diet change your mindset or your emotional patterns? It can’t. Exercise can change it to a certain extent, yet it would still not be enough.
Your subconscious mind will always sabotage your attempt to lose weight unless the cause has been taken care of. Then you can lose weight even without a diet. This is your chance to change your weight.
The necessary mindset shift – Tactics vs. Strategy
What is needed first and foremost is a mindset shift – not another diet.
The first step is to understand the difference between tactics and strategies. Tactics are short-term activities with the purpose to achieve some short-term results.
Strategies, on the other hand are combinations of several tactics that are well designed to bring the desired long-term results.
Diets are tactics and have short-term effects; they don’t lead to sustainable weight loss because they don’t address the real problem. A healthy way of eating is different from a diet and should certainly be part of an overall weight loss strategy that is designed to bring you lasting results. Please learn to distinguish between a diet and healthy eating. There is no such thing as a “healthy weight loss diet”. Either you eat healthy or you follow a diet.
Without a good overall weight loss strategy even eating healthily alone is not enough to get you slim for good. What you do instead is checking the possible causes and creating an integrated strategy for your weight loss that addresses your individual causes. In other words, you combine several well chosen tactics and create a strategy, your personal weight loss program, if you wish.
To illustrate the difference between tactics and a strategy: tactics may win a battle or two, but strategies win the war.
By creating a strategy you simply connect the dots.
Think Outside of the Box – Connecting the Dots
The necessary mindset shift is to start thinking outside of the Diet Box!
Look at yourself as a whole being. Therefore a holistic strategy takes care of body, mind, emotions and the spirit.
Whatever you do on the physical level will make you feel better and therefore also influences your emotional level. Just remember how you feel after a healthy meal with living food or after a 1-hour walk.
On the other hand what you do on the emotional level will also make your body feel better. Just think about a moment when you were very happy. You didn’t feel any pain and didn’t bother about your weight. You were just being happy and you felt good in your body.
When your emotions are high, you will find it hard to think negatively, therefore working on your emotional levels has also an impact on your mental level.
On the other hand, your thoughts directly influence your emotions within seconds. One moment you can feel happy and you could hug the whole world. Then one thought creeps into your mind and you suddenly begin to feel miserable. Of course the same is true when you have positive thoughts. When you feel bad and decide to think about what you can be grateful for, you instantly begin to feel better emotionally as well.
The 4th level is the unconscious mind or the level of your memories. When you have positive thoughts, this will also create new, positive memories.
And when you think about positive and happy experiences, your thoughts will be happy ones as well.
Going down memory lane has, of course, also an impact on your body. Depending on whether the memory is a good or a negative one, you will either feel well or not so good.
Likewise good physical experiences also create new, positive memories.
As you can see it’s absolutely impossible to only treat one level alone as they are strongly inter-connected with each other. You can turn this all around and start with negative memories. These will automatically bring negative thoughts, the negative thoughts will lead to negative (sad or angry) emotions and the negative emotions will make you feel bad physically, for instance give you a headache or elevated heart rate. In such moments many women tend to reach for comfort food.
You may now begin to understand why I continue saying that you need a weight loss strategy and not a tactic or two.
When you start working on the physical level you automatically also change – at least for a moment – the emotional level, the mental level and the psychological level (by creating new experiences and memories). Changes from the lower levels up have a smaller and shorter impact than the changes we make from the higher to the lower levels. And when I speak about “high” and “low”, I’m referring to the vibrational rate of each of these four levels.
Molecules vibrate higher than cells, atoms vibrate higher than molecules, and electrons vibrate higher than atoms. This is just plain physics. The psychological/memory level vibrates the highest and the body vibrates the lowest, that’s why it takes a while to see physical results.
When you eliminate the causes on the mental level you improve your physical level, your emotional level, and your psychological level.
When you transform the causes on your emotional level, you automatically help your body, your mental level and your psychological level.
And when you start eliminating all the problems on the physical level, you improve your mental, emotional and psychological levels as well.
Can you see now how working on all four levels is by far THE fastest way of losing extra weight?
Build a strong, solid foundation by designing a sensible weight loss strategy.
4 Pillars of sustainable weight loss
With the article Causes of Weight Gain and this one we have come to full circle now.
I have the hope that you begin to understand now the necessity to have a well-balanced weight loss strategy that goes beyond eating healthy and exercising. And it’s much easier than you may think and years faster than going from one diet to the next.
In the past you have gone from one diet or program to the next, each time abandoning what you have previously done. And I bet all this together has cost you way over $1,000. In fact, an overweight person spends about $50,000 in the average during her lifetime just to lose that excess weight, not to speak about the higher costs for XL clothes and the loss of money many have to suffer because they don’t get the higher paid jobs due to their extra weight.
So don’t you think it’s time now to change that and reduce the extra costs for XL clothes, for special ‘lite’ food, for supplements, books and programs that don’t work? Now you can change your strategy. Instead of doing one tactic after another, you add a few of them to one single strategy and follow that strategy until you will have achieved your weight goal.
Keep in mind that tactics may win a battle or two, but it’s the strategy that wins the war. Now you want to win the whole game, not just a little bit here and there. If you are determined to make 2016 the last year you will ever have to worry about your weight, then this is your chance. And don’t wait because, each time you start a new diet or program your motivation continuously decreases.
There are a quickly growing number of weight-struggling women who realized that diets are not the solution for maintainable weight loss and who are now searching for healthy alternatives. This is quite a process and it’s a necessary first step to healthy and sustainable weight loss success.
The second step is very often not so easy yet even more critical for your slimming progress. That step is to completely turn away from the diet mentality.
The third step is developing a deep desire of slimming in a natural and healthy way.
So let’s assume that you have already gone through that process of fully understanding why diets are not the solution, of completely letting go of the diet mentality, and of developing a deep desire to find healthy alternatives.
If that is you, you are ready to learn healthy ways that really work long term.
So here are 15 healthy and very powerful alternatives to the dieting approach:
Regular cleansing & detoxification – One of the main reasons why your body is forced to create excess fat are toxins. As soon as you begin to cleanse your body strategically, your body can begin to reduce that excess fat. But please be aware that doing it once will not do the job. You have to cleanse one organ after the other in a strategic manner and repeat that cycle until your body has let go of the excess fat.
pH balancing – Just like the body needs to create fat in order to store toxins and other detrimental substances away from vital organs, it deals the same way with acid. An overweight body is always over-acidic. Regular and strategic alkalizing is therefore vitally important.
Juicing – This is a great method to alkalize your body. When you choose that step you have to make your own daily juices fresh, you need organic produce and 80% of the produce should be green-leavy vegetables. However, there are two rules regarding juicing for weight loss. Number 1: don’t use it exclusively, only in combination with other methods. Number 2: if you’re over 30 years old or want to lose more than 10 pounds, do not juice fast. Combine the juicing with healthy eating, drinking a lot of water, and doing some exercise.
Exercise – Exercise alone can let you go a long way, but not all the way down to your ideal weight. It not only burns fat and improves the metabolism, it also shapes the body, if you do it right. For weight loss you need both, aerobic exercise and muscle training.
Eliminate the psychological causes – With all the actions you take on the physical level you can lose a lot of weight, but if you want to keep it off, you also need to eliminate the inner causes.
Increase your water intake – Water is very important for your healthy weight loss. Your body needs water to get rid of waste, toxins, and acid. Plus another bonus of water is that it fills your stomach and you need less food. Very often, when we feel hungry we’re really just thirsty anyway.
Zero sugar – If you cook and bake yourself, then this is an easy one for you. Simply replace sugar with xylitol in the exact same amount and you can enjoy your home-made desserts free of remorse.
Eat gluten free – This one is harder for many women because gluten have become such a major part of our eating habits. For decades we have been told that we need a lot of carbohydrates to stay healthy. Now we know that this was false information. The mean thing is that our body has become so used to starchy carbohydrates that we often act like addicts when it comes to reducing or eliminating gluten. Yet for many of us gluten is a real culprit and eliminating gluten from your diet may be a necessity to lose your extra weight for good. If you want to be sure whether or not gluten is a problem for your body, you can get a blood test done.
Sleep improvement – One of the ‘musts’ for sustainable weight loss is the quality and the quantity of your sleep. In order to stay healthy and lose any excess fat you need seven to nine hours quality sleep per night.
Leading an overall healthy and well-balanced lifestyle – This should be a no-brainer. Instead of dieting it’s much more important to lead a healthy lifestyle in any regard. This includes healthy eating. When it comes to weight, balance is key.
Healthy eating – Instead of dieting learn to imply a healthy way of eating. This includes cooking from scratch (no or very little boxed, canned, bottled, pre-cooked, or packaged food). 70% of your meals should be row vegetables.
Change of focus and mindset – You know the adage that what you focus on you increase. It’s the same with your weight. When you focus on your extra weight, this is what you’ll get more of. Develop a positive mindset regarding food, your weight, and your body.
Visualization – This is a very powerful tool. Visualize yourself being slim, healthy , happy , and wearing the clothes you can once you’ll have reached your ideal weight.
Supplementation – If you have a full-time job and a very busy lifestyle you may want to add some meal-replacement supplements from time to time. But you should only replace one meal per day maximum. And, please keep in mind that once you’ll have lost your extra weight you would have to continue using the meal replacements in order to remain slim. Therefore I only recommend this step for the busiest women. Cooking from scratch doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to cook for hours. I’m a busy entrepreneur with 12 to 15 hour workdays. I cook all my meals from scratch and most of the time it doesn’t take me more than 15 minutes to cook a meal. Or if you have to eat out, you could eat a large plate with a mixed row-food salad. That doesn’t require more time than eating an unhealthy meal.
A combination of all of that – One tactic alone will hardly do a good long-term job. Therefore I recommend combining several of these steps and create your personal healthy weight loss strategy. Then follow through with that no matter what. Follow through with that strategy for at least a year.
And here is a very powerful bonus tip. Change your habits. It’s the habits that make you gain your old weight back. For lasting weight loss you will have to make some lasting changes in your habits. There is no way around.
If you need more in-depth instructions for each of these steps and/or encouragement from a group, you are welcome to join my 30-Day Triple Power Weight Loss Challenge.
Please post your comment or any questions you may have.
What I have experienced for myself and often hear from my participants is that they don’t like to look at themselves in the mirror and in shopping windows. Most of them then begin to see all the negative things about themselves: the muffin top, the bad hair, the posture, the fat hips, the too small or too large boobs, the fat ass (their words, not mine), etc. And what they tell me about their bodies is way worse than what I’m repeating here.
Overweight women can be very harsh about their own bodies. Many of my clients tell me that they kind of feel, that when they say all these bad things about their body, other people won’t say them. So this is really a way of protecting themselves from being hurt. It hurts less to say negative things about oneself than hearing them from others. But no matter who says these terrible things about your body, it always hurts…and it has an effect on your weight and the ability or disability to lose it.
Our subconscious mind is not only an intelligent being, it also has ears. Whatever you say or think about your body, your unconscious hears that. Your subconscious is a 100% obedient to what you say; and when you say all these terrible things about your body, your subconscious instantly gets to work to manifest exactly that physiccally.
But that’s not the worst. Your body is an intelligent being as well, adhering completely and a 100% to the laws of creation and nature. And when you think or say all these negative things your subconscious mind wants to manifest but which are against your body’s onw blueprint, this leads to an enormous conflict for your body spirit.
The problem is that you most likely then will blame the body when you gain more fat because your subconscious thought that this is what you wanted. This leads to a situation of mistrust between you and your body that makes matters much worse and can extend the weight loss (weight gaining) process forever. It literally causes a vicious cycle that spirals down from negative thinking to negative emotions what always have a direct impact on our bodies and down to your subconscious mind whose job it is to bring everything you’re saying and thinking into physical reality.
Your unconscious doesn’t know that you’re saying or thinking these things because you don’t want them. It can’t distinguish between a joke and a command or a complaint and a command. To your unconscious every thought and spoken word is a command to realize. And if you complain about your body or weight, your subconscious mind mistakenly believes that this is what you want and obediently realizes even more of what you don’t want. And at the same time your body is deeply disappointed when it hears such harsh words about it and it stops cooperating and collaborating with you. But it’s exactly your body’s FULL cooperation and collaboration you need.
Especially feelings of insignificance lead to energy blockages in our bodies what makes losing weight harder. Such energy blockages first have to be released before the body can begin to lose weight.
Now just think about, if you would talk about another person the way you’re talking about your body, would that person be motivated to assist you in your personal goals? Not unless she’d be a masochist. If you have pets you communicate with regularly, you know that they can understand you. Since our body is very much like an animal, it can understand you as well.
Just be aware that you’re not talking just to you. You are talking to your subconscious mind and to your body at the same time. Both have “ears”. The conflict between you, your body and your subconscious mind could not be bigger. So how on earth do you think you could ever lose weight with all that negative self-talk and the conflicts you are creating within yourself?
As long as you can’t look at yourself in the mirror in a friendly, gentle and loving way, I recommend you avoid looking at yourself in the mirror as much as possible…at least for the moment. At the same time take yourself a few minutes every day where you consciously look at yourself in the mirror and tell your mirror image what you like about her. There is always something beautiful in every person. This is the only way you can win your body’s trust back.
I know, this is not an easy assignment for many. I’m pretty sure that you’re going to have difficulties at the beginning. Please, do it anyway. It will soon get easier. And one day there will be the moment when you can look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you’re the most beautiful woman you have ever seen…and you’ll mean it. I’m not talking about the narcissistic way of thinking that you were the greatest person on the planet and show off whenever you have the opportunity. I’m not talking about arrogance and cockiness. I’m talking about real, deep, honest and pure self-love. That’s the moment when you, your subconscious and your body will become a team. And that’s the moment when your body can begin to realize its perfect blueprint…slim and healthy.
Once you’ll cut through all the self-criticism, you’ll never be the same person anymore. Your self-image will have completely changed, and with it your outer body.
Just know that it will take your body longer than your mind to change. So please be patient with your body and don’t beat it up if it can’t lose weight within a month just because this is your wish. Take responsibility and be aware that you have mistreated your body with bad food and a lack of exercise, with your negative self-talk and a whole bunch of bad habits for YEARS. Now it’s time to get in charge and be a kind yet determinded “boss” to your body and subconscious. After all it took you until now to finally get in charge of your weight the right way, and you can’t expect your body to change immediately.
So be patient. Don’t push things.
Have fun and enjoy the process. I’ll talk to you again next week. In the meantime please feel free to post your comments, questions and everything you want to share with me on this page below this article.
Here’s to your slim and healthy body,
Angela B.
P.S. If you want to learn more about how to change your thinking and behavioral habits, please check this page.
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Here is the story of Bertha, the figure I use often in my books because I think that her weight loss story is extraordinary and can inspire many of my readers.
Bertha is a 55-year old woman who became obese during the time of a severe personal famine. At some point of her life she was robbed and lost everything she had, including her last dollar in the pocket. During that time all she had was some flour, so she was lucky enough to bake her own bread what really saved her life.
Unfortunately that much bread eaten over months – as at it later turned out, over years – was not received well by her body and as a perfectly slim person she began to gain weight very fast. Although she only had 4 slices of bread with nothing on it per day, her weight literally exploded. Within only two months she had two dress sizes more, although she was starving.
By the way, this is proof that you can eat very little, but if you eat the wrong food – food that is wrong for your body – you can gain tremendous amounts of weight. Bread may not have had such a terrible effect on another person, but Bertha is a blood type 0, and for her bread was really the worst choice of all. Of course, in that situation it was still life saving for her and better than nothing.
To make a long story short, for years she remained in poverty and was forced to eat poorly what got her obese within only a few years. Twice a year she needed a new dress size. All that time Bertha knew that eating healthy would be the solution for her dilemma. She knew perfectly well how she could lose that extra fat, but she didn’t have the means to afford a healthy lifestyle.
For the coming years she wished, and hoped, and tried, and did everything within her limited means to change the situation on several levels. She visualized a fertile garden full of healthy vegetables, yet nothing happened. That situation lasted 18 years.
There were many situations when Bertha wanted to give up and accept what seemed to be the obvious.
A few months ago Bertha hit a new low point. She had to move because she couldn’t sleep where she lived but hardly had the energy to look for a new place, let alone to pack and move. That was a moment when she once again reflected on her life. She realized that at the current situation she had pretty much just one way to go: down. She felt trapped and had no idea what else she could do to change her terrible situation.
She was desperate for more energy and realized that gigantic storage of “fuel” in her body that – once released and properly burned – could give her a tremendous energy boost. That was the moment when Bertha made such a strong decision to do whatever it takes to burn that extra fat and change her life completely. She swore that she would do whatever was necessary to get her slim…and she meant it. For her it was now or never.
That was the magic moment for Bertha, and to this day she can’t believe how much has changed since.
Suddenly, a friend of her decided to give her $200 every month for healthy food until she would be in a better situation.
Soon after she found the apartment of her dreams that came with a half-an-acre backyard. With the money from her friend she immediately purchased organic seeds and started her own garden with vegetables, greens, herbs, berries and fruits. Only a few months later she can now harvest all kinds of salads, herbs, peas, and soon she will pick her first zucchini. That little yard is everything she needs to feed her almost all year round with the best and healthiest organic food once things begin to grow.
To fully understand the miracle, you need to know that Bertha lives in a country where most people are forced to rent apartments because there is not much space for all the people. Having your own yard is usually only possible for those with more money. Because there is so little land in her country, land is a luxury only the rich and wealthy can afford. And of course we know that Bertha is far from being rich, yet in a way she is wealthy now with her garden that provides her with everything she needs in the best possible quality without needing much money.
Since she moved she sleeps much better what gives her more energy. The daily work in the garden builds muscles and she is outdoors several hours every day, enjoying fresh air.
All this happened only within a few months where one homerun followed the next. From the hind side – and knowing how Bertha was living for 18 years before that – this is a miracle. She can hardly believe it, and everybody around her can hardly believe it.
She is finally eating more and healthier. She sleeps more. Her exercise is working in the yard every day. She is quickly moving toward living a healthy lifestyle.
And here is the best news.
Drum rolls please…..
Since then Bertha has lost a whopping 19kg/41lbs.
Remember, she is eating more, she is sleeping more, and she is enjoying her backyard and the outdoors. That’s pretty much everything she has changed. No more starving, no counting calories, no restrictions, no puffing and huffing at the gym…
This is the MAGIC of a strong intention. All it takes is a firm decision.
This is a vital part of everybody’s weight loss success. Without that you lack the foundation for your success…and this step has to be taken at the beginning. Once you have that, it will literally carry you through the whole process; and what once was hard and difficult becomes now easy and effortless.
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” — William H. Murray
In my 30-Day Triple Power Weight Loss Challenge: Habits the participants learn to make such a firm decision and to feed their intention at the beginning of the program. Then, within 30 days we eliminate as many inner and outer obstacles as possible, change bad, fattening habits and learn new and healthy ones. For those with a strong determination these 30 days are everything they’ll ever need to turn their weight issues around forever. If you want to learn more, please check out this site: http://www.angelabuhri.com/howtoeliminatefatteninghabits/
In my first of this 3-part article series I talked about will power and how habits occur. Today we are going to talk about the 9 most common fattening habits. Some of them you may not even realize as contributing factors.
9 Fattening Habits To Get Rid Of First For The Sake Of Your Slim Body
One of the very most important and crucial things you want to avoid when you are overweight is:
adding more acidity and toxins to the load that you already have.
The real culprits are toxins and acidity. We have talked about this topic very in-depth in other occasions. So for today I don’t want to talk about acid and toxins. I just want to mention it because that’s what leads to weight gain. The poor habits lead to an accumulation of more acids and toxins – toxins and acid inevitably lead to weight gain and prevent you from losing it for good.
By avoiding the following 9 things you can be sure that you won’t make things worse than they already are through your bad habits. And eliminating them leads to direct and to indirect weight loss.
Many times weight gain goes along with toxic stress and mental stress (negative thinking). The good news is that we can get a handle on both. Both are entirely in your own hands and your own responsibility and thus also in your own power.
Weight issues therefore are always in your own hands. Being overweight calls for a change of your habits – ALWAYS.
The 9 most important negative habits to eliminate for the sake of a slim, healthy, and vibrant body are:
Weighing
Counting Calories
Soft drinks
White flour
Refined sugar
Artificial sweeteners
Low fat and ‘lite’ products
Smoking
Fighting your weight
1.) Weighing
It’s a natural law that the more we focus on weight, the more our weight will stubbornly remain or even increase. Whatever you focus on, you will attract AND increase. If you focus on your extra weight, you will get more extra weight. If you focus on what you’re not allowed to eat, you will find yourself craving more of exactly that food.
If you want to not only lose a few pounds but also keep your weight off, you have to stop focusing on what you don’t want and, instead, start focusing on what you do want. Therefore one of the first negative habits to quit is weighing. In my courses and workshops my participants are not allowed to weigh. This is a crucial part of your long-term weight loss success. I know most overweight people are afraid that if they don’t weigh, their weight will go through the roof. This can only happen, if you continue with your old poor habits. And without changing some of the habits the weight will go up anyway, whether or not you weigh. And it will bounce back after each diet.
2.) Counting Calories
In several of my videos I talked about why counting calories is nonsense. So I don’t want to get into detail here. All I want to say is, please consider that calories are not equal. Calories only show how fast a particular food can be burned in a pot. But your body is not a pot. Your body needs a lot of vital nutrients.
It should be obvious to you that the quality factor regarding food is much, much more important than the quantity factor. For example, it’s impossible to get fat if you eat too much salad.
Counting calories puts your focus on weight gain and not on your goal. Therefore it has the same effect on your brain like weighing.
So stop counting calories. This alone can save you a lot of time – time you can use to go for a walk, for instance. Instead simply follow your common sense and eat healthy.
3.) Soft Drinks
Soda drinks are TOXIC! If you have any form of rheumatism, arthritis, weight problems, cellulite, stiffness, or disease (or if you simply want to remain healthy) then you cannot afford to drink anysoft drinks, because they are very acidic and loaded with toxins. And it doesn’t matter whether they contain sugar or not, not even when they contain so-called natural sweeteners. You really should strictly avoid them. If I were you, I would not allow any exceptions here. Soft drinks make your body more acidic and this is exactly what you absolutely cannot afford to have. As long as you drink any kind of pop it’s close to impossible to lose weight. In fact, you may continue to gain weight. And diet pop has been proven to be worse than regular pop. I know dozens of people who only lost weight by simply following this one recommendation and nothing else. Ignore this point to your own peril.
White flour and any product that contains some of it are acid-forming and thus force your body to create fat in order to store the acid away in your soft tissue where it can do the least harm. By avoiding it and any bakery goods containing white flour, you help your body tremendously. Although we need carbohydrates, we do not need these kinds of carbs, and we don’t need as much as we have been told.
Also, we do not need any cereals at all. Actually our stomach is not even made for digesting cereal. We don’t have a four-chamber stomach like cows and horses do. Especially avoid all boxed cereals. They are made with a process called “extrusion” which creates toxic byproducts.
My suggestion: If you absolutely have to have bread, buy products made of buchwheat or organic whole grain rye flour such as European-style rye bread. Rye bread has a higher nutritional value, and although it’s more expensive, you need less of it, and therefore save money. Eat that in moderation.
5.) Refined Sugars
White refined sugar is something our body can hardly deal with and we really do not need any of it. It’s highly acidic and very detrimental. When we eat sugar we are literally asking for trouble. Our body is constructed to build sugars from healthy, untreated carbohydrates (fruits and vegetables). Give your body enough of them and you will not miss refined sugar at all. If you want to, you can replace white sugar with stevia, xylothol, local raw honey or pure maple syrup. They are not only healthier, but also taste much better.
Now, avoiding white sugar also means to avoid any prepared foods that contain it. Don’t eat any prepared and processed food at all. That way you will not only eat healthier but also save a lot of money at the same time.
6.) Artificial Sweeteners
Although artificial sweeteners do not have any calories; that does not mean that they are harmless or helpful for your weight loss. They are highly toxic and our body has very difficult time getting rid of them. They simply add up in our body. So just in case, while reading our last paragraph, you thought that you are smart and use artificial sweeteners, stop and think again.
The toxicity of aspartame is not the only problem.
Did you know that artificial sweeteners are used to fatten pigs before they are slaughtered? Probably not. Yes, they are used for pigs because – are you sitting down? – because they increase the appetite. It’s been proven in scientific studies that the people who used artificial sweetener in lemonade ended up eating more food than those who drank sugar-sweetened lemonade, because it stimulated their appetites. Unless you want to gain weight, I do not think that this would be desirable for you. If you want to sweeten anything there are plenty of healthy and tasty natural alternatives available. I personally prefer xylothol as number one choice.
7.) Low-Fat and ‘Lite’ Products
I have already said earlier that we should only eat products that are not prepared in anyway. That means fresh. Any products that are low-fat contain sugar, artificial sweeteners, or some other artificial substances that pollute your body. They are not harmless. Some can affect your health badly. Plus they add to the acidity and therefore force the body to gain weight instead of losing it.
If you’re serious about losing your weight for good, for you the ‘diet‘ really is to only use fresh food: organic vegetables, herbs, vegetables juices, and fruits; whole grain cereals you cook yourself (in moderation and only if you’re not gluten intolerant); meat and eggs from grass-fed, free-range, organically fed animals; wild caught fresh water fish; organic virgin coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil and water. As soon as food goes through any preparation process it is not as valuable anymore and in many cases “enriched” with substances your body cannot deal with at all. It stores these substances primarily in your fat cells. A very welcome extra benefit of cooking from scratch is that it will save you a lot of money.
I know it’s very convenient and once or twice a month I buy some ravioli in bags, but they just don’t taste good anymore. I found out that cooking healthy and from scratch can take as little as 5-15 minutes. Besides, you can cook large quantities and freeze some portions for a later use. It’s really all about changing habits.
8.) Smoking
If you’re a smoker, I believe that to quit smoking is the greatest favor you could do yourself and your body and especially when your body is already so acidic that you are overweight.
If you are a smoker you have no idea how much this harms your body, otherwise you would not do it. When you are overweight your body is already too acidic and loaded with toxins, waste, fat, heavy metals, and old stored-up water. There are enough toxins and heavy metals in the air, in the soil, in the water and in the food. You really don’t need or want any more of them through anything avoidable like smoking.
I was a chain smoker over 20 years ago, and my biggest fear was to gain weight after quitting, but I didn’t. So that fear was completely useless.
9.) Fighting Your Weight
Fighting against something has the exact same effect like focusing on the negative – it IS a form of focusing on the negative. And whatever you focus on you increase.
By fighting against your weight you’re losing precious energy you would otherwise need for your weight loss success – for what you really want. By fighting against the current situation you give up your power and make yourself feel weak and powerless. And worst of all, it’s getting you nowhere.
So these are 9 of some of the most detrimental fattening habits I want to encourage you to eliminate or replace by positive habits. We are going to eliminate more of them in my upcoming 30-Day Triple Power Weight Loss Challenge – Habits.
In my third and final article of this trilogy I’m going to talk about how to eliminate bad, fattening habits in an easier and faster way – a way that requires far less will power than any diet you may have followed. In that article I’m going to give you a link where you can download my Weight Loss Habit Hack Tool.
Part 3 of this Weight Loss Habits Trilogy will follow soon. Please watch out.
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Is your health and weight loss goal worth five to fifteen minutes of your time every day?
If you want to learn a process that leads you to constant weight loss success by baby stepping, check out my Facebook group.
You can get a feeling for the 4 Pillars of Weight Loss process for free. Simply join my closed Facebook group where you can go through the process by taking tiny daily baby steps completely stress free and still make tremendous progress.
Dr. Susan clearly says that diets don’t work, and she recommends, “You want to throw away any diet book you might have that tells you that you can lose weight and keep it off without moving a muscle.”
To have a nicely formed body, we need aerobic exercise like walking, cross-country skiing, hiking, jogging to burn fat out of the muscles. And then we need to do some weight training to build up muscles which, in turn, increases the metabolism.
If you want to lose weight, a minimum of half an hour of aerobic exercise every day is the minimum. Then make it a commitment to add some muscle training three times a week for 30 minutes consistently for the next six months. Within those six months, your body will add ten extra pounds of lean muscle tissue, and these ten pounds of muscle tissue will burn 500 more calories a day. These muscles will help you lose weight faster.
A few years ago, I did an interview with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial.
You may believe that your weight determines your attitude and that this was normal. But it’s actually the other way around. The mind always influences the body. Therefore, before taking care of our weight, we have to take care of our mindset. It begins with your attitude!
Commitment to a weight loss program – of course, it has to be one that has the chance to bring you lasting results and no diet can ever do that for you – can lend stability to your everyday life. Because, with each daily action, you reaffirm your commitment, and that brings a feeling of empowerment and increased self-esteem. Now, instantly, your energy changes and people around you can sense that as well.
Many women feel like the victim of a cruel fate, of poor genes, or habits they can’t control. Such an attitude makes it very hard to be successful with any maintainable weight loss method.
When you look at all the commercials on TV and the advertisements in magazines and newspapers, the advertisers are trying to tell you that they have a miracle pill, powder or potion, and we’ve come to believe that things outside ourselves are the keys to health and well-being. And whatever you are suffering from, be it headache, constipation, sleepless nights, diarrhea, indigestion, skin rashes, high blood pressure, weight gain–you fill in the blank-you then first try to self-medicate before going to the doctor. Thus, we have become a self-medicating society or world because we don’t really understand how our body is trying to communicate with us, trying to give us the correct answers for a healthy, slim, long, and happy life. And because we are impatient and want instant relief without taking care of the body’s needs first, we make matters worse by going the wrong route. 
“So each of us needs to be reminded that we are magnificently equipped to meet life’s problems when supplied with the simple and easily obtainable requisites of health,” Dr. Susan recommends. So we’ve got to realize that our human body is remarkable and a wonderful feedback machine. 
Fighting against something has the exact same effect like focusing on the negative – it IS a form of focusing on the negative. And whatever you focus on you increase.