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General Weight Loss Tips

Don’t Let Your Mind Bully Your Body

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I found this print by Lori Weitzel on pinterest and had to put it up. Isn’t this the truth? I deal with my mind every single day. It likes to justify and convince me that my bad habits are survival. That I need to eat until I can’t move or until I’m sick. That it’s just this one time, tomorrow I will be good. It’s as though food is oxygen and even though I’ve had enough, it wants more. And every time I turn it down and say no, the bully gets weaker. I imagine it takes a very long time for the bully to play a very small part in my life. So small, that he won’t even make it to the end credits.

I’ve made a list of all the reasons why I don’t want to eat too much food. This list is best written after eating too much, because for me, it’s more true and it hits harder. This list is helpful for when the bully or the lower brain works with me to justify making me sick. It tells me I’ve earned it, that I’ve had a bad day or that I’m not worth the trouble. It tells me that food will smooth things over and make everything uncomfortable go away.

One thing on my list is how dramatically different I feel. When I’ve had just enough food, I feel like I can do anything. I feel hopeful, excited, and optimistic. When I eat too much food I feel depressed, moody and hopeless. It feels as though the earth will open up and swallow me. It feels like I will never make anything great happen. Knowing the truth helps me to ignore the bully, it makes me stronger.

What’s on your list?

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General Weight Loss Tips

New vs. Old Habits

Old habits die hard. I’m hearing this a lot, as well as replacing old habits with new habits. And finding it difficult to identify these bad habits is a process in and of itself. Sometimes I don’t even know it’s a habit, or that it’s keeping me from my goals.

A couple of days ago I went through the house and threw out food that could cause me to binge. I went through this whole mental process of thinking this is wasteful, I can handle small amounts, and is this really bad to have around? It’s hard for throw away perfectly good “food”, but I did anyway and I have another round to go. I have boxes of graham cracks leftover from gingerbread house building, and right now they aren’t tempting- I could care less about graham crackers, but I worry about what they could turn into. So I will give them away.

And now I’m thinking of tackling my sugar/brown sugar and flour reserves. I cook occasionally with sugar, but I know I can use honey instead. Not much can be done (of the overeating variety, for me) without sugar, so I will keep the flour. I’m actually having these thoughts, what could I easily turn into a dessert? If this can be a dessert, it should go. This is the thing with being able to bake, you can do it quickly and easily without much on hand.

Old habits for me, are thinking “I can handle this”, and in the moment I can, but eventually something will pop up and I’ll find myself making brownies in the microwave and wondering how that even happened. Steps A to B to eating are a blur to me and I’m left with brownie residue in a mug trying very hard to wash away the evidence.

I’m asking myself, how can I  replace these habits and old ways of thinking? It’s a challenge, it’s hard to question a behavior you’ve worked hard at protecting.

What habits are you trying to throw away?

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Weight Loss Exercise

Sleep, Rest and Relaxation and health | sleep and rest



Sleep, rest and relaxation are a very important part of your daily ritual. I know that in the past I have gotten reved up with many projects and before long something has to be let go and it is usually the sleep that I need for a while. Don’t do it! As your sleep and rest start dropping you lose focus and can be lured into bad habits, sugar, coffee, and bad food. The worst thing about a lack of rest is that your body will not have a chance to heal from your earlier workouts, this can be very bad as you not only will feel sore longer but it will also suck your optimism for your new lifestyle.

How Much Sleep to Get

How much rest is enough? You probably already know this. I myself do not wake up with an alarm clock or clock radio anymore. I am fortunate to have a flexible start time and know that I will not sleep in past 8:00 in the morning. Try going to be earlier in the evening for a few nights and see when you wake up. In the fall and winter I always tape the TV shows that I watch so that I can get a chance to watch them when it is convenient to me not when it is convenient for the TV networks.

Another thing that pro bodybuilders do is have a nap in the afternoon, a nap can be great in cleansing your mind and letting you learn to relax better but you will probably find as I do that it si almost impossible to do except maybe on the weekends.

You can probably see from the tone of this information that I am delivering here that you must stop treating sleep and rest as something that takes away from something and instead learn to treat it as your own personal time, something a little more sacred than just something unavoidable that has to be done.

The Effects of Sleep

According to leading sleep researchers, there are techniques to combat common sleep problems:

  • Keep a regular sleep/wake schedule
  • Don’t drink or eat caffeine four to six hours before bed and minimize daytime use
  • Don’t smoke, especially near bedtime or if you awake in the night
  • Avoid alcohol and heavy meals before sleep
  • Get regular exercise
  • Minimize noise, light and excessive hot and cold temperatures where you sleep
  • Develop a regular bed time and go to bed at the same time each night
  • Try and wake up without an alarm clock
  • Attempt to go to bed earlier every night for certain period; this will ensure that you’re getting enough sleep

According to sleep researchers, a night’s sleep is divided into five continually shifting stages, defined by types of brain waves that reflect either lighter or deeper sleep. Toward morning, there is an increase in rapid eye movement, or REM sleep, when the muscles are relaxed and dreaming occurs, and recent memories may be consolidated in the brain.

No Hitting the Snooze Button

The experts say that hitting a snooze alarm over and over again to wake up is not the best way to feel rested. ‘The restorative value of rest is diminished, especially when the increments are short,’ said psychologist Edward Stepanski, PhD who has studied sleep fragmentation at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. This on and off again effect of dozing and waking causes shifts in the brain-wave patterns. Sleep-deprived snooze-button addicts are likely to shorten their quota of REM sleep, impairing their mental functioning during the day. (New York Times, October 12, 2004)

Certain therapies, like cognitive behavioral therapy teach people how to recognize and change patterns of thought and behavior to solve their problems. Recently this type of therapy has been shown to be very effective in getting people to fall asleep and conquer insomnia.

According to a study published in the October 2004 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, cognitive behavior therapy is more effec