BodyZen

I am back on deck after spending more time being a Mom and a Coach and less time blogging so thanks for your patience :)

I wanted to share an exchange I had recently which is typical of many I have had over the last three years.  I was talking to a friend who is a very intelligent, compassionate and professional woman.  She was sharing with me that one of her friend's has just started on a diet initiated by a physician that involves 'mostly lentils and green veggies' (her words) and not much else.  The woman undertaking this diet is keen to lose weight and I can only imagine that when being guided by a physican we would assume we are being given sound advice.  I asked if this woman is having trouble psychologically with this kind of denial and the answer was a resounding 'yes'.  'She won't even feed her kids the same diet, so why would she be prepared to have it?' my friend wondered.  

Now let me be clear - this is NOT an exercise in criticising this woman for her diet choice.  This is more a message about the absolute pervasiveness of the belief that we must DENY ourselves to extreme levels in order to lose weight.  Really where is the common sense in all this?  What could be more punishing??  When I say to you that it has been proven that the denial approach (which = diet) sets up a psychology of absolutely positively, wanting, needing and ultimately obsessing about the food/s you are witholding I am sure you would agree from your own personal experience that this is true.  You are a greater person than I am if you can decide that you will no longer eat chocolate and then not resort to gorging on a family block (or dare I say cooking chocolate) at some point!  Time is the only variable here - eventually we will all binge on chocolate.  

BUT if we decide to take the opposite approach and make NO food off limits, but instead gradually change our eating habits to include more healthy options and less junk then we will find that elusive long term successful weight loss.  And guess what?  We will also allow ourselves to indulge on our favourite treats that may be junky, but we will savour and enjoy them and rarely binge on them.

So Ladies I implore you if you haven't already please stand up and say a FAT 'NO' to any more diets, denial or extreme eating regimes.  Dump them all in the bin for good.  Replace all this punishing behaviour with gentle, loving kindness towards yourself and how you treat your body.  Sounds too good to be true?  Many women just like you have proven time and time again that it is not.   This can be your reality.  You can have your cake, and eat it too.  

Mireille Guiliano in her book ‘French Women Don’t Get Fat’ tells us that French women have a healthy relationship with their body.  They also tend not to snack, or binge, and they steer clear of processed foods.  

According to Guiliano, there are a number of things that French women do differently to a lot of American, Canadians and Australians including giving themselves permission to eat cake and chocolate.  Of course the key here is GIVING THEMSELVES PERMISSION rather than classifying them as a forbidden food.  Not having a list of forbidden foods can put an end to bingeing, as we find at BodyZen when women take up our Eating Program, which is about 100% permission.  Paradoxically, when you allow yourself to eat any food, you will break the diet shackles and you will normalize your weight over time.

BodyZen is all about losing weight without dieting and finding peace with your body.  How do we help women do both of these things? We have 3 principles which are the framework of our programs.  I have recently blogged on the first principle which is 'practice mindfulness' particularly with how you eat.  The second principle is 'make your body your temple'.  When clients commence the BodyZen process they typically have been yo-yo dieters, or yo-yo exercisers for years.  They may also have struggled with poor body image and a lack of acceptance and appreciation for their body.  In this mindset, it is virtually impossible to lose weight successfully, and to ever feel comfortable in your skin.  The key to shifting the shape, size and condition of your body permanently AND to feeling genuine appreciation for your physical being is to adopt a new positive mindset.  The ideal mindset is one where you accept,  and respect your body in this moment and feel a desire to take care of it because it is precious.  When you make your body your temple, you automatically make healthier choices for you.  You start to listen to what your body needs and wants, and you feed it more nourishing food, and you move it in a way that strengthens and supports your physical condition.  You also choose to sleep enough, and to relax regularly.  Please notice that I say this happens 'automatically'  which is the exact opposite of the 'forced' approach that dieting and typical weight loss programs require.  This is one of the reasons why 95% of diets fail.  

So it is easy to understand the value of making your body your temple, but how do you translate this into your daily life?  The answer is that there are many ways to shift your mindset and it can take some time.  The starting point is always making the decision that you are ready to relate to your body and yourself more gently and positively.  Declaring your decision can be simply writing it down, stating it out loud or saying it within.  The declaration is important though to start shifting the energy of your thoughts and feelings in relation to yourself.  One declaration that can be very powerful is 'my body is my temple'.   If you make this declaration before you make food, exercise, rest or relaxation choices it will help you make a better, more conscious choice for yourself.  If you feel ready to test this out start today.  Imagine that your body IS your temple and you will intuitively start to make better choices for you.   

And remember we would love to hear your experiences and questions on our facebook page or our website forum.  Enjoy taking care of yourself!

In our last blog I spoke about the first principle of BodyZen which is to practice mindful eating.   The art of eating mindfully brings many benefits including the ability to lose weight without dieting, the doorway to tasting and savouring your food more (so basically more pleasure!) and a way to really centre yourself.  But as good as this is, how do we eat mindfully if we are super busy?  Good question.  I am going to suggest 5 techniques that will help you to successfully embrace mindful eating in your daily living.  Here goes:

1 . Sell yourself strongly on the benefits of mindful eating.  You can save all that time, ansgt and money that you have spent on dieting and weight loss programs and instead do it the easy way.  The more we know an action is going to give us something positive - our best body, more enjoyment, and greater health and wellbeing, the easier it is to do it.

2. Make yourself accountable.  Buddy up with a like-minded friend so you can be accountable to each other each day, or set up a closed facebook page with a group to check in regularly.  Post up your intention to eat mindfully on the fridge, in your car, on your bathroom mirror, anywhere to keep it in the top of your mind.

3. Take baby steps.  Start by setting a goal of eating mindfully say 3 times a week or only once per day (include meals or snacks or even your hot drink).

4. Challenge your thinking.  If you are really so busy that you cannot spare an extra 10 minutes a day to eat mindfully what does this say to you about where your life is at right now?  I remember when I used to feel that I couldn't slow down enough to brush my teeth for the recommended two minutes.  When I finally did stop and take the two minutes I couldn't believe how much better I felt for slowing down.  You could always get up 10 minutes earlier or just plunge in and eat more slowly for one meal and see what happens.  You may be surprised to find out that you can make the time and it will be worth it.

5.  Check in with your heart.  Put your hands on your heart and ask if eating mindfully is a good thing for you to adopt right now.  Wait until you get an answer, but if the answer is yes - go for it!

I will write more soon on the second BodyZen principle which is all about treating your body as if it were your temple.  In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your food!

Are you a yo-yo dieter? Or a yo-yo detoxer?  Do you think that losing weight is the solution to your life problems at the moment?  Do you obsessively think about food?  Do you emotionally eat?

If you are female, chances are you have answered yes to at least one of these questions at some point in your life.  At BodyZen we work with women who want to lose weight without dieting and finally feel comfortable in their own skin.  On a bigger scale, we are motivated to revolutionize the damaging weight loss and dieting industry by providing a real alternative that truly works.  In fact what we do at BodyZen is far MORE effective than dieting which fails at a rate of 95%.   

So how do you ditch dieting for good?  The first BodyZen principle is to practice mindfulness.  Mindful eating is the opposite of dieting, which is all about limiting, denial, and control.  Dieting and denial set up a psychology that makes you fixate on the foods you are not allowed to have.  So you spend the day thinking ‘I can’t have chocolate, today, this week, this month’ which starts to feel like forever.  The more you focus on not having chocolate, the more you want it and it would take a greater person than me to not eventually eat a family block of chocolate in response to this horrific denial.  Ironically, by denying yourself a particular food, you are MORE likely to want it because it becomes ‘off limits.’

At BodyZen we ditch the denial and the dieting for good.  Instead we advocate 100% permission.  This is about eating whatever you want, whenever you want with the one proviso – that you eat it mindfully.  And guess what?  When you give yourself 100% permission you change your psychology completely.  When you can eat whatever you want you can have that chocolate but eventually you won’t eat a family block of it anymore inside 5 minutes.  You will eat a few squares and savour and enjoy it and feel satisfied.

What is eating mindfully?  Simple.  You sit still, and bring your attention to the task at hand, that is eating and savouring your food.  You chew each mouthful slowly and derive maximum pleasure out of the taste of the food.  Plenty of women myself included have lost kilos easily by doing one thing differently – chewing more.  The more you chew, the slower you eat, and the more pleasure you derive from your food.  Also the longer it takes which gives your stomach time to let you know when it has had enough.  You ultimately end up eating less, but feeling more satisfied from the experience and you will lose weight. 

So how can you incorporate this mindful eating into your life?  Easy.  Start by paying attention to how you eat your next snack or meal.  Count the number of times you chew your food.  Then consciously slow down and enjoy the food fully. 

And what if I am too busy to eat mindfully?  Check out my next blog to find out how anyone can incorporate mindful eating into her busy live.  In the meantime enjoy your food!

BodyZen is all about helping women lose weight without dieting, and find peace with their body.  Typically, when I talk to a woman for the first time about what we do she will say something like ‘Wow – sounds great and just what I need.  How do you do that?’

Probably the best way to answer the question is to mention the BodyZen Principles. The three simple principles we advocate in all that we do are:

1. Practice mindfulness
2. Treat your body as your temple
3. Listen to your heart

Over the next week or so I am going to blog in more detail on the principles.  Right now I just want to let you know about each one briefly in case it is something you would like to apply to your life right away.

Practicing mindfulness is about breaking the diet cycle – no more denial, no more good and bad foods.  Instead, do the opposite.  Eat whatever you want, when your body tells you that you’re hungry, with the only proviso being to eat mindfully.  Many clients have experience a massive weight loss by ONLY doing this one thing. 

Treating your body as your temple is all about setting up the right mindset to achieve and maintain your best body.  If your current mindset says ‘my body is not good enough therefore I am not good enough’ there is little chance that you will achieve your body related goals, AND you will be far more likely to choose dieting.  Dieting is a great way of continuing to punish yourself and to continue self-loathing, and a terrible way to actually lose weight, feel better about yourself and move on positively with your life. 

Listening to your heart is about not letting your head rule your life.  A plethora of research conducted over the last 20 years points to the importance of the head and heart working in tandem.  When our head rules us, we often don’t have any idea who we really are and what we really want.  The answers to these questions lie in the heart.

Do the BodyZen Principles resonate with you?  If yes, watch this space.  I will write more on the first principle this week.  In the meantime, to start moving towards peace with your body know that right here, right now, in this exact moment you are already enough.  

As parents, it is our responsibility to make sure that our children receive the kind of nutrition they need to stay healthy and fit.  With the growing number of overweight kids falling victim to over-eating and emotional eating habits, you can’t afford to allow your kidsto become unhealthy, picky, and obese.

One way of doing so is to teach them how to adopt mindful eating habits. Mindful eating promotes awareness of what a child consumes everyday.  It gives the child an idea of how healthy this piece of food is for his/her body, or what this food can do if he/she consumes too much of it.

You may think that imposing house rules about meals and dictating what your child eats is the way to go, but here are some tips to help encourage your children to eat mindfully while making the whole process a great learning experience for them:

• Accept the fact that there is no such thing as the “right way to eat”. Every child is different in their own way, and that includes their eating habits and food preferences.  What you can do is to encourage your children to explore different kinds of foods and let them know what they do for their bodies.[i]

• Talk about the basic details of the food your child eats.  Whether it is food that’s familiar or food that’s new to your child, you can make every dish a learning experience by explaining basic details about it.  You can talk about its nutritional value, ways you can cook it, and much more.  Just make sure not to turn it into a lecture over the dinner table.[ii]

• Let your kids explore new kinds of food.  Encourage them to try different flavors and tastes to get them to be open-minded to eating foods of different groups.  Doing so will also teach them to welcome healthy and nutritious foods much more than junk food.[iii]

• Remind your kids about the importance of “mealtime”.  If you’ve read our previous posts on mindful eating, you’ll remember that it involves being deeply connected with the eating process. 

With that said, you should encourage your kids to put their focus on what they are eating, what they’re tasting, and even how they chew their food. Turn off the television, radio, and halt any activities that could disrupt mealtime or that will distract your kids from enjoying their food.

• Be a good role model for your kids.  This is probably the most effective way to get your kids to be mindful of what they eat everyday. 

According to SuperKids Nutrition author Nour El-Zibdeh, RD, children eat what their parents eat; therefore, set a good example by eating what you want your children to eat as well.  Add more nutritious foods to your plate and eat alongside your kids to show them how delicious and healthy they are for the body.

Of course, there are also several things that you should avoid if you want to successfully instillmindful eating habits into your kids’ lives:

• Do not impose a restrictive diet on your child.  Taking certain kinds of foods from them will only spark curiosity and obsession in your kids.  To put it simply, don’t treat food as an enemy; rather, get your kids to understand that this particular food is much healthier and nutritious than this one.

• Do not impose decisions when it comes to food.  You may be in charge of bringing in the food supply, but your kids should decide what they want to consume at the table.  You can do this by providing your kids a variety of healthy and delicious options to choose and try.

• Do not encourage healthy and mindful eating through unhealthy “rewards”.  Don’t tell your kids to eat their vegetables so that they can get a happy meal from McDonald’s.  It won’t teach them the right values of healthy, mindful eating, plus the unhealthy rewards will just affect their overall health even more.

Now remember, teaching your children about mindful eating won’t work overnight.  It requires patience, consistency, and understanding from you for it to really work. 

As long as you have the right kinds of foods in your refrigerator and are open to letting your kids explore with their taste buds, you’ll soon develop and mold good and mindful eating habits that will stay with them for years.

What made you happy today? Stop reading for a moment and go over your day. If it’s still early in the morning, try to remember what happened yesterday. Can you identify three things or events that gave you a bit of joy, that made your day a little bit lighter?

You might say that you couldn’t find anything good in your life today, that all things that could go wrong did go wrong. You might complain that the whole day had just been a series of failure after failure, and you expect it to continue until you go to bed for the night.

You know what? Let’s try an experiment. Pretend those things didn’t happen. Go through your day in your mind again. Ignore the fiascos and try to identify one single instant—no matter how small!—that gave you joy, made you smile, or lightened up the burden a bit.

It could be as simple as a child’s touch, a stranger’s smile, or a neighbor unexpectedly lending a hand. It could be the sight of an old couple walking hand in hand, a brief glimpse of a rainbow in the sky, or even just the smell of newly laundered clothes. Whatever it is, however small it could be, find it and identify it.

The ability to find something—anything!—that made you happy for the day is one of the ways that you can cultivate a positive mindset. When you learn to focus on the positive aspect of life, you will learn to become more hopeful. This can mean a lot when you are trying to lose weight.

Weight loss for women is as much a psychological as it is a physical struggle. With a positive mindset and a happier disposition, you will learn to care more for yourself and be forgiving of your mistakes. Because you begin to see yourself as someone with value and worth, you will no longer be bothered by emotional eating, knowing that you can deal with your frustrations in another, healthier manner.

Dieting does not work. Results of several scientific studies have already shown that dieters eventually gain back what they have lost, and in some cases, gain even more. According to a research published in The Journal of Neuroscience, repeat dieters become more vulnerable to daily stresses leading to a pattern of emotional eating that brings back all the weight they had lost on a diet.

Like a lot of women, you have probably gone on a diet sometime in your life too. If you had tried one and quit, then you’re lucky. Most women don’t give up, hoping that the new diet plan they have chosen will be THE ONE this time, the magic formula that will make their weight problems disappear.

Even after knowing that the diet program they are following is either unhealthy (i.e., produces adverse health effect) or does not result to sustainable weight loss, women still persist on using these quick weight loss plans. What gives?

One of the reasons could be that women want to look their best. So some go on a crash diet to help them reduce weight. They expect quick results; their weight loss plan is short-term, just something that can help them wear a dress two sizes smaller in time for whatever social function they had to attend. Since these kinds of women have no plans beyond that, they go back to their “normal” eating habits when their goal is achieved, they gain more weight, and go back to their programs, resulting to the classic yo-yo dieting.

Second, women who try one diet program after another don’t see weight loss as something that would need a lifestyle change. It’s just something they have to do once in a while, when social pressures bear down on them. When whatever is it is over, they go back to derive comfort from food, hating themselves for it but unable to do something about it.

Lastly, women who have been heavy all their lives have probably learned to develop negative thinking. They don’t expect sustainable weight loss and they are convinced that they will fail anyway, so to avoid getting disappointed (which had probably been their lot in life), they sabotage their own weight loss programs, wanting to be vindicated in the end.

If you feel that some of these describe you perfectly, take some time to reflect: what do you really want? Do you want to be heavy and unhealthy forever? Or is there a way that you can finally have peace with your body?

If you end up deciding that you want to affect change in your life once and for all, start with the basic: commit to start loving yourself from now on. Stop all the negativity in your thoughts, words, and actions. Be aware that sustainable weight loss is not a one-time deal but a way of life.

Get the concept of dieting out of your vocabulary, too, for you will soon learn that focusing on yourself, being aware of what you need and want at a particular time, can help you develop habits and behaviors that can make you lose weight without dieting and give you that much-sought after peace with your body.

Caring for others is indeed a noble behavior. It feels good because you are helping people who are important to you. However, women who always put others’ needs ahead of their own find that all the stress associated with caregiving has led to several physical and mental problems, including sleeplessness and obesity. Food has always been associated with comfort, and stress-induced emotional eating can result to weight gain and lowered self-esteem.

Without understanding the concept of self-care, overweight caregivers turn to dieting and repeatedly cycle from weight loss to weight gain, growing more frustrated with themselves through the years. They don’t know that dieting is never the answer, because the only way to sustainable weight loss is making sure that they are taking care of themselves.

What is Self-Care

You probably think that self-care means having a massage or a session at the salon. While this is part of it, self-care is more than that. It is making sure that you are managing and meeting not only your physical, but also your mental, emotional, and spiritual needs.

When you care for yourself, you are aware of your feelings and needs at a particular time. You know what is good for you and your body. You avoid self-destructive behaviors like alcohol and drug addiction because you are aware that it will hinder you from performing your best. You also learn to avoid emotional eating because you know what the triggers are and can already cope with them.

Physical Self-Care

All aspects of self-care are important; however, you must ensure that you are taking care of your body at all times. Your body is your greatest resource; if it is ill or generally unwell, it will be very hard to take care of your other needs or the needs of people around you.

Taking care of your body generally means that you have enough rest, nutrition, and exercise. Through rest, your body can recharge and replenish itself. With mindful eating, your body can get all the nutrients it needs without the excesses that leads to weight gain. Exercising regularly not only provides an outlet for your stress, it also ensures that you have the stamina and endurance to meet whatever challenges lay ahead of you.

Pampering is part of physical self-care, too, although it can also be stressful (i.e., financially) if done in excess. This includes having a massage and going to the salon; feeling and looking beautiful can do wonders to your self-esteem.

Mental Self-Care

Take note of what you say when you are talking to yourself. Have you noticed that you always put yourself down? That you are too harsh on yourself? That you always expect too much? Your thoughts directly affect your emotions and your behavior, so when you expect to fail, you will indeed fail.

Get rid of all these negativity and start cultivating a positive mindset. Replace statements like “I can’t” with “I can.” Remove the “shoulds” and “musts” and begin to be more flexible in how you see yourself and the world.

Once you begin to have a more positive outlook, you will see that making peace with your body is not hard to do after all.

Spiritual Self-Care

Aside from your mind and body, your spirit needs looking after, too. You need to feel connected not only with others but with something higher and bigger than you are. It would help if you could re-establish or maintain contact with old friends and initiate new ones. A healthy relationship with others (one that both gives and takes) can do wonders for your soul.

Whether you believe in a Higher Being or not, a spiritual connection is necessary. We all need to feel that we are part of something bigger. This could mean going to church if you are a believer, or simply appreciating nature and everything around you if you’re not. Hold a blade of grass in your hand, listen to the chirping of the birds on the trees, or watch the twinkling of the billions of stars in the night sky and feel your oneness with the universe. Meditate, do yoga - anything that can help you get in touch with your heart.

Practicing self-care may be a bit hard to do at first; after all, we are creatures of habit, and bad habits are hard to break, especially when it comes to our sources of comfort like food or other substances. You will find, however, that when you begin to love yourself, your weight will cease to be a source of stress for you. As you practice self-care, you will automatically cultivate thoughts and behaviors that can help you lose weight without dieting.

Indeed, when you have learned to take care of yourself, you will realize that it’s possible to have a fulfilling and abundant life for yourself while still being able to help other people at the same time.