I hope you found this video informative and useful. What are your thoughts on diets and dieting?

I attribute this to the power of planning and staying focused.  Regular inputs in your journal make an enormous difference to your weight management outcome.  Commit 5 minutes each day to making an entry and reap your rewards in 6 months to a year.

Creating a working structure is your cornerstone for staying on task.  This journal provides a structure for your physical activity and eating plan.  Your entries help you stick to your goals, monitor your progress, keep your actions consistent, steer you away from your sporadic vices and identify some destructive patterns that might be consistently sabotaging you. For instance, finding the link between drinking coffee after dinner and poor sleep quality and excessive tiredness the next day, could be a powerful pattern that is zapping you of your energy to stay focused on self-care. If this regularly undermines your exercise regime and food choices, you might want to sit up and take notice and make some changes.  Do not underestimate the power of small changes in making big differences.  In this instance, cutting out the coffee after dinner could change a whole series of events for the next 24 hours.  Picture these events recurring for a whole year, how could that not cost you dearly in terms of effectiveness and generating results?  But before you can tweek your lifestyle in this manner, you must first make regular entries and then identify the problem areas before you can make the necessary changes. You cannot change what you do not know.   As you make these entries, you will find your self progressing in your stamina and food choices.  Success begets succeess.

For a free copy of Australian Food and Heart Week Exercise Record go to:

http://www.healthyweightweek.com.au/files/Food%20and%20Exercsie%20Chart%20FINAL.pdf

In this video, Jemima shares with you the game plan she has put in place for her sister’s wedding reception tomorrow.  Fundamentally, there are just two very basic guiding rules she will observe for this special occasion and they are:

1. Tune in to your hunger and satiety cues and eat till you are comfortably full.
2. Since there are no constraints on food choices, choose ONLY foods that rate 10/10 on the taste scale.

These simple rules will ensure that you do not feel deprived or left out on this special occasion.  Meanwhile, have loads of fun!

As long as we are alive, we will have problems.  Question is whether they are big or small.  But of course, the sum of all our problems will always add up to 100%, irrespective of what they are.  The wisdom lies in having a rational and balanced view of the problem.  Jemima shares with us how she learns to compartmentalise her life and keep soldiering on.

This episode of Weight Loss in Real Time is about mindful eating and learning to restore consciousness to your eating patterns.  The cornerstone of mindful eating requires you to tune into your body cues.  That is to take time out, relax and listen to yourself.  The more connected you are externally (especially via emails, mobile phones, faxes and particularly when you do not have any rest time to quiet your mind), the less connected you will be internally.  Consider that your mindless, uncontrolled eating is a manifestation of your being out-of-touch with yourself.  And this is the result of functioning at a low level of awareness.

Mindful eating is about restoring nature’s way, paying attention to the food you eat and the manner in which you eat them.  Learning to relax, listening to your body, deliberately slowing down, chewing your food thoroughly and being fully present to the experience of nourishing yourself.  Conscious eating involves the whole of your being; your thoughts, your emotions and engaging all your senses in the art of eating.

Practice mindful eating and you will find that eating according to physiological hunger will be as natural as breathing.  At this point, you will finally have made peace with food.  You will find yourself eating less and enjoying more.   And I promise you, you will never struggle to maintain your ideal weight again.

Have you ever considered giving licence to the people around you to police you in your weight management effort? What I am referring to is sharing your goals with everyone and letting them help you set boundaries and remind you of what you should be doing?
For instance, you could consider saying the following to your family and friends:
1. If you see me eating a packet of chips, please take it away without hesitation.
2. Please do not invite me to buffet dinners in fancy restaurants.
3. Please do not buy me big lunches or dinners.
4. Never say, “Just eat now and diet tomorrow.” Please respect that every decision counts.
5. Please do not offer me high-calorie drinks like milk shakes, alcohol or full fat hot beverages.
6. Please help me clear the table as soon as possible after each meal. I would appreciate it if you could rush me out of the kitchen and put away the dishes.
7. Remind me to floss my teeth thoroughly and brush my teeth immediately after each meal. If I conveniently forget, please march me to the bathroom.
8. Please remind me to slow down when I eat too quickly. My meal has to exceed 20 minutes, preferably half an hour.
9. Do not feel rejected or unloved if I turn down your food. I’d rather accept a non-food gift from you any day. Feel free to give me any of the following: for example jewellery, card, socks, scarf, tie, sexy underwear, flowers, a poem, a letter, kind words of affirmation, anything but food! Thanks.

Is selling out an option?  Of course!  But it may not be the best choice as there are unpleasant consequences.  In the book, “How to stop worrying and start living (first published in 1948)”, Dale Carnegie advocated the following timeless advice for managing our problems:

1. Imagine, what is the worst thing that can happen to you?  Get a pen and paper and write it down.  Get clarity on exactly what you are afraid of.
2. Now, mentally and emotionally accept the worst.  Once you accept the worst, anything else is bonus.
3. Create a plan of action for preventing this scenario.  You have the answers within you; trust yourself to make this plan a good one.
4. With this plan, go right into action.  The magic is in moving swiftly into action.  No one climbs a mountain looking at it.   Click on the following link for more http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/stop-worry.html

Did you know that all tissues in your body can synthesize cholesterol from acetate? However, most of the cholesterol in your body is synthesised by your liver and then your intestine. The enzyme involved in the process is called HMG-CoA reductase.

The activity of HMG-CoA reductase can be powerfully lowered by well-known cholesterol lowering drug – Lipitor as well as a hormone in the body called glucagon. Conversely, HMG-CoA reductase can be powerfully stimulated by a hormone produced by your pancreas called insulin.
Metabolic syndrome is associated with insulin resistance or the ineffective use of insulin. This is linked to low grade inflammation in the body. Insulin resistance has a lot to answer for in the presentation of high serum cholesterol level.
High cholesterol levels can be powerfully reduced by adopting the following lifestyle changes:
1) losing excess body weight
2) choosing a low glycaemic index diet
3) increasing the percentage of lean body mass or muscles through exercise – specifically resistance training (this leads to reduction in HMG-CoA activity)
4) increasing consumption of omega-3 rich foods from fatty fishes and flaxseed
5) reducing intake of saturated fats from animal foods
6) increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables rich in polyphenols which are powerful anti-inflammatory agents
7) increasing consumption of nuts, seeds and legumes rich in micronutrients, fibre and vitamin E
increase consumption of plant sterols (plant sterols out compete dietary cholesterol for absorption and powerfully reduce overall cholesterol absorption)
9) increase fibre intake to 35-40g per day

Surprisingly, having a high cholesterol diet is not as deleterious to serum cholesterol levels as previously believed as high dietary cholesterol has the interesting effect of suppressing cholesterol synthesis by the liver. Also, assimilation or uptake of dietary cholesterol is relatively low as approximately 50% of dietary and biliary cholesterol is not absorbed from the intestine and excreted. This is good news indeed!
I hope the above highlights how a multi-prong approach can be adopted to powerfully reduce your cholesterol levels.
In conclusion, there is no single magic bullet for the reduction of serum cholesterol (the most commonly prescribed drug – Lipitor or statin, comes closest to the definition of a magic bullet but even this has its draw backs and significant side effects, a discussion fit for another article). For now, there does not appear to be one on the near future.

Do you get fired up for 3 days, jump out of bed, enthusiastically commence your diet and exercise program and then start to tell yourself you are a lost cause and lose all your excitement?  Do you see your efforts biting the dust over and over again?  If you tell yourself you are a failure, your outcome will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

These messages powerfully create your emotional state.  These emotional states dictate whether you have your life and eating under or out of control.  What are you telling yourself about your appearance, weight, discipline, self-control, health and general self-worth?  Take a pen and paper and write down the real-time running commentary in your head.

In this video, Jemima shares her internal dialogue with you.

Low glycaemic index diets are more effective than other conventional weight loss diets possibly because low glycaemic index diets keep you feeling fuller for longer. That way the tendency to snack between meals is less.

Another explanation for this phenomenon is that eating low GI foods elicit less insulin production from your pancreas. With less circulating insulin, less sugar storage and fat production takes place. In essence, what you are doing is powerfully shifting the hormonal balance within your body toward less storage of fat. This results in the reduction in the percentage of body fat, thus facilitating weight loss!

Take the simple rice for instance; did you know that their glycaemic indexes vary considerably? Who would have guessed that the carbohydrate from your unsuspecting Jasmine rice (GI – 109) hits your blood stream faster than your table sugar (GI – 100)!

Check out the table below:

Glycaemic index of various types of rice

For further information, click one of the following links: Glycaemic Index and also How To Stop Your Sugar Cravings.