Tag Archive for: dieting

Are You a Yo-Yo Dieter? Find out now!

It’s the same story with every diet you start: “this time it’s going to work, this time I’m going to be stronger, this time I’m going to stay committed”.  However, the unfortunate truth of dieting is that it will never help you achieve your long term weight loss goals.  In fact, statistics show that 46% of people who make a weight loss resolution never make it past 6 months.  So, if dieting doesn’t work you may be wondering how you will ever reach your weight loss goals.  The key for weight loss success is not to follow a diet, but rather to understand what is really sabotaging your weight loss.
Here are two questions you need to answer to get started:

 

Question #1: Am I a Yo-Yo Dieter?

Yo-yo dieting is a term you are likely familiar with.  It is a process that results in what is commonly known as weight cycling and it involves going on and off diets and constantly losing and regaining weight along the way.  You may be thinking that yo-yo dieting is the perfect description of your life.  The cycle of yo-yo dieting is crippling mentally, emotionally and physically.  Not only does it lead to an emotional rollercoaster of successes and failures, but weight cycling has also been shown to impose adverse health effects.  Does this sound like you?  If it does, move on to question #2.

 

Question #2: Have I Hit Diet Bottom?

Hitting diet bottom happens when you simply do not have it in you to go on another diet.   You have hit diet bottom when you’ve been dieting your whole life and you no longer have the energy or inner strength to worry about the number on the scale, count any more calories or deprive yourself of foods that you love.  The negative emotions and feelings of guilt that come along with overeating are tormenting you and something that you cannot endure any longer.  Hitting diet bottom is the first step you need to catapult you into a diet-free life.

If you have succumbed to the yo-yo cycle of dieting for many years and still haven’t reached your weight loss goals, consider if you are at the point where you have hit diet bottom.  Figuring out for yourself if you are at this point takes self-reflection into your personal diet patterns and being honest with yourself as to how dieting has affected you throughout your life.  Then, and only then, can you move to the next step of discovering the biggest mistakes you’ve made at dieting.

 

To help you on this discovery journey, please accept my Hitting Diet Bottom Blueprint as my gift to you. Find out if you have hit diet bottom, and learn what you can do to end the yo-yo dieting cycle.

“Good” Foods and “Bad” Foods

Do you have a list of foods that you consider as “good” or “bad” to eat? How do you feel if you eat a food on your “good” list? What about on your “bad” list?

 

One of the first things I help my clients do is to get rid of the food lists. Foods should not be categorized into good and bad.

 

Why not?

 

Watch this week’s episode of The Diet Free Zone Show™ to learn more.

 

Then come back and comment: How you will discard your list of “good” and “bad” foods?

 

Click the image below to watch now.

Good Food Bad Food

 

 

 

 

Remember, come back here to comment!

 

The Fear of Letting Go of Dieting

As you embark on your intuitive eating journey, it’s most important to move away from dieting. Yet, the idea of not dieting might be scary for you, right?

 

I talk about this very topic in this week’s The Diet Free Zone Show™ on YouTube.

 

Click the image below to watch now.

 

The Fear of Letting Go Image

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment below on what is YOUR biggest fear about giving up dieting.

 

What Does it Feel Like to Eat Without “Food Worry”?

Woman eating pizzaFantastic, terrific, freeing, amazing….I could go on and on.

 

If you recently attended my free webinar, or watched the replay, you heard my story, the highlight of which (in my opinion) is that for many years I was “on” a “healthy meal plan” (notice the quotation marks) that I created for myself and “followed” diligently day in and day out. I never looked at this as a diet, until I discovered intuitive eating.

 

If you haven’t listened to my webinar, you can still catch it here for a few more days.

 

What I realized through my research and training in intuitive eating is that the “healthy meal plan” I was “following” was just another diet. There were definitely foods that I didn’t give myself permission to eat, and when I did eat them, even if it was a small piece, there was a tinge of food worry that came over me. That food worry led to body worry….would that bite of cake cause me to gain weight?

 

When I implemented the steps toward learning to be an intuitive eater into my life, I achieved a feeling of freedom. These are the steps I spoke of in my recent webinar.

 

Let me give you an example of how I no longer have this “food worry”.

 

The only beverages I drink throughout the day are water and a morning cup of coffee. I don’t drink any other beverages because I happen to love water and how it makes my body feel. Last night I sat down to eat dinner and I had my tall glass of water on the table. I saw the orange juice container (my son was having a glass of orange juice) and at that moment, my body said to me “Bonnie, have some orange juice”. I can’t remember the last time I had orange juice, or any juice for that matter. But yet there was a feeling that is hard to describe that my body just knew that a small glass of orange juice would be right for me at that moment.

 

I honored my body’s inner wisdom and had a glass of orange juice. It was delicious. I enjoyed every sip.

 

What’s the big deal about this story? Well, four years ago while I was still on my “healthy meal plan”, I would not have allowed myself to have that small glass of OJ. I would hear my inner voice saying “don’t drink your calories”, “juice will make you gain weight”, etc….

 

But not last night! The only inner voice that I heard was the voice of nurturer, saying “yes, Bonnie, honor what your body is telling you”. And, that small glass filled my needs.

 

And, it’s not just with juice. It’s with pizza, ice cream  and all foods.

 

This was a wonderful feeling. No more food worry, no more body worry.

 

Would you like to feel this feeling too? You CAN! I promise!

 

Take this moment and listen to the webinar replay “How to Break Free from the Pain of Dieting and Get the Body You Love Without Feeling Deprived”.

 

And if you’d like, consider taking it further and join me and those who already said YES to the Freedom to Eat Forever™ Program where you will get the training, action and support you need to eat without food worry.

 

Hope to see you there!

 

If you have any questions at all, feel free to email me at bonnie@brghealth.com . I am here to support you all the way!

 

 

Abolishing the “Eat This, Don’t Eat That” Rule

Portion control is something that is always stressed when discussing weight loss and healthy eating.  It is undeniable that the portions of food people eat are much larger than they were years ago, which is a direct contributor to the obesity epidemic this country is facing.

 

Several experiments have recently been conducted at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.  It was discovered that people have a “taste-health balance point” – a proportion of unhealthy and healthy foods in each meal – which they find satisfactory.  Thus, eating a smaller portion of a food you love (that might not be deemed the healthiest), rather than eliminating it completely, and pairing it with a healthy food choice allows the person to be satisfied with a smaller amount without feeling deprived.

 

Yet, in most commercial diet plans, along with portion control, there are “eat this, don’t eat that” rules.  Inevitably, the dieter can only stand not eating a favorite food on the “don’t eat” list for so long.  Cravings then lead to overeating and the diet is foregone.

 

Is this sounding familiar to you?

 

This is one of the reasons that I stress to my clients the importance of really understanding the concept of providing yourself with the unconditional permission to eat when hungry what food you desire. It takes the “taboo” label off foods that you would otherwise deem as “bad”.  It eliminates the desire to overeat on these foods and creates room for healthier food options.

 

So, if you are stuck in the diet mindset, try balancing your next meal with healthy wholesome foods plus those that you might deem “not as healthy” but are your favorite. See if you are satisfied with less and let me know in the comment section below.

 

To learn more about becoming an intuitive eater and How to Break Free from the Pain of Dieting and Get the Body You Love Without Feeling Deprived, join me for a Free Webinar on Tuesday September 16,2014 at 8 pm EST. Click here to register for FREE.

 

 

 

Are You Married to the Scale?

Scale-married-divorcedLife as a chronic dieter is plagued with ups and downs, weight loss and weight gain. You want to find that one diet that works better than the rest, which will finally give you what you want, a new body. Well, a diet is not going to get you there. As you may realize by now you usually gain the weight back and then some, leaving you feeling sad, depressed and like a failure.

 

When you start a diet, do you set a goal as to how many pounds you want to lose? And, each week, or if we are really being honest here, each day you jump on the scale to see how much weight you lost. What happens when the number isn’t exactly what you had hoped for? It probably affects your mood and sets the tone for the rest of the day.

 

Why do you do this to yourself? Why do you let yourself be defined by a number? Are you married to the scale??

 

I encourage my clients who are on the journey to becoming an intuitive eater to put the weight loss and numbers game on the back burner for a while. Let’s not focus on the numbers. I recognize this is a very difficult thing to do since for all your years of dieting and being on formal weight loss diets where you would go to weekly meetings, you would also have weekly weigh-ins. I understand that up until now, the scale has been the only way you have measured your success.

 

Well that hasn’t worked, has it?

 

So, let’s try something different. Focus on being mindful in your eating, listening to your internal signals of hunger and satiety and make the best food choices for yourself that you can make. You will see that in time, weight loss will happen, without you even realizing it. The pants will become baggy, the skirt will be falling off, and the shirt will be swimming on you.  Visualize this happening as part of the natural process of trusting your inner instincts and wisdom.

 

It’s time to divorce the scale!

 

Okay, I realize that this sounds nice and all but is likely difficult for you to do. You need assistance. You need support. You need encouragement. And, I am here for you if you want me to be.

 

If you are seriously interested in learning how to lose the excess weight you are carrying around without focusing on the scale, just click here and request a FREE session with me. We will get on the phone and see the best way to move you forward.

 

Your turn to take action: It’s time to move beyond the dreaded scale. Get the support you need by clicking here.

 

A Healthy Lifestyle is Not One Size Fits All

Over the many years I have been counseling clients, I have come across those who simply want me to give them a menu to follow, be it a 7 day, 14 day or a month of menus.  Or when I am giving a presentation, someone will raise their hand and ask, “how many calories should I be eating”.  These people want answers, but the point they are missing is that nutrition is not one size fits all.

 

When you have an ailment, you go to the doctor and the doctor gives you an examination to help diagnosis what is wrong.  He hears about your specific symptoms and reviews your past medical history.  From there, you set up a course of action for how you will treat and hopefully cure the problem.  Your treatment plan is unique to you, your history, and your symptoms.  Just like you wouldn’t want a doctor to streamline your specific case to be like everyone else, why would you want to do that for your nutrition needs?

 

This concept is the reason why the diet books out there can be so dangerous and can also be so depressing.  Many times people who create these fad diets aren’t remembering that no two people are the same.  They write out a diet plan and make nutrition recommendations without regard to any one person’s specific needs, and expect you to follow it in order to lose weight, or achieve a certain body type.  Meanwhile you could be depriving yourself of so many calories that you’ll actually hinder weight loss, or perhaps the plan has eliminated an entire food group that results in you missing out on important nutrients such as vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber.  These diet gurus don’t know your schedule, your activity level, your medical history, and all the things that can affect your nutrition and how much you should be eating.  That is why it is so important to pay attention to how you feel before and after eating meals.  It is why you need to be sensitive to how certain foods affect you so that you can determine which foods make you feel your best, and which ones you would prefer to avoid.

 

Throughout these blogs I am constantly reminding you that you are on your own journey.  There is no need for you to rely on some celebrity health professional to tell you what is going to help you along your path to wellness.  The more ownership you take over your journey to health and a body you love, the more likely you are to succeed.  You will become more in tune to the things that work and don’t work, and because you know what helps you succeed, it won’t be as difficult as the struggles you may have felt trying to follow a generalized diet.

 

You are the master of your own body!

 

And remember, I am always here for you to help guide you in your journey!

 

Your turn to take action: If you’ve been struggling on this journey, take advantage of a my offer for a Break Free of Dieting Strategy Session so you can get clear on your path to making peace with food in 2014.   Just click here and I’ll get you set up for your free session.