Following is the Hypnosis product I talk about in the video. You know the battle for ideal weight is mostly played out in the mind, and it is about your overall health. Hence I recommend giving this avenue a good go. Click on the graphic below to check out the Perfect Health Hypnosis:

Taking Stock

As explained in the video, create a sheet of paper and put down notes on what you did (and thought) over two weekdays and one weekend day, in the following areas:

• Sleep – How many hours of actual sleep did you have?
• Hydration – How much liquid did you drink?
• Drinking – How much alcohol did you consume?
• Food – What foods did you consume and how much of it?
• Exercise – What kind and quantity of physical exercise did you get up to? Include things like “10 mins walk to train station”. This is not just gym.
• State of Mind – How did you feel? Happy, calm, relaxed, nervous or angry?
• Physical State – For example, tired, fresh, in pain, numb?
• Drugs – Substances like medication, cannabis, anti-depressants, sleep medication, tobacco?

The key is to take stock for just three typical days of your life. Be brutally honest. Only when you have completed the three days’ log do you start reviewing what you are actually doing. You will probably be surprised by what you see, and most likely there will be a few things that you can immediately improve on WITHOUT requiring a truckload of permanent willpower and/or self-denial.

Oh, and as I mention in the video – since you are about to lose weight – if you do want to destroy your log once you’ve viewed it, go ahead. Burn it, flush it down the toilet, whatever. Just don’t eat it. After all, we want to have good nutrition and eat less junk, right?

Did you find this useful? If you’d like to share your thoughts or even some findings from your own taking stock to achieve sustainable permanent weight loss, I’d love to hear from you. Simply leave me a comment below.

Co-dependency and Overeating

stop binge eating

If you are tired of spinning in the same spot in the mouse wheel I have just described, now is the time to say unequivocally STOP.  According to Professor Gould, co-dependent individuals are more likely to overeating.  Co-dependent individuals give till they hurt and have the tendency to remain in harmful situations or relationships way too long; significantly compromising the quality of their lives.

Nurture Yourself

When was the last time you thought about your own needs and went out of your way to fulfil them?  Do you feel guilty and selfish when you think about your own needs?  If you do, I urge you to think again.  Being selfish is not the same as being self-caring.  You have a responsibility to yourself to be self-nurturing.

If you keep giving without looking after yourself, you may become resentful, revengeful, self-righteous, frustrated and even depressed.  You feel taken for granted, abused and burnt out physically and mentally.  Negative emotions like these invariably lead to turning to food for comfort. Unfortunately, no amount of food can take away the pain and anguish you experience.  Food is not a replacement for other ways of nurturing yourself.

Kindness and Compassion

Therefore, the best way to stop binge eating is to develop a new level of kindness and compassion for yourself.  In other words, be especially gentle and forgiving with yourself.  Below is a list of self-nurturing activities you can do to ensure your “cup is totally full or overflowing”:

1. Do nothing, learn to be still
2. Pursue a hobby you absolutely love
3. Rest and take a nap
4. Laugh often
5. Relax – meditate, sit in a bubble bath
6. Go on mini-vacations
7. Listen to music
8. Love unconditionally with all your heart (negative emotions lead to destructive hostile actions like bingeing!)

Walk Down a Different Street

Lastly, have a look at this video – it’s fun and so true!

A friend sent this to me, and I signed up for the program myself. I am now at day 11 and loving it! Yeah, I do not have a problem with binge eating, but I am still human with plenty of other problems! And I can tell you, this program is full of positive, empowering messages that truly propel you each day to live a life you love! (Even my kids are now into it.) Create your own breakthroughs, go for your dreams – and walk down a different street!

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

Interviews with women who have undergone bariatric surgery and full body makeovers surprisingly reveal that they do not feel better after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars creating themselves by putting themselves under the knife.  This begs the question, “Why?”  This is because they inevitably feel like frauds.  High maintenance women who work hard to look good feel like frauds because they know the process involves enormous effort, money and deception.  Deep down in their hearts they know the product they have co-created with their surgeons is not them. Feeling like a fraud engenders chronic destructive stress and anxiety.  These feelings are all pervasive and keep you trapped because you feel vulnerable about being exposed as an imposter.  This sets up a vicious cycle where you “cannot rest on your laurels”.  Your anxiety and stress further exacerbate your obsessive need to improve yet another imperfection on your body thus setting you up for a series of never-ending procedures.  You have put yourself in a “no-win” situation.

The only way out is to learn to value and accept yourself and treat your body with a great deal of respect.  After all, it is the “temple of your soul”.  Give your body what it really needs and stop torturing it.  Remember, those who mind how you look do not matter and those who matter do not mind how you look!  Cutting yourself to look beautiful certainly does not cut it!

Have a look at this video for some common outcomes of  ’celebrity cosmetic surgery’ - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZtcW6MKNz4

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.