“Sure,” you may respond, “I eat too much of the wrong food and I don’t exercise enough. That’s what I’m doing wrong.”
But what if you eat mainly healthy and not really a lot? What if you exercise regularly and don’t lose weight significantly?
Actually, with my title I meant something completely different. I’m not talking about things like “Eat this, not that,” or “Eat less and exercise more.” I’m not talking about tactics and methods. I’m talking about a particular mindset.
One of the things I gained more clarity on in my life was the nature of “struggling” per se, and I remember especially two occurrences in my life when I really struggled a lot – and for years. The first big struggle was regarding my weight. This was a story going on for most of my childhood into my late twenties. Then, somehow, the struggle stopped – I just didn’t care about my weight any longer and shifted my focus onto my life. Instead of working on my weight, I was working on my happiness and self-worth. And the rest is history.
The second time I really struggled a lot was with my self-growth business in the 1980s. I was a single mom and I wanted to be with my daughter as much as possible. So I decided to build my own home-based coaching, seminar, and public speaking business. I did all right from the get go and we were lucky enough to always have some food on the table. And though some months I couldn’t pay my bills, I could always pay them the next month. However, I was never able to save any money for my daughter’s college or buy some special things like new furniture, a car, or nice clothes. It was just enough for what we really needed. And I was trying really, really hard.
Then, one day, I was very sick and very desperate. I had just found out that the women’s magazine I did many workshops for paid me less than other speakers and seminar leaders, although my seminars had the best and highest rates and always sold best, as they had told me.
I was a single mom and needed more money. The organizer became my best friend back then and she knew my situation. So she also knew that I depended on the magazine she was working for. When I found out that she had not told me the truth about my fee, I felt being taken advantage of. It was very frustrating to see that I was making that magazine so much money while I was doing all that work for them but was still struggling financially. It was very sad to realize that my best friend had lied to me.
So while lying in bed with high fever, I prayed and asked for a solution. I was too weak to do something, so I literally surrendered my problem.
Literally, within seconds, I was given a whole 9-month weight loss program with all the topics, with the content for a whole book and five CD’s. That was a weight loss program I had never seen before with many new ideas never heard of before – certainly not regarding weight loss. It was the total opposite of what other weight loss coaches offered. I even received the entire marketing concept. It was all there before my inner eyes at once. And all I had to do was get up and go to work.
The next morning, the fever was gone and I began writing the book. A few months later, I had finished that book, five CD’s, the curriculum and papers of a whole 9-month weight loss program, a workbook, and a marketing strategy, without ever having learned anything about marketing. That turned out to be one of the most successful marketing strategies ever.
Within only two weeks of the launch, all my 9-month workshops were filled. I only wanted to do two or three workshops, but I ended up doing twelve, the absolute maximum I could handle. But that was not enough. In fact, within four more weeks, I filled not only more workshops than I had planned to do…I filled them for another 9 months and was booked solid for the next two years.
That was proof to me that I had found something very special.
The interesting thing is that it took other coaches like Marianne Williamson, Geneen Roth, and Jon Gabriel more than a decade to come up with similar solutions, but all of them only offer parts of what I have found. What I was allowed to “download” from the Universe back then is still true today and I still teach these same principles in all of my workshops, seminars, and programs. And I am very surprised that I am still one of very few holistic weight loss coaches who can do that kind of work.
Now that I am writing all this down, – actually it’s the first time that I even share this with my readers – it even sounds to me like a miracle. And you know what? I think it was a miracle that happened that day and the years that followed. It was an enormous gift from God, not only to me, but to all of my clients also who had previously struggled with their weight and went from frustrating diet to diet. And now it can be a gift for you as well, if you are open and ready to learn a new way of weight loss make that one mindset shift.
Over the years, over 10,000 people (mostly women) have attended my workshops and seminars. Many had the same miraculous results I had with my weight loss. Others had to go through a different process than I had to in order to reach their weight goals. Sometimes, only a weekend workshop was all they needed for them to find the real cause and make the necessary shift from fat to slim. Others needed several months to find their real, underlying causes. But once they found it, losing weight became easier than ever before, really effortless, actually.
Why am I sharing this story with you?
Because I know that so many women have been struggling with their weight for years and just don’t seem to be able to find a way to lose their weight for good. They are all on a completely wrong route. With a small mindset shift and a new weight loss strategy, their weight struggle could end almost instantly.
Let me say that again.
With a small mindset shift and a new weight loss strategy, your weight struggle could end almost instantly.
What you must realize is that struggling in itself is a sign that you’re on the wrong path. As soon as you’re on the right path, the struggle ends and you can begin to see results – lasting results.
Struggling in itself is a sign that you’re on the wrong path.
For as long as you are struggling, you are literally holding on to what you don’t want: your excess weight. That way, it is impossible for you to get rid off those extra pounds.
You see, what happened to me when I lost weight is that I had eliminated the causes of my weight issues – unknowingly, though. Yet, it worked. This is proof to me that this is the right path. It works whether or not you do it consciously, and whether or not you believe in the method. Once the cause has been transformed or eliminated, your body no longer needs to hold on to its extra fat. Because your extra fat is just a symptom. It’s your body trying to alert you of a problem. It’s your body’s way to communicate with you that there is something wrong you should take care of. Your body has only one way of communicating with your: through symptoms. And once the cause is gone, the body doesn’t need to talk to you through extra fat any longer.
Unfortunately, by struggling with your weight you are exceeding the weight loss process, and for many this lasts a lifetime.
As long as you’re focusing on one or two methods, such as a diet and an exercise plan, you tend to expect too much of these tactics and disappointment is almost certain. You are constantly trying and going from diet to diet. On top of that you’re regularly weighing yourself, another way of keeping your current weight. That way, you can’t let go so easily. But it’s exactly the letting go that is a very important part of your weight loss process. Once you have let go and found the right solution, the struggle stops and losing weight becomes quite easy, very often even effortless.
It’s the letting go that is a very important part of your weight loss process.
Once you have let go and found the right solution, the struggle stops and losing weight becomes quite easy, very often even effortless.
The simplest trick is to let go. This requires a mindset shift.
Just let go! Let go of your expectations regarding how quickly your body needs to lose weight. Let go of your diet mentality. Let go of your quick-fix mentality. Let go of the belief that you knew how to lose weight better than your body does.
Just let go!!!
Happy slimming.
**********
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.
Why can people overeat with unhealthy food for decades, live the life of a coach potatoe, neglect their body, be in total denial regarding their psychology, and then expect to lose all that gained weight within only a few weeks?
Honestly, I don’t really have an answer to that question because I simply don’t understand such a lack of logical thinking. Of course, I do get that human beings are impatient and want to reach their goals ASAP once they have made a decision. But the gap between logic and the goal to lose weight fast is very, very big, especially with the diet approach.
One of the biggest issues is that people can’t distinguish between marketing messages and the truth. We have been told a million times that we can lose weight within seven to ten days. Plus, we are increasingly living in a world where we get everything at the push of a button. On thop ot that – to be totally fair – it’s a known fact that the current cell phone and WiFi technology shortens people’s attention span dramatically what leads to even worse impatience.
But where in all that is our common sense?
Well, maybe it’s just time to look at different weight loss methods to check which one is THE fastest.
Dieting
Since I have talked about the diet approach many times, I want to make this short. Dieting is against the body’s own nature and therefore can’t work long term. Going on a diet can give you some short term results but the weight will come back after a while. Depending on how many diets you have been trying or will choose to try, the constant up and down usually goes on for years and the person will eventually come to a point where she will resignate and give up all weight loss attempts.
So, although at the beginning you sometimes can lose weight quite quickly, what do you win at the end with yo-yo dieting?
Nothing!
By losing and gaining and losing and gaining you are not only jeopardizing your health, waste your precisouls life and make it more and more impossible for your body to lose extra fat.
Honestly, what is fast about that?
Exercise
Exercise alone has never been a fast tactic. Although exercise should always be part of a sensible weight loss strategy, it’s far from being fast nor maintainable. You can jog for an hour every day and 365 days and you may not even lose a pound. Believe me, I did it and that was the results. Zero weight loss.
And if you lose some weight and then stop exercising when you’ll get sick or older, you will gain the weight back.
Diet Pills
Like with any diet, at the beginning you may lose a lot of weight very quickly. But after a while you will gain it back because you didn’t take your body’s nature into consideration. You can’t fool your body.
Your body does not only know what you know. It also knows what you don’t know. Your body knows exactly what it needs to do to lose extra fat. But as long as you are interfering with diets and calorie reduction, you are forcing your body to go its own way, and it will do that because your body’s first job is to safe your life.
Therefore you can really say that your body has more common sense than you have….should you ever choose to take diet pills.
Since you will gain the lost weight back and even more, you can’t consider this to be a FAST method.
Gastric Surgery
In my humble opinion this is the most stupid way of losing weight, and any doctor who offers that kind of surgeries should be put in jail for a long time. Gastric surgery is slow murder.
No doubt, you can lose weight very quickly. But the price is very high. After such a surgery you will be sick for the rest of your life and there is very little you can eat. In other words, you are literally starving to death….slowly and surely. And not only that, after a few years you are going to gain that weight back.
So how is that FAST?
Liposuction
At first sight I would consider this to be the fastest method of losing weight.
But here too we have to take the body’s nature into consideration. Your body’s two main reasons for accumulating fat is acid and toxins. It creates fat when either of them increase to a level where it becomes dangerous for the body. In a loving attempt to safe your life, your body creates fat cells to store toxins and acid away in the safest possible way.
When you remove that fat, your body gets literally flooded with toxins and acid. And what would you do if you were your body? Create new fat. That’s one part.
The second part is that liposuction destroys part of the lymphs. This will create a new problem you probably didn’t have before. As soon as your lymphatic system doesn’t work properly anymore, you get lymph edemas, swollen legs and arms. Yes, it’s “just” water, but when you’re overweight, do you really care whether you have to get rid of fat or water? When the lymphatic system doesn’t work properly anymore, you will need compression stockings for the rest of your life. I’m not sure if you can call this a good solution.
Again, at the end of the day you can’t call this really “fast”.
Hypnoses
Hypnoses is a great method and I personally use several kinds of hypnoses in my coaching and therapy practice.
Hypnoses works partiularely well for compulsive eating and to suppress appetite.
The problem is that hypnoses alone is not a reliable problem solver as long as you don’t know the real, underlaying issues. Hypnoses alone therefore is not a reliable method….it can take months and years. But if you can find a weight loss coach who combines several methods and who can help you find the real physical and psychological causes, this can be a great solution. Depending on how much time it takes to address the real causes, weight loss can happen quite fast.
As a behavioral therapist I do believe in psychology. And in almost 40 years of my personal weight loss story and by working with over 10,000 individuals I can say with absolute certainty that 80% of a maintainable weight loss process is about the psychology.
But…there is a big “BUT”.
Psychotherapy is not fast. Traditional psychotherapy is about talking, talking, talking, and this can go on for years, even decades.
Yes, like I said, 80% is about the psychology. That should give you a realistic picture about a solid weight loss process. But there are also physical causes, emotional causes, even spiritual causes. A psychologist seldom understands all of them. I have met many psychologists who are even far from understanding all of the possible psychological issues that come with weight gain, especially if they never had to go through a weight loss process themselves. Those I know look at the issue soleley from the eating perspective too and why people overeat.
Although you may have a good chance for maintainable results, especially when the cause is the eating, it’s far from being “fast”.
Healthy Lifestyle
Although a healthy lifestyle ABSOLUTELY has to be part of a maintainable weight loss strategy, by itself it’s not a fast method and very often not even a lasting solution. The healthy lifestyle approach looks at weight issues exclusively from the physical standpoint and that’s never enough to make losing weight to last. Inner causes will not be transformed.
Therefore, maintainable only if the issue is the lifestyle and nothing else. Fast? Never.
The old way of losing weight
This is how most women go about losing weight. They go on a diet. Then when they realize that it doesn’t work, they quit. Some time later they try another method and fail again. They go from method to method and at the end they have to give up because they are desillusioned or have given up completely.
The New Way Of Losing Weight – 4 Pillars of Weight Loss
You may have heard me say that so far I have found 58 possible causes of weight gain. These causes can be physical ones (eating, lack of movement, hormones, high acidity levels, etc.), emotional ones, it can be the mindset (and the mindset is most of the time a huge contributing factor), and the unconscious. Again, 80% of the problem is the psychology, the part of the iceberg that is beneath the surface. But most known weight loss methods work only with the 20% of the visible part of the iceberg.
Thanks to decades of my own weight struggles and thanks to working with over 10,000 individuals I have been so fortunate to gain a completely different understanding of maintainable weight loss. I have spent over a decade of searching for other individuals with the same knowledge, hoping that I could give them my clients and enjoy my retirement. But to this day I only found one man who got close to what I know, but he can’t cover it all himself and works with a team of several experts. And he is still quite far from the truth, especially when it comes to female weight issues.
My 4 Pillar system takes the whole person, the whole being into consideration. We are body, mind AND spirit. We can’t solve a problem just on the physical level by ignoring the other parts of our beings.
Generally, everything you do on the physical level can lead to fast weight loss. But then you also want to keep the weight off. So what you do on the mental, emotional and unconscious level is the kind of transformation work you need to make your weight loss last. It’s an overall transformation process needed here.
So here at the Natural Weight Loss Academy we always work on all levels combined. The main focus is to find and address an individual’s cause or causes. That’s why you can’t just offer one solution and hope to fix them all. A sensible, maintainable weight loss process is always individualized. And since we work on all levels, we can exclude the yo-yoing most of the time, unless an individual cheats and is on a diet without telling me.
So minus the yo-yoing, and by securing that the weight loss will last, you can honestly say that this is THE fastest way of losing weight for women (for men it’s easier any way, so we are only talking about women here). Depending on the weight a woman starts the process at and depending on her seriousness and commitment, it can take anything between three months and three years. The heavier a woman is, the longer it will take, of course.
Let me share two examples.
Example 1
One of my current clients – let’s call her Jessica – joined my Facebook tribe four weeks ago. She jumped in both feet and took action on all the daily action steps right away. Not all the steps were easy for her – that’s normal – but she always discussed things with me. She never said, “I can’t.” Instead, she always asked, “What can I do with this problem?”
During the first two weeks nothing happened. She just went through the process and trusted the process. In week 3 she suddenly lost 5 pounds and 6 inches. This was during Thanksgiving week and she ate anything she wanted, even dessert. The only thing she did was watching her psychology and enjoying the family gatherings.
Two of Jessica’s most outstanding characteristics are her commitment to lose weight and be healthy, and her consistency in going through the process. She started at day 1 and never missed any of the daily action steps, no matter how small or silly they seemed to her.
Example 2
Another client of mine – Ruth – went through my SheSlimEasyprogram 5 years ago and lost weight nicely. I emphasized that she should make sure to stay on the path and later move forward on the SheSlimForeverprocess to make her weight loss maintainable. Recently she joined my Facebook tribe and admitted that she could only keep her weight by dieting and regular cleansing. In other words, she completely ignored the psychological part, the 80% of the process. And not only that, she lost everything she had accomplished five years ago and now has to start all over again.
Ruth has always been kind of reluctant, the opposite of Jessica. She was afraid of her emotions and of bursting into tears when working with me. That was proof to me that one of her major causes of weight issues is the way she is dealing with emotions. Unfortunately she didn’t understand that every tear she cried while going through the transformation process with me means losing weight for her.
During a one-on-one session over the phone with me she began to realize that she can’t block the process emotionally and still hope to achieve lasting weight loss. So she decided to trust the process. As a result, within only one hour of coaching she could solve and transform several issues.
Working with the 4 Levels
Just in case that you feel overwhelmed by the 58 possible causes, my system includes figuring out each client’s effective causes very quickly.
Of course, if you are trying to do it by yourself, it may take years. Please keep in mind, that we all have our black spots. No psychologist can do it by herself/himself. It would literally take centuries. But maybe you are the exception.
Or you can work through your psychological issues with your psychologist. I’m sure you will make some great progress, but the question is how long it will take.
If you are at the point where you realize the benefits of my 4 pillars of lasting weight loss, you have two options:
1.) Workshops or group coachings
2.) One-on-one coaching sessions
Both possibilities are very valuable. The group setting is very interesting because you see the struggles of other women and you also get a lot of encouragement from the other members. The downside is that it may take longer because I have to work with several individuals at the same time.
If you need to lose weight fast and if you have the means, then the one-on-one coaching setting is certainly the best choice.
Of course, a big contributing factor to your weight loss progress and success is your willingness to open up and be willing to work through the processes. If you bring that to the table, we can transform each of your effective causes within one to five sessions, depending on the intensity of the issue.
These are the steps of my 4 pillars of lasting weight loss:
Step 1: Habit Transformation (SheSlimEasy)
Step 2: Detox & Cleansing (SheSlimFast)
Step 3: Weight Loss Mindset (SheSlimSmart)
Step 4: Transformation of the Inner Causes (SheSlimForever)
Maybe, by now you are getting a pretty clear understanding of the effectiveness of my 4 Pillar process.
Conclusion
Changing your diet may bring you a step ahead.
Following a fitness program may bring you a step ahead.
Thinking positive may bring you two steps ahead.
Going through the 4 Levels and eliminating the real causes is entirely different ball game. It’s a transformation process. It does not only get two or three steps ahead….it brings you right to the top of your goal. And not only that, at the same time it can improve your relationships, it can reduce your stress levels, it can improve your professional life, and it definitely will improve your health and longevity.
Finding the REAL causes of weight gain and eliminating or transforming them makes the body fat obsolete. As soon as we understand our body’s message and solve the problem, the body has no longer a need to hold on to the extra fat and can burn it almost instantly.
Since I don’t work with diets, there is hardly any bouncing unless it’s about the normal hormonal cycle. Therefore, we can honestly say that working on all four levels of the human being is THE fastest weight loss method because it is maintainable.
At the beginning it may take a while for the body to realize what’s going on. But once the process gains some momentum, weight loss can be fast and effortless. Very often, my clients don’t even realize that they have lost weight because they are feeling good despite of the weight and stopped weighing.
Now I have to leave it up to you to make a decision for yourself. Do you want your weight loss to be hard or smart? Do you want to keep yo-yo dieting or do you want to put an end to it? Do you want to go from diet to diet or do you choose a more effortless way?
The choise is yours and yours alone.
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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.
Recently I told an aquaintant that I have lost 16 pounds in one month. Her first question was, “Which diet did you do?” Of course, as my follower, you know that I don’t do diets.
Are you one of those women who are still hoping for a miracle pill to be invented or the perfect weight loss diet to be created before you’ll die?
Then this might be good news for you.
There is something that really works like magic for lasting weight loss. It makes the weight loss process much easier, faster, more enjoyable, more reliable and almost effortless.
Although there is no magic pill and never will be (no matter what they are going to invent in the future) and there will never be a perfect weight loss diet that works for all and without fail plus for good, there IS a way that brings results that can be described as “magical”.
BUT….
You can’t find that “magic bullet” outside of yourself.
In fact, it’s much easier and simpler…and it doesn’t cost you a single penny.
Are you curious what that “magic bullet” is?
It’s something so great and wonderful that I find it hard to find the right words for it.
It’s called MOMENTUM.
If you can’t see the magic behind that word, don’t worry. You’re not alone. It took me years to understand the fantastic POWER of momentum.
Momentum is what provides the wind under your wings. You can also call it snowball effect.
Momentum is a build up of energy that leads to one single point or outcome. It’s behind what business people know as exponentiel effect.
This graphic shows linear progress. This is what you can expect from the diet approach at the beginning. But after a while the body slows the fat burning process down and then – if you stick with it long enough – it begins to stop completely. This is what I also call the two-dimensional weight loss tactic and this is what you can expect from a single tactic like dieting.
On the other hand, the exponential progress curve shows little effect at the beginning and then suddenly begins to double and triple quickly. This is the kind of curve that happens when you have momentum. In business the exponential success is preferred from linear success, which is not reliable anyway and hardly brings the real big successes and breakthroughs.
Translated to your weight loss process this would mean that you start with small, daily steps, and from day to day you are building a momentum without taking drastic actions. At the beginning you may not see much progress, but as the momentum grows, the weight loss goes faster and faster.
This also requires that you are not only settling for a single tactic but create your own, personalized weight loss strategy. Working on all levels of your self can then create such an exponential success line throgh momentum.
Taking daily small steps never feels daunting or stressful. But don’t you ever underestimate small daily action steps.
For fast and reliable weight loss success it’s important to gain momentum and momentum can only be built by taking daily actions.
What is momentum?
This is Britannica’s definition of momentum.
“Momentum, product of the mass of a particle and its velocity. Momentum is a vector quantity; i.e., it has both magnitude and direction. Isaac Newton’s second law of motion states that the time rate of change of momentum is equal to the force acting on the particle. See Newton’s laws of motion.”
“From Newton’s second law it follows that, if a constant force acts on a particle for a given time, the product of force and the time interval (the impulse) is equal to the change in the momentum. Conversely, the momentum of a particle is a measure of the time required for a constant force to bring it to rest.“
What we can say from that definition is that momentum only happens with motion. The more or faster the motion, the faster momentum will increase.
Momentum is very powerful in reaching our highest goals. Wherever there is motion, there is momentum.
The thing to get momentum going is to START. And then, right after the start, the second, third, forth, etc. step has to follow. If you don’t start, your weight loss process, for example, nothing will happen because motion drives actions and actions drive momentum. That means, the more motion you have at the beginning and the more regular that motion happens, the higher the momentum.
As you go through the actions, more and more motion is generated and each of your action steps will get easier. Goals that seemed too impossible to reach, suddenly become more realistic, even easy to reach.
First set a realistic goal. Be very clear and specific. The more specific your goal is the better.
For example, if you decide to go for a 30 minute walk or go jogging every day, it will get easier from day to day. And after a while you will not even have to think about. No matter the wheather, you will put on your jogging shoes and your jacket and you go for a walk or a jog. It doesn’t even cost you any energy anymore.
And as you gain momentum with your exercise routine, you begin to set other goals that support your weight loss, do these steps every day without fail and you will gain a tremendous momentum including several tactics that makes you unstoppable.
The downside is that when you stop taking these regular action steps, you will quickly lose your momentum and things will become hard and rocky. You will have to force yourself to go out for a walk and also other action steps will get harder.
The trick is to show up every day at the same time and plan your life around that event. Because, once you have gained momentum, you don’t want to lose it because now you know how much greater and easier it is with momentum.
To make it easier for you, I have created a Facebook page with daily tiny baby steps that build up on momentum. Each step takes between 5 and 15 minutes. And if you follow these steps every day at the same time, soon your momentum will begin to snow ball and you will experience what one of my members is experience.
Today I talked to one of my members of that group. She joined the group three weeks ago and she jumped both feet in. For the first two weeks not much happened other than a few important insights and an inner shift. Today she told me at the phone that she has lost four pounds within the last five dayse without dieting. On Thanksgiving day she even ate a piece of pumpkin pie without remorse and enjoyed it very much.
All this could only happen because she took action every single day.
Believe me, when you can lose weight by building a strong momentum, your weight loss process is going to be real FUN!
Recently one of my members of my Facebook group left the group because she thought that the daily 5 to 10 minutes was more time than she could spend. The comment of another members was, “When she doesn’t even have 5 to 10 minutes time for her weight loss process per day, then she really, really, really needs you.”
Of course, she is completely right. But this is something every person must have to find out for herself to make it work. As long as an overweight woman believes that she doesn’t have five to fifteen minutes time per day for her weight loss process, she is simply not ready to achieve her goal, or worse, she is even in total denial.
Daily action is the way to gain momentum. And momentum is the most important requirement for weight loss success, provided that you choose the right method. Of course, by now you understand that gaining momentum with a wrong tactic like dieting will not get you the desired results either. It requires the right method PLUS momentum.
This is the formula to your weight loss success:
S (Strategy) + M (Momentum) = Weight Loss Success
How about you? Do you think you and your health are worth to take action for 5 to 15 minutes per day?
Start gaining momentum today and you will never look back!
************
Are 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.
No time of the year is so predestined to reveal whether a person is living in her “Slim Self” or her “Overweight Self”.
It starts before Thanksgiving when millions of women begin to worry about their weight and the outlook of gaining even more weight between Thanksgiving and New Year.
What most women then do is deciding to go the “easy route” and eat as much as they can during the Holiday and then to go on a diet January 2nd. These women are living in their “Fat Self”.
They constantly focus on weight gain.
Even thinking about going on a diet is living in the “Fat Self”. It’s the typical mindset of an overweight woman.
I don’t know who the author of this quote is, but he or she is spot on. No one could have said it better, shorter and clearer.
The body achieves what the mind believes.
There is no other way. This is how we humans have been created.
We are creators by nature. We create through the combination of our thinking and the emotions. When a thought and an emotion meet, that’s when we are creating our life circumstances….our fate.
The same is true with our health and weight.
Your current weight totally reflects your thinking in the past a 100%. What you have been believing about food and weight in the past, your body realized and you can now see it as a “fact”.
Living in your “Fat You”
A woman who is living in her fat self is somebody who constantly counts calories, worries about food, worries about her weight, worries about how she is looking. I have met thousands of women who’s thinking constantly circles around food and weight all day long without being fully aware of.
Such a person is living in her “Fat Self”. She is living and breathing weight gain. She constantly nourishes her creation tools – her thoughts and her emotions – with information regarding GAINING weight.
Living in your “Slim You”
No slim woman would ever do that, unless she had just lost weight and is now afraid of gaining it back. But then she is still in her “Fat Self”.
Women who live in their “Slim Self” have completely different thoughts about food. They ask themselves what they can eat to remain healthy and energetic. They are on the lookout for healthy, natural food.
Around the Holidays their focus is on enjoying their loved ones and being with their family and friends. Their focus is on joy, not on food stress.
Maybe they don’t want to eat too much because it makes them feel stuffed and they don’t like that feeling. So they enjoy eating in moderate amounts, but not out of worry but out of care for their health and because they want to feel good in their body. Feeling good in her body is what matters most for her.
By the way, people who truly enjoy the eating and every bite of it, can hardly over-eat.
Or she may choose to drink a glass of water before each meal to help her body to digest the food better.
Women who are operating from their “Slim Self” are constantly on the lookout for what is good for their health and have no focus on the weight. When they choose healthy food they constantly choose out of wisdom (not out of fear); and when they choose to exercise they do so because they want to stay healthy (not because they want to burn some calories).
Maintainable weight loss begins in your head
Let me share an example that one of the members of my Facebook group has experienced during Thanksgiving week. She ate everything she wanted and enjoyed being with her family. Yet during that week most overweight women fear, she has lost 5 pounds and 6 inches. Two days ago she informed me that she could maintain that weight loss.
How did she accomplish that?
By taking each and every daily baby step I have layed out in my Facebook group and by doing the inside work. Again, 80% of your weight loss success is beneath the surface: in your psychology and unconscious mind.
It is my deepest hope that you are beginning to understand how much maintainable weight loss is a mindset game and not a calorie game.
It’s true that 80% of your weight loss success is about your psychology, about what is going on in your mind (not in your digestive track).
Developing the right mindset requires a lot of self-discipline, but it’s a different kind of self-discipline than the one required for diets and easier to come up with.
When you’re on a diet, you can come up with as much discipline as you want, your subconscious mind is always going to win the battle and you’re going to lose. You have no chance, no matter how strong your discipline and willpower are.
But coming up with the discipline of the right thinking, that’s where your success begins. That’s where your discipline will be well “invested” and fall on fertile ground.
Happy Holiday…and happy slimming!
*****
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.
So many overweight women are struggling with their weight…unnecessarily hard and long because they have the wrong mindset regarding weight loss. They don’t take the time factor into consideration.
In our mind we can lose weight effortlessly and almost instantly. But the body needs more time to achieve such a goal.
I know there are peers of mine out there who are brainwashing you with the idea that you can lose weight quickly. They show you images of other people who lost weight and tell you that they lost x amount of weight in x amount of time. Those numbers then stick in your head as a “fact”. They are in your brain and you begin to believe – consciously or subconsciously – that you can lose the exact same weight in exact the same time. To your brain, such a before/after picture is PROOF that the method works. And that’s exactly the big mistake and a lie either these “experts” are telling you or a lie you are telling yourself out of wishful thinking.
But that never happens.
People then often reach to drastic tactics to get the promised quick results such as diet pills, liposuction and the very dangerous gastric surgeries and thus make matters worse. All these are quick fixes but they don’t solve the real problem.
3 Reasons Why You Should Learn to Set Realistic Goals
First of all, each person’s body is differently with different needs and problems. Although we all have basically the same kind of body, we are different in many ways. Some bodies need more time for digestion, others have a slow metabolism, still others have some hormonal challenges, some have different enzymes for digestion, others need more time to burn fat during exercising…and so on.
That’s why it’s very dangerous to hear about people who have lost 10 pounds in 10 days, for example. These numbers get into your brain and subconscious mind and will stick there. You then automatically begin to compare yourself with those people whose success story you have read or heard. This then becomes your unconscious “ceiling”. You simply can’t think beyond those numbers anymore and you can’t push through that glass ceiling anymore. It’s set in your system like a thermostat of your heating system.
Secondly, it took time for your body to accumulate that fat…most of the time we are talking about years and decades of fat accumulation. The longer you are carrying around some extra weight, the harder it will be for your body to reverse it and the more time it will require. The body needed time to create that fat and it will need time to burn it. The results you can get through weight loss diets are never realistic. You will lose a lot of water and maybe even some fat, but if you don’t change the cause, both that water and fat will come back, often quicker than you have lost it.
Thirdly, your current weight is another number that sticks to your subconscious mind and whenever you go on a diet, your subconscious mind will do everything to get back to that number. It’s like with your air conditioner. When you set it to a certain degree, the system will constantly adjust the temperature. When it gets warmer than you chose, the system will cool down; when the room gets colder, the system will heat up. It’s the same with your weight because your body doesn’t understand that you want to get rid of that extra weight and it will always bounce back unless you eliminate the real causes.
For all these reasons it’s very important that you set realistic goals. Before we come to that, I want to briefly share with you what happens on your psychological level when you don’t get these promised quick results.
The Consequences of Setting Unrealistic Goals
At the beginning you have big hopes and you’re all hyped up. Then, when you gain the weight back or don’t lose as much as you had been promised, you lose hope. Losing hope is a very dangerous thing and quickly leads to depression what creates another downward spiral.
Then, of course, you blame yourself or beat yourself up. After all, those other women accomplished their goals and the “expert” promised that you can achieve the same. Ergo, it must be your fault. And you can back up that logic with the fact that there were situations when you didn’t stick a 100% to the program. Again, ergo it must be your fault.
After a while, you then begin to lose faith in yourself. You just don’t seem to be able to achieve a goal…you don’t trust yourself anymore. So since you can’t achieve that one simple weight loss goal, maybe you’re too stupid to achieve other goals. Right? (I know how harshly women can talk to themselves.) Again, a negative downward spiral begins.
Then kicks in self-pity. Since you “failed” in your understanding, then you probably don’t deserve to be slim, healthy and beautiful. You are doomed to stay overweight for the rest of your miserable life. In other words, you have given up.
Before you even think about setting a new weight loss goal, I highly recommend to reverse that process: give up self-pity, gain back faith in yourself (no, you can’t wait until you will finally achieve your weight loss goal, you have to have faith in yourself first), stop self-blame and gain back your hope. There are sustainable solutions. You just have to allow that mindset shift to happen.
As long as you put your hope in diets, the next disappointment is inevitable.
Stop searching on the outside.
80% of your weight loss success is an INSIDE job.
Of course, you can hire a coach for that process and most likely you’ll have to. Yet you still have to go through the process. There is just no short cut. The answers are within you.
Set Realistic Goals
Then set a REALISTIC goal. Choose how much weight you want to lose and then leave it up to your body how much time it will need to accomplish that desired goal. Your body might surprise you and you can lose that weight much faster than you thought. And there is also a 50% chance that your body may need more time than you think. When you choose a time frame within which you want to shed those pounds, disappointment is certain. You then will lose hope, be disappointed and frustrated and your brain will add another failure to your already existing pattern.
Adding a time to your weight loss goal is not realistic because at this point you can’t know what really forced your body to accumulate fat in the first place. It can very well be that the real, underlying cause goes years back or that it is something you never thought about. For example, if the cause is a hormonal imbalance, it can take years to balance that back.
What I recommend to my clients is to ALWAYS give themselves at least one entire year, no matter how little weight they want to lose. Remember, lasting weight loss is to 80% an inside job.
If you are obese, then it would be more realistic to give yourself two or three years. The fat burning process can be much faster than that, but if I understand you correctly, you want to lose your extra weight for GOOD and not just temporarily. In other words, you want to make sure that all aspects that lead to your weight gain in the first place will be removed from your entire system: body, mind and spirit, especially from your subconscious mind.
Therefore, the by leaps and bounds fastest way is by keeping away from the diet approach, by setting realistic goals and by giving yourself enough time.
Just think about. What is fast about losing and gaining and losing and gaining? Many overweight women go on like that for over a decade. That’s neither fast nor quick nor sustainable. That is no weight loss at all, because at the end of the day you haven’t lost anything. You’re just a year older and back to your old size…or even a size bigger.
It is truly my hope that you begin to understand why going for the quick fixes is a shot in your own foot.
Therefore my friend, patience is one of the first attributes you will need for your maintainable weight loss success. We are talking about a long-term goal here. We are not talking about a few weeks or months, we are talking about your healthy LIFE….a maintainable healthy lifestyle you can easily follow through with for the rest of your life without starving and without stress.
Learn to set realistic goals!
It’s crucial for your weight loss success.
*****
Are your health and weight loss goal worth five to fifteen minutes of your time every day?
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.
Millions of women are coming to the awareness that diets might not work. In several blog post I mentioned the advantage of having a weight loss strategyvs. just having a diet.
You are a whole being of body, emotions, mind, and spirit. And the causes of weight gain can happen on all these four levels. This is the reason why it’s not enough to just eat healthy most of the time. It’s not even enough to diet and exercise. Therefore, a sensible weight loss strategy integrates all four levels. Of course, healthy eating (the opposite of dieting) and exercise should be part of your weight loss strategy. This may help you lose a little bit of weight temporarily but not for good.
“You could eat the best foods every day, but if you don’t exercise, you are not going to be healthy. Or you could eat the best food, and you could exercise an hour a day, but if your thoughts are always negative, if you are always harboring thoughts of doubt, worry, anger, guilt, jealousy, helplessness and hopelessness, there is no way you’re ever going to be vibrantly healthy.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
It’s body, mind and spirit. The body reflects the mind, the mind reflects the spirit.
The body is a good place to start because whatever you do on the physical level will lead to fastweight loss. And what you do on the psychological and spiritual level will lead to lasting weight loss. That’s why you’d be wise to address all levels.
Dr. Susan recommends starting by taking loving care of your body day in and day out. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming; we’re not talking about huge changes in your life. In fact, you can make massive progress by taking baby steps every day. It’s really the simple lifestyle changes you choose to make regarding what you eat, how you deal with stress, how often and the kinds of exercises you do, how much you sleep, and how much water you drink.
Then, the next level will be to change the thinking regarding your body, weight, and food.
You may moan about the fact that losing weight for good is a little bit more complex than just dieting. But as soon as you realize how much more effective a weight loss strategy is than dieting, you will begin to love it. It’s not complicated and – again – it can happen by taking baby steps and simple changes. Besides, what is fast about yo-yoing?
So many overweight women are torn between feeling guilty and feeling helpless. And in either state, you couldn’t be further from the concept of being the CEO of your own health and weight.
What you must understand is that each of us chooses every second of our life through the subconscious choices we make (mostly through our habits), and thus we create our own reality. From the moment you wake up, you are choosing the thoughts you think, what you can have for breakfast, how you are with people throughout the day and how you want to treat your body.
By being the CEO of your own health and weight, you begin to make conscious choices every day that will move you closer to your weight goal. This path is much more effective than the subconscious one, where you allow your thoughts and emotions to go their way. This makes all the difference between feeling like a victim of a cruel fate and by feeling empowered and in control over our health and life.
Our current life is the result of the countless choices we have made in the past regarding the foods we ate, the thoughts we thought, whether or not we moved, etc. And if you don’t like how your life is heading or where it is right now, you’ve got to make some different choices now. It’s really that easy. You can do it.
Here is a possible lifestyle recommended by Susan Smith Jones:
Choose the best food for you
Cultivate a holistic lifestyle
Celebrate your blessings – cultivate an attitude of gratitude
Take responsibility for your health and weight
Choose the first 40 minutes of your day wisely because it sets the tone for the entire day (positive, healthy, happy, relaxed)
Make these five steps part of your weight loss strategy, and you will already be a step closer to your desired weight goal.
*****
A few years ago, I did an interview with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial.
What the whole diet industry is telling you is that diets were the solution for weight loss because of the calorie in vs. calorie out theory, but that theory is wrong and an utter lie. The fact is that dieting is not a cure for excess fat. Of course, healthy eating should be part of any sensible weight loss strategy. But dieting is not a healthy approach and causes many health issues.
One of the very important topics Dr. Susan Smith Jones talked about in our interview was the control mechanism for weight loss.
After you finish a diet, you may have lost some fat, but you have not lost your tendency to get fat. According to Dr. Susan, what we eat does not change muscle metabolism.
Most women are not happy with the shape of their bodies because most people go about it the wrong way by dieting. A woman I know is a fan of the vegan lifestyle, and she tries to convince every person she meets to go vegan as well, and she is very pushy about that. Although she is short and very thin, her body has a terrible shape. This is one of the typical results of a vegan lifestyle, and it’s the most harmless of all results.
Dr. Susan clearly says that diets don’t work, and she recommends, “You want to throw away any diet book you might have that tells you that you can lose weight and keep it off without moving a muscle.”
After you finish a diet, you may have lost some water, muscle mass, and maybe even a little fat, but you haven’t lost the TENDENCY to get fat.
Here is what you need to understand about metabolism:
The control mechanism for being overweight is not diet; it’s muscle metabolism.
“Your base for metabolic rate is the rate at which your body utilizes energy. In other words, how many calories you’re burning throughout the day.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
The higher your metabolism, the more fat you burn and the easier it is to lose weight, provided that everything else is working properly. To this, Dr. Susan adds that you can feed your muscles and your bodies with the best supplements, but if exercise is not part of the plan, you are not going to burn all the calories you need. And you will probably not have the nicely shaped body you want.
As we age, if we don’t keep lots of good lean muscle tissue on our body by working out, then the metabolism goes down. So the key to controlling metabolism is exercise. Exercise must be part of a good, sensible and effective weight loss strategy. Never settle for one tactic only.
To have a nicely formed body, we need aerobic exercise like walking, cross-country skiing, hiking, jogging to burn fat out of the muscles. And then we need to do some weight training to build up muscles which, in turn, increases the metabolism.
In my work as a weight transformation coach, I realized that about 50% of overweight women hate exercise. I was one of them for many years. But I promise, once you begin to do just a little bit of exercise, and if you do it daily no matter the weather, you will begin to like it, and then after a while, you even begin to need it, and it will get super easy to follow through with your exercise plan. To make it easier, Dr. Susan recommends the buddy system, especially at the beginning. When you know that your friend is waiting around the corner at 7 am, it’s easier for you to get out of your bed.
To begin with, just choose those activities you like the best. Most people can find something that they like to do. And if you can’t take 30 minutes or an hour a day, start with as little as 15 minutes per day. Even the busiest person can squeeze in 15 minutes. The main thing is that you do it daily without fail for the first 30 days. As soon as you realize that it works, you can find ways to increase the time or exercise for 30 minutes or 15 minutes twice daily.
Just in case you are one of the super busy women whose first reaction to this recommendation is, “But I can’t afford to take so much time for exercise every day,” let me ask you a question. What will happen in ten, twenty or thirty years if you don’t exercise regularly now? I’m sure you will come up with several health issues right away. And you’d be right.
Therefore, the question should not be, “Can I afford to take time for daily exercise?” Instead, the question should be, “Can I afford not to exercise daily?” What many people just don’t realize is the costs of a sedative and busy life.
If you want to lose weight, a minimum of half an hour of aerobic exercise every day is the minimum. Then make it a commitment to add some muscle training three times a week for 30 minutes consistently for the next six months. Within those six months, your body will add ten extra pounds of lean muscle tissue, and these ten pounds of muscle tissue will burn 500 more calories a day. These muscles will help you lose weight faster.
And here is an additional bonus. If you do as recommended, you can look 15 to 20 years younger within only one year. And this is according to major studies done at Duke University. Can you get that? Just exercise for one year and build 10 pounds of muscle tissue and look 15 to 20 years younger. It will work, no matter your current age. Isn’t that a no-brainer!?
Please remember what Dr. Susan said regarding choosing to be the CEO of your body and life. Therefore, adding that kind of exercise to your weight loss strategy could be the first step to being the CEO of your body and life. All it takes is a commitment.
We are creatures of habit, and when you get in a rut of doing the same things day in and day out, it may take some effort to change the habits. Just keep in mind that your current “rut” was created by your past choices and habits. So now, you can choose to implement new habits and create a new daily procedure. The right kind of exercise should always be part of our overall weight loss strategy.
*****
A few years ago, I did an interview with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial.
When it comes to weight loss, there are three things over which we really have control in life. One is what we think, one is what we eat, and the third one is how we move and exercise. And it all begins with your attitude. If your life is set up in a way that doesn’t allow you that freedom – provided you’re an adult – then you’re in bigger trouble than you may think.
“Attitude is the mind’s paintbrush, it can color anything.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
We all like to think that our thoughts are just happening without us. When we eat, we either eat what our sweet tooth, the media, our life circumstances, or the time of our lunch breaks dictate. And the exercise part is being dictated by time and excuses…we either don’t have time or use that as an excuse.
But the fact is – and there will come a time in your life when you will painfully realize that we and only we are in charge of our thoughts, the food we eat and what priority our health has in life.
If you are a spiritual person, please make the following visualization. Imagine that you have just gone through death, and now you are standing face to face in front of God. Imagine that he asks you how you were thinking about his gift, your body, throughout your life and you would say, “Well, dear God, I couldn’t really decide what to think, my head just kept thinking without my interference.” Do you really think that God would respond, “Poor thing, you were so burdened with a disobedient brain. Of course, then it was all your brain’s fault and not yours.”
God’s next question then is, “Now tell me, dear, how have you been taking care of that gift of mine, your body? Did you feed it with the best food, and did you move it regularly as it needed to be moved?” And you would answer, “Well, you see, dear God, the situation is this; I was so busy with my job that I could only eat microwaved food, and there was simply no time to exercise. When I came home from work, I was too tired to go out for a walk.” And then, of course, you would expect God to say, “Oh dear me, you were really burdened, and I fully understand that you simply could not eat healthily and not move your body as it was supposed to be your duty.”
Or would God say something like, “Well, my lovely daughter; I gave you a brain to think; I gave you a heart that connected you to me what gave you instant access to me at any second of the day whenever you wanted; I gave you a body to be my agent in your city, and I gave you the freedom of choice so that you could learn by making mistakes. But you didn’t use my gifts well and gave your power away to bad habits, other people, circumstances, and excuses. You didn’t pass this test, and you will have to go back and do it better next time.”
So tell me, which scenario makes more sense and is more likeable?
We are in charge of our thinking, our emotions, the words we say and the actions we take.
Here is a test for you to find out whether or not you are in charge of your thinking, your emotions, your words, and your actions.
Is your life exactly the way you had dreamed it when you were young, and is it exactly the way you want it to be?
If your answer is a wholehearted, ‘Yes,’ then you’re probably doing a lot right.
But if your life isn’t the way you want it to be, then look at your thinking, your habits, and the actions you take. If your health is not what you want it to be, look at how you’re treating your body.
If you wake up in the morning and immediately think, “Gosh, what shall I wear today? I’m wondering whether the spaghetti I ate for last night’s dinner showson my scale today.” Then the next thing you do is step on the scale, and there is a 50:50 chance that you will not be happy with your weight. So your thinking goes around all the reasons why you’re not happy with your body and this determines your mood of the day.
You may believe that your weight determines your attitude and that this was normal. But it’s actually the other way around. The mind always influences the body. Therefore, before taking care of our weight, we have to take care of our mindset. It begins with your attitude!
“The greatest discovery of this generation is that the human being can change his life just by changing his attitude.” –William James
The thing is, when you decide to do something – like eating healthier and going for a daily walk – and then you don’t follow through with it, you lose self-control, you lose self-esteem, and you lose your integrity…step by step, each time you don’t follow through with what you said you would do.
When you don’t follow through with what you say you’re going to do, you probably think, “What does it matter! Nobody knows!” But that’s not true. YOU know. And not following through with your promises to yourself takes a hit on your integrity.
And even if nobody knows what you promised yourself, because of the fact that YOU know, you change your energy, your vibrations. You ooze the energy, “I can’t keep my commitments,” and subconsciously, people around you will recognize and stop trusting you without knowing why. They just have a bad gut feeling about you.
Commitment to a weight loss program – of course, it has to be one that has the chance to bring you lasting results and no diet can ever do that for you – can lend stability to your everyday life. Because, with each daily action, you reaffirm your commitment, and that brings a feeling of empowerment and increased self-esteem. Now, instantly, your energy changes and people around you can sense that as well.
It’s through our everyday behavior that we get serious results and create a life we want and like.
“Commitment means you ‘ve got to get past your excuses, follow through on what you say you are going to do, make your word count and be responsible and accountable.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
There is one exception: weight loss diets, and I highly recommend to better make a commitment not to follow a weight loss diet. They are designed in a way that it’s simply not possible to follow through because your body lacks vital nutrients and will sabotage your attempt to follow through with the diet. You simply can’t win with any weight loss diets. Therefore, you should first do some research to find out what really works and be willing to give your weight loss process time. Any quick fix can’t work long-term, and what you want is long-term success. You want your diet to be a healthy one that provides your body with everything it needs. You want a healthy lifestyle you can implement. You want maintainable weight loss. For such a goal, you have to be willing to give yourself enough time.
Once you find such a strategy, make a commitment to follow through with it, get past your excuses, and take action every day until you reach your weight goal. And I promise you; you will be stronger than ever before. Make your word count and be responsible and accountable.
So you’ve got to follow through on what you say you are going to do if you want to lose your weight for good.
*****
A few years ago, I did an interview with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial.
In my last blog post I shared with you a few highlights of the interview I did with Dr. Susan Smith Jones.
During that interview with Dr. Susan, we also talked about the fact that she looks 20 years younger than her age. And she added, “This is how most people should be looking.”
The thing is that when we carry extra weight, it creates major stress on every system, every organ and cell in our body, and it ages us quickly. So we must get the extra weight off if we want to look younger than our age! Frankly, is there any woman out there who would rather look older?
As a next step, we must choose to make our health the top priority in our life. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “Health is your greatest wealth.” The only way to take care of our greatest wealth is by showing by the actions we take every day that our health, weight, and life is our top priority.
To that, Dr. Susan adds, “Yourlife and all of its magnificence is a reflection of how you feel about yourself. So you’ve got to plant those seeds of high self-esteem and support them with every action you take every day. Because you deserve the best life has to offer you.“
And she keeps saying, “Sometimes, people would say to me – like they pull me over in the middle of a talk during the intermission – they’ll say, ‘Susan I like what you say, but you know what? I can’t start eating better ‘till next month because I am under too much stress, my birthday is coming up, it’s my anniversary, or I can’t exercise for at least two weeks because I am going away on a holiday or vacation and it’s my church’s bake sale’.”
I have heard those excuses over and over, and so has probably pretty much every weight loss coach or expert on the entire planet.
The truth is, my friend, that you are never going to get to your desired achievement in your life until you have some self-discipline. And by that, Dr. Susan recommends to “…following through on what you say you are going to do.”
If you sometimes feel that the steering wheel of your car just turned into the fast food restaurant, then you have lost control. And this is not how it’s supposed to be, and this is not how we can become the ‘CEO of our health, weight, and life.’ We – and I have to include myself in this – have to have some control and discipline in our lives.
When we don’t keep our word with whatever it is, we lose faith in ourselves…each time a little bit more. We lose self-esteem, and at a deep level, we don’t feel that we deserve the best in life. And, according to Dr. Susan, this causes depression.
When your energy goes down, and your emotions go down, and you feel depressed, what do you then do? In those situations, so many women often select foods that match their lower emotional level. Then it becomes a vicious cycle of being depressed, eating the wrong foods, gaining weight, being even more depressed, eating more of the wrong foods, and gaining more weight until the day comes where she feels completely out of control.
Dr. Smith Jones says that we can stop this vicious cycle by choosing to love ourselves and show by every action we take every day that we deserve the best.
We deserve to feel powerful and under control, we deserve the best food, and we deserve to be slim and healthy.
Let’s not forget that there is always something we could use as an excuse. The time to eat healthily or to go for a walk is never perfect. It’s never the right time unless we decide that it’s the right time now.
So let’s stop making excuses and ask ourselves who is supposed to have control over our health, weight, and lives. Is it the next baking sale, the next birthday party, the Drive-Through, a current depression….or is it you?
*****
A few years ago, I did an interview with several health and weight loss coaches with a different approach than the diet approach. One of these experts was the bestselling American author, Dr. Susan Smith Jones. She quickly turned out to be one of the most amazing interview partners, and she spilled the beans in that interview. She held nothing back. If you want to hear the whole interview with Dr. Susan, you can go here and claim your free 2-week membership trial:
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.
The second time I really struggled a lot was with my self-growth business in the 1980s. I was a single mom and I wanted to be with my daughter as much as possible. So I decided to build my own home-based coaching, seminar, and public speaking business. I did all right from the get go and we were lucky enough to always have some food on the table. And though some months I couldn’t pay my bills, I could always pay them the next month. However, I was never able to save any money for my daughter’s college or buy some special things like new furniture, a car, or nice clothes. It was just enough for what we really needed. And I was trying really, really hard.
The interesting thing is that it took other coaches like Marianne Williamson, Geneen Roth, and Jon Gabriel more than a decade to come up with similar solutions, but all of them only offer parts of what I have found. What I was allowed to “download” from the Universe back then is still true today and I still teach these same principles in all of my workshops, seminars, and programs. And I am very surprised that I am still one of very few holistic weight loss coaches who can do that kind of work.
Because I know that so many women have been struggling with their weight for years and just don’t seem to be able to find a way to lose their weight for good. They are all on a completely wrong route. With a small mindset shift and a new weight loss strategy, their weight struggle could end almost instantly. 
https://cdm.weightlossexpertsrevealthetruth.com/lm-4-pillars-of-lasting-weight-loss603eyu39It’s the letting go that is a very important part of your weight loss process.
Is your health and weight loss goal worth five to fifteen minutes of your time every day? 
Since I have talked about the diet approach many times, I want to make this short. Dieting is against the body’s own nature and therefore can’t work long term. Going on a diet can give you some short term results but the weight will come back after a while. Depending on how many diets you have been trying or will choose to try, the constant up and down usually goes on for years and the person will eventually come to a point where she will resignate and give up all weight loss attempts.
Exercise alone has never been a fast tactic. Although exercise should always be part of a sensible weight loss strategy, it’s far from being fast nor maintainable. You can jog for an hour every day and 365 days and you may not even lose a pound. Believe me, I did it and that was the results. Zero weight loss.
Like with any diet, at the beginning you may lose a lot of weight very quickly. But after a while you will gain it back because you didn’t take your body’s nature into consideration. You can’t fool your body.
In my humble opinion this is the most stupid way of losing weight, and any doctor who offers that kind of surgeries should be put in jail for a long time. Gastric surgery is slow murder.
Hypnoses is a great method and I personally use several kinds of hypnoses in my coaching and therapy practice.
Although a healthy lifestyle ABSOLUTELY has to be part of a maintainable weight loss strategy, by itself it’s not a fast method and very often not even a lasting solution. The healthy lifestyle approach looks at weight issues exclusively from the physical standpoint and that’s never enough to make losing weight to last. Inner causes will not be transformed. 
My 4 Pillar system takes the whole person, the whole being into consideration. We are body, mind AND spirit. We can’t solve a problem just on the physical level by ignoring the other parts of our beings.
Changing your diet may bring you a step ahead.
To make it easier for you, I have created a Facebook page with daily tiny baby steps that build up on momentum. Each step takes between 5 and 15 minutes. And if you follow these steps every day at the same time, soon your momentum will begin to snow ball and you will experience what one of my members is experience. 
Maintainable weight loss begins in your head
Thirdly, your current weight is another number that sticks to your subconscious mind and whenever you go on a diet, your subconscious mind will do everything to get back to that number. It’s like with your air conditioner. When you set it to a certain degree, the system will constantly adjust the temperature. When it gets warmer than you chose, the system will cool down; when the room gets colder, the system will heat up. It’s the same with your weight because your body doesn’t understand that you want to get rid of that extra weight and it will always bounce back unless you eliminate the real causes. 
Then, of course, you blame yourself or beat yourself up. After all, those other women accomplished their goals and the “expert” promised that you can achieve the same. Ergo, it must be your fault. And you can back up that logic with the fact that there were situations when you didn’t stick a 100% to the program. Again, ergo it must be your fault.
Therefore my friend, patience is one of the first attributes you will need for your maintainable weight loss success. We are talking about a long-term goal here. We are not talking about a few weeks or months, we are talking about your healthy LIFE….a maintainable healthy lifestyle you can easily follow through with for the rest of your life without starving and without stress. 
“You could eat the best foods every day, but if you don’t exercise, you are not going to be healthy. Or you could eat the best food, and you could exercise an hour a day, but if your thoughts are always negative, if you are always harboring thoughts of doubt, worry, anger, guilt, jealousy, helplessness and hopelessness, there is no way you’re ever going to be vibrantly healthy.” –Dr. Susan Smith Jones
You may moan about the fact that losing weight for good is a little bit more complex than just dieting. But as soon as you realize how much more effective a weight loss strategy is than dieting, you will begin to love it. It’s not complicated and – again – it can happen by taking baby steps and simple changes. Besides, what is fast about yo-yoing? 
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.”
If you want to lose weight, a minimum of half an hour of aerobic exercise every day is the minimum. Then make it a commitment to add some muscle training three times a week for 30 minutes consistently for the next six months. Within those six months, your body will add ten extra pounds of lean muscle tissue, and these ten pounds of muscle tissue will burn 500 more calories a day. These muscles will help you lose weight faster.
You may believe that your weight determines your attitude and that this was normal. But it’s actually the other way around. The mind always influences the body. Therefore, before taking care of our weight, we have to take care of our mindset. It begins with your attitude!
Commitment to a weight loss program – of course, it has to be one that has the chance to bring you lasting results and no diet can ever do that for you – can lend stability to your everyday life. Because, with each daily action, you reaffirm your commitment, and that brings a feeling of empowerment and increased self-esteem. Now, instantly, your energy changes and people around you can sense that as well.
The truth is, my friend, that you are never going to get to your desired achievement in your life until you have some self-discipline. And by that, Dr. Susan recommends to “…following through on what you say you are going to do.”
We deserve to feel powerful and under control, we deserve the best food, and we deserve to be slim and healthy.
