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DIET INDUSTRY LIES THAT MAKE YOU GAIN WEIGHT

W HY EAT LESS & EXERCISE M ORE IS A H OAX D ESIGNED TO K EEP Y OU COMING B ACK A GAIN LIANDA LUDWIG

Copyright 2014 by Lianda Ludwig. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recorded or otherwise without written permission from the author.

Published by TCK Publishing. www.TCKPublishing.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents Escape From Diet Prison: The Key To A Stress-free Relationship With Your Body and Food Introduction: How Dieting Made Me Fat PART One: Why Didnt My Diet Work? PART TWO: Stress is the Missing Link to Overweight What precipitated your weight gain? PART THREE: How Your Negative Thoughts Can Make You Fat What Triggered Your Weight Problem? PART Four: How Can You Break Out of Diet Prison? Food as a Metaphor And Finally About The Author:

DISCLAIMER:
The material provided here is for educational and information purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. The information contained in this eBook should not be used to diagnose or treat any illness, metabolic disorder, mental illness, disease or health problem. If you have developed a serious illness of some kind, the complexities of dealing with that disorder should be evaluated by your physician or another professional health care provider of your choice. Use of the information or other information contained in this eBook is at the sole choice and risk of the responsible reader.

ESCAPE FROM DIET PRISON: THE KEY TO A STRESS-FREE RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR BODY AND FOOD
Although it hurts to be called fat, in this book Im going to use the terms overweight and fat interchangeably. You know that you dont say to yourself, Im overweight. You probably call yourself descriptive terms that begin with the word fat. Im a fat _________. Later in this book, you will learn why it is a dangerous practice to use negative terminology to describe yourself, and how changing your words, will also alter your attitude, and quite possibly, your weight.

INTRODUCTION : HOW DIETING MADE ME FAT

I was 24 years old, 126 pounds, and five feet, six inches tall. I was playing tennis three to four hours a day and in great shape. But, I had what my mother called a feminine backside or what others refer to as a rounded rear-end, butt, ass, or tush. There were also other parts of my body that I didnt like. With curly hair, and eye-glasses from age eight, I didnt look like the other girls and I wasnt popular. Subconsciously, I thought that if I looked like them, Id be accepted in to their group. Although at the same time, I didnt like them because they were so mean. No one who looked at me would have said that I needed to lose weight. I looked like a healthy, young, athletic woman. But now, when I think back about my own situation, I feel like I must have been crazy to believe I needed to lose weight! I have come to realize that the doctors who allowed me to diet did not have my best interests at heart. They actually encouraged me to diet! Doctors at a prestigious hospital in New York City, that will remain unnamed, should have been sued for malpractice for putting me into their obesity clinic when I was 126 pounds. After two weeks of drinking their unpleasant-tasting liquid protein diet and eating nothing else I lost a total of one-quarter pound. If you werent cheating by eating additional food during thes e two weeks, go home and be happy that youre not morbidly obese; youll never lose weight the doctors told me. Oh, if I would have just listened to them then, I would never have put myself into Diet Prison and started on the path to becoming really overweight! But I continued dieting on and off, and knew nothing about what to do, except that I should eat less and exercise more. I starved myself day after day, eating only a yogurt for breakfast and lunch and then a low-fat salad for dinner with Diet Pepsi. Id lose a couple of pounds and then be happy. Id go back to eating my normal way, which was still what would have been considered a diet for most women. But despite that, the weight would slowly creep back. In the end, I would regain what I lost plus two pounds more! Id weigh myself constantly and hated myself based upon what the scale said. Each day, Id go through the same cycle. Id weigh myself, sometimes multiple times a day, to determine whether this would be a day Id eat or starve. When I look at the photos of me back then Im amazed. How could I have ever thought I was overweight? As each decade passed, I was still looking great despite gaining those yo-yo pounds after the last diet. But I called myself a fat cow because I had gained from my original weight. I was one hundred and forty pounds at this point. I was wearing a size 10 - 12. I even dressed in a closet rather than letting my then-husband see me with the extra five to twenty pounds. I was certain that there must be something wrong with my body. After all, I religiously followed every diet to the letter. I never cheated. I exercised. I did everything right: but I still couldnt keep the weight I had struggled to lose from coming back! I went to my doctor to get my thyroid tested. But the blood test results showed that my thyroid was normal. It was hard to believe. So, Id just go back home and find another diet, and hope that it would be the magic solution to my weight problem. 6

After literal, decades of trying every kind of diet, I finally woke up and realized that the never-ending cycle of gaining and losing weight cant be happening just to me! It must be happening to others as well. Thats when I began to read everything I could find about the yo-yo cycle and weight management. I found out that I was just like 95% of the population that has been on a diet and gained the weight back. So many of these women described the same situation: they dieted, exercised, and were very disciplined. They didnt cheat and sneak food. But they gained the weight back anyway. When I discovered that this was not my problem alone, and that so many women had the same results as me, I cried from a combination of emotions. I felt relief. I realized that there was nothing wrong with me, and I could stop blaming myself and my body for diet failure being my fault. But I also felt anger at the diet industry that had tricked me, and the doctors who went along encouraging me to do something that was physically impossible. Thanks to the Internet, I was able to meet lots of other women who told the same story as mine. No, we were not over-eaters who made ourselves fat by stuffing bon-bons into our mouths while sitting and watching TV. We were active, exercised and ate healthy foods. However, we also had problems with negative self-judgment; a few others had terrible, stressful events that came right before their weight gain. Many of those women had other negative forces in their lives as well: neglect, abuse, humiliation, or even teasing were their earliest memories of family life. Those years that we dont consciously remember before the age of six have been shown to have a profound effect on both health and weight later in adult life. Many of the stories I heard were from women whose parents had put them on a diet, assuring them theyd never have friends or get married if they got fat. Bribery, locking food in cabinets, teasing, and any other method to keep them from eating was not going too far for these misguided parents. Are you ready to consider a different path? One where you accept yourself, instead of experiencing selfabuse and shame? Are you ready to forgive yourself and begin the next, and best part of your life? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you are in the right place, right here.

PART ONE: WHY DIDNT MY DIET W ORK?

If you are reading this book, its probably because you are unhappy or dissatisfied with your body. You even may be a diet coach trying to learn how to keep your clients from regaining the weight, as 95% of them may have done so after you coached them to lose it. Maybe you are lucky and reached your target weight. Thats fantastic! But since you are here reading this book, Im going to assume that you are willing to explore how you can keep those pounds off for good, regardless if you are one of the 95% of people who regain all the weight that you worked so hard to lose or one of the 5% whove kept the pounds off for any length of time. Losing weight can be a complex and confusing journey. The common knowledge everyone quotes and that seems logical is: if you ate less (cut your calories) and increased your activity (exercised more) you would burn off more calories and lose weight. That seems like success, however, it is only the beginning of the diet. The end is what really counts--if you are able to maintain the weight loss. When you go on a diet and work hard to lose weight, you are actually working against the Laws of Nature. In this book you will learn how your brain and body respond to calorie deprivation (aka, diet) in a way that virtually assures you will regain the weight. You will also discover that when you exercise more, your brain actually makes you hungrier, thereby more focused on food! Why? Its not because you are addicted to carbs. Your body is simply going into automatic mode to make you hungry so that you replenish the calories you burned off with exercise. Losing weight isnt the hard part for many people. But if youve become a diet prof essional, an experienced dieter, or a tried everything dieter, it will be a lot harder to fool your body into losing weight. There are many temptations to try: new miracle supplements or celebrity diets promising that you will have a sexy body or drop ten pounds in a week. After you failed at your last diet and blamed yourself, maybe you think if you try this new diet it will work. After all, Dr. Oz said it works. Maybe you can lose weight, at least for a while. You buy into the green tea, coffee bean, or the weird trick to burn belly fat diets. You discover (if it works at all) youve reached a plateau, a place where the weight stops coming off. Once again, diet failure. Also, once again, you blame yourself! Doing something repeatedly the same way and expecting different results is the definition of a DIET and Insanity. For most people, the place of being stuck, starving and not losing any more weight is the end of the diet. Your body has just told you something important. It is saying: ENOUGH! Youve deprived me of sufficient calories. Youve over-exercised me. Im getting concerned that this is a permanent state of affairs! Theres not enough food and I must protect your life by slowing down this rapid race to starvation. Im doing this for your own good! At this point, the same amount of food and exercise is not enough to maintain that weight loss. Very slowly, the weight starts coming back.

STUCK ON A PLATEAU
People who level off or get stuck in their weight loss can find this very frustrating, infuriating, and depressing all at the same time. Who enjoys dieting, except when the scale gives you a positive sign that all this deprivation is making you lose weight? When you pull up your jeans, fresh from the dryer, and they have extra room around your waist, you are motivated to continue. But when the weight loss stops, so does the positive reinforcement that we learned in Behavioral Psychology will help you maintain a behavior. How long can you keep avoiding all the foods you love? How many birthday parties, family celebrations, religious and national holidays can go by with you just saying no to all the things you love, when your body isnt even rewarding you by dropping another pound? Many people do give up and go back to their normal eating habits. But theres a mean trick that happens at this point. The amount of food that you used to eat to maintain your weight originally no longer allows you to maintain your post-diet weight. Your body has learned from your past dieting: your metabolism has slowed by about 30% so your new maintenance diet would still be a significantly lower amount of food than you had become used to eating. The vast majority of people who have gone through this diet process a number of times find the weight comes back pretty quickly. Its like you are jogging on a treadmill that has gotten faster and you have to run faster just to keep up! Now, you are frustrated, angry at your body and afraid. All the hard work, all the delicious food you missed went for naught. But it gets worse. Youve added a couple of insurance pounds. Its the thing that your body does to make sure you are not going to starve again in the future. Hopefully, you didnt throw out your old fat clothes! No, you are not damaged or suffering from a metabolic problem. When you gain the weight back, its a natural response of a healthy body! Thats whats known as the Yo-Yo Syndrome. Each time you go through a diet cycle and yo-yo back, you can add roughly two pounds. Lets do the math. If only two pounds are added per diet cycle, and you only diet one time per year, after 20 years youve added 40 pounds just from dieting! If you add that to your starting point (assuming you were slightly overweight), it would mean adding on 45-plus pounds after your first diet. Going on an extreme diet actually sabotages your ability to eat a normal amount of food in the future!

CHRONIC DIET DISGUISED AS LIFESTYLE CHANGE

Most diet gurus and diet coaches will tell you that you failed because you fell off the wagon and stopped following your diet regime. They expect, that in order for you to lose weight and maintain it, you must be on a continuous diet for the rest of your life. But instead of telling you that, they now have a different term, lifestyle change, that doesnt sound as bad. To me its the same thing; they want you to accept a life term in a diet prison. (And why doesnt my thin friend Yolanda have to live in a lifestyle change where she pushes aside the desserts, garlic bread, pizza and chocolate and ice-cream?) 9

Is that what you expected? Is that what you are willing to do to have that thin sexy body of your dreams? Are you willing to avoid all the fattening, delicious food you enjoy for the rest of your life? Are you willing to measure and weigh your food, and always walk away from the table slightly hungry to keep your svelte body? I sure hope not, because thats not what life is to be about- and it doesnt work anyway! Food is supposed to be enjoyedthat is why you have taste buds. Your body knows exactly how much food you should eat without the need to weigh and measure it. A signal is sent from your stomach when youve had enough to eat. The diet industry says you need to drink tons of water. You dont. You need to drink only when you are thirsty. Sleep is exactly the same concept; you get tired when you need to sleep. (An exception here is if you are depressed or sick.) Your body, by far, is like the most sophisticated super-computer in the way it responds instantaneously to its environment. You must get back to the point where you trust, and pay mindful attention to the messages from your head, heart, and gut; and all symptoms that your body gives you. Being overweight is one of those symptoms. Its telling you something is not working and needs attention. Once you understand the science that explains how you got overweight, you will no longer feel as if you did something wrong because you cheated or didnt exercise enough, and that made you overweight. I remember listening to a diet guru on a radio show give advice to an upset woman who called in to ask a question. She was desperate because she had gained back the weight she lost. Throw away all your fat clothes, he chided her. Then you wont cheat on your diet. This answer still makes me angry enough to scream. These coaches have no scientific knowledge, and use the common wisdom, which is totally flawed to blame women for regaining weight. They are implying that YOU are the failure, not the diet. A blog that became viral on The Huffington Post website was actually an apology from a Diet Coach who worked at one of the huge diet corporations found all over the country. She finally admitted to herself and to her clients, in a heartfelt apology, that dieting doesnt work. I owe you an apology, my former client and now friend, who I helped to lose too much weight. Who I watched gain the weight back, plus some. Because that's what happens when you put someone on a 1,200 calorie diet. But I didn't know. If you're reading this, then I want you to know that you have always been beautiful. And that all these fad diets are crap meant to screw with your metabolism so that you have to keep buying into them. I think now that I was a really good weight loss consultant. Because I did exactly what the company wanted (but would never dare say). I helped you lose weight and then gain it back, so that you thought we were the solution and you were the failure. You became a repeat client and we kept you in the game. I guess I did my job really well. ~ Your Fairy Angel http://www.makeitsomindset.com/apology

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The diet industry is happy to have you blame yourself for diet failure. Because every time you fail, you get disgusted with yourself for not doing the dieting well enough. But you dont give up because you cant stand your body the way it is. You will read every magazine that has a new diet, read every ad, listen to late night TV shows, Dr. Oz, and every other Diet Guru who assures you they have the answer to your overweight problem. And of course it comes down to the same failed strategy: Eat less, and exercise more . It is at best ignorance, and at worst, an out and out lie. You have been bombarded with it from media, the diet industry, your doctors, your well-meaning friends and relatives (who are probably thin or not weight challenged). You may have even tried hypnosis to help you lose weight. Putting you into a trance isnt going to work, e ither. Most hypnotists, just like the diet coaches, have fallen for the eat-less-and-exercise-more strategy to weight loss, and what you now learning doesnt work. The goal of this book is to teach you why you are not to blame for diet failure. I intend to empower you by exposing the myth-information that has kept you locked in a self-imposed diet prison. In that prison, you have given yourself a life-sentence of food deprivation, otherwise known as a lifestyle change. No more grains, desserts, soda, candy, or other treats for you! Thats your new lifestyle; one of avoidance and deprivation, along with a peppering of starvation for punishment when youve been bad. But once you understand how your body functions and why all diets will fail to permanently keep the weight off, you will never be fooled again by claims that a miracle diet, a secret ingredient, a weird food, or a mystery supplement will make you lose weight and get the sexy body of your dreams. Because it isnt a dreamits a nightmare. This book is your key to unlock the door to your diet prison.

THE CORPORATIONS THAT RUIN YOUR LIFE AND MAKE BILLIONS

The diet industry makes at least $60 billion dollars a year. Just to give you perspective, a billion is 1,000 million. Thats a lot of money. And that amount doesnt include the medical side where doctors are prescribing questionable medications, using plastic surgery to suck out fat, surgery to staple your stomach, or any other medical solution. The results of all this money points to the overall 95% failure rate of dieters, as explained earlier in this book. What other industry could sell something with that high of a failure rate and still make billions of dollars? It doesnt matter what diet plan or supplement you take. Expensive or cheap, only about 5% of dieters are able to sustain their hard fought for weight loss for more than a few months to a couple of years. And its all unnecessary. Why? Because eating less and exercising more wont lead you to your sustainable weight loss. But its been accepted as common knowledge that this is the only way to lose weight. For some people, this method will work; but only for a limited time, and then the weight will 11

come back. It creates a vicious cycle. Its the reason why so many people are on a diet at any time. Its because the last diet failed, and they are trying again! Going on an extreme diet actually sabotages your ability to eat a normal amount of food in the future! Studies done on the participants of the TV show, The Biggest Loser, show the slowing of the metabolic rate may predispose weight regain, unless the participants maintain high levels of physical activity or significant caloric restrictions. Would you put yourself through the deprivation of dieting and extreme exercise if you knew ahead of time that you had a 95% chance of gaining the weight back, and actually adding even more weight? How many people can afford the time for four hours each day of extreme exercise that Dr. Robert Huiznegas from The Biggest Losers says is necessary to maintain the weight loss. How many can maintain a low calorie diet when they dont have personal trainers constantly screaming at them to s tay the course? Not many and thats why so many of the Biggest Losers are now the bigger re-gainers! If a diet actually worked, wouldnt everyone go on it once, lose the weight, go back to normal eating, and never have to diet again? You must be thinking, But I dont want to stay this weight. This is really frightening! How will I ever lose weight?

TREATING THE SYMPTOM INSTEAD OF THE CAUSE

Being overweight is most often a symptom of another problem. Dieting to lose weight is like removing the Check Engine light out of your car, instead of investigating why the light illuminated in the first place. You must determine whats the problem with your engine and then address the solution. Otherwise, you are simply treating the symptoms and not the cause. People have a hard time understanding that overeating is not the root cause of getting overweight. Yes, over-eating is one of the things that can make you gain weight, but there are many other factors that can be the root cause of over-eating. People do not over-eat on purpose. It hurts to be stuffed with food. Have you ever intentionally tried to eat when youre really not hungry? Nothing looks delicious or smells good enough to make you want to eat more. And if you do actually eat the food, your body will rebel and you might vomit up the food you ate! At the very least, you are going to feel miserable until that food moves out of your system. Overeating occurs because feedback from your body is being ignored. Most of the women I work with have actually not been overeating; theyve been chronically under eating for years! They started one diet, and have remained under-eating, frightened that if they stop they will gain more weight. Amazingly enough, many women (and some men) gain weight because they do not eat enough! Does it seem normal or even logical that some people should have to deprive themselves for a lifetime in order to maintain their weight, while others can eat exactly the same way throughout their lifetime and never gain an ounce?

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RESISTANCE TO THE FACTS

Whenever I write on an online forum or article about weight issues, I receive many comments from angry responders. They insist that people who are fat are lazy, over-eat, and dont exercise; they got what they deserve. Slender or thin people who have never been on a diet frequently think and say, If these overweight people would only get up, start jogging, stop stuffing McDonalds burgers and soda into their mouths, they would lose the weight and get healthy. They dont believe that people can be overweight, yet under-eat. They also say that everyone they know who is overweight eats too much and just needs to control themselves. Well, I can tell them that most of the people I know who are overweight are chronically under-eating diet food and exercising! People who are overweight are blamed as if their condition is due to a personality disorder. This is an example of the common-knowledge-that-everyone-knows theory; however, it is not true. The sad thing is, many of the people who are overweight agree with them! This is the ultimate brainwashing! When you understand the reasons that create weight gain, it would be like saying that people with arthritis (or any other disease) should be blamed for deliberately causing their own illness by not exercising enough.

BURNING OFF FAT WITH EXERCISE

A short, overweight man described in, Why We Get Fat, by author Gary Taubes, explained that he started jogging in his twenties to lose weight. In 20 years of jogging, constantly increasing his running distance, he had run the equivalent of going around the circumference of the earth twice. He described the changes in his body with all this exercise: I was still short, overweight, and the only thing I lost was my hair. He is not the only person with this experience. In a controlled research study done by a leading University and reported by the New York Times, most of the subjects burned slightly less fat over the 24hour study period when they exercised as when they did not. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/phys-ed-why-doesnt-exercise-lead-to-weight-loss/?_r=0 In another study, it was found that people who exercised and burned the most calories compensated unconsciously, by eating more, and by conserving energy in their regular activities. The people who exercised lightly (one-half hour) actually had more weight loss; perhaps because they didnt compensate by eating more and were energized instead of being tired out. A shorter exercise session can also be stress relieving, instead of stress producing. (This study did not follow the participants to see if they maintained their weight loss.) Author Gretchen Reynolds, from the New York Times writes: Multiple studies have found that without major changes to diet, exercise typically results in only modest weight loss at best (although it generally makes people much healthier). Quite a few exercisers lose no weight. Some gain. 13

I still believe that the scientists who do these studies are missing the point that is affecting weight gain. The variable missing from these studies is the effect exercise has on stress. Excess exercise can create a stressful physiological response in your body, while light exercise can relieve stress. As you read further, you will learn why this is important in your ability to lose weight, which is the basic premise of this book. Stress is the foundational problem of weight gain and weight loss. Without addressing the issue of stress, weight will be stuck where it is.

HOW COMMON KNOWLEDGE BECOMES ACCEPTED AS TRUTH

It amazes me how so called diet coaches and gurus will read anything into research findings; and then vociferously dispute those facts that dont agree with their philosophy. They are not using any actual research in their argument. They will frequently go on to say: Everyone knows that blank is not good for you, without substantiation of the facts. Of course, before accepting the results in any research, its important for you to know how the study was designed to make sure it wasn't effected by researcher's assumed or desired outcomes; and if the company that paid for the study will merely throw out anything that goes against their ability to make money. Dieting is always in the media. You cant go past a checkout in the grocery store without viewing magazines filled with the latest diets; and the movie stars who lost weight that want to share their diet with you. This vast majority of movie stars are paid for their endorsements. News that is reported about diets is not vetted or fact-checked. Reporters are not trained scientists to look at the findings critically. They rarely ask who was funding the study. This can have a significant impact on the findings in the report of the study. I recently watched an interview on a TV news program where the reporter kept asking the doctor questions about his diet plan. When I looked up the doctor on the Internet, I found he was a Doctor of Divinity! He had no background in health, nutrition, psychology or anything related to the area of weight control. Despite the health coachs proclamations that you will lose weight when you eat less and exercise more, real scientists doing actual research are now finding that all calories are not created equally. The body responds to different foods in different ways regarding whether the food will be used immediately for energy, or stored for later use. Independent research studies have shown time and again that although eating the same diet, and following the same exercise regime, one group of study participants gained 30 pounds, while others gained only ten. Similar effects are found with weight loss regimes. Its true that you will read gobs of research, books, reports, listen to radio programs, doctors, alternative care practitioners, diet coaches; they all have their own diet plans. If one diet (or two) actually worked, why would there be more new diets coming out every day? Its not logical! It plays to the desperation of people who hate themselves and their fat and will do anything, no matter how outrageous, to lose weight.

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In some ways, the more outrageous the claim, the more likely people are to believe it! And it takes on a life of its own, and becomes viral or the common knowledge. Yes; everyone knows blank; yet its never been proven to be effective and lasting. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. ~Mahatma Gandhi

CAUSATION OR CO-INCIDENCE
Just because two things occur at the same time doesnt necessarily mean that one causes the other. If you read a headline such as, Ice Cream Causes Death by Drowning, this would be a perfect case in point. Summer is a time when its hot outside. More people eat ice cream in the hot summer weather, and more people go into the water during that time; therefore, that more people drown is a great probability. A flawed study would report that eating ice cream causes drowning because both the ice cream eating and drowning occurred in the same time frame. Of course, it isnt true that ice cream causes drowning. The confounding variable is summertime. Because the research did not consider the temperature or season when comparing the amount of ice cream being eaten and the number of people who drowned, the findings are flawed. I believe that this is part of the problem with the entire area of research into dieting. They left out important variables. Lets examine eating less and the effect it has on your weight. For most people, eating less will begin to make you lose weight. But it is not a permanent solution to weight loss. Despite following diet advice of your doctor, or the myriad of diet books you paid tons of money for, the weight comes back for 95% of the dieters. If you start digging deeper to examine the facts, youll see that people who have lost weight and gained it back are ashamed, feel guilty, and blame themselves for gaining the weight in the first place, that they dont want to tell anyone about it. Just look up the names of the Biggest Losers to see where they are now. For the small number of dieters who maintain their weight loss, it can be a terrible price to pay. Excessive exercise of over two hours a day, maintaining a limited diet that keeps them feeling hungry constantly, and avoiding any foods that are not allowed, is the price you pay for temporary weight loss. These are most often the foods that people later on, when under stress, binge on. No one binges on salad. Dieting as a lifestyle is certainly not a fun lifestyle, but one based upon discipline and beating your body into submission. Dieting and deprivation has become the focus of their everyday life in order to maintain even a partial weight loss.

HOW DID YOU GET WHERE YOU ARE? THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ANSWERS
Healthy people who have no weight challenges are blessed with an amazing system that perfectly balances what they eat with their activity level. The reason nature designed this is to prevent your weight from major shifts of going up and down all the time, which is not healthy. 15

This is for survival purposes, and it is the system that governs all animals, not just humans. Think about the nature programs youve probably watched. The only skinny animals are sick, and probably dying. The only fat animals are those that are getting ready to hibernate. Animals eat to satiation, and then leave their kill for the scavengers who eat the leftovers. And there is plenty for all! Your bodys operating system is a totally unconscious and sophisticated system. If you tried to replicate this effect with controlling your food intake and activity level, it would be nearly impossible to achieve, even for a supercomputer! Fluctuation as little as 20 calories a day can contribute to weight gain. Also, your bodys system works like a thermostat that can apply heat or cooling to keep a steady comfortable temperature in a room. Your system adjusts itself to the amount of food you eat and the amount of exercise or activity you expend. These factors are inversely proportioned. That means they work in opposite directions. If a person whose physiological system is working the way nature designed it, but eats too much, they will get a burst of energy and their metabolism will pump up to get rid of the extra calories. The smallest of movements can burn calories- such as shaking your leg or drumming your fingers. On the other hand, if you exert yourself too much in exercise and burn a lot of calories, you will get hungry to balance the system so that you have enough calories to maintain your weight set point. Think about it this way: after doing a lot of exercise, you dont get less hungry, you get ravenous. The hunger is automatic, and when it is working correctly and as nature intended, youll eat until you get the feedback from your stomach that you are now full. Its actually truly amazing when you understand that it only takes a difference of 20 calories a day to add 2 pounds of weight per year. To put it in perspective that would be the equivalent of eating half of a medium-sized carrot. That can translate into 60 pounds in 30 years. However, your body automatically regulates this difference between your activity level and how much you consume, so that you dont gain and lose a lot of weight constantly, placing stress on your body-- even if you drop excess weight. In people who are not weight challenged, the thermostat works very well. But all bets are off when you try to self-adjust the thermostat by going on a diet. Within 24 to 48 hours of beginning a calorierestricted diet, your metabolic rate decreases 15 to 30 percent to compensate for lost calories. Furthermore, your metabolism gets progressively slower with each day you remain on the starvation diet; this is not a fasting diet, but a diet of approximately 1200 calories. We know from many animal studies on both dogs and rats that you cant adjust your bodys thermostat manually. Resetting your metabolic set-point is one of the most difficult issues regarding weight loss. Scientists and doctors actually dont know how to reset the weight point, but it seems that the only chance is if weight loss is done very gradually, and unintentionally. There are other reasons why your metabolism may have slowed down: medications you are taking, lack of sleep, illness, aging, toxins in your food and environment, and most of all stress, to name a few that affect your system. When you learn about the effect of stress on your metabolism, and on your level of hunger, and other systems in your body, you will see why the only diet you should be on is a stress diet! 16

EVEN STARVATION DOESNT WORK: THE MINNESOTA STUDY

Dr. Ancel Keys, a well-respected American scientist, studied the influence of diet on health. He detailed the results in his book, The Biology of Human Starvation which includes information from his Minnesota Starvation Experiment. The results were very clear: Starvation diets are temporary measures to lose weight. One study investigated feeding college age men a typical obesity diet, shows the physical and psychological effects from six months of dieting. In a very controlled environment, the participants were fed 1,640 calories a day, which is about half of a maintenance diet for a typical male of this age. These are the results of the diet.

PHYSICAL CHANGES :
Decreased heart volume Slowed pulse rate Voluntary movements became slower Subjects felt older and behaved older

PERSONALITY CHANGES:
Increased apathy and depression Sensitivity to noise General feeling of ineffectiveness Loss of ambition and narrowing of interests Increased neuroticism and hysteria Almost 20% showed severe character neuroses Two subjects bordered on psychoses, including violence

FOOD PREOCCUPATION:
This included increased interest with food, heightened cravings, food dislikes disappeared, became possessive with food, increased gum chewing, smoking, coffee drinking, nail biting, and purchased useless items (these not described in the study). A few participants even escaped the study, binged, and then felt feelings of guilt, followed by vomiting! Although it had been a tightly controlled experiment, perhaps the most interesting result showed that weight loss among this group was not consistent. Assuming that the diet caloric intake remained at 1,640 calories for the 24-week starvation period, and if the 3,500 formula (the amount of calorie deficit needed to lose one pound) were correct (the amount of calorie deficit needed to lose one pound), every man should have lost at minimum 78 pounds in fat alone, and even more on top of this in water and lean tissue. Instead, the average weight loss of the men was less than half of this at only 37 pounds--or 1.5 pounds per week!

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Furthermore, the study showed that the less you eat, you must continue to eat less and less to have any chance of losing more weight. Eventually weight loss will stop, whether you like it or not, because you need sustenance to survive. All participants in this study reached a plateau at about the twentieth week where further weight loss could not be induced. During the final month of the starvation period, however, at least one diary recorded weight gain! In another Keys study where participants were women, the decline in metabolic rate was disproportionately great; that is, small losses in body weight produced large declines in metabolism. Why is it that diet coaches, and even doctors, disregard this ground breaking research and insist the way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more? Why does our medical profession, instead of seeking a real method of permanent weight loss, continue to push a method that is doomed to failure? If you were a conspiracy believer, you might think that its because there is a lot of money to be made here; fat people are devalued and berated by society, so its ok to cheat you out of your money if you have gotten overweight. While depressing, the findings from the Keys studies are also empowering. Because once you understand that dieting is a flawed method to lose weight, you now know you must find a different option. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. ~Albert Einstein You can lose weight. However, the pounds lost may not be as many as you think you should lose or as great as the effort you put in to losing them. In addition, and in all likelihood, the weight loss will not be permanent. At the point when you have access to food, the weight will come back as fast as you can get the food into your mouth. You are compelled by your brain and physiology to replenish those lost calories, no matter how strong your determination and discipline; its simply not your choice-- unless you want to maintain an unhappy state of affairs as described in the symptoms of the participants in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment referred to earlier in this chapter. In his study, Keys also showed dieting made those people temporarily insane by any standard! Diets are a temporary measure to lose weight and make you fixate on food that then assures you will gain back the weight, plus adding insurance pounds in case of future dieting, due to the conditioning of the brain. It's a recipe for obesity. How do I know? I did it for 35 years. This recipe explains why diets do not work, but how did you gain weight in the first place? There are many reasons for weight gain, and you may be surprised to learn that several of them are simply out of your control.

SOME FACTORS AFFECTING WEIGHT:

Genetics

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Whether you were born by C-section or normal delivery and your mothers eating habits while pregnant Whether you were breast- or bottle-fed and If you were given antibiotics when a baby Exposure to toxins, endocrine disruptors (plastics, such as Teflon-type pans) Predisposition to thyroid disease Your weight set point If you are insulin or leptin resistant If you are in perimenopause or menopause; i.e., hormones out of balance

The amount of sleep per night and the quality of that sleep If you have an adequate amount of good bacteria in your intestines Your Body Type - Ectomorph, Mesomorph Or Endomorph Emotional factors, such as those concerning body acceptance Economic factors, such as, are you the Boss or are you bossed? Your stress level and how you handle stress

IMPACT OF GENETICS ON YOUR ABILITY TO LOSE WEIGHT

As much as you might not want to hear this, genetics play a major role in determining both your size and shape. You may notice that there is a family resemblance in your physical characteristics that is somewhat similar between parents and also between siblings. Of course, this is not a 100-percent determination of what your body will look like or how much you weigh; but the question of nature versus nurture has long been debated, and studies conducted on sets of twins give important insights into this issue. Research has shown the weight of adopted children resembles that of their biological parents, and not of their adoptive parents. Children eat the same foods of their adoptive parents, yet their weight doesnt reflect those food choices and is more aligned with that of their biological parents. When researchers compared identical twins raised apart, they found that their body-mass index was nearly identical as well, despite being raised by different families in different environments. This demonstrates to us that there is an impact and influence of genetic inheritance on what you weigh. If your parents and siblings are overweight, theres a good chance you are going to have this inherited effect. (But dont lose heart, because genetics are not the entire story, as there are twins that were raised both apart and together who break this pattern.) Lets compare the genetics with that of an acorn. The acorn has its genetic potential from the tree. However, if the acorn falls into an area where the soil is depleted that is, where it will be growing in shade, in constant wind, or does not enough water to reach itthe tree wont grow to its full potential. 19

Its the same thing with humans. If raised in poverty, a victim of abuse, or without love, a child will grow up very differently from a child who is loved, nurtured, and receives the best food, education, and encouragement. That being said, there are exceptions to the ruleindividuals who flourish despite, and perhaps, in spite of a harsh beginning to their lives.

ECONOMIC FACTORS IN HEALTH AND WEIGHT

A ten year study of over 28,000 British civil servant workers (Whitehall Study 1 & 2), found a strong correlation between those workers who were higher in the grades (earned more money) and stress and mortality. For those in lower grades, the mortality rate was three times higher from a range of physical causes that included obesity. The National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health reviewed 144 published studies of the relationship between socioeconomic status and obesity. Their findings suggest a strong inverse relationship among women in developed societies. The poorer women are more likely are to be obese. Money may not be the solution for everything, but you definitely have more control and more choices in life.

WEIGHT SET POINT

There is a weight range known as the set point. The set point is where your body weight settles while you're eatinggaining signals of hunger or fullness-- and engaging in some level of physical activity. It is a very precise, self-regulated, sophisticated system. This set point can get re-set by environmental effects and other factors. How Did Humans Survive Without Mothers Forcing Children To Eat? Do you think the human race would have survived this long if babies and toddlers refused food and starved themselves to irreparable illness or death merely because they were enjoying themselves? Not likely. You can see how effective the bodys hunger signals are designed by nature. Persuading or forcing a baby or toddler to eat when s/he isnt hungry is next to impossible! When they are full, they dont fall for the airplane going into the hangar trick. The food will be dribbled out of their mouths or end up on the wall or floor. Thats the same hunger signaling system is built into you as an adult however, something in your life has subverted this perfect eating system. I was recently at the beach enjoying a beautiful day in Southern California. Wouldnt you know it, a couple with a child who sat down next to me provided me with this story to tell. Their beautiful little girl was about four years old with a perfect little body, not overweight, not skinny. She happily played in the sand and was really involved in digging, singing to herself, and having fun. Her mother, however, was really focused on getting food into her daughters mouth. The girl kept whining loudly. Im not hungry! No! I dont want to eat! But the mother tore off pieces of a sandwich 20

with what I thought was a suspicious looking meat product in between the slices of white bread. I cringed. She forced the girl to eat; while tears ran down the little girls cheeks. I further observed that the mother was overweight, and sat the entire time she was at the beach putting bites of food into her own mouth. It was so sad. I thought, heres a child, later to become a fat adult being conditioned to ignore her bodys signals because of her mothers insistence that she eat when the child wasnt hungry. Does that sound familiar in your life? Are you a member of the clean your plate club? Were you forbidden from leaving the table until you had finished eating everything on your dish? This early conditioning lasts through adulthood for many women. My parents were strict about finishing all of my dinner. I had to sit at the table, sometimes for hours, until I would eat everything: even the food I hated. Now as an adult, I find myself eating the food I dont prefer first, and saving the portion I like to encourage me to finish everything on my dish. Im 62 years old, and still cant get over my parents conditioning. ~LG, San Francisco Recent research is showing that even young children have a change in their inborn system that prevents them from dis-inhibition or stopping when satiated or full. These changes in eating behavior were recently discovered due to the increased numbers of oversized babies and obese children being reported by their physicians. There is speculation that one reason for dis-inhibition is due to the same eating habits and behaviors exhibited by the pregnant mothers. A YouTube video shows a perfect case where a father uses distraction with TV to force feed his young son. Baby Benjamin was clearly not interested in eating. He was whining, moving his head and trying to avoid the spoon of food his father was pushing near his mouth. But after the TV went on, baby Ben watched the Gangnam Style dance and stopped fighting his fathers attempts to feed him. As long as the dance continued, the baby opened his mouth for the food. Distraction and interest in something other than the food had overtaken his inborn satiation signal. Take note: Eating in front of the TV or while multi-tasking masks the important signals from your body that let you know youve eaten enough food.

PRE-BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE ISSUES

The way your mother ate while pregnant with you directly effects how your body will react later in life. At one time it was believed that the fetus was protected by the umbilical cord to prevent poisons to enter your system; however, research has shown that poisons and much more could affect the developing fetus; such as, if your mother was exposed to toxins, ate poorly, was starved or dieting, drank alcohol, took drugs, or experienced high stress levels. In addition, research shows your birth weight could have been affected as well, which then becomes an issue in your life as you grow. The type of delivery also has effects on weight issues later in life. When babies are born vaginally, they receive the benefit of having the perfect probiotic mixture already in their digestive tracts by swallowing 21

the amniotic fluid during the birth process. It is not the same for babies born via Caesarian Section. Babies born via C-section often suffer from colic because their digestive tracks were not prepared with the same probiotics of babies born vaginally. Whether you were breast or bottle-fed has lifelong effects, too. A study published in Pediatric Obesity involved over 8,000 children. Researchers found that formula fed (bottle fed) babies have a 2.5 time higher risk for obesity by two years old, compared to those babies who were breast fed during the first six months of life. It is thought that when extra fat cells are created, they persist into adulthood, causing adult obesity (Taveras et al., 2009) Perhaps you were ill and given antibiotics as a baby or young child; this would have killed off the good bacteria that help your ability to digest food, along with many other factors. Its also said that your gut feeling is actually your brain in your intestines, sending messages on how to metabolize your food. Obviously, those times of being in utero and being born are way off in your past with no turning back the clock. But it is believed you can replenish your intestinal tract with probiotics. Recent research is finding that fecal transplants (yes, it is what you thinkpoop transplants) are helping overweight people who suffer from digestive diseases. The New York Times reported on research studies performed on mice show gut bacteria transplanted from a thin twin to an obese twin resulted in weight loss in the obese mouse. Essentially, scientists are curing obesity with a germ transplant! This process is being used experimentally in the human population and helping sufferers of Crohn s Disease. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865579532/Transplanting-ourselves-out-of-obesity

THE FOOD CHOICES AS YOU GREW UP CULTURAL FACTORS

In his best-selling book, Why We Get Fat, Gary Taubes describes how carbohydrates cause people to get fat. He claims high glycemic foods, i.e., starchy carbohydrates and sugars, are the culprits. If you are Italian, chances are good that pasta was a staple in your home. Taubes says that the waistlines of Italian people reflect their choice of high glycemic foods; yet, not all Italians have thick waistlines. In comparison, Asian and other racial and cultural backgrounds, where diets are based upon rice or starches, they do not necessarily have the same genetic problems. Other health investigators have disputed this explanation and point out many inconsistencies within Taubes explanations and findings. But no matter what diet plan you read about, and how much research there has been done, you can find another study that will disprove the first.

PART TWO: STRESS IS THE MISSING LINK TO OVERWEIGHT

Most people just know what stress feels like for them. But the actual definition is reacting to a stressor which can be anything that makes you feel threatened, in a way that takes you out of your normal feelings, or homeostasis. Stress can be due to:

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Difficulties in relationships and/ or Economic insecurity Death of a loved one and/or Divorce Moving residences Work pressure taking too much responsibility (burnout) Lack of safety (abuse) Any chronic physical or mental illnesses, or if you get sick frequently Being in pain Emotional issues: boredom, loneliness, and other feelings

Being a worrier. Do you take on everyone elses problems as your own? Do you try to fix things for others at your expense? Insomnia (a result of emotional issues, and also a result of being overweight- its a vicious cycle!) Negative self-image and low self-esteem; poor body image Anxiety focusing on future events that you worry about. Depression focusing on the past and wanting it to be the present

Not making adequate time to move your body and have fun Not giving yourself adequate time to gets things accomplished being too busy all the time Isolation not having a support system or friends Past or present abuse emotional, physical, or sexual Constant dieting depriving yourself and withholding food, resulting in changing your metabolism

IS STRESS CONTAGIOUS?
In a way it is. When you see other people being afraid or anxious, it affects you as well. You may not be reacting to the same stressor, but you may be reacting to the intensity that surrounds you. Also, if your spouse, friend, or co-worker is stressed, and even if your boss is walking near and finding fault with everyone around you, that too, can make you feel uncomfortable and uneasy.

THE EFFECT OF STRESS ON YOUR HEALTH AND WEIGHT

Its been estimated that between 75 -95% of all disease is caused or exacerbated by stress. ~The American Institute of Stress

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An overview of what stress does throughout your body will make it more clear why you must learn how to change your perception of, and reaction to stress, if you are to make any change in your weight. No kidding. Relieving stress is not just a woo-woo activity that makes you feel betterit is imperative for your health, your ability to lose weight youre your well-being!

HOW DOES STRESS AFFECT YOUR BODY?

The stress response is natures brilliant way to help the human animal survive real stress, such as being attacked by a predator. You probably have heard of the term Fight or Flight. It has been discovered that women have two additional methods of dealing with stress. The first method is bonding with others; and the second method is cleaning! You are more likely to clean than to bond, just as you may be more inclined to flee than fight. Your bodys reaction to stress is not meant to stay on for prolonged periods of time; it is meant for short bursts, and then turned off until the next emergency arises. However, your lifestyle, your reactions to driving in traffic, fighting with your spouse or boss, being too busy, paying your bills, all become either chronic stress (continuous stress that never stops, even at night) or frequent small stressors. The small stuff is still stress, yet a different kind, and can, in some ways, make the response in your body even worse!

STRESS IS A SHORT TERM ADAPTATION DESIGNED TO PROTECT YOU

As soon as a stressoran accident, for instanceis detected, your brain reacts to a lack of safety. The response is automatic and immediate from the brain to the adrenal glands, releasing adrenalin into your system. You will notice sweaty palms, your heart is racing, and rapid breathing and other changes are beyond your conscious control. If the stress continues, the adrenal glands produce cortisol within ten minutes. When this happens, the cortisol-release will prepare the body to fight and escape the threat. But if this stage of the stress is not lowered, the effect of continuous cortisol-release begins breaking down the body. When you realize your body is making an adaptive response to the stressor to protect you, it becomes clear that your bodys priorities are to use all the resources it has to escape its predator, or to beat off and survive injuries sustained in the attack. A way of thinking about the bodys reaction to stress is that it favors short-term survival over long-term survival. The short-term reaction to stress for survival is a positive one; however, the long-term reaction to stress will make you sick, and eventually it can kill you. Consider the scenario of needing to run away from a life-threatening situation. Thats a short-term stress, and is meant as protective. Below are results and reactions of having the stress response continuing short and long-term:

SHORT BURST STRESS VS. LONG-TERM CHRONIC STRESS

Your body reacts differently to short-term stress vs. long-term chronic stress.

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SHORT-TERM (BURST)
You need all the your energy to fight or escape the threat, and your body will increase all the resources that will help you to survive this short term peril. Immediate energy resources are focused is on your muscles: heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate all increase. Your digestion is turned off (you dont need to be digesting your hamburger and fries until you are safe again). Sexual function inhibited right now. Certain aspects of memory improve (where a good hiding place would be). Cognition is sharpened, and you become hyper-responsiveness to noise. Perception of pain is blunted. All of these are positive physiological changes that increase your chances to win a fight or escape the threat. But when your body is reacting repeatedly to stress these physiological changes dont shut off. While they can help you to survive an attack, the long-term repercussions can actually kill you!

LONG-TERM (CHRONIC)
Through a complex system of hormone releases, stress response can lead to energy depletion, chronic fatigue, and diabetes. Your immune system is inhibited, and you become more susceptible to disease. You are unable to fight off colds/flu and stay sicker longer. Your body ages faster. Sexual function inhibited with lower sexual desire. You have decreased ability to conceive and carry a pregnancy to term. Blunted perception of pain flips, with the body beginning to feel hyperalgesia, (constant pain) sometimes in the form of fibromyalgia. Hyper-sensitivity to noise and visual clues make you jump from the anxiety-long-term depression. You become more susceptible to PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). There are loss of brain cells which ages your brain.

Unfortunately, human stress is rarely short term, and the body responses mentioned above dont turn off. In the long run, with chronic continuing stress, the stress response can become more damaging than the stressor itself, especially when the stress is psychological. Robert Sapolskys book, Why Zebras Dont Get Ulcers, explains that even though animals are constantly exposed to life threatening events, their stress lasts only for a short time, and then is gone. A zebra either outruns the lion, or becomes the lions dinner. Either way, the stress only lasts a number of minutes. For many humans, stress is either chronic or serial (one thing after another), raising and lowering the stress levels.

LONG TERM STRESS PREDISPOSES YOU TO LOWER STRESS LEVELS THAT S ET O FF FUTURE ANXIETY
Perhaps the worst aspect of the problem is that long-term reaction to stress can lead to a future inability to reset the hormonal balance back to a non-stressed state. You become more easily reactive and chronically anxious. Essentially, your body is reset to a new and higher level of anxiety, causing it to react to smaller and more insignificant stressors. Your reaction to stress has created a vicious cycle. Repeated stressful events change the brain chemistry. From this, neurotransmitter chemicals and new growth of neurons are created, which also lead to reinforce stressful memories. These memories are non-specific, yet will produce a generalized feeling of anxiety, fear, and lack of safety.

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DIETING CAUSES A STATE OF STRESS IN THE BODY

Dieting will trigger your body to an adaptive stress response. Fasting, or eating significantly less with or without exercise creates an energy deficit in your body. Your body responds by turning to alternative energy sources to cope with the shortage, and by slowing down your metabolism, lowering your body temperature and increase production of stress hormones. Chronic stress leads to elevated blood sugar, insulin resistance, depressed sexual function, weight gain, suppressed immunity and elevated blood pressure and heart rate.

STRESS CAN MAKE YOU OVERWEIGHT BY EFFECTING YOUR METABOLISM

Stress can cause an extreme fall in your basal metabolic rate, which can be measured by taking your body temperature first thing in the morning. If your temperature is consistently below 97.8F, your bodys metabolism is slow and you may have a thyroid conditioneither Hashimotos Thyroiditis or Hypothyroid. These diseases are said to be the most under-diagnosed and under-treated maladies of our time. Your low body temperature can also be the result of adrenal fatigue or exhaustion brought about by chronic stress. Low body temperature can also be due to other disorders, but under no circumstances is it normal to have a body temperature less than 97.8F.

STRESS PREVENTION
Its not only important to recover from a stressor, but also to learn how to limit your psychological perception of events so your body doesnt see them as stress to begin with! Dr. Mark Hyman, best-selling author of The Blood Sugar Solution is a well-respected Functional Medicine doctor. He explains: Its fascinating how stress, fear, anxiety, anger, judgment and even negative self -talk can literally create a physiologic stress response in the body. This means that we generate more cortisol and insulin, two hormones that have the unwanted effect of signaling the body to store weight, store fat, and stop building muscle. Strange as it may sound, we quite literally change our calorie burning capacity when were stressed. Whats more incredible though, is that as we learn to smile more, ease into life and breathe more deeply, the body enters a physiologic relaxation response. In this state, we actually create our optimal day-in, day-out calorie-burning metabolism. So, you could be following the best weight loss diet in the world, but if youre an anxious mess, the power of your mind is limiting the weight loss of your body. Far too many people adopt stressful weight loss strategies impossible to follow diets, overly intense exercise programs, tasteless food, extremely low calorie meal plans all of which can create the kind of stress chemistry that ensures our weight will stay put. Its time to relax into weight loss. Cortisol is the stress hormone that causes a weakened immune system, a decrease in lean muscle, decreased concentration and memory, aids in hair loss, thinning skin, infertility, and the inability to grow nails. Excess cortisol kills brain cells, including those in the hippocampus, where the brain processes

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emotions. Excessive cortisol production from stress can also deplete serotonin levels, causing depression. You can see that your bodys perception of and reaction to stress is a major factor in determining your long-term health. It can be very frightening to discover the potential problems that unmanaged-stress can create in your body. You now understand that there is a strong relationship to stress and weight gain. Now its time to find out whether your weight gain is actually your bodys reaction to stress.

WHAT PRECIPITATED YOUR WEIGHT GAIN?

Its not just what youre eating; its whats eating you. When I work with clients, I ask them if they can remember a time when they didnt have any weight issue? Then I ask what changed? It is oftentimes a major stressful event that precipitated their weight gain. I lost my job and have been job hunting for over six months. My husbands salary isnt enough to pay for our monthly bills. We went into default on our mortgage, and are about to lose the house. I just realized thats when I began steadily gaining weight, even though I didnt have an appetite. My twenty-four year old son got sick when he was away at college. He ended up in the hospital, and had an adverse reaction to the medications he was given. He was in a coma for 3 months, and then died. It was the most horrible time in my life, and it feels like I will never recover. I blame myself for not staying there with him in the hospital the whole time, but my other children and my husband needed me as well. My older daughter is now suffering from depression. Its put a terrible pressure on my marriage. During this time, I kept forgetting to eat. Unbelievably, I started gaining weight during this time, and now want to lose 25 pounds. My life was stressful. I was working in ICU, raising two children, my husband worked 18-hour days. I missed seeing my children; my relationship was suffering. I felt like I was on the go all the time and even though I was exhausted, I wasnt able to sleep well at night. I was eating at irregular hours, and I dont even remember what or if I ate, I was so busy. It was during that time that my weight started going up. Think about your own life and experience. Did stress change your weight? Did it cause you to eat more or stop you from being physically active? Did you eat the same way you always had, but found yourself gradually gaining weight? Stress is being implicated in recent findings for creating belly fat. If you follow the news, watch violence in the media, stories of disasters and crime, live in areas that are overcrowded, listen to how the economies all around the world are tanking, are one of the people worried about losing your job, home,

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pension, teeth, have no health insurance, have trouble in your family or personal relationships, cant sleep through the nightsure, its easy to relax and de-stress. NOT!! The exterior of your body is showing what processes are going on inside your body. So if you are overweight, your body exterior is showing an obvious sign that something needs attention inside your body. (Blood-test results will show part of this change, too.) It is imperative for you to take stress seriously, and learn how to manage it-- not just for the overweight issue, but for the sake of your overall general health.

PART THREE: HOW YOUR NEGATIVE THOUGHTS CAN MAKE YOU FAT
Your beliefs and emotions affect your health, and have been implicated in causing or exacerbating up to 95% of all diseases. There was a time when doctors believed that our autonomic nervous system (breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, etc.) could not be affected by our thoughts and feelings. Finally, doctors are beginning to understand that your thoughts and feelings can have a positive or negative effect on your health. They will tell you that its important for you to deal with your stress; although they will rarely tell you what to do to alleviate it! Its obvious your thoughts and feelings affect your health. If youve ever had a nig htmare you know the power of emotions. Theres no monster or serial killer in the room with you, but your heart is pounding, and you are gasping for air just as hard as if the dream were real. The same thing can happen when you watch a scary movie, or when you read or see something sad. Although its not actually happening to you, the scary movie is real in your imagination and the sad story invokes emotions and those feelings affect your physiology.

UNCONSCIOUS AND SUBCONSCIOUS THOUGHTS AND STRESS

Before the age of six years old, the brain is like a sponge. Children are constantly learning in every situation about themselves and about life in general. Many of the women with whom I speak, comment on how their fathers put down their mothers for being fat. A little girl learns how to be a woman and mother from her own mother. Even though she never thought of her mother as overweight and loved her, this is a powerful lesson. Her father taught her that fat is ugly, and that she wont be loved if she is overweight. She has developed a subconscious belief that if you are fat, you are unworthy of love. This can start you on a lifelong pursuit of being thin. Emotional abuse doesnt have to come from your family. Teasing and being humiliated as a child or as an adult makes a deep scar. We are taught that sticks and stones will break your bones, but words can never harm me. Bones heal faster and completely. But hurtful words stay active in your subconscious mind. It is estimated by well-known cell biologist Bruce Lipton, PhD., your subconscious mind is in control roughly 93% of the time. Only when you are consciously and intently focused on an activity will your

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conscious mind be directing your thoughts; the rest of the time, subconscious thoughts float through your mind. What percentage of your thoughts are negative? What effect do these subliminal thoughts have on your health, your well-being, your weight? Dr. Lipton explains there are two separate minds that create what he calls the bodys controlling voice. There is a conscious mind, but it is only operating five percent of the time. On the other hand, the subconscious mind is basically a super-computer loaded with a database of programmed behaviors, most of which we acquired before we reached the age of six. The subconscious mind works ten times faster and works without the knowledge or control of the conscious mind. It is the unconscious mind that actually shapes how you perceive and live your life. Your subconscious thoughts created as a young child may have created a hidden belief that is in control of your present weight. How do you overcome a hidden mindset that makes you feel unsafe, and was created in your early childhood? You cant accomplish this mindset using your conscious mind. Affirmations, which are positive statements you say to yourself, are competing with your subconscious mind which overwhelms your conscious statements. Later in this book you will learn effective tools to heal and break through that negative subconscious mindset.

YOU ARE A 3-PART SYSTEM: MIND/EMOTIONS/BODY

Some people prefer to think of emotions as the Heart or Soul or Spirit. In fact, this is the reason for the failure in the Mind/Body approach because it leaves out the emotional factor. Ignoring your emotions in changing your health is like trying to balance on a broken three-legged stool. Its going to be difficult, at best! These inter-dependent factors, mind/emotions/body, actually work together. They are responsible for your health and well-being. This is how they work. When you have a thought and your emotions dont agree with that thought, you get a symptom in your body. Think about the last time you did something that you werent feeling happy about. Didnt you feel it somewhere in your gut? You may have also experience d headaches, tight muscles, and many more types of symptoms. In fact, your body doesnt lie. If you have a thought and you are not sure about your emotions, focus on your body. Look in the mirror and see what kind of expression you have on your face. Your body will be giving you the feedback on what you are feeling with your emotions! Thats how poker players know when someone is lying! Theres a tell. Your body cant completely disguise your inner thoughts and emotions. Charles Darwin was one of the fi rst to identify the facial feedback loop. This theory says that your facial expressions and your body posture will expose your inner hidden thoughts and feelings. You can change your emotions by changing your body. Break into that three-part system and change any part of it and it will change the rest. For example, holding a pencil horizontally across your mouth so it forms a smile can change your emotions! A recent study showed that women who received Botox shots

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that paralyzed their frown muscle had a measurable improvement in their moods, until the shots wore off and they were able to frown again! So how does this relate to being overweight? Your body is expressing a problem through the excess pounds you put on. In more cases than you realize, your body is telling you the literal expression of your thoughts and emotions you are holding inside. The words you use to describe yourself, tell the story of your inner beliefs about yourself. I always used to say Im too much: too many interests; too much to do; too little time; too much weight. Have you heard or used these expressions: stuffing your feelings; eating your heart out; Im over the top; I think weighty thoughts; and of course, Im fat? Your body is the outward expression the em-body-ment of your thoughts and feelings.

SELF-TALK: YOUR CONSTANT INNER DIALOGUE

Even though you generally consider communication as conversation between you and another person, self-talk is an inner monologue. When you judge yourself harshly, constantly berate yourself, tell yourself you are unable, not worthy, and other negative judgments, those silent words have a profound effect on you. They create a stress. Negative self-talk is destructive of your self-esteem and confidence, and is even potentially harmful to your health. Imagine having a friend who constantly criticized you. You look terrible! Why did you say that? They probably will hate you. You know you cant do that! Youre not good enough. No one is able to accomplish that, why would you think you can ? How long would you keep this friend? Well, for many of us, that bad best friend is our own inner dialogue of negative self-talk. Any positive thought or feeling in our head is met with a reason why that thought or feeling is wrong. Why do we allow ourselves to continue this self-limiting talk? Conversely, how often has encouragement from a friend been the incentive youve needed to try and succeed at something new? Its time to become your own good best friend and jettison the habitual negative self-talk that is holding you back, lowering your self-esteem, and limiting your lifes choices. Whether you believe you can, or you believe you cant you are correct. ~Henry Ford

I CANT BELIEVE IT!

Have you ever said that statement to yourself? What you say becomes your reality. It has been estimated that people have approximately 70,000 thoughts during an average day. Is your attitude expressed with an ongoing inner dialog of negative self-talk and negative thinking? Is your glass half empty or half full? The way you view your life will determine your mood, your choices and your outcomes. Negative self-talk is self-limiting. If you tell yourself that you wont be successful, why should you attempt to try something new or different? If you have a negative attitude you will generally give less importance to a positive outcome, saying something like it was just dumb luck, rather than taking credit, being happy, and expecting that you actually have control of your life and its outcome.

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The way you speak about your physical health will also affect how you actually feel. If you use words such as I am or I have to describe a physical condition, it can change your brain patterns. Although subtle, I have a bad back is very different than my back is hurting. It is your li teral belief system of seeing your pain as a chronic condition in comparison to a temporary situation that can be healed.

WHAT TRIGGERED YOUR WEIGHT PROBLEM?

It is now clear that the path to becoming overweight is from a number of possible conditions that you couldnt controlgenetics, epigenetics, toxins in food or the environment, stress-related eating issues (from early childhood or a present situation), emotional eating, under-eating, or slow metabolism from the impact of stress. Its important to determine what event or experience triggered your body to become overweight, and that you can find the proper way to deal with the cause, rather than the result. In fact, that is the complaint most often described about the American Allopathic medical system. They treat the symptoms of a disease rather than the cause. To find your fat trigger, spend some quiet time recalling your history to determine whether there was a particular stressful event, or if there are other factors that precipitated your weight change. You might want to write about it in a journal, or even ask those close to you to recall events from your past. This is an important first step to resolving issues that are still affecting your present weight. After my mother divorced, she had to go out to work. She didnt have enough money for a babysitter, and my uncle offered to babysit for me. I was about five years old when he started touching me. Sexual abuse continued until I was eight years old. It finally stopped when my mom remarried, and I didnt have to go to my uncles for babysitting anymore. I became a fat child, and a fatter adolescent. No boys would ever approach me, and that was fine with me. ~M.S. Los Angeles, CA

ABUSE AND LACK OF SAFETY

Getting overweight can be a way to protect you from abuse. If you have been sexually, emotionally, or physically abused this causes a terrible trauma resulting in something like a continuous background noise of stress. It leaves a scar on your unconscious mind. You are subconsciously always on the alert for fight or flight. These memories can actually be suppressed until a triggering event brings them into your conscious mind. Your minds memories are stored in a way that makes events literal. Therefore your body could unconsciously have added fat to literally distance yourself from- or to make you unattractive to your abuser. Subconsciously, you could have put on the weight to protect your important organs from physical punishment. Maybe you unknowingly put on the weight to become thick-skinned from emotional words that injured you. These actions may have been your bodys attempt at self -protection in a literal fashion.

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The point is before you can lose weight, you must feel safe in your body. If you have a continuing issue with abuse, I strongly encourage you to seek professional help and get yourself to a place where you are safe. Until that is accomplished, the likelihood is that your weight will not budge.

NEED FOR SAFETY AND STRESS

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs is a concept in modern psychology which explains that in order to attain the highest levels of self-actualization and mental health you must first have basic needs of security and safety fulfilled. In other words, you first need to have food, shelter and community in order to have a healthy, productive, and happy life. Abuse, neglect and humiliation, even from the earliest times in your life, can leave a lasting impact on your brain that sabotages your ability to function on the highest possible levels. Blaming and being frustrated with your body sets off a reaction in your nervous system that informs your body that it isnt safe. Safety issues create the strongest and most immediate stress reaction in your body. When you dont feel safe consciously or subconsciously, your body shifts into defensive and stress-reaction mode. You may recall from Part One of this book, that stress reaction is one of the main culprits that add weight to your body.

EMOTIONAL EATING AS A SELF-MEDICATION FOR STRESS

Do you eat because of stress? Are you eating comfort foods to fill needs other than an empty belly? If yes, you are using food as the drug of choice. Some people use alcohol, prescription or illegal drugs, or medication. Others use television or even exercise! The first relationship you establish with another human is associated with food. As a newborn, when you feel pain from hunger and cry, a warm person comes and makes the pain go away with food. This has created a conditioned relationship that has developed between comfort, food, and love; there is even a phrase for it: comfort food. Thats the first and longest lasting conditioning in your life! It is difficult to break an association between food and feeling nurtured because of it. Emotional eating is a response, an attempt to soothe your own hurt feelings, just as your parent did for you when you were a baby. So now, when you are feeling unhappy, frustrated, angry, or stressed, you are nurturing yourself with food. Once you understand that eating food is an attempt at filling your empty heart, you can consciously make a decision to nurture yourself another way. Mindless, emotional eating doesnt solve the problem. And in fact, it can make your life worse w hen you end up feeling guilty for all the food you ate when you werent even hungry! Food has been used as a reward when you were good, and as punishment by withholding the food youve wanted. (You have to eat your vegetables before you have dessert). Perhaps youve been forced to sit at a table and clean your plate of food you didnt like, because children were starving in a poor country. If you had continued to eat like a two year old, then you would eat what you wanted, when you were hungry, and stop when you were full. If you were frustrated as a toddler, you wouldnt run to the refrigerator for food! You wouldnt sit and stuff macaroni and cheese into your mouth to relieve 32

frustration. Babies take care of their emotions another way--by having a temper tantrum, screaming, crying, or whatever. Thats the time when your body was working like it was designed to work. As an adult, you have the choice and ability to change that relationship with food. Are you ready to renormalize your relationship with food and your body?

FOOD CRAVING AND BINGING

A lifestyle change, the newest euphemism for a continuous diet that lasts a lifetime, is a very difficult one to maintain, especially in times of stress. If you believe a food is forbidden, it becomes something that you crave. In your mind, the lack of that particular food you love makes you a victim. Think of it this way: you never binge on broccoli. The reason is because you dont deprive yourself of eating vegetables. If you lose your inhibition after youve had a couple of drinks or are under the effect of stress, this potentially becomes the time of a binge. If you think ice cream is bad, you should literally fill your freezer and belly with it; eat it until it no longer has power over you and becomes neutral. You will be free of the dieting mentality when you can choose food because you desire it, it makes you feel good, and because you have a nourishing, loving relationship with yourself. Youll never, ever arrive there by diligently avoiding foods that you want and enjoy. Make a conscious point to actively enjoy every bite of the stuff that youve conditioned yourself to believe is forbidden fruit, with intense focus every time you decide to eat it. Eat it slowly and with gusto. Be happy and present. You deserve it! I used to feel that eating chocolate was off limits for me. Id eat it when no one was watching, and then chew it so quickly that I didnt even get a chance to enjoy the taste and the texture of the candy I wanted so much! I ended up eating a lot more than I would have if I had sat down, taken my time, and actually tasted the food I wanted so much. What good is eating a food when you dont even taste it?

I CANT STAND MYSELF THIS WAY I HATE MY BODY

Its hard to move out of self-judgment, the Ill like myself when syndrome. There are so many excuses for why you are unhappy with your body or yourself in some way. Part of the problem has been created by media, which has both a conscious and subconscious effect of making you unhappy with your body. If you lived in a time when being plump was considered attractive, you wouldnt be unhappy with your body. You might never have gone on a diet, and then you might never have gained additional excess weight! I know thats what made me overweight, and from countless women Ive spoken with, thats what happened to them as well. I was the primary caregiver for my elderly mother with dementia. I had young children at the same time, and felt like I had to choose who needed me more. Either way, I didnt feel like I was doing the right thing. And needless to say, there was no time left for me. My children would cry and plead for my attention, and my mothers needs were a constant demand. Id rush through my meals. I was always craving something sweet. ~M.A., Madison, WI My sleep was rarely deep enough for me to feel rested the next day. A couple of months after this began I noticed a lot of my hair was falling out when I washed it. I was cold all the time. 33

Around that time I noticed that my clothes were getting tight, but I didnt even have time to go and buy anything new! I felt totally miserable. - T.L. Ft. Lee,

ARE YOU ADDICTED TO DIETING?

What is addiction? Its a compulsion or a strong and harmful need to regularly have something (such as a drug) or do something (as in diet). Addiction is also described as an unusually great interest in something or a need to do or have something. Addiction is an attempt to relieve unhappiness or a stressful situation. Women who diet get sucked into a vicious cycle created by unhappiness with their body and the fear of being fat. Typically, they begin dieting to lose weight by eating less and sometimes include exercise. When and if a woman does reach her goal, she feels great. But the weight will slowly return over a period of time for 95% of dieters, just by her bodys natural response to weight loss. As the dieter notices her lost weight is coming slowly back, shes undoubtedly freaked out, and will jump back onto the diet again, restarting the cycle. Or, more often, after being worn out with the measuring, weighing, exercise, and missing her regular foods, she just modifies her diet a little, hoping all the weight wont come back. Maybe shell increase her exercise, hoping that an extra hour on the treadmill will stop the weight from returning. But she may become so frustrated, that she stops dieting altogether, resigned as her body slowly brings her back to her pre-diet weight set point. But actually, its worse than that, because after each diet, a small additional weight is added to the original set point. However, after a while, she cant stand her body again. Shes shamed by those who want to help her, or they make comments about her weight, so she goes into another new miracle diet, hoping this time it will be different. This goes on and on, as diet after diet fails to maintain the weight loss and even adds to her bottom line. At no time, does the woman suspect that the diet is at fault. Shes afraid to stop dieting. She cant stop dieting because shes afraid of what her life will be like if she doesnt lose weight.

THE FEAR OF GETTING FAT

Research and surveys are reporting that a huge percentage of women are terrified of gaining weight. They are obsessed with their scale. Their entire day is determined in the morning when they step on the scale and decide whether they are good or bad by a number. A Glamour Magazine poll discovered that 97% of their young women readers admitted to having an I hate my body moment each day. Another survey from the University of Central Florida said that nearly half of three to six year-old girls were already worried about being fat. A third of them said that they wanted to change something about their body! Standards for beauty in America have gotten worse and worse. At one point, actress Marilyn Monroe, size 14, was considered the epitome of beauty. But fast forward from that time, models and actresses have gotten thinner and thinner. The latest rage is encouraging women to be so thin that their upper 34

thighs dont touch, leaving a thigh gap. These models look like concentration camp survivors. Its become the most extreme body fixation yet! Compared to the Playboy centerfolds and Miss America winners from the 1950s, at least one-quarter of present-day icons meet the weight criteria for anorexia. Meanwhile, the average womans weight has increased. ~PsychCenter.com Women are essentially addicted to dieting and only eating certain foods that they deem low-calorie or low-fat. There is rarely a time when they are not watching what they eat. Women are terrified of stopping their restrictions, and just eating what they want, and eating to satiation. If I stop dieting, Ill turn into the Goodyear blimp, a past client assured me. I have worked with women in their forties, fifties, and sixties who cant remember a decade when they were not dieting. They cant recall a period of time long enough when they were either proud of their appearance, or not sufficiently concerned that they would get into the picture and not hide behind someone else. Many women refused to have their photo taken altogether! These women have also rarely chosen their clothes without considering what body part it would cover up in order to feel acceptable about themselves. Do you have clothes of many sizes, and from decades before when you were thinner? Are they are hanging in torture chambers, otherwise known as your clothes closet? This is one of the ways we punish ourselves.

BODY OBSESSION AND PERFECTIONISM

Are you a member of the group of women who are always dissatisfied with your body, your looks, and your weight? Do you decide whether this will be a day when you allow yourself to eat freely, or a day when the scale says it deprivation day? Obsession about your body appearance and weight begins early in life and continues for decades for women. Some people think being a perfectionist is a positive characteristic. Its really not. If your body has to be perfect, or just like the others, then you are going to have low self-esteem based upon that difference, because you will always find someone who has a better body than you. When you are a perfectionist, there is no gray area. Everything is either perfect or crap. The judgment that you make for yourself and about yourself can make you depressed. A client of mine described herself as a fat pig. Im so disgusting that I wont let my husband see me undressed. I undress in the closet, and come to bed with the lights off. When I asked her how much weight she thought she needed to lose, her answer was five pounds. Its been estimated that 80% of women are unhappy with their body. Sixty-five percent of women interviewed between the ages of 25 and 45 have partaken in eating-disorder behaviors, including taking laxatives, diuretics, diet pills, and even purging. Eating disorders actually affect more people that schizophrenia!

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Sixty-seven percent of women (excluding those with eating disorders) are always on a diet. Over a quarter of women said that would be extremely upset if they gained even five pounds! Many of these women skip meals to lose weight, which, you may now understand, actually creates the problem of yoyo dieting and upward spiraling of your weight! On a typical day 97% of women will have at least 13 negative body thoughts (nearly one every hour), and many women confess to having 35 to 100 hateful thoughts about their shapes each day. These are negative habitual thoughts that have created new neural networks in your brain, which make it more likely that you will have similar thoughts in the future. The habitual focus of your thoughts actually makes those thoughts become reality. It will affect your cravings, the way you metabolize your food, and even change your posture. Once your outward appearance reflects your inner turmoil, the world will start treating you in the way you see yourself. A vicious cycle is created. Overweight people are treated in society with disgust and derision, which then further lowers self-esteem and raises stress levels. Research has shown that women who obsess over their body and diet have chronically elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol, even when you are not feeling stress from other events in your life. This study was done among women who were in their twenties!

COMPARISON HURTS
If youre like most overweight women the issue is not about health, but about your sadness and shame about the weight of your body. Despite the proclamations of the media claiming that there is an obesity epidemic, you probably only notice slender and fit women to whom you compare yourself. Plus, you want, so much, to look like them. It hurts to compare yourself, and you want so desperately to be able to wear the same kind of clothes, attract the same kind of jealous looks from other women, and gain admiring male attention. But beating yourself up, starving yourself, or over-exercising, that is going to have the opposite effect. Did you hear that? Starving yourself and over-exercising is going to make you gain weight (eventually), and change your body metabolism quickly, in a way that will be incredibly difficult to repair. If tomorrow, women woke up and decided they really liked their bodies, just think how many industries would go out of business. ~Dr. Gail Dines The choice is yours. By needing to look like those women you are requiring yourself to remain on a path of constant vigilance and focus: every meal, every day of your life will be focused on your food intake and exercise level in order to attain the standard of beauty that is now revered by our society. And even if you say its worth it to look thin, and youre willing to do whatever it takes: there is no guarantee that you will be successful! Remember, 95% of dieters fail to maintain the weight loss, not because of lack of effort, but because it is a healthy, natural response of your body to rebound your weight. You are literally fighting a losing battle!

LOW SELF ESTEEM TRIGGERS DIETING

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When the layers of the onion are pulled back, it becomes clear that the issue of weight loss is about selfesteem. You are comparing yourself to an accepted standard of beauty, and feel you dont reach it. But part of you still believes that if you were thinner, you would be beautiful like themor at least closer to being beautiful. Sure, its easy to color your hair, and, albeit expensive, go for plastic surgery to change your nose. But losing weight doesnt work that easily. Self-disgust and shame have been major contributing factors as to how your body got to the way it is, and why you began to diet in the first place. You are now aware that there are many factors-- genetics, abuse, and neglect in your early lifethat may have contributed to your weight gain and are out of your control. A baby is never embarrassed by her body, and learns gradually from those around her there are non-acceptable behaviors, such as its not polite to burp or fart in front of others. You learned that you should be one way, and if you are not that certain way, you may be one of those who work very hard to reach those proper standards. But if you believed in yourself, your self-worth, and your other abilities and talents, that may have been enough to prevent you from falling into this plot to make your body like others as expressed in the media. Thats one of the major contributing factors as to why girls begin dieting and the yo -yo cycle of weight gain ensues. Ground zero that creates overweight is when your self-esteem has not been strong enough to realize that you are all right the way you are. You dont have to fit into the standard sizes and the one size fits all appearance of everyone else. It is stressful to have low self-esteem, and not believe that you are good enough just the way you are. You are valuable, loveable, and acceptable the way you are: whether you have five pounds or fivehundred pounds of extra weight on your body. Would Oprah be any more popular if she was thin? Until you can move past the stress of self-denunciation and start accepting yourself right now despite how much you weigh, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to lose weight and maintain it. Because you didnt get overweight from overeating, you got overweight from stress that either caused you to overeat, to under-eat, or just slowed down your metabolism. Your weight is a symptom that shows there was a problem that caused you to alter your normal eating patterns. Trying to lose weight without addressing the cause of your weight gain will be a temporary fix, if it works at all. Attempting to lose weight without managing the stress that caused an alteration in your eating patterns, is not going to get rid of your continuing problem with stress. As long as unmanaged stress continues, your body will find another way to express your negative emotions. You may develop heartburn, digestive problems, headaches, high blood pressure. Its almost like a balloon filled with air. If you squeeze it in one spot, another spot will expand out of proportion.

THE LAW OF ATTRACTION & BEING OVERWEIGHT

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You must learn to accept, and even be grateful for, the body you have. The things that you resist in life persist. That is the Law of Attraction (LOA). Whether or not you believe in it, the Law of Attraction is always working. When I was a Behavioral Therapist at Canyon Ranch Health Resort, I used to do an experiment in my talks with the guests. Knowing they were high achievers, I would give them a challenge. "Look around the room for fifteen seconds, and try to remember everything in the room that has the color red in it. People stood up, focused intently on every item they could see. "Ok, Id say. Now close your eyes, and let that set in your memory for a few seconds." And then came my trick. "Now tell me everything that was BLUE". The moans and groans were loud. Few people could remember anything that was blue; they were totally focused on red.

YOUR MINDS FOCUS CAN CHANGE YOUR PHYSIOLOGY

When you have a negative focus on your body weight, whether you realize it or not, you are actually using the Law of Attraction. You are focused on your dissatisfaction with your body, and dislike the extra weight; avoidingor trying to avoid foods you love, or eating foods you may not even like - just to make you lose weight. That is being negative in focus. And the things you resist in your mind become a habitual thought pattern. I cant have this; Im punishing myself; Im no good the way I am. These continuous thoughts and feelings become a negative pattern that informs your subconscious mind that your body is being attacked. Your subconscious mind thinks its not safe and reacts with the stress response. Your focus and mindset are sabotaging efforts to lose weight! Louise Hay has helped people transform their lives by teaching the body is a mirror of our inner thoughts and beliefs. Well-respected Spiritual teachers, Psychologists and Medical Doctors such as Dr. Joan Borysenko, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Caroline Myss, Dr. Bernie Siegel, Greg Braden, and so many others teach the lessons of how our emotions affect our health as well. Candace Pert, Ph.D., concludes that your body IS your subconscious mind! To heal the body, you must heal your relationship with your mindset and emotions; they are an interdependent system. Time and gravity will have its effect on your body; however, your soul is constant. Consider and ponder these few questions in relationship to your beliefs. Perhaps youd l ike take time to write down and explain your answers to clarify your thoughts for yourself. Would you be a different person if you did have the body of your desire? Why is that so important to you? Who is your harshest judge?

Do you fear what others say about your appearance? Do you feel unworthy of love because you are overweight? How do you imagine yourself as an older person?

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Would you rather die a young beautiful person than grow unattractive from the effects of aging? Are you willing to focus on maintaining a youthful appearance as your main objective in your life? Is there anything outside of your YOUniverse that has meaning and could be more important than focusing on your appearance? What are your special, unique talents and passions? How do you feel when you share those passions? How do you feel when you help others?

THE FLAWED SPIRITUALITY OF HATING YOUR BODY

Do you consider yourself to be a spiritual or religious person? Is it possible to be spiritual and hate your own body? No, you cant. How can hold reverence for all things, and leave your body out of this group? If you believe in God, do you believe that God made a mistake with your body? Self-acceptance and self-love must be present in order to feel love and acceptance of others. You cant give away something you dont have. Do you choose only to accept others based upon their physical appearance? Do you devalue and negatively judge others whose bodies may be overweight? If you are judgmental of others, thats how you are also judging yourself. You are committing yourself to a life of unhappiness by dividing the world into right and wrong, black and white, perfection and rejection.

YOU ARE YOUR BODY, AND SO MUCH MORE THAN SIMPLY, YOUR BODY.
Marianne Williamson, in her book A Course in Weight Loss, explains that the true causal root of weight issues is the result of forgetting your divine perfection. The healing comes with shifting your relationship with yourself and your body from fear to one of love. In her book, If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules, Cherie Carter-Scott illuminates the importance of accepting your body. Indeed, it is the Number One Rule in her book. You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth. She goes on to explain how the real you is stored inside your body with all of the emotions and beliefs that make you the unique person you are. It is important, since you cant trade it in, to learn to transform you relationship with your body into a beloved partner and lifelong ally. Why hold yourself to an unattainable standard that is the temporary judgment of beauty in todays society? What experiences have you held yourself back from trying because of you are selfconsciousness and fear criticism? Yes, there are methods to change what you believe is your too big nose, and too small breasts. But many women who do the surgery then find another all-too something that must be changed for them to accept themselves.

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NOT TO WORRY: HEALTH CONCERNS ARE NOT THE ISSUE

Is one of your concerns about being overweight because of your health, or is your slim doctor chastising you? Well, the jury is out on this actual claim. Weight related health issues are probably more correlated to how much extra weight you are carrying. Yes, it can be hard on your knees and lower back when you have excessive belly fat. But do you really have excessive (morbidly obese) weight or are you trying to lose fifteen, twenty, or fifty pounds? In Linda Bacons book Health At Every Size, she dispels the common wisdom that overweight people are sicker. Using statistics from government sources she shows that in many cases overweight people are actually healthier than their underweight counterparts! The claims by the diet and medical industries, and as well as the Federal Government, that obesity causes disease, have not been substantiated by scientific findings. The idea that weight plays a large causal role in disease is unproven! Yes, it has been implicated in some diseases, such as osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, and a few cancers. However, there is no evidence that supports the claims that FIT overweight people are unhealthier than FIT lean people. In addition, and on the other hand, there are several diseases and conditions where higher levels of body fat are actually an advantagelonger life expectancy, for one! Never before in American history has so much junk science been exploited to whip up hysteria about a supposed health epidemic. The health establishments constant barrage of scientifically baseless propaganda regarding the relationship between weight and health constitutes nothing less than egregious abuse of the public trust. This propaganda has played a key role in creating a culture that make tens of millions of people miserable about their bodies: Worse yet, it has done so for crass economic motives. The war on fat, which is supposedly about making all of us healthy, is really about make some of us rich. ~Paul Campos, The Obesity Myth Extensive evidence documents that attempts at dieting typically results in weight cycling, not maintained weight loss.. Treating cosmetic weight loss as if it were a medical and moral issue tends to make people both considerably fatter and a good deal unhappier than they would otherwise be.. Certain aspects of the medical literature are suggestive, in particular studies that indicate weight cycling (also known as yo-yo dieting) is a major factor in the development of clogged arteries, congestive heart failure, hypertension, and other serious health problems. ~Laura Fraser, Losing It Health claims aside, there are those of you who read this who will still reject these findings that explain that dieting will actually be worse that just maintaining your weight. You may say, I STILL want to lose weight. Yes, I still want to be taller, or have perfect eyesight without glasses, but Ive come to realize that no matter how much I want those things, they are not possible in this lifetime. Will being thin make you a better person? Will it make you happier to have a thin, sexy body? It will mean that a major focus of your limited time on earth must be spent beating your body into submission through hours of intense exercise, and avoiding the foods you love FOREVER. Thats choosing to live in the Diet Prison, isnt it? Do you want to lock yourself in there just so you can look good until you

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discover that even that isnt enough? Youre getting older; your skin isnt as tight as it was. Now its time for plastic surgery. At this point, you must seriously look into your heart and make a determination about who you are, and the way you value yourself. If being thin means subtracting 10 years from life, is it still your priority? If your goal is TRULY to increase your health, that can be achieved by moving your body out of a chair more often, and walking around or stretching. If you are spending 23 1/2 hours a day either sitting, or laying down, just getting out of your chair will be a significant change and improvement in your level of fitness! To further improve upon that, taking a short walk in the sunshine (increased Vitamin D from the effect of the sun) will lower your blood pressure (from the effect of walking in nature mindfully), and you are on your way to improved health. At this point, weight loss can possibly be achieved unintentionally as the by-product of self-care. However, despite the facts, the public relies on common wisdom when it makes overweight people feel afraid that they are going to die unless they diet. Those fearful feelings in overweight people create a stress reaction (lack of safety), and forces people to believe they need to be on a diet. Dieting creates stress, and sabotages their health. Then if they do get sick, they blame it on being overweight, instead of the stress! The fact remains, that people eat for many reasons other than hunger, but in many cases they boil down to one thingstress. In women it looks like this: Being negatively self-judgmental, expecting perfection, hating your body, being self-punitive. You are trying to be something that you are not. You have been manipulated to believe that women can never be too thin or too rich (see what that did for Whitney Houston!). When you compare yourself to the images that the media have made, you come up as too short, too tall, too heavy, too much, or too little. Your self-esteem has been damaged and distorted by un-natural and un-realistic standards of what a womans body should look like to be attractive to men. For many women, there was a time in your life when your self-esteem was damaged and it affected your self-image. Perhaps it was criticism, teasing, or put-downs from your family, peers, and school-mates. Perhaps there was abuseemotional, physical, or sexual in your life. These issues alone can change your emotional landscape; destroy your sense of safety, and self-esteem. It creates a chronic background noise of stress, which affects your physical, mental, and emotional health.

YOUR CHOICE:
Do you want your life to be focused around food? Do you want your life to be centered on your YOUniverse and the shallow focus of your appearance? Do you want your life and behavior to revolve around the fear of potential judgment of others? Instead, your choice can be to focus on who you truly are, discovering your gifts and talents, finding the purpose of why you are here on this planet, and what you can offer to others. Im not saying to stop

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taking care of your appearance and caring about your body, but there is a lot more to life than simply what you look like.

PART FOUR: HOW CAN YOU BREAK OUT OF DIET PRISON?

These events have created a nation of overweight and stressed-out people who hate and feel betrayed by their bodies. It doesnt have to be this way. Your body is doing just what its supposed to do when it doesnt have adequate nutrition, when it is being fed toxins, or is under continuous stress. So, stop blaming your body, your lack of will (or wont) power. Empower yourself by learning about what you need to be healthy and happy. If stress is the culprit of overweight, how can cutting back on food (a diet) solve your weight problem? It cant!

DO YOU FEEL SAFE? ENERGY PSYCHOLOGY TO THE RESCUE

As you learned, the emotion that sets off the stress response most intensely and immediately is the lack of safety. Your brain automatically shifts into protective fight or flight, releasing cortisol when you perceive your safety is at risk. This begins the cascading effects in your body that affect your health and weight. Belly fat is one symptom of the stress response. If your stress is in the present or the result of a childhood where you were abused, neglected or humiliated, that feeling of a lack of safety persists in your subconscious mind. It will be imperative to unblock those feelings to convince your body that you are right now, here and in the present time, safe. Thankfully, new Energy Psychology methods that seem almost miraculous have been discovered and are being used very successfully to break through safety issues. They can help you break through those unconscious and hidden beliefs that are keeping your body responding to old wounds and fears. They are presently being used with returning Veterans and others suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Remarkably, these new techniques work much faster than simply talk psychotherapy, and have been proven to have very effective and long lasting effects. EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprogramming, a tool that must be done with a trained therapist. Mindfulness or Meditation: Is another powerful, but self-administered practice that can help you to focus on the present, and clear the fear and negative emotions that are instigating the stress response in your body. YogaThe Best Stress Exercise: Yoga combines slow physical movement with focused attention on the breath; is a moving meditation.

EFT: MERIDIAN TAPPING

There is one more powerful and essential tool, known as EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), also referred to as Meridian Tapping, or just simply Tapping. EFT is an effective tool to breakthrough destructive habitual thoughts and the emotions that are interwoven with those beliefs. The continued 42

pattern of self-defeating thoughts and negative emotions you experience, create neural pathways in your brain, and throughout the energy paths of your body. These beliefs can be from your distant past, all the way up to your present life. First discovered by Chinese medicine over 2,200 years ago, doctors inserted tiny acupuncture needles into these meridian points to block pain and cure disease. It is believed that the needles open the blocked energy paths. Acupuncture has even been used as anesthesia for open-heart surgery in China! EFT, instead of using needles, uses gentle tapping by your fingers on specific energy meridians. Western medical practitioners have taken a much longer time to recognize that there are electric and magnetic fields that run through our body and are affected by thoughts and emotions. They now accept that the nervous system is made up of a network of neurons which transmit information in the form of electrical signals. These neurons are responsible for all information that controls the bodys internal functions, including muscle movement and even thinking. Chinese medicine and EFT treats the result of habitual negative thoughts that create energy blockages in the meridians. The energy blockage is almost like a kinked hose that keeps water from flowing through it. By using EFT instead of needles, similar results can be achieved by tapping gently on these points. It unkinks the flow and allows the energy to move freely again. Frequently, just from Tapping, negative emotions ease or completely disappear, and the pain or behavior that is associated with the emotion also evaporates! One of the best parts about Tapping is that you can do it to yourself, anytime, anywhere. EFT is so amazing that most people think its like hypnotizing yourself, or fooling you in some way. Someone actually asked when I performed EFT on them, Did you hypnotize me? But it doesnt work that way. In fact, EFT has been used on animals, which are known not to respond to hypnosis. EFT also works with children as well. At the beginning of any new technique or invention, there are detractors and skeptics who insist the innovation is useless. Theres no reason for individuals to have computers in their homes. ~Ken Olsen, President, Digital Equipment (1977) Airplanes are interesting toys... no military value. ~Marshall Foch (1911) The telephone is amazing, but who would want to use one? ~Rutherford Hayes, US President (1876) I believe that EFT Meridian Tapping is as important as those innovations. What if you had a tool that could banish your fear-based thoughts, guilt, anger, and other negative emotions? What if EFT could release your subconscious issues that may have triggered your weight gain? What if EFT could help you to deal with stress in the present time? Give it a try, and see for yourself! I also suggest you watch the documentary movie, The Tapping Solution, which depicts how EFT works. Youll see some spectacular and long-term dis-ease and pain reversals that Tapping has achieved. 43

For people who are weight-challenged, new feelings to establish acceptance and love of yourself and your body are imperative. You must be able to banish negative feelings from past abuse, neglect, or humiliation, that have made you feel unsafe. For those people who are overweight, they are punishing themselves by constantly withholding food (dieting) and hating their bodies for still being fat, even though they dont eat! For others, binging on comfort food is being used as an attempt to make you feel better. Either way, you wont lose weight and keep it off until you mend that broken relationship you have with yourself! Remember, overweight is the symptom, stress is the cause. Tapping is a great solution for stress.

TAPPING INSTRUCTIONS
Tap each spot, on either or both sides of the body with the tips of two or three fingers, approximately seven times. Tap firmly, but not hard. These meridians points could feel somewhat sensitive to the touch. If that happens, this may indicate you are tapping on a blocked meridian that needs to be cleared. If you miss a spot in order, you can go back out of order. EFT is gentle and forgiving. Dont worry about using the right words. The thing you want most is to experience the emotional feeling while youre tapping. Stay focused and mindful.

SUDS Rating
Begin with a set-up statement, which is verbalizing the specific issue you want to relieve. Then write down the name of the emotion and the number that corresponds to the level of intensity of that emotion you are experiencing. This is called the SUDs Rating Subjective Unit of Distress. The intensity is determined by rating your level from zero to ten, with zero as no feeling; 1 is the least feeling; and 10 the most intense feeling. It doesnt have to be exactjust write down close to what you are feeling. You will refer to the rating later to determine your level of improvement. EFT can work well by doing it yourself; however, some people need to work with a professional or a friend the first few times until they are comfortable in the process. For others, Tapping can be like trying to tickle yourself you just cant do it. Regardless, EFT works tremendously well for most people, even when self -administered. The Tapping spot where I prefer to start is called the Sore Spot the left side of your chest, near the heart; rub, rather than tap. A lot of people suggest you start on the Karate Chop areaits the area where you would hit a block of wood if you were trying to break it using the side of your hand. Either spot can be effective. Test and see what works best for you. Whichever spot you choose to begin, this is where you will start with the set-up statement which focuses on ONE emotion at a time. This is the issue you will start working on. IMPORTANT POINT: You must allow yourself to experience the emotion and not think or worry about how it looks. This is the way to release it. You wont have the same response if you are only thinking about the issue. Although Tapping can be done for many issues in a short sequence, I want to prepare you by showing you another, more in depth process. This is a 3 part Tapping Series. It sounds like a lot, but its easy and very effective.

Part 1 is tapping out the negative

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Continue Tapping on that specific emotion until its down to a SUDs of 1-2. Its probably best to follow the chart and go through tapping before we start with the statement below. The two spots that are a little tricky to find are the sore spots (dont worry; these spots are actually sore for everyone.), and are located on your chest (near your heart), and under your arm (under your armpit, about even to where your nipple line is). Push around with your thumb until you identify exactly where it is. Then youll be prepared when we start Tapping. Look at the illustration abov e to identify the tapping points. KC (Karate Chop) or Sore Spot (1): (insert the feeling that you are experiencing). Im so sad about how I look. (2nd time)- Im so unhappy about my looks (3rd time) Im so desperately sad that Ive gained so much weight. Write down your SUDS Name of Emotion __________ and Level ______ Start the Tapping short sequence: Tap 7 times in each area, and focus on your feeling; the feeling we are dealing with here is sadness. EB (Eye Brow) (2): Im so sad when I see my big belly. SE (Side of the Eye) (3): I cant wear my jeans, and Im so sad. UE (Under Eye) (4): I have three sets of clothes in different sizes because of my weight, and that makes me so sad. UN (Under Nose) (5): No matter what I do, I cant make my body stay at my ideal weight. CH (Chin)(6): Im so sad that when I look at myself, and compare myself to others, I want to cry. CB (Collar Bone) (7): I dont want to go out and have people see me like this, Im so sad. UA (Under Arm) (8): I dont know what to do to help myself, and Im sad that I ever got this way. TH (Top of the Head) (9): I wish I could eat like other people, instead of always being on a diet and feeling sad about my life. Even though I feel this way, I choose to love, accept, and forgive myself. Now take a deep breath in, and exhale slowly through your nose, taking almost twice as long to let the breath out. How do you feel? Whats your SUDs level now? Did it go down? Even a little change is a good sign. Dont expect to be at a zero after just one round of tapping. It generally takes a few tapping series to get all the way down to 1 or 0. If its not at 0, did your emotion change? If not, repeat this sequence with the same emotion (sadness). If it has changed, what is it now? Dont move on with another emotion unless it has moved down to at least a 1-2. 45

Part 2 is tapping with a positive view

You may not yet feel positive about yourself, but you can use the word, CHOOSE to help you get to that point. That way you wont feel like you are lying. EB(2): If I stop dieting and depriving myself, my body will recover from the stress. I choose to believe that its not my fault. SE(3): Even though Ive been blaming myself, and feeling guilty about gaining weight, I choose to love and accept myself the way I am. UE(4): Even though I know I cant lose weight fast and keep it off, I choose to love and accept myself the way I am. EN(5): Even though I think that people are blaming me, and making me feel ugly, instead I choose to love and accept myself the way I am. CH(6): Even though Ive been blaming myself for my weight issue, I know now that it wasnt my fault; and I choose to love, accept and forgive myself. CB(7): Even though it may take time to get to the weight I want, I choose to love and accept myself. UA(8): Im so happy that I wont have to starve myself or diet anymore, and I choose to love and accept myself the way I am. TH(9): I am feeling so positive now, because I am now on the path to my healthy weight and mindset, and I choose to love and accept myself and forgive myself.

PART 3- Alternating Negative & Positive Statement

Tapping with this plan starts with a negative statement and ends making a positive one. EB(2): What if this plan doesnt work? SE(3): I choose to be open and see if I can just ignore my weight and be happy now. UE(4): What if it takes a really long time? EN(5): I know that when I eat mindfully when Im hungry and stop when Im full, my body will respond the way its meant to. CH(6): But part of me is worried that I cant stop dieting. CB(7): In my heart, I know this is the right way, and the answer to my weight issues. UA(8): Im afraid that Ill go back to mindless eating. TH(9): I know that I will feel comfortable and able to eat for my pleasure and health, and my weight will no longer be an issue.

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Now, take a slow breath, in and out through your nose only. Slowly, consider the level of your emotion at this time. Check your SUDs level and write it down to see the change, so you can actually see whats happened! I know that youve come down in your intensity of feeling. Dont stop until youve come down to a one or a two. Oftentimes when you are Tapping, you will find that your emotion changes. At first you might feel sad, and then the emotion changes to frustration. Very often, Tapping on one issue or emotion can clear others. One of the most amazing things that I have found with Tapping is that during the process, sometimes an intuitive belief arises. Its difficult to describe, but sometimes a knowing bubbles up into my consciousness. It can be a profound, new discovery of a hidden belief that has now surfaced. Its pretty amazing when that happens! I know that EFT seems like a magic tool, but dont expect that it is going to completely work after one set of tapping (although it does for some people!). You may have to do it for an hour or over length of time; but if thats how long you must do it, then do it, and youll see how powerful this EFT Tapping technique is with releasing emotional and physical pain and stress. As you have learned, weight issues are most frequently the result of stress. Now you have a way of dealing with stress, as long as you remember to use it!

EMOTIONAL EATING
Awareness is the first step towards fixing any problem. If you find yourself grabbing for comfort food, you have the opportunity to use this is as a cue for self-understanding. There is a short opportunity before you start eating when you can actually stop yourself to assess the situation and deal with it effectively. But if you let this opportunity go by, it will be a lot harder to stop yourself in the middle of eating. Think about a roller coaster moving towards the peak. Before you start that sheer drop, you can pause, and prevent yourself from falling! When you find yourself wanting comfort food, ask yourself a question, Am I hungry? If not, then ask yourself, What emotion am I feeling, or whats bothering me? No matter how disciplined you are, if you grab for comfort food and eat it mindlessly, you will be caught in a cycle of deprivation and binging. That means you are out of balance. But the wonderful thing is, you can eat that comfort food, and make it a nurturing and a stress relieving activity! Thats like having your cake and eating it! Much of the time, emotional or stress-eating is your way of comforting yourself with food; just as your parent had done for you when you were a baby. But now, you are trying to deal with present day emotions, such as: Anger, Frustration and Boredom Loneliness Anxiety Sadness or anything else 47

Once you name the feeling, you have power over it. Find a better way to dispel those feelings other than eating, which will do nothing to actually make you feel better! Write a note to the person with whom you are angry (you dont have to send it), take a walk, call a friend, read a joke book figure out what will work to address the real problem. And then you can feel better afterwards because you dealt with your problem in a better way; and you didnt overeat mindlessly! Now that you know how to use EFT, you can tap whenever you are feeling stressed. As you learned, stress eating is one of the ways that people eat extra food when they are not hungry. Name the feeling is it boredom, anger, frustration? Name the intensity (SUDs), and tap. Dont worry if youre not saying the right words, if you left out a tapping point, or anything else. Just tap, and focus on your feeling; and remember the last tapping words are, I choose to love, accept and forgive myself (and my body).

INTENTIONAL, MINDFUL EATING AS STRESS RELIEF

Most of these types of eating plans are called Intuitive eating. I call mine Intentional eating. That means theres a goal to use eating as a stress relief and self-nurturing activity. Yes, part of it is intuitive: listening to your bodys inner wisdom. But it starts with the goal of joy and health. When you think about it, you used to see food as the enemy. Now you see eating food as the solution to your weight issue. Its almost a paradox. You can use mindful eating of food you love to restore your health and happy weight. Once you start using food to truly nurture yourself, you are rejecting a diet mentality and breaking out of your self-imposed diet prison. Break through and dismiss fear about gaining weight (EFT) Affirm your right to nurture yourself and eat Re-establish a connection with your hunger; pay attention to your stomachs messages of hunger/satiation Stop skipping meals Eat what you desire, not what you should eat Avoid only the foods you dont like, or to which you are allergic

Follow the guidelines for eating Use the time for eating as relaxing and restorativean eating meditation! Focus on the appreciation of the food, and all the people who had a part in bringing it to you the interdependent web of life. Feel gratitude for your life. Gratitude is the antidote to stress

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FOOD AS A METAPHOR
Its been said that you are what you eat; but I think its even more than that. You are how you eat! And its also been said that the way you do one thing is the way you do all things. This is an interesting concept, and it would be good for you to think about this statement and see if it applies in your life. Is the way you eat the way you do everything in your life? Over doing it; taking too much or taking too little; grabbing whats fast or easy (convenience foods), instead of taking your time and doing it right? Because most of us in the U.S. eat at least three times per day, you have plenty of opportunity to observe and see how you eat. The way you eat can be a metaphor for how you live the rest of your life. Then you can ask yourself, Am I happy with how Im living my life?

How is that working for you?

The great thing about being human is we have free choice. The first step in changing anything, as stated earlier is awareness; begin by observing your eating behavior. Most of the things that you do in life are almost habitual, without thought. In fact, most often your mind is wandering while doing your regular activities. Unless you are intently concentrating, your mind flits in and out of attention to what you are doing. If you eat meals with others, you are probably listening to the conversation, thinking about what you have to do later, tasting your food, and then going back to other thoughts. Eating for most is a habit, rather than a conscious activity.

THINGS TO LOOK FOR IN YOUR EATING HABITS

Are you a fast eater? Do you multi-task while eating? Do you feel compelled to eat everything thats on your plate? Do you cut up your food and eat it methodically? How do you know when youve had enough? Are you consciously trying to limit the amount of food you eat? Do you cook or bring in food? Do you prepare different foods for yourself and avoid eating certain foods that others are eating (in your family setting) Do you plan and decide what you want to eat ahead of time? Are you always thinking about food? Do you notice how you feel after you eat? 49

Do you choose to eat organic food or whatever is least expensive? What is your favorite type of food? Do you just grab whatever is available if youre hungry? Do you eat by the clock? Do you rush through your meal? Do you eat everything on your plate? Are you a picky eater? (Are there foods you dont like, or wont even try?) Do you eat by philosophy? (Are you a vegetarian, dont want to eat meat?) Are you a self-depriver? You are disciplined and dont give in to eating treats. You are afraid to allow yourself to eat anything you want. Are you a binger? When theres something good, you just cant stop? Do you live to eat? (the opposite of eating to live) You LOVE eating? Your life revolves around food. Are you mindful during your meals?

EATING GUIDELINES
One of the most powerful tools for change is having rules or a guide, where you know what you are going to do. This eating guideline will help you normalize your relationship with food. These rules work perfectly when you use them happily, not as a punishment for being overweight. Its intended to help you re-establish the joy in eating by doing it mindfully. You deserve to enjoy your food. Thats why you have taste buds! Intentional Mindful eating is just that. Here are guidelines to do this practice.

The RULES
1. Eat when you are hungry. Be aware of why you are eating. Ask yourself a question before you eat, What am I feeling? Am I hungry? If Im not hungry, what am I feeling ? Bored, tired, sad, angry, etc? Identify your stress trigger that starts your emotional eating. By naming it you develop control over it! Find an alternative stress relieving method to take away its power. Take a breath, take a walk, read a joke book, stretch, call a friend TAP, do whatever gives you space and time away from the stressor so you can take control back.

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If you have been routinely skipping meals, you may have to entice yourself by thinking: What would I love to eat right now? I know that breakfast is a meal than many people skip. Youre in a rush, and maybe you dont feel hungry. And here I am telling you to eat when youre not hungry. But if you have been on a chronic diet, or have not been eating enough for a long time, its almost as if your stomach has shrunk. You may have to teach yourself to feel hungry again! This is the time I encourage you to break Rule #1. You may have to force yourself to eat in the morning. Eventually, with practice, you will develop hunger in the morning. You dont have to stuff yourself. But you need to break the fast. You literally are on a fast from the last time you ate before you went to sleep. Thats a long time for your body to be without food, and that can create a chronic stress response, in being chronically starving. If youve been skipping breakfast, and start eating it regularly, you may notice that you are more clear headed in the am. Your concentration improves, and you feel more relaxed as well. 2. Eat sitting down (but not in the car; make an enjoyable spot for yourself to enjoy your meal). Light candles in the evening. Make it like you were dating yourself! 3. Eat without distractions (no TV, newspaper, magazine, no talking on the phone, texting). There are Mindful Retreats when, during eating, you must be silent; not even make eye contact with others! You dont have to go that far, but make sure you are focused on tasting your food. 4. Eat what your body wants, mindfully. Digestion actually begins in your brain. First you have to think about what you desire to eat. Then your mouth starts salivating, like Pavlovs famous dogs. If you are eating something that you should eat, because its healthy, but you dont really love it, you will not digest it properly; you can get stomach-aches or even become constipated. If your body wants something that is not good for you (such as diet soda), its important for you to consider what are you feeling about yourself at that moment (and in addition, its probably that diet mentality slipping in). This is a time when I encourage you to not eat what is harmful to your health. There are very few things that I put in this category; however, anything with Aspartame is bad for you. Common knowledge now is that sugar is evil and must be avoided at all costs. However, there is very limited evidence that sugar and carbs are bad for you, that eating them makes you fat, that not eating them makes you lose weight, or that eating carbs is bad for Diabetes and other diseases. I have read enough to realize that this is yet another Diet Myth. However, because Im not a nutritionist, this is not my area of expertise. I encourage you to read the work of Matt Stone, from 180Degree Health. His is an independent health researcher and makes very convincing arguments that dispute much of the common wisdom. Matt still has very reasonably priced coaching sessions, and I completely trust his advice. 5. Eat until you are satisfied. You must check in with your stomach. It can take up to twenty minutes for your stomach to finally give you the message Im full. So dont rush through your meal. Make sure you are chewing slowly. Put your fork down between bites and see if youve had enough. Take your time eating; dont rush. Its not a race!

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6. Eat fearlessly. Focus on your new understanding that eating will not get you fat; stress will. Fear sets off the feeling of not being safe. If you start worrying about limiting your food intake because you dont want to be fat, that is the result of fear. Remember, trust your body to tell you when youve eaten enough. Eating what your body desires until you are full is not going to make you fat. But stressing about it will! 7. Eat slowly, with enjoyment, pleasure, and gusto. Learn and practice how to really experience your food. Use all your senses to slowly evaluate the food as if this was the first time you were eating it, and you were from another planet! Make sure you do this practice slowly:

Smell it Look at it Taste it (where on your tongue do you taste it- describe the taste) Notice the texture Note what you enjoy about it Count the times you chew it before it is ready to be swallowed; notice how fast you are chewing. (when I paid attention, I realized that I was chewing really fast- now I mindfully slow down my pace).

This is what being mindful is about! Consider the food while you are eating it as if you had to write a 500-word term paper about it! Slowly is probably the most important aspect. In fact, its a life lesson: If its worth doing, its worth doing slowly. When you have to break down the steps and do something slowly, it becomes intentional, deliberate, mindful, and relaxing. Your experience is new every time when you do it slowly and well. Dont rush through your meals or through your life! 8. Give yourself permission to break the Rules. Perfectionism is a standard that prevents you from having the flexibility to consider and fulfill your present needs. Being perfect doesnt serve you, and is self-limiting. These guidelines work perfectly when you use them and when you understand what they mean and implement them. They are intended to get you to be mindful of eating. In the beginning, it may be difficult for you to turn off all distractions and focus on your food. It will also be difficult for you to stop dieting and being worried about everything you are eating. You may resist eating until you are full.

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These mindful techniques have been very successful with both helping women normalize their eating behaviors, re-establish a normal relationship with food, and to relax and start feeling comfortable and not guilty about eating.

STRESS RELIEF - MOST EFFECTIVE METHODS

Youve learned that the probability you became overweight is the result of stress in your life. Overcoming stress must become your priority, not just something you do once in a while, or when the stress is really extreme. Practicing stress relief when things are not bad will make it much more effective when you are dealing with a real life situation. And a scheduled program of stress relief practice will also make you more resilient. That means the smaller and less impactful stressful situations may not bother you much, or at all! If you say you dont have time for stress relief, do it twice! Many women forget to put themselves on their own priority list. Everyone elses needs come first, and if theres time left over, you might allow yourself a little time off. This practice has got to stop if you want to really have an impact on stress in your life, and make positive changes to your health and weight. Remember the wise words of the cabin attendant in your last flight: In an emergency, put on your own oxygen mask first, and then help others. Multi-tasking, trying to fit too many activities into a reduced amount of time is probably one of the greatest causes of stress in modern life. The most common answer to How are you? has become Busy. Your brain doesn't work effectively when you are multi-tasking. When you multi-task, you lower the quality of every activity you are doing. Research shows that multi-tasking increases stress, diminishes perceived control, and may cause physical discomfort such as stomachaches or headaches. Mindful eating is a wonderful practice that you have time for every time you eat! Scheduling time in your day for a walk is an important stress relieving activity. Walking, not jogging has many positive effects. It gets you out of a chair and gives you a break from your work. It clears your mind and increases circulation. Walking in a place where you see nature can also lower your blood pressure. You dont have to walk fast either; even a slow, mindful walk can lower your stress level.

YOGA: THE PERFECT STRESS RELIEF

People think of Yoga as exercise, but it is so much more. Its a whole-body stress-and-tension relief, and exercise combined. It is the perfect Mind/Body stress relief. I even call it stressercise. You can benefit from any level of proficiency. You dont have to go outside in bad weather, go to a gym, put on special clothes, or have years of training. You dont have to worry about injuring yourself (when you pay attention to your body). Yoga is exercising your mind at the same time its exercising your body. Yoga is not just about getting into and holding a position, or asana. Yoga creates the balance of strength and flexibility in your body, because one is not sufficient without the other. It is about the union of focus in your breathe, your mind and body. 53

There are many different kinds of Yoga. But some people are using it as just another excessive, forcing the body exercise. While this type of power yoga may be an alternative for some occasions, it certainly is not a stress reliever. You might be surprised to find that gentle yoga, with very slow and limited movements can be pain and stress relieving, and may even encourage weight loss. But it is from the stress relieving aspect of the practice not from burning calories. For many people who are constantly on the go, you may even find the most necessary type of Yoga practice is called Restorative Yoga. If you are a Type A individual, I will venture a guess and say that this will be the most difficult class for you. Thats because its not about beating yourself up, pushing through the pain, feeling the burn, no-pain-no-gain attitude. It is exactly the opposite. Yoga brings balance into your life, literally and figuratively. In Restorative Yoga, your instructor will help you find a comfortable and totally supported position using yoga props, such as pillows, bolsters, straps, blocks, and whatever it takes. You will then be able to slowly and completely release all of your tension. You will be encouraged to maintain this comfortable position for up to twenty minutes. This is the balance that you need when your life is about multi-tasking, having too much responsibility, too much to do, and too little time. Its what you need to take care of yourself. Yes, its great to go to a yoga studio (or even a good class at a library or Y), but you can start by viewing videos online, and begin there. Make sure you have pillows, a strap (or belt) and blocks available to help you comfortably and safely move into the positions. . You should not strain yourself; just notice your comfort level in each part of your body that engages in the particular asana (thats the name of a position). Always listen to your bodys signals and do only what does not hurt you. If you feel tension in a muscle, intentionally attempt to soften and ease that tension. A good Yoga instructor will tell you to keep your mind focused on your breathing and your body. Dont judge or compare yourself to anyone else, and simply notice how each muscle group feels in a particular position. With continued practice, you will notice that your body (or body part) has more flexibility and strength. Youll find yourself moving more easily. A Mindful Yoga practice will help you regain lost flexibility, strength, balance, fluid motion, and confidence in your body and in your mind (and that will improve your posture). I have found that Yoga has relieved chronic pain in my hips and lower back. I feel a renewed confidence in my body to learn and get stronger, despite aging. Another focus of yoga is balance. Because Yoga is a Mind/Body exercise, practicing balance with your body will help bring more balance to your mind! This may sound woo-woo, but I can assure you that it works. Its that three-part system I wrote about earlier in this book. Youll have to do it for yourself to see the results! The best stress relief is doing yoga mindfully and slowly, allowing your muscles to melt into the positions as your mind and emotions also lets go of tension. You will feel so much better as you end the class in Shavasanaten minutes in the pose of total relaxation. You earned it!

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AND FINALLY
ONCE YOU KNOW, YOU CAN NEVER NOT KNOW AGAIN
Theres a big difference between knowing and believing. You dont believe in gravity. You know it exists. Thats the assurance I hope I have delivered to you in this book, now that you know that you are not at fault for making yourself overweight by over-eating. Now you know that you are not preventing yourself from permanently losing weight by cheating on your diet, or not following a diet exactly. You know that you didnt make yourself fat by not exercising enough. Although this is not a guarantee, many people who have followed these stress relief and eating guidelines have lost excess weight at a natural pace and have also maintained their weight. I call it reaching and maintaining your Happy Weight. They were undoubtedly successful because they were using Intentional Mindful eating as a stress relief program and not for weight loss! You will find that your mindful eating habits transfer into other parts of your life. Stress levels go down, happiness and health increase. This is the path for your body to lower your stress, build resilience to stressors, find a new level of health, and can be the beginning of your ability to lose weight. The best diet is the one you are not on; and the things you resist in life persist. Stop focusing on your weight and, instead, consider your happiness and health as your goal and priority. The rest will take care of itself, or not. For some women (and men), you may find the extra weight will not leave immediately, or ever. But you will be happier, more relaxed, and accepting of yourself, with or without the extra weight, when your weight is no longer an obsession or a problem in your mind and heart. This is not a change that you can expect to complete overnight. After all, it took you a while for your body to get overweight. Furthermore your body attitudes can be the result of events that took place years ago in your childhood. They can be deeply imbedded in your subconscious mind and resistant to change without continued practice. Thats one of the reasons I developed the Mentabolism Mindset Transformation Program. It incorporates audio CDs that can help you develop new positive neural networks in your brain with continued listening. Energy psychology techniques that incorporate numerous senses increase the likelihood of your success. Your goal will be to develop radical acceptance of your whole self as you are. You become beautiful in your Mind, Soul, and Body when you have self-acceptance. Its a calmer, more beautiful, spiritual life when you live this way. You become a role model to those around you. Thats a much healthier way to live your life, too. So, follow these guidelines and suggestions in this book, because it will help you with your stress and health. Make your primary goal about getting healthy. The rest will follow. And dont get angry with yourself if it doesnt happen immediately or that you are not perfect. Its a process You can do it!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Best Selling Author, Speaker & Counselor, Lianda Ludwig, M.S. was a former Behavioral Therapist and Speaker at The Canyon Ranch Health Resort in Tucson, AZ. Her Mind/Body focus empowers women (and men) to transform their negative mindset to regain trust and confidence in themselves, their body, and their true inner-selves. Through tireless of hours of researching and speaking with frustrated and despairing dieters, she has realized the one aspect all overweight people have in common and its NOT over-eating! Stress and low self-esteem precipitate the changes that cause the creation of becoming overweight. Its not just what youre eating, its whats eating you. Lianda earned her Masters Degree with distinction from Hunter College, in New York City. A licensed HeartMath Stress Reduction Trainer, certified in EFT Tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique) she is also trained in Eriksonian Hypnosis, as well as Chi-Gong and Yoga. Pulling from the most up to date tools and technology along with ancient Mind/ Body Energy Psychology practices, Lianda has created proven strategies that will allow you to regain and maintain your health and vitality without ever dieting again!

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ONE LAST THING...

If you enjoyed this book, Id be very grateful if youd post a short review on Amazon. Your support really does make a difference and I read all the reviews personally. Thanks again for your support!

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