Well, the bottom line is that eating 6 meals a day does not lead to more weight loss than eating 3 meals a day.

While some studies have shown that having a higher meal frequency reduces food intake because you are reportedly less hungry, and that this in turn encourages fat loss, other studies have not been able to confirm this relationship. It appears that fat loss is only higher in situations where ‘dieters’ are also exercising more restraint over what they eat, and are also doing more exercise.

A study released this year by the British Journal of Nutrition, suggested that eating small frequent meals did not impact on appetite factors either.

So, what’s the moral of this little story.

a) eat the meal frequency that suits you and your lifestyle, whether it be 3, 4, 5 or 6 meals. For example, many people eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and a snack at around 3-4pm. As long as you are not going over your required energy intake by eating the snack, the afternoon snack may ultimately help you manage your hunger and prevent you from “pigging out” at your next main meal

b) if you have diabetes type I or II small regular meals are recommended to optimize blood sugar and insulin management

c) maintain your eating routines from day to day because your body and your lifestyle will adjust to it.

d) always eat breakfast

e) don’t eat food because it is there, or because someone offers it. Unless you are hungry say no to unscheduled food opportunities

f) avoid tiredness because the brain misconstrues tiredness as low energy levels and will stimulate a sensation of hunger causing you to eat more when you are tired. People tend to have less self-discipline when they are tired and eat more high sugar, high energy foods or “junk food” when they are feeling tired and fatigued. Eating non-nutritious foods when tired only makes your body feel more tired because it is not getting the nutrients it needs to run optimally. This sets up a cycle of poor eating habits and food cravings

g) regardless of the meal frequency you choose, you will need to exercise restraint over your food choices and to maintain a reasonable activity level, preferably at least 60 minutes of moderate activity a day.

Never forget, weight loss at its most basic is a maths equation. Less in, more out – eat less, exercise more.

Reference: Cameron, J. D., Cyr, M-J, & Doucet, E. (2010). Increased meal frequency does not promote greater weight loss in subjects who were prescribed an 8-week equi-energetic energy-restricted diet. British Journal of Nutrition, 103, 1098 – 1101.

Related posts:

1. A Bit of Motivation from Buddha for Those Who Have Lost Their Weight Loss Mojo or Think Losing Weight is Just Too Hard
2. Supplementation after Bariatric/Weight Loss Surgery – lapbands, gastric sleeves etc
3. 8 Key Guidelines for Weight Loss

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This Christmas let’s contribute to the world by watching what we think, eat, drink and do.

Do…

• Eat loads of fresh fruit and vegetables that have not been drowned in oil, cream or other sauces and gravies
• Eat moderate amounts of lean meats and other protein alternatives like nuts, legumes and tofu
• Eat small quantities of high fibre breads and cereals
• Eat reduced fat dairy products in moderation
• Extend loving kindness
• Give kind deeds or words instead of gifts
• Exercise your body
• Be appreciative that you have food to eat, a house to be in, and people that care about you

You don’t need…..

• A food focus
• Shortbread biscuits full of fat and sugar
• Dips and chips
• Lollies and soft drinks and more than ½ cup of fruit juice because after the first half glass you have all the vitamin C you need for the day and may as well be drinking soft drink because it’s cheaper and the same calories
• Pork crackle
• Skin on the turkey or chook
• Fat on roast meats
• Five different kinds of meat at one meal – ham, turkey, roast pork, roast beef and chicken
• Mince pies & other high calorie Christmas fare ranging from rum balls to white Christmas and fruit cake
• Three types of dessert ranging from Plum pudding through to trifle and pavlova (especially after you have just pigged out for main course)
• Chocolates
• More than 2 standard drinks of alcohol for women or 4 for men
• and,  unfortunately the list goes on.

Merry Christmas, and if you can’t be good, be careful!!

The DietPsyche Team

Related posts:

1. How to Waist Away After Too Much Christmas Cheer
2. Celebrations Are Not A Reason To Eat More

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Myss is an American medical intuitive, which translated means she can read your energy system and tell you what condition you have and what caused the condition on an emotional and spiritual level. Basically, Myss believes that all conditions, including overweight and obesity have an emotional base, and says that when we clear blocked emotions our health improves.

As well as being a medical intuitive, Myss is also a best selling author and her books lay testament to how far the world has progressed since Shirley Maclaine nearly got burnt at the stake in 1983 when she released her book, “Out On A Limb” which referred to reincarnation. Maclaine’s book was only mildly ‘spiritual’ or ‘alternative’ compared to Myss. Myss has introduced concepts like chakras, archetypes and energy medicine into the living room of many minds and given the concepts a certain legitimacy. Notwithstanding, her approach is bold and unashamedly incorporates reference to prayer and God as well as energy systems such as the chakras, so if these concepts offend you or are not consistent with your belief system, don’t read this blog!

Before seeing Myss present in the flesh I had been warned that she was no shrinking violet, so was not expecting any sugar coated hand holding when taking a personal growth  journey with Ms Myss. Someone said that if you are a victim of your belief systems, or deluded by your own denial, she will cut through your excuses quicker than you can blink.

To the contrary, I found Myss to be quite mesmerizing and very motivating, and not at all as scary as I had been told. She was the last speaker at the “I Can Do It”, Hay House conference in Tampa Florida (November 2009) and was really worth waiting for. It is hardly surprising that she was placed last. Most attendees waited for her. She inspired, she healed, and she gave hope. Based on her content, her energy and her conviction I would highly recommend anything she has produced for public consumption be it written, spoken or developed. This woman knows her stuff, and unlike many, appears to live it.

Myss prefaced her talk by selling the concepts of energy and personal growth. She pointed out how people have become more interested in their inner world of thoughts and personal development than their outer physical worlds. The growth of psychology, alternate healing therapies and the New Age movement support her view. We do speak more openly about energy. We comment when certain people drain our energy, we buy feng shui books and good luck charms, we no longer call people who do yoga weird, we care about the energy consumption of the earth and actively do things that conserve energy, be it our use of physical energy like electricity and petrol, or our own management of internal energies like anxiety and anger.

One of the most powerful manifestations of energy is change. The world has become a rapidly changing place. Change is happening faster than it used to. Our technology is out of date within six months, just like our relationships. We also change our minds more quickly than we used to. We change our minds about what our favourite food or TV show is, who our favourite person is, and what job we want to work in. We have become fickle. We don’t stick to our weight loss or exercise programs and rarely follow up on our New Year resolutions. We change our minds like we change our clothes!

We can see the changes in what we consider important when we look at relationships, a major source of emotional tension and reason for emotional eating! Once upon a time we broke up with our partners for concrete reasons or even worse, put up with abuse and unhappiness because one partner went out to work and paid the bills, and the other ran the household and depended on the “provider” for financial survival. Now we split up because the relationship doesn’t ‘feel right’, because our psychological needs are not being met. Not surprisingly, the divorce rate has escalated. We want our partners to be who we need them to be. And, we want them to see who we are, not that we are ever clear about that. Most of us are not clairvoyant so being able to meet each other’s expectations is fraught with failure. It is hardly surprising our friendships, working relationships and personal relationships break up. Instead of acceptance of individual differences there is expectation and as most of us have learned the hard way, expectation usually leads to disappointment or some other negative emotion that we use as an excuse for poor behaviours such as emotional eating or drinking too much.

The concept of energy has become more important not only in our relationships but in relation to how we cope with the changes in our life, the illnesses we develop and how we choose to live. We are more and more aware that it is not just the food we eat that determines our energy levels but the emotions we choose to experience, the relationships we choose to stay in, the jobs we choose to work in, the way we interact with our spaces, the amount and way we move our body. How we manage our energy has become paramount. Everything is about energy. Even e-motion is energy-in-motion, and often our undoing.

You only need to look at our food supply to gauge how much change has taken place in our world. No longer do we eat seasonal food, cook most of our meals at home in an oven and eat at the table. No, we eat any food all year round because we just import what we don’t have for that season, or grow it hydroponically under scientifically designed conditions. We eat fast food, packaged and processed food and use microwaves in preference to slow cooking and probably eat more in the car, in front of TV and on the run than we eat at the table. Both our food habits and the food we eat have changed, and our weight has changed with it. Most of us are fatter, and if we are not fatter, then we are not as healthy.

Now think about the changes we have seen in medicine. When we were growing up healing was physical and based on what was called the Medical Model. We went to the doctor, he examined us physically and then identified a specific physical treatment for the physical illness he diagnosed. Of course, we now know that our healing journeys are a lot more complex than that. Gone are the days when we focused only on the physical aspects of healing like our genetics, how much we exercise, and what we eat. We now focus on psycho-social factors like how we live, who we live with, the status of our relationships, how much we like our work, our financial situation, the degree of stress we have in our lives and how we manage it.

Thirty years ago dietetics followed the medical model. Overweight clients would present to the dietitian and the dietitian would educate them in the obvious, how to eat less and exercise more. Of course, none of you did what you were told, and many of us quickly accepted that the medical model for weight loss doesn’t work. Dietetics has now moved to something bordering on the biopsychosocial model that acknowledges that your thoughts, emotions and habits need to be addressed if you are to successfully lose weight.

It seems like energy will soon be appended to the biopsychosocial approach because scientists, more particularly those with an understanding of quantum physicists, are describing us as vibrational beings living in a vibrational universe.  While more conservative people and practitioners would like to pooh pooh or ignore the concept of the vibrational universe, quantum physics and other research scientists have the data to back up their claims. Even traditional medicine has proved mind-body relationships in health. For example, the relationship between positive emotions and immunity is well accepted based on research published in referenced journals.

Many alternative brands of practitioners such as acupuncturists, energy psychologists and kinesiologists have been telling their clients for decades that their beliefs affect their energy system. And, not surprisingly, many people will seek out more alternate approaches to health when traditional medicine fails to “cure them”. Let’s face it, when you are faced with a life threatening illness like cancer you will likely pack more into your healing journey then you would pack for an overseas holiday. If you are diagnosed with cancer you may initially consult a medical doctor for physical treatment such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, but many of you will also cover the “alternate” bases and consult anyone from a kinesiologist, herbalist, naturopath, osteopath, chiropractor, acupuncturist, energy healer, nutritionist, even a clairvoyant. You may also buy water purifiers, eat only organic food, follow an alkaline diet, do yoga, visit Lourdes for some holy water, consult St John of God in South America, pray, meditate, leave your spouse, quit your job, move house, take more vitamins and minerals, drink concoctions that taste like floor polish, and the list goes on.

The healing journey is pregnant with possibility, unfortunately, most of it not guaranteed, especially in the weight loss arena. The global health crises of heart disease, cancer and metabolic diseases caused by unhealthy lifestyles and obesity have created a plethora of healing modalities. The number and variety of health treatments is both overwhelming and intimidating. Medicine can no longer subsist on the medical model; it has fierce competitors and a wealth of literature highlighting the importance of social and psychological factors in disease and health as well as physiological factors. This blog shows how Myss has taken the breadth of health one step further by introducing processes that defy reason and take a mystical path to healing.

More people are fighting to find ways to be healthy rather than actually “being” healthy. Humans seem to get more excited about possibilities than the actually “doing” of the goal they seek. For example, magazines frequently sell well because of the health promises, particularly in relation to weight loss, that they strategically present on their front covers. Of course, we all know that most people sabotage their attempts to get healthy and just keep buying the magazines promising yet another magic weight loss diet or another magic health strategy. The winners of the “Get healthy movement” are people like the media magnate Rupert Murdoch, Tony Ferguson with his meal replacement products and Jenny Craig and her food manufacturing business. They trade on the human attraction to hope and the knowledge that our hopes are usually cemented in to our psyche with laziness and a history of poor follow through in relation to health-related behaviour change.

Research has not identified the ingredients of healing and has definitely not identified the key to weight related behaviour change. Most of you will know that what we think is truth one day, is disproved the next.

Myss says we are the products of the age of reason meaning that the cognitive processes that we use to interpret our world and make decisions go back 100s of years. Based on how humans like to portray themselves one would assume that we were all terribly reasonable people, living in a reasonable and objectively defined world? Of course, we all know this is not true. Having been marinated in an age of reason for the last few centuries, a source of constant pain for all us is not being able to understand those things, which seemingly defy reason. We constantly search for reasons for everything. When something happens to us, we have automatic self-talk like, “Why me?”  “It’s not fair” and “Why did I have to come from a big boned family?”  At the physical level we ask questions like, “Was it my diet, my weight, my lack of exercise, my genes?” We want logical, objective and reasonable answers, and more than often we don’t get one.

When objective physical data does not give us the reasonable and logical answers we want, Myss says we take the elevator up to where we think the mind is and search for psychological and emotional reasons for our medical conditions, even our weight. In the last few decades with the introduction of language like bio-psycho-social we are more accepting of the notion that disease and some of our habits like binge eating can have an emotional origin. Research has confirmed that emotions play a role in our lifestyle diseases. For example, in the world of health psychology it is well accepted that heart disease can be exacerbated by emotions like hostility, and that low self-esteem is an underlying issue in people who have eating disordered behaviour. It defies the old medical model that if we find deeper psychological causes of our lifestyle diseases including our weight issues and pain we may solve the mystery of our poor health and regain optimal health.

A more recent linguistic term being bounced around by mainly alternate practitioners is the body-mind-spirit domain. Myss says that when we don’t get answers at the psychological level we take another elevator ride beyond the mind to God.

Now a number of people do not like the term God so to make the term more consumable, if you are reading this blog, think of it as higher consciousness. We all know God is not evidence-based, it is a faith-based concept, and we also know that people who have some sort of life philosophy to live by, such as believing in God, seem to cope better with life and health in general.

Researchers like Larry Dossey have provided some evidence in relation to the belief that God has a role in healing. Dossey’s studies have demonstrated using rigorous research methods the power of prayer (to God) in at least two areas, recovery from cardiac surgery and the success of IVF procedures. However, you won’t need to look much further to find that skeptics have done further research that debunk his research based claims! Regardless, prayer appears to be powerful and certainly it keeps you focused on the goals you wish to achieve including weight loss and overcoming eating disordered behaviour.

The mind alone cannot solve your deepest anguish, get your finances in order, improve your fitness, lose your weight, resolve relationship difficulties, force you to forgive all the people you hold responsible for your issues including your past. Cancer recurs, other illnesses recur, weight is regained. We cannot rely on the mind alone to do our healing, or God or some mystical experience for that matter. We are complex multi-faceted creatures. And healing a body that we have abused in more ways than one be it layering it with creams saturated in sodium lauryl sulphate, to eating foods microwaved in plastic that leaches phthalates or bpa into our systems or eating plant food grown is soil drenched in pesticides, cannot just be done by using the mind. And anyway, most of our minds are pretty damaged. We have all suffered, and the mind has taken the brunt. Healing a damaged body with a damaged mind doesn’t make any logical or reasonable sense.

Myss counsels us to climb back into the elevator and ascend to a level where reason does not operate to heal something unreasonable such as recurrent cancer and other acute and chronic ills. Assumedly she is referring to what she calls the mystical level, the space that defies needing an evidence base, and does not necessarily have God as CEO.

Myss spoke in a way that reminded me of Buddha’s noble truths including his first noble truth, “Life is suffering”, and his second noble truth, “We suffer because we are ignorantly  attached to beliefs and desires that don’t serve us”. Myss explained that when we become ill or distressed or tired or any other situation that causes us to lose power or disempower, we often assume that the retrieval of our power is about identifying who or what disempowered or negatively impacted on us, and getting that energy or power back. However, revenge, Myss suggests, is a toxin to our system. It is not so much about who caused your disempowerment but what you want to do to get back at who injured or hurt you or caused your problems. Myss says, “Here you find the source of your toxins. These are the blisters that need lancing.”

We have a focus and regard for suffering according to both Myss and Buddha. Suffering gives us permission to say things like, “I suffered therefore I can do this. I had a bad day so I can eat. I paid my dues; so this gives me permission to do this or that”.

Myss proposes that for people suffering holds some kind of power and privilege. If you tell someone you suffered you expect a certain response. Many people wear their suffering like a badge and find avenues such as some support groups to be constantly reminded of their suffering.

This suffering issue is a big deal in life and healing. As they say, ‘hurt people hurt’. We have all suffered and when we suffer often make others suffer, and even ourselves. Myss says, “Healing is difficult because of our romance with suffering. It gives us permission to treat others badly.  We get to say, ‘I have had a bad day so I can make you suffer as I have’.” My work with people with weight and eating disordered issues has shown me that while they suffer they do not necessarily take their suffering out on others, they take it out on themselves. Healing can be a disempowering choice because to heal you can no longer use suffering as a privilege, as a reason to punish others or yourself or exhibit bad behaviour, or as a reason to play the victim.

On some level we all experience anger. Most of the damage we inflict upon others and ourselves is done when we are angry. Anger is attached to suffering, and is best friends with lack of forgiveness. If we could put our rage and anger on a diet, and literally stop feeding it, we could all live more peaceful lives. Instead of harming others, and ourselves we could love and support one another. Novel concept isn’t it? If only everyone on the planet could do it.

Some clever person referred to lack of forgiveness as a self-imposed prison we place ourselves in. Making others suffer because we can’t or don’t want to forgive is just a prison. To get out of prison we need to forgive others and ourselves and stop this conflict we create between each other.  To forgive, one cannot be afraid to be kind and loving. To forgive we need to make a conscious effort to infuse every breath with loving kindness. We have the choice to fill our bodies with love or fear. If we continue to live in fear and not forgive we will just continue playing life like a game of psychological ping pong passing pain, suffering and distress backwards and forwards between each other. Same stuff, different day. And, what do we all collectively want as we feed our attachment to suffering, PEACE and HAPPINESS! Are we a twisted species or what, we seem to constantly do the things that don’t get us the goals we are seeking! For example, we want desperately to lose weight, but binge eat!

According to Myss, the soul understands unreasonable things; the ego only understands reason. So clearly, to heal we need to take the elevator to the penthouse and hope that a divine enema will be delivered to allow the pain to pass through along with all the toxic thoughts, emotions, memories, habits and beliefs that keep us attached to suffering and being active co-creators of suffering including staying overweight or eating disordered.

Myss refers to the soul as, “The centre of who you are, the moment of God, of everything”. She believes that if you are very still and in reflection you will become very aware of how each choice is conscious. She referred to this state as self-awareness.

Myss offered a process to release the fear, pain and suffering we cart around. Myss referred to the process as going into the seven Shadows and Graces.  The Shadow represents the darker side of our selves, and the Grace, the antidote. These Shadows and Graces Myss aligned with the seven chakras, but pointed out that compared to the Graces and Shadows, the chakras are concrete.

In performing this process Myss advises you to see yourself as an hourglass, the waist being the fourth or middle chakra.

The Shadow of the first chakra represents Pride or what shames you. To connect with what shames you think about the bad things that your family has said about you, especially in relation to your weight and self-worth.

According to Myss, the first or base chakra is where we experience our sense of status. It will tell you what status means to you. The Shadow beliefs and memories of the first chakra not only form us, they take us away from who we really are. Instead of tapping into the Grace of Reverence and experiencing being truly alive, we stay tied down by status, believing that our concept of status represents who we are. Suicidal people, Myss says, are detached from the Grace of Reverence, of simply being able to love life because they are alive; loving life because it is good; or holding on to the good of life. Suicidal people have first chakra energies that are not in alignment. They question who they are. They experience a loss of identity because they don’t know who they are without their status. Take the rich business man who goes broke. Without his BMW, fancy house, good looking girlfriend and Georgio Armani suit he feels worthless. The Grace of revering life crashed because it was tied to illusions of status.

To move from the Shadow of Pride to the healing Grace of Reverence, we need to remind ourselves that we are loved. We need to hold on to the feeling that life is good. When the Grace of the first chakra crashes because of Pride ask God to give you the Grace of Reverence.

We all need a reason to be on this earth. When you experience the Grace of Reverence Myss promises that you will feel omnipotent. She says you will weather life’s storms because the Grace of Reverence allows you to handle them. She described the Grace of Reverence as the “the divine wind that grabs you. It unties the knot in your gut. Takes the heat out of the shame”.

If you do not address the Shadow of Pride in the first chakra you will not be able to look at another person and say, “You are as good as me”. You will always have to look at others and say, “You are not as good as me”. Your perception and beliefs about status and ‘who is who in the zoo’ will be your benchmark in judging yourself and others. These chakra one beliefs whether they are related to your pride or shame are sources of stress, and they age you. When you view the world through the Shadow of Pride you become a prisoner of pride. We live in a world not just thick with pride but predicated on pride. The media knows it, and so do marketers. They make a fortune out of it. We live not just in fear of success and failure, but in fear of humiliation be it related to what we look like, what people think of us, and the list goes on. Fears related to pride have us completely controlled.

Myss says that every choice we make is filtered through this Shadow of Pride first. It is this Shadow that determines who we respect. To process this Shadow we must stop blaming our childhood. To get in touch with your soul, to be who you really are, you need to own that the only person in your soul is you, and blaming things outside yourself, be it your upbringing, your family, or your circumstances, only keeps you from showing who you really are.

The second Shadow is found in the second or sacral chakra. It is the Shadow of Illness. This is where sexuality and creativity are housed. It is the chakra that can be used as a weapon so it is also represented by knives, forks and wallets. It is the most irrational area.

This is the Shadow of the gambler, the house of greed. It is the Shadow that goes shopping and eats too much. Greed is irrational so this is where you find attention, affection, “stuff”, toys, money, fame, power, power to punish, the power to control someone’s behaviour and their future. This is where you hear what your parents had to say to you. This is where you hear parents say things like, “If only I could take the suffering from my child”. But really, as you know, few people give unconditionally and at a later date the parent will remind the child what they have done.

Greed usually manifests as one person getting ahead, and not another. When this Shadow is manifesting you only know people if they are useful to you. You will find reasons to think negatively about someone such as “this person abused me or was violent to me”. Not surprisingly the healing light of this Shadow is Piety. Piety allows you to see goodness in someone else for no reason. When you are in Grace you do not need to compete with others. You will be able to admit that your beliefs about the person were created by you. Divinity shows the soul. If you hold to reason your ego will hold to hatred. Using prayer will infuse this Shadow with light says Myss.

The third Shadow is Entitlement. This is the Shadow that demands respect. When reflecting on how this Shadow pervades your life identify everything you think you are entitled to, for example, getting a return on your money because you paid for it. This Shadow causes you to assume that someone has to deliver on your entitlements. Some may believe they were entitled to a perfect marriage or a perfect child. When someone says, “I never thought this would happen to me” you know that this Shadow is alive and well. A good response is, “Well, who did you think it would happen to?”

If you don’t explore your own sense of entitlement you will never realise how entitled you are and will unconsciously take your entitlement out on someone else. Someone will pay, and if they don’t it could manifest in your physical body. For example, “I eat because I am miserable and had a bad childhood”. Entitlement is often the source of illnesses said Myss. For example, “I am sick because I worked so hard”.

The Grace of Understanding fixes the Shadow of Entitlement according to Myss. She counsels those with the Shadow of Entitlement to say “Give me the Grace or the higher truth of why I am like this. Give me the Grace to see what is unfolding in my life as I cannot see it. I am not in Grace when I can’t see it.”

The fourth Shadow is Wrath. Anger resides in the heart and it is not surprising to know that the angry heart is at present in epidemic proportions across the globe.  An example of an angry entitlement is believing we are entitled to an inheritance or career progression and become angry when we are not bequeathed it. Not surprisingly, the Grace from here is “I love, I love, I love”.

Myss says the ego understands our highest potential because it is a survival machine. However, she says that the soul understands that every minute of every conversation, every act, everything has a highest potential. There is a higher potential in everything. It is now time for a complete life change. To achieve the Grace to heal the Shadow of Wrath we must ask God for Fortitude. By following the most unreasonable guidance the most unreasonable miracles happen. Ask, “Give me the fortitude to follow the most unreasonable track or short cut you can give me”.

The fifth Shadow relates to Spiritual Gluttony. We keep feeding ourselves lies; we rarely speak truth. The Grace to heal the Shadow of Spiritual Gluttony is the Grace of Counsel. The Grace of Counsel at a high truth level allows you to understand your life, to identify what needs to be removed. Crises in our lives change us physically, but where do they change us archetypically? The Grace of Counsel is about understanding the mystical truth, the symbolic meanings in your life.

The sixth Shadow is Envy and the Grace to heal it is Knowledge. This Grace gives us a masterful understanding of what is happening in relation to mystical truth. It is about mystical laws or universal laws, laws such as, ‘All is One’.  Prayer and Grace are mystical truths.

The seventh Shadow is Sloth.  To heal this Shadow is the Grace of Guidance or Wisdom. It is hard to operate on the Grace of that guidance all the time. In this pivotal time of change we can no longer use excuses to explain away why we are not responding to our highest potential. If we were operating from our natural Graces we would know how powerful we are and what we could do. To be lazy gets us nowhere. The Grace of Guidance or Wisdom provides information on what is the wise thing to do. Why would God send us to be exposed to great teachings? What is heaven asking of you? We are all being called to something greater and we need to sit in stillness and see what we are being called to. Go inside and see what you are afraid of loving, of being, of doing. Start with your thinking, “I am truly a channel for Grace”. See the world around you as a field of Grace. A mystical law is that the mystic knows the force of a prayer changes the world.

By working through your shadows at each chakra and infusing it with the requisite Grace, true healing can take place. For more information on Caroline Myss go to her website, www.myss.com. This blog refers to her latest book,  Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason.

Myss has written several books and a quick review of any of her books will quickly indicate to you that she is one complex, extremely intelligent woman. She writes good stuff, but it gets a bit heavy. At the Hay House conference she fast tracked us because she had to. They gave her one and a half hours to get her point across. This was the perfect way to go because it forced her to simplify. For those of you who want meat on the bones of the information provided in this blog, you can buy her books and DVDs from Hay House Publishers, Amazon or her website.  One book written by Myss called Entering The Castle: An Inner Path to God and Your Soul has led to spontaneous healings according to Myss; so perhaps it could be a good two-for-one read for some?

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Unfortunately obesity has proved an extremely difficult condition to treat and surgical interventions have become more common. Many people are asking questions about weight loss surgeries. One of the newest procedures is gastric sleeve surgery.

This blog overviews gastric sleeve surgery. Information has been taken from medical websites, YouTube and people who have had bariatric surgery procedures. There is a case study blog that is regularly updated that gives you a step-by-step personal insight into the gastric sleeve procedure.

So, what is bariatric surgery?

Baros is a Greek word for weight so not surprisingly bariatric surgery is weight loss surgery. Bariatris surgery is generally performed on severely obese individuals who have been unsuccessful in their weight loss and attempts.

To be eligible for bariatric surgery you need to fulfill one of two weight criteria. The first is you must have severe or morbid obesity. The accepted guideline for severe obesity is having a Body Mass Index or BMI of more than 40. To determine your BMI you divide your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in metres.

The second criteria for bariatric surgery is having a BMI greater than 35 and an associated medical condition related to obesity. Example of obesity related medical conditions are diabetes, high blood pressure or high blood fat levels like cholesterol.

Photo Credit: http://www.gastricsleevereviews.com/lap-band-vs-gastric-sleeve/

There are two types of bariatric surgery:

The first uses devices to reduce the size of the stomach. An example would be lap band surgery.

The second type of bariatric procedure are gastric bypasses or surgeries which remove a portion of the stomach like gastric sleeve surgery.

Gastric Sleeve involves removing the lateral two-thirds (>~60%) of the stomach with a stapling device. The procedure can be done using keyhole surgery.

The remaining stomach is more like a tube or ‘sleeve’ than a sac. It is estimated that the remaining stomach has about a 200ml capacity. This represents a significantly reduced stomach capacity and would only allow an entrée sizes meal.

The gastric sleeve procedure is ‘restrictive’ as opposed to ‘malabsorptive’. This means that it restricts the amount of food you can consume. There is reduced surface area of stomach lining as a result of the surgery so not only do you need to eat less, you need to chew well.  Chewing your food well maximizes the absorption of what you do eat. Poorly chewed food will cause discomfort and just pass through and be eliminated by the bowel. Being able to eat much smaller portions means that what you do eat must be of a high nutrient value.

The gastric sleeve procedure originated as the first part of a duodenal switch surgery in people with severe obesity. The gastric sleeve allowed enough weight loss in these high risk clients to permit the second surgery.

Let’s look at who gastric sleeve surgery is suitable for.

As we have already said, having severe obesity or a BMI of more than 40 is the first criteria.

Another criteria is having an increased risk of health problems such as sleep apnoea, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and fatty liver, or a combination of these problems. These conditions have the potential to shorten your life span.

A third criteria for gastric sleeve surgery could be that you are experiencing chronic physical symptoms. Physical symptoms could include fatigue, back pain, reflux, impaired mobility and difficulty performing tasks such as tying your shoe laces or even washing yourself.

A fourth criteria is that your weight has impacted on you psychologically. You may be experiencing levels of depression, anxiety and stress that impact negatively and significantly on your life. You may also have very low self-esteem and limited self-confidence.

Another criteria is that your obesity has impacted on you socially. For example it may have impacted on your current relationships, your ability to have an intimate relationship, or your confidence in being able to attend social events. You may not be able to travel or go to the movies because you cannot fit in a normal sized seat.

A necessary criteria for weight loss surgery is that you have genuinely attempted to lose weight by a variety of means but been unsuccessful.

Weight loss surgery is not a panacaea for weight loss. There are many people who have had the surgery and gained weight because they eat or drink the wrong foods, and do not make the necessary lifestyle changes such as regular exercise.

Weight loss surgery will work for you only if it is accompanied by lifestyle changes and changes in your thinking. It is imperative that you practice  mental self-discipline in relation to food choice and do regular exercise

Gastric sleeve surgery is an option for people for whom a gastric bypass is contraindicated. This includes people who have conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease. It also includes people with higher risk of complications such as smokers or those on anticoagulation therapy like warfarin.

Gastric sleeve surgery may not be an option for people who have significant issues with a hiatus hernia or a history of severe gastroesophageal reflux disease. This is because once the gastric sleeve procedure is performed further gastric reflux surgery generally cannot be done.

Now let’s look at the pros and cons of the gastric sleeve

The first pro is that the procedure reduces hunger. The surgery cuts out more than 60% of your stomach. This reduces the concentration of biochemicals in your stomach that cause the sensation of hunger.

The second pro is that there is no band or other permanently restrictive device or foreign body left in your body after the surgery. The problem  with the gastric band is a number of objects are left in your body. The band can slip, erode or cause infections.

The third pro is the large amount of weight you lose after having the procedure. Different websites report different ranges of weight loss. One site reported 30-50% weight loss in the first 6-12 months. Another site estimated that people who undergo this procedure achieve 40-60% weight reduction over the first 1-2 years.

A fourth pro is that the significant weight loss resulting from the bariatric surgery will generally lead to improvements in blood pressure, diabetes, sleep apnoea, joint pain, reflux and fatty liver etc.

A fifth advantage of the gastric sleeve is there is no malabsorption of nutrients. As noted above the gastric sleeve surgery is a restrictive procedure as opposed to one that is malabsorptive. You will be able to eat what you previously did but will need to eat in much smaller amounts and may find some foods physically uncomfortable to consume. And, because you are eating less you will need to ensure that you eat nutrient dense foods, not junk foods!

A sixth pro of surgical treatments is that the risk of surgery is often less than the risks caused by severe obesity.

A final pro is that another surgery called a gastric bypass or duodenal switch can be performed after this procedure.

And, now for the cons or downside of gastric sleeve surgery.

The foremost downside of gastric sleeve surgery is that it is irreversible. It is a permanent procedure.

The second downside is that the procedure is expensive and not usually covered by medical insurance companies or medicare

As the gastric sleeve is a surgical procedure there could be post-operative complications such as infections, pneumonia and bleeding. As the procedure involves stapling part of the stomach, leakage is always possible. If leakage occurs it may cause infection and other health problems. The more obese you are prior to surgery the higher the risk of complications. However, the literature indicates a mortality risk of less than 0.3%.

The fourth issue with gastric sleeve surgery is that it only restricts your capacity to consume solid foods not liquids. There are high energy liquid foods that if consumed after a gastric sleeve will prevent weight loss. Drinking high calorie liquids frequently enough could even cause weight gain. Be warned, having a gastric sleeve does not mean you can get away with eating and drinking what you like!

A fifth issue is that after a gastric sleeve the remaining stomach will gradually stretch and permit larger meals. If you make unhealthy food choices you may gain weight.

A sixth issue is that because 60% of your stomach has been removed your stomach space is much smaller and you will feel full more quickly. If you overeat or swallow poorly chewed food you may feel uncomfortable and vomit.

A seventh issue is that you will need to reframe your relationship and attitude towards food because you will not be able to eat what and how you did previously. There will be a mourning involved. You will need to get used to watching other people eat in a way you no longer can.

An eighth issue is acknowledging that most people eat psychologically, not in response to hunger. So, despite some people saying the gastric sleeve operation reduces the production of the hunger hormone, most of my clients don’t eat because they are hungry. Most people eat because they are bored, upset, or out of habit. If people on the planet only ate when they were hungry then none of us would be fat! So, even after having the gastric sleeve you will need to exercise ongoing commitment to healthy eating and exercise.

Once you have made the decision to proceed with a gastric sleeve surgery, the surgeon will give you pre-operative guidelines.

Pre-operatively you will likely be recommended a meal replacement or liquid diet program to follow for between one and four weeks.

On the day of your surgery you will only be allowed ice to suck.

From day one post-op to day three you will only be allowed clear fluids. As rule of thumb you will be required to drink 30-50mls of water every 15 minutes to ensure adequate hydration.

From day four  to day 10 to 14 you will be transitioned to mixed fluids. Mixed fluids include clear broth, soups, custards, milk drinks, juices etc. It is essential that you maintain an adequate water intake to prevent dehydration. If you become dehydrated you are more likely to experience nausea and to be readmitted to hospital for intravenous rehydration.

By week three post-op you will be transitioned to soft, watery/liquidy foods as tolerated, as well as the mixed fluids. Foods you may include at this stage could be oatmeal consistency foods, thicker soups, pureed fruit perhaps mixed with yoghurt or custard, mashed potato/pumpkin with gravy etc

In the longer term you will be recommended to consume foods as tolerated and at least 2 litres of water daily.

When you have progressed to eating normal food, choose food that you are able to chew into a consistency that you can swallow easily. If food is difficult to swallow it may cause discomfort or reactions such as vomiting. Mashed, pureed or naturally soft semi-liquid foods will be initially easier to eat.  You will learn through experience that it is essential that foods be chewed to a soft or mashed consistency to make swallowing easy. Meals you previously took five minutes to eat, may take up to an hour to consume!

There are a number of things you can do to help you manage the changes to eating post-gastric sleeve surgery.

The first thing to do is to ensure you cut food into very small pieces. Many people reduce their bite sizes to a quarter the size they would normally have eaten pre-surgery. It may even help to try eating with a teaspoon or small fork to ensure you only take small bites.

The second recommendation is that  you chew all food extremely well. As stated above chewing food well ensures it is a soft consistency when you swallow, reducing discomfort. While chewing practice mindfulness. Focus on the taste and texture of the food and how it feels in your mouth. Mindfulness practice will help you slow down your eating. Avoid foods you cannot chew well.

Thirdly, avoid consuming liquids with meals.

Fourthly, stay hydrated. Drink 2-3 litres between meals.

Fifthly, to avoid reflux avoid known gastric stimulants such as tea, coffee, fatty foods, spices, and avoid lying down immediately after a meal. Also avoid gasey drinks like mineral and soda waters with gas.

Sixth, eat five to six small meals a day. Your meal sizes will be much smaller because the gastric sleeve surgery only leaves a small sleeve for your stomach. Lunch may be a piece small piece of fruit and half a sandwich. As mentioned numerous times in this blog, because you can only eat small amounts of food, what you eat must be of high nutritional value.

Seventh, beware of high calorie fluids and foods with a soft fluidy consistency that are easy to consume such as milkshakes, cordial and soft drink, fruit juice, sports drinks with sugar, ice cream, custards, puddings, crème caramels, blancmanges etc It is easier to drink on weight than it is to eat it on!

Following is a food intake that was tolerated by a patient at day 4 post-gastric sleeve surgery.

• Breakfast: One Up and Go
• Mid-morning: One cup of reduced fat iced coffee
• Lunch: One cup of soup
• Mid-afternoon: 1 cup of milk
• Dinner: Half a cup of Low-fat custard

The total energy of this food intake is 2496kilojourles or 594 kcalories. It is 35grams of protein. A dietitian would view the intake as nutritionally inadequate. A recommendation to supplement this intake is extra juice for more energy, vitamins and hydration as well as extra sources of liquid protein.

Below are some gastric sleeve post-op comments summarised from U-Tube

Comments from Day 1 Post- gastric sleeve surgery included the following:

• after surgery you are only given ice.
• swallowing is difficult.
• you may experience significant pain and be given pain killers.

Comments from Day 2 Post- gastric sleeve surgery included:

• you are usually an inpatient for two days and two nights.
• you are discharged two days after the surgery.
• you are asked to walk around the second day.
• by day two you are feeling better than day one, but still experience discomfort particularly in certain positions.
• juice is provided on day 2.
• patients say they eat what is given but admit that there stomach is still swollen. They made comments like,  ‘the liquids don’t feel great in the stomach even though it is nice to have something in the mouth’.
• Two u-tube videos said that it was in the immediate post-surgery period that they questioned what they had done. To deal with their doubts they said they focused on successful outcomes of people who were further down the track post surgery.

Comments from Day 4 Post-gastric sleeve surgery included the following points:

• Patients reported feeling weak at this stage and attributed the weakness to having no protein.
• On discharge one person commented that they brought a bag they had to carry to the hospital, but had to purchase a bag with wheels that they could pull because they could not carry anything. She said she had no energy to lift anything and was still in pain and on pain killers.
• A patient in Australia said she was advised to do NO lifting for two weeks after the surgery.
• At day 4 one person on u-tube reported not being hungry but liking the smell of food. They said they were dreaming about food.
• By day 4 swallowing was reported as easier.

Comments from Day 6 Post-gastric sleeve surgery were as follows.

• Some patients reported feeling dehydrated and were making a conscious effort to stay hydrated.
• At day 6 most people were saying they were still on clear liquids but said they would be starting full liquids in the near future. Full liquids included fat free cream soups and meal replacements.
• Patients reported sleeping less. For example, one reported only sleeping 5 hours.
• Some said their energy levels were fluctuating from some days with reasonable energy levels to other days with no energy.

Comments from the second Week Post- gastric sleeve surgery were as follows. 

• One person had lost 20 pounds or 10 kilograms post surgery.
• Someone said the second week post-surgery can still be difficult as the body is still healing.
• Another person commented that drinking water was difficult.
• By week two most people were drinking protein shakes and milk. By week three they had progressed to soft foods.
• One person said that during week two they were only consuming 200 kilocalories a day. Considering that you cannot nutritionally balance a dietary intake on 200 kilocalories per day it is hardly surprising that this person reported feeling weak.
• By week two the bruising caused by the surgery was resolving.
• By week two, for some, the pain had abated and they were no longer taking pain medication.
• Some people said they had started multi-vitamins.
• Some people said they were worried about muscle loss because of the significant levels of weight they had lost. They were told they needed 70-80 grams of protein per day and were unable to eat that much.
• One person reported the difference between feeling full on liquids and feeling full on solids.
• Most people emphasised staying hydrated.

Comments during the fourth week post- gastric sleeve surgery were as follows:

• Difficulty meeting protein needs remained an issue.
• One person said that if they ate bread they had to spit it out.
• It was suggested that the easiest foods to eat were foods with a high water content like strawberries and fruit, yoghurt and soups.
• By week four activity levels can be increased.

Comments at ten weeks post-astric sleeve surgery were as follows. 

• At this stage people can be exercising.
• Weight loss will be significant enough to have caused you to throw out your old “big” clothes and replace them with smaller sizes.
• Confidence levels will have increased, as will energy levels.
• If drinking alcohol it will impact on you more, so monitor it carefully.
• As you are on a reduced food intake it is important to eat nutrient dense foods when you do eat, to eat small bites, eat slowly and over a period of 30-60 minutes.
• Bread and thick chunky foods do not feel good when they are swallowed so avoid them.
• People will be eating better.
• Some people complained of a “sour stomach” and were taking  “acid reducers” and enzyme support supplements.
• A 300ml or 10oz protein shake was taking an hour to drink.
• They had all learned to eat very small bites and recognised that it takes a long time to eat.
• Fried foods were not tasting good and were hard to swallow.
• People were saying that they judged food by how it felt.
• Warning, warning, warning: ice cream was described as feeling good and tasting good, so keep it out of the house.

General comments were made on u-tube and included the following.

• The pain of the surgery can last up to 1 ½ weeks.
• It is during the high pain period that people experience the most self-doubt about having had the surgery.
• It took about 2-3 weeks to feel better.
• After recovery people described their meal sizes as children’s sizes and then probably with something left over.
• One person admitted that he believed that the change to his eating habits, and how he now had to eat, would require an adjustment of 1 – 1.5 years.
• Another person said they mourned not being able to eat properly.
• One person said that it was a procedure one should not do if they were lazy and hadn’t tried to lose weight. He advised that it should be everyone’s last resort. He also warned to “be prepared for a life changing experience”. He said, “My life is nothing like it was before. I miss eating big meals, but I can now do a lot of stuff I couldn’t do for years.”
• A few people suggested recouping your surgery costs by selling your clothes on ebay.
• Another suggestion was to buy clothes that look good when they get loose because it was very likely you would be losing several clothes sizes.

DietPsyche’s Recommendation is to ensure you have your dietary intake monitored by a registered dietitian to ensure nutritional adequacy. Another recommendation was to discuss the significant changes the surgery creates in your life with a psychologist to assist adjustment.

In summary, while the gastric sleeve procedure markedly reduces your capacity for food, it is still important to exercise discipline in food choice and to make lifestyle changes including regular exercise. It is crucial that you avoid fluids and fluid consistency foods high in calories  and low in nutrients such as soft drinks, milk based drinks and soft desserts like icecream. As you will only be able to eat small amounts what you do eat matters more. To ensure nutritional adequacy and good health you MUST make healthy food choices.

Remember, “If it is to Be; it is up to Me!”. Your health is in YOUR hands.

Related posts:

1. Supplementation after Bariatric/Weight Loss Surgery – lapbands, gastric sleeves etc
2. Gastric Sleeve Surgery – a 2009-2011 Success Story
3. The Gastric Balloon – the Latest in Bariatric Procedures

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Post tags: Bariatric Surgery, Criteria for weight loss surgery, Gastric Sleeve, Gastric Sleeve Nutrition Guidelines, Gastric Sleeve Pros and Cons, Weight loss surgery

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Phytoestrogens, sometimes called “dietary estrogens”, are a diverse group of naturally occurring non steroidal plant compounds that, because of their structural similarity with estradiol, have the ability to cause estrogenic/and antiestrogenic effects.

• Phytoestrogens have anti-oxidant activity and are reputed to have the following health benefits:
• Protection against bowel and prostrate cancer
• Mixed protection for breast cancer. As outlined further on in this post, the protection phytoestrogens provide for breast cancer depend on the type of cancer you have
• Reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease
• Possible protection against osteoporosis including maintenance of bone density post-menopause
• Reduction in menopausal symptoms

Phytoestrogens are broken down into:

Flavenoids which are high in soy bean and soy bean products. There are three subtypes of flavenoids

1. Isoflavones, found if soy, red clover and legumes

2. Flavones

3. Coumestans

Lignans, mainly found in nuts and oils seeds such as flaxseed

PLEASE NOTE: While phytoestrogens are considered beneficial for women, women with known breast cancer are generally advised to consider avoiding rich sources of phytoestrogen until more research is performed. While epidemiological studies suggest that phytoestrogens have a protective effect against breast cancer, some laboratory studies show that phytoestrogens could stimulate tumour growth because they stimulate the growth of oestrogen receptors in test tubes. If you have had breast cancer speak with your oncologist for advice.

Phytoestrogens ARE NOT considered nutrients as a lack in the diet does not have an associated deficiency syndrome, and they have not yet been identified as having an essential biological function.

Phytoestrogen levels in foods vary depending on where the food was sourced from, or how it was processed if it is a processed food such as tofu. This list was taken from a Canadian research study.

Photo Credit: sxc.hu by Baltar

No related posts.

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Post tags: Breast, Breast cancer, Canada, Cancer, Conditions and Diseases, Estrogen, Health, Menopause

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Maintaining change, be it weight loss, good exercise habits or remembering to be more positive and less reactive is difficult.

Scott Peck warned us in the first sentence of his famous book, The Road Less Travelled, “Life is difficult”.

Buddha also obviously knew a thing or two about life as well, and the first of his Four Noble Truths, “Life Means Suffering”, isn’t that much different to Scott Peck’s first sentence.

I’m not a Buddhist, but figured that as the world’s fourth largest religion, the estimated 350 million Buddhists on the planet must be on to something. So I took a look at the Four Noble truths because they are designed to end suffering, and we could all do with a bit of that!

First Noble Truth – Life Means Suffering

We don’t have to be Einstein to know we all suffer, and on many levels.

• On an emotional level we suffer anxiety, depression, stress, fear, grief, rejection, disappointment, and betrayal to name just a few.
• On a physical level we suffer injury, illness, disease, disorders, pain, exhaustion, overweight and obesity, starvation and malnutrition, eating disorders and body image issues, the ageing process and inevitabilities like menopause, wrinkles and death.
• On a social level we suffer loneliness and isolation; relationship conflicts, break-downs & break-ups; issues with children, friends and family; and the list goes on.
• On an occupational level we suffer job dissatisfaction, workplace bullying, unemployment, workplace investigations, workplace stress and many more pressures.
• On a legal level we suffer divorces replete with custody issues and property settlements, litigation, investigations and all others things that allow the lawyers to get richer as we get poorer!
• In the weight loss area we suffer again, but I don’t need to expand on that because you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog if you had not suffered in some way, in relation to weight-related issues.

When you look at the list above, ‘suffering’, or struggling with life and what it throws at us, seems inescapable. However, ‘bad times’ are punctuated by ‘good times’. A practical way to avoid getting too caught up in the downside of life is to perhaps assume that we are here to learn from life’s ‘hard knocks’ and to get ‘better and better’ as a result. Maybe life is just one big winnowing process, separating the chaff from the wheat? And, anyhow we have learned that for every downside there is an upside, which is why we know the difference between emotional states like happy and sad!  As they say, nothing ever stays the same; a constant in life is change. There is always something to look forward to!

It seems that once we accept that ‘life means suffering or struggling’, that no one escapes this inevitable truism and that highs and lows are just part of the living process, we can just get on with living which includes ‘rolling with the punches’ and living life, ‘warts and all’.

Second Noble Truth – the origin of suffering is attachment & constant craving for highs and pleasures

Attachment to our belief systems is possibly one of the biggest contributing factors to suffering.

Examples of belief systems that I commonly see in practice that do not support our cause for a worry free or stress free existence and successful behaviour change be it weight loss, or any other goal you have set yourself include:

• I should worry about what others think
• It is selfish to put myself first
• I am not enough, not good enough, smart enough, talented enough, thin enough, good looking enough!
• I don’t deserve good things to happen to me so no wonder I don’t lose weight, have a partner, have a job I love!
• Everyone else gets what he or she wants but not me!
• It’s too hard, I can’t do it!
• I need to be right, all the time!
• I must stay “high”, on the go, busy, goal oriented, and be constantly achieving all the time. Of course, this is an exhausting way to be but generally serves the purpose of never having to confront yourself or  what your life is really like.
• A final example is that, “The world, events and the people in it should behave like I want them to and it’s upsetting when that doesn’t happen”. This belief is operating when you hear people blame the current status of their life on their parents not being who they needed them to be when they were growing up, even when this was years ago. Another example is when people attribute their inability to lose weight to their partner not supporting them when really, no one else can lose their weight for them.

This list could be longer but we would be here forever. Life is about perception, if we want to change our lives, usually this involves changing our perception of it, and our belief systems are a great place to start.

Look at weight loss. We want to lose weight, but constantly sabotage our weight loss attempts, and in the process become professional ‘yo-yo dieters’. We automatically assume that we cannot lose weight, that weight loss is difficult and that we are unlikely to ever permanently lose weight. All belief systems, a self-created reality! So we spend our lives unhappy about our weight and blame our weight and looks for what is not right in our lives. In short, we suffer because we hold onto beliefs that don’t serve us.

If we could murder our attachment to our unhelpful beliefs, we could start hanging out with more constructive perceptions and realise that if we want change then we must be, do and think that change. Life is full of opportunity and potential, we just need to grab it. Suffering, it seems, is optional! Read on for the Third Noble Truth and the end to suffering.

Third Noble Truth  – The cessation of suffering is achievable

Well, it looks like there is light at the end of the tunnel, and we don’t have to murder our unhelpful beliefs to achieve freedom from suffering and struggle, we just have to stop connecting with our suffering. This is consistent with psychological research. The Buddhists say we need to become ‘dispassionate’ about our beliefs and other habits that create suffering. Hanging out with our negative belief systems and feeding them just makes sure the unhelpful beliefs keep coming back for more attention, glory and control. If we keep feeding negative beliefs we just get – same stuff, different day, or for some “same stuff different decade”. So, the new rule is  “no feeding belief systems that don’t serve you!”

Now becoming detached or ‘dispassionate’ to beliefs we have nurtured, fed and used as excuses to continue unhelpful behaviours like over-eating, under-exercising, screaming at our spouse or children, or just generally procrastinating, is a challenge, but it appears that there is no easy way out, consistent effort will be required.

I like what Vince Lombardi had to say:

“The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you’re willing to pay the price.”

We don’t need to consult Einstein to confirm that persistence and perseverance pay off; none of us get what we want without intention and some form of effort. However, it seems that the goal for Buddhists is to achieve “nirvana” and in so doing release themselves from suffering. I am not Buddha, and did not spend decades under the Bodhi tree discovering how to become enlightened and pain free. This blog is ‘food for thought’, and hopefully motivating you to realise that “If anything is to Be, it is up to Me”.

Fourth Noble Truth – The way leading to the cessation of suffering

I like this Truth, it talks to us about taking the ‘middle way’, the road of moderation – not being super ‘in control’, like a dieter, or totally out of control like a binge eater, but finding a balance that sensibly and practically gets us what we want.

So, it looks like we don’t have to sit in a cave, in a loin cloth, in the forest, living off nettles to find the antidote to suffering, but nor should we rest on our laurels and eat what we like and assume that a magic pill will come on the market and dissolve all our fat before we die of a heart attack, or spend what we like because our retirement plan is to win lotto. Moderation and being-on-purpose is the key. Old news really!

Life is like a big school with a higher purpose. We are on a path of gradual self-improvement, and there is a lot to be said for doing it in a way that is kind and graceful and not too pressuring for ourselves.

Look at how Kaizen worked for the Japanese. Kaizen relates to continuous incremental improvement as reflected in Japan’s transition from a nation once reputed for “Japanese junk” to being a highly regarded “technological giant”.

Another useful concept relevant to the middle path is ‘slow living’. It fits in with the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, which is being incorporated into many eating programs.  Slow living is an art, and is related to moving slowly and purposefully, so you can appreciate life. We don’t live forever, and get easily sedated or distracted by 9 to 5, Monday to Friday and the shopping sales that take place at the different seasons of the year, and forget to live with awareness and clear intention. “Slow Living” forces us to Be Here Right Now, getting the full juice out of life, and doing and thinking the things that we know will get us what we want, be it weight loss, appreciation of the food we are eating right now or the sun shining.

Buddha apparently developed a game plan for ‘the middle way’ known as the Noble Eightfold Path. This will be reviewed in another blog to avoid drowning you in an ocean of information and ideas.

I hope you enjoyed this blog as much as I enjoyed writing it. We all have a bit of avoidance and I recall the first time I ever went to read the Four Noble Truths. When I saw the first one, “Life is suffering”, I stopped reading. I thought, “Wow, this is a spiritual philosophy based on doom and gloom, I get enough of this when I watch the news!” Of course, my reaction was ignorant and ill informed. We should all read or listen to the whole story before forming opinions.

I found it somewhat liberating to have read ALL Four Truths, but make a clear disclaimer that I am not an expert on Buddhism. What is provided here is a light-hearted treatise on some ideas that could help you with any struggles you may have, using the Four Noble Truths as a framework. As you know there is a whole religion based on the subject, so for more information consult a Buddhist Centre.

NOW…it is easy to read something, it is quite another thing to put ideas and insights into action, and to keep using them in your life with positive effect. Following are some suggestions to minimise suffering.

First Noble Truth – Life Means Suffering

• To address this nobel truth get acquainted with where suffering shows up in your life. Look on all levels – emotional, physical, social, occupational and legal as well as your weight loss history.

• To make yourself feel better, and to balance all that suffering, list the highs or good things in your life, and do it daily. An attitude of gratitude goes a long way to cultivating positivity in your life.

• Create a meaning of life that empowers you as opposed to one that gives you permission to whinge about your lot in life.

Second Noble Truth – the origin of suffering is attachment

• Too often we go through life with beliefs that don’t serve us. An example would be, “I don’t have a girlfriend because I am too fat”. Now no one has probably told this man that he is too fat. It is simply a belief he has taken on and created into a self-fulfilling prophecy because unfortunately we humans tend to search for evidence to substantiate the stories we tell about ourselves. So, get up close and personal and list down all the limiting and self-defeating beliefs you have about yourself that hold you back.
• Practise changing your life by changing your perception of it.
• And, never forget, suffering optional, and is not that constructive.

Third Noble Truth  – The cessation of suffering is attainable

• List out the ways you are sedated in your life – is it 9 to 5, Monday to Friday because you have to pay your mortgage (in Old French, mortgage means ‘death pledge’)? Is it reading magazines and knowing more about celebrities lives than your own, watching endless hours of TV,  playing video games, internet surfing, downloading porn, relationship recycling, moving from project to project, or addictions to busyness, shopping, sex, food, alcohol, illegal substances, prescription drugs, falling in love, gambling, cigarettes, exercise, ….. and the list goes on.
• Now to rise above doing “same stuff different day or deccade” it is important to start living mindfully, to be here right now, to live slowly, to know immediately which decisions you make that are not empowering or adding value to your life. for example is buying a gossip magazine to find out whether Brad and Angelina are really breaking up, or whether Brad is still talking to Jen, or seeing if there is a celebrity who has more cellulite than you really worthwhile?
• Detaching is difficult. It requires something few of us have – discipline. It means you have to see your thoughts just as thoughts, and your emotions just as emotions. Notice them, but don’t get down and bogey with them, or they will have you stuck in a belief or emotion that doesn’t serve you. Remember, persistence and perseverance pay off. Write daily affirmations about your ability to get what you want in life. Keep a gratitude journal where every day you write down 5 things you are grateful for, and if you are too lazy to write them down, then just think them.

Fourth Noble Truth – The path to the cessation of suffering

• Google kaizen and how to do it. Google slow living and think about doing it. Practise mindfulness. Be ordinary, and if you can’t be ordinary, be extraordinarily ordinary.

• Google the Noble Eightfold Path – Wikipedia says it is about: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration – sounds like fun!

• Life is difficult but ‘the show must go on’

Photo Credit: sxc.hu

Related posts:

1. Is Cutting Calories Sufficient for Weight Loss?
2. How Stress & Over-exercise Can Prevent Weight-Loss
3. 8 Key Guidelines for Weight Loss

© anita for DietPsyche: Making Life a Healthy Habit, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Body image, eating disorder, Four Noble Truths, Health, Road Less Travelled, Shopping, Vince Lombardi, weight loss

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Time & time again we hear our clients talk about emotional eating – turning to food to soothe emotions related to major events & daily stress.They say things like,

“But I was really stressed…”

“I just felt sad…”

“It calmed me down”

Emotional eating is reported as one of the most common reasons our clients sabotage their weight management attempts.

While occasional overeating, like letting go on Christmas Day, is not too much of a worry, doing it more often than not drags you into a destructive cycle of using food to manage your mood, cope with stress, or overcome feelings of anxiety or boredom.

We are ‘psychologising’ food when we use food to fix psychological issues such as stress. Of course, most of us know that food does not resolve stress and depression, and not surprisingly ends up making us feel more stressed and depressed when we gain even more weight. But, do we stop doing it? No! We stay stuck in the cycle of emotional eating!

As boring and blindingly obvious as it sounds, food is an energy and nutrient source. It supplies our body with  protein, fat and carbohydrate and vitamins and minerals.

Technically speaking, we should be eating to live, not living to eat!

Two-thirds to three quarters of Australians eat more than their body needs and as a result deposit excess body fat. And, it is not just Australians that are getting fatter, it has become a planetary problem!

We are actually designed to maintain our body weight in a range that is appropriate for our skeleton and body build. We have a feeding and satiety centre in our brains that if we listened to it, would keep us at an ideal body weight all our lives. Unfortunately, our emotions and thoughts can override a natural tendency to manage our weight through appetite regulation. So instead of eating when we are physiologically hungry we eat emotionally – when we are sad, when we are happy, when we are stressed, when we are angry, when we are bored and when we couldn’t care less. And, because we are such emotional creatures, we just get fatter as we eat in response to emotions.

We also allow our more unenlightened thoughts and beliefs to determine what we eat. Typical examples include: “Go on, eat that dessert, you can start your weight loss program tomorrow!” or “I’m on holiday, so I’ll eat what I like, and start my weight loss program when I go back to work”, or “I deserve it!”.

How Does Food Relate to Mood?

1. Eating some foods like chocolate  releases small amounts of mood & satisfaction elevating hormones, meaning you want to eat them again.
2. For those who psychologise their food, the ”pleasure” of eating can offset negative emotions, and even though the effect is usually temporary, it is powerful enough to cause the person to repeat the exercise, making it a habit.
3. Food can be a distraction from worry, anxiety, sadness and other negative emotions. Unfortunately, the distraction is only temporary & when you are done overeating, your attention returns to your worries. On top of that, you’ll probably be feeling guilty too, which could start the whole eating cycle again.

Following are Some Tips to Get a Grip on Emotional Eating…

Firstly, know your triggers…

We all react to different things. For some of us, being stressed leads to over-eating, while for others, it leads to under-eating. Tracking what & how much you eat, when you eat, how you’re feeling when you eat & how hungry you are will allow you to identify triggers of overeating & deal with them before emotional eating takes hold! Creating awareness of your motivations for eating is crucial to weight loss success. We call it self-monitoring.

Secondly, know your hunger…

Learn to recognise true hunger. Is your hunger physical or emotional? Some signs of emotional hunger include:

• It comes on suddenly – you go from being not hungry at all to starving
• It is stimulated by pleasant food smells and, you were not hungry before you smelt the food
• It is stimulated by pictures on TV of food
• It begins in the mouth & the mind, not the stomach
• It often craves specific food a favourite being chocolate
• It often accompanies an unpleasant emotion such as a feeling of agitation or being unsettled
• It involves mindless eating
• It isn’t satisfied when you’re full
• It makes you feel guilty
• It co-occurs with self-sabotaging mental chatter such as “One won’t hurt”, “I earned it”
• It occurs outside your normal eating times
• Once you start eating you can’t stop

Thirdly, to control emotional eating find comfort elsewhere or in diffierent ways… Soothing or sedating yourself with food isn’t going to get you anywhere! Instead of opening a packet of chips, do something positive for your health, such as taking a walk, taking time out to see a movie, drinking water, listening to music, reading, or calling a friend. If your stress is about a particular thing, try talking to someone because food will not support you, fix your problem or talk back.

Fourthly, have healthy snacks within a balanced food plan…

Bt filling up on basic, healthy food you are more likely to feel fuller, for longer. Eating at regular times and not skipping breakfast will help you maintain control throughout the day. Snacks should be low-joule foods, such as fruit, vegetables with fat-free dip, or multigrain crackers. Research has shown that missing breakfast contributes to difficulty with weight loss. Small, frequent, healthy meals are the key to appetite control.

Fifthly, take care of other factors

Remember, things like sleep and exercise also affect your mood, and taking care of these things can make your mind & body better able to cope with stress. People will often confuse tiredness and low energy for hunger. Be rested.

Finally, lose the guilt…

We all stuff up sometimes. The problem is when you run around with guilt for days & let you Mad Monkey Mind tell you to give up! If you give in to emotional eating, forgive yourself & get back on track ASAP. Most importantly, try to learn from the experience, and make a plan for how you can prevent it or manage it better in the future. Focus on the positive changes you’re making in your eating habits and give yourself credit for making changes that ensure better health.

Overall, it’s not about a diet failing, or your emotions mucking you up, YOU need to take responsibility for your actions and eat more mindfully and consciously. Remember, you eat to live, not live to eat!

Food does not solve emotional issues!

Photo Credit:  sxc.hu

Related posts:

1. Eating Mindfully
2. Does eating six small meals a day produce more weight loss than eating three meals a day?

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Post tags: emotional eating, Overeating, weight loss

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• Diet (balanced nutrition & healthy eating habits)
• Psychology (mental fitness)
• Exercise (physical fitness)

My name is Anita Cochrane and the vision for DietPsyche was first conceived in the mid-90s. It emerged from my background as both a Dietitian and Psychologist.

I first graduated as a Dietitian in 1979. Yes, way back when very few people had a mobile phone, when digital cameras were virtually unheard of and when we relied on dial-up on the slim chance that we did have an internet connection in the home, or even a personal computer!

I was young and enthusiastic when I commenced work as a dietitian. I assumed that all I needed to do was tell people what to eat and provide basic exercise/activity suggestions and they would run away and do exactly what I advised becoming permanently slim, trim, taut and terrific in the process.

Of course, it will come of no surprise to you to learn that I was very wrong.

I had incorrectly assumed that weight loss was a simple maths equation – less in, more out, and hey presto, the fat just gets whittled away!

It took no time at all after commencing work as a dietitian to clearly and indisputably realise that there was more to this weight loss game than telling people what to put in their mouths and how to move their bodies.

I learned that while most people could and would lose weight, few would keep going with their weight loss or healthy eating and exercise program and of those who did lose weight, few would keep it off.  Even fewer kept exercising.

Changing people’s behaviour in relation to weight loss and disordered eating such as binge eating, bulimia and anorexia was going to be a challenge.

I could probably write a book on what excuses or reasons people have given me over the last 30 years for why they couldn’t stick to an eating and exercise plan that would assure weight loss, address disordered eating and ensure ongoing physical fitness, but more about that later.

It seemed to me that the missing ingredient was psychological. It was something in people’s minds that prevented them from making their lives a healthy habit and being who they wanted to be.

So, by 1986 I had commenced a psychology degree in pursuit of the panacea for permanent behaviour change. And three psychology degrees later, did I find the Holy Grail of weight loss and other permanent health-related behaviour changes? Well, sort of, but you may not like the answer because the bad news is there is no magic pill. The answer to making weight-related change is not found outside yourself, it is in YOU.

“If it is to be, it’s up to me”, needs to be your mantra if you want to overcome overweight, obesity, over-eating, binge-eating, bulimia, and other forms of disordered eating, and if you want to become physically and mentally fitter.

There has been a reasonable amount of research performed on identifying what facilitates effective behaviour change in psychological therapy and this information can be applied to the health-related behaviour changes I am referring to in this blog.

The research performed by Scott Miller (refer to www.talkingcure.com) and his colleagues has identified the following:

• client factors account for 87% of change in therapy. Translated, this means ~90% of your success is in YOUR hands
• therapeutic affects account for the remaining 13% of change and is apportioned as follows:

1. 8% is attributed to the quality of your relationship with your treating practitioner. The better the relationship, the stronger the outcomes.
2. 4% is attributed to how much your treating professional believes in their approach, so make sure the person you are working with believes in what they do
3. 1% is attributed to the model or technique  your treating professional uses

So, the takeaway message from this blog is ….

DietPsyche is a unique program combining nutrition, psychology & exercise to help you achieve & maintain weight loss, manage disordered eating, and become mentally and physically fitter. We place great importance on psychological strategies to help you manage your mind, say no to bad habits, and to stay motivated and committed to your health-related changes.

Most of us KNOW what to eat and how to exercise BUT… lack the motivation, self-discipline & focus to translate our desire for weight loss into long term action & therefore reality!

While a magic wand is a great fantasy, the reality is….

Nobody else can lose your weight for you

Nobody can exercise your body for you

No one can think for you

Your new mantra needs to be, “If it is to be, it is up to me!”

DietPsyche IS NOT for people who are looking for instant weight loss.

DietPsyche IS NOT a diet, IT IS A WAY OF LIFE. Diets are something people tend to go on, to go off.

DietPsyche IS NOT for people looking for something outside themselves to achieve weight loss such as a magic pill, miracle diet, or vibrating machines that don’t involve exercise it just wobbles your fat.

DietPsyche  IS for people who are prepared to take responsibility for their current state of health and are willing to be self-responsible enough to use sensible guidelines provided by the DietPsyche program to:

• improve their nutritional intake,
• overcome disordered eating habits,
• achieve an ideal and sensible weight for their size and health,
• improve both their mental fitness and
• improve their physical fitness.

DietPsychE is the whole enchilada, not just the entree. You get three things for one – diet, psychology and exercise – so as you take charge of your eating habits and weight, you are given guidelines for improving your physical health and fitness, and for personal development.

You have nothing to lose but your weight.

On an on-line membership site is currently being developed, so watch this space.

Warm Regards

Anita Cochrane

© Mindz Matter Pty Ltd

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Post tags: the psychology of weight loss, weight loss, weight loss for the mind

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And, the culprit? Cortisol.

Cortisol is the body’s primary stress hormone and is secreted by the adrenal glands in response to stress.

It may surprise you, but the body interprets high intensity, frequent exercise as a stress.

Exercising too much, too often, & without a break, leads to consistent high cortisol levels, and can negatively affect weight loss attempts.

How does this come about?

Under stress, cortisol functions to help the body produce blood sugar and pour it into your bloodstream. The blood glucose provides you with the energy to mobilise your “fight or flight” response.

Scientists believe that in prehistoric times, the “flight or fight” response was designed to facilitate an intense physical effort, such as “fighting” your attacker or taking “flight” from a threat such as removing yourself from the path of a t-rex.

While in emergency situations our stress response is vital and valuable, in modern times, our stress response is often activated in situations where the response is not useful such as when you miss the bus, or when your boss upsets you. Our prevailing social and legal norms don’t encourage us to physically hit or verbally abuse people who upset us because we could be up for an assault or bullying charge!

The bad news for weight losers under chronic stress whether this stress be exercise-induced or otherwise, is that the blood sugar build-up stimulated by cortisol, if not utilised to fight or flee, is deposited as fat.

As well as causing fat gain, especially around the stomach, chronically elevated cortisol levels lead to:

• muscle loss (lowering your metabolism),
• a less effective immune system, and
• slower recovery from injury.

Cortisol can also inhibit thyroid function, which also lowers metabolism and prevents weight loss.

So, if you already have a stressful job on top of a stressful life juggling work, family and other commitments, too much exercise will only contribute to the maintenance of high cortisol levels, encouraging you to hold onto your fat.

And what’s worse, research shows that people with high lifestyle stress release MORE cortisol during an intense bout of exercise than someone who has a lower stress level.

The solution to the effect of stress in relation to weight loss is to create more balance in our lives and reduce both our stress levels, and our response to stress (ie don’t react in the first place).

So, how does stress affect appetite?

High blood cortisol, brought on by high stress levels, not only increases the production of blood sugar, it can stimulate our appetite, particularly for carbohydrates, fat, & sugar. One of the major excuses weight losers give for ‘giving up’ on their weight loss programs is ‘they were stressed’ and turned to food for comfort. Emotional eating is a major obstacle to weight loss so learning non-food related ways to manage stress is essential for those who wish to lose weight and keep it off.

There is also a relationship between stress and gender-based coping styles & eating behaviours

On top of these biological changes, we know that some people, especially men, cope with stress via social withdrawal, substance abuse, including food & alcohol, and aggression.

The easiest way to put on weight is to drink it one. Alcohol is 7 kilocalories or 29 kilojoules per gram and unfortunately we can drink a lot more than we can eat. While fat is more fattening (37 kilojoules or 9 kilocalories per gram), we aren’t going to sit down and drink cup after cup of fat. Watching what we drink be it juice, cordial, alcohol, or even milk, is a non-negotiable step in losing weight and keeping it off. And, of course, it will come of no surprise to learn that drinking either alcohol or soft drink does not “fix” your stress; it will likely just cause more!

Women tend to cope with their stress by “tending & befriending” their female friends, which may or may not involve food. The recommendation of course is going to be obvious. Talk and walk; don’t eat your problems away.

Most weight losers would have to admit that one of their main reasons for not losing weight is because of stress and/or emotional eating.

We were designed for short adrenaline and cortisol bursts to mobilise our “fight or flight” response, NOT the prolonged stress associated with modern-day life.

Apart from the disruptions it causes to our weight loss and metabolism, stress also disrupts our sexual response. Libido’s wane and sexual arousal is harder to maintain.

Chronic stress also contributes to gastro-intestinal changes including diarrhoea, constipation, bloating, reflux, flatulence and abdominal pain.

And, the solution is obvious. Manage stress for better sex, improved coping, a more normal appetite control and a happier gastro-intestinal tract.

Stress also affects sleep. High cortisol levels lead to restless sleep, which also negatively impacts on weight loss. We need sufficient relaxation and sleep to produce enough growth hormone. Growth hormone is involved in fat mobilisation and helps make us leaner and stronger.

The effects of not enough sleep on obesity is also at least partly due to the the hormones leptin (leptin has a role in hunger control) and ghrelin (grehlin triggers hunger). One study has shown that people who slept only 4 hours a night for 2 nights saw an 18% decrease in levels of leptin, & a 28% increase in ghrelin. They also had a 24% increase in appetite, craved sweet, starchy and salty food, and lost interest in fruit, vegetables, protein and dairy products.

Again, the solution is obvious. Sleep 7-8 hours every night.

Recent research has suggested that supplementing the diet with fish oils can reduce cortisol levels.

6 Recommendations to Optimise Weight Loss:

1) Optimise exercise, but with the following caveats in mind:

• Exercise but ensure down times  between intense exercise sessions
• Mix up your workouts. For every hard workout with strenuous cardio and weights, do two easy days, either resting or doing yoga, gentle cycling or walking, keeping your heart rate below 70 beats per minute.
• For every 3-4 weeks of exercise, have an “unloading week” that perhaps includes massage, gentle yoga-type exercises, walking, gentle cycling and stretching. When you head back to the gym, your body will be fully rested and you will be able to train harder, which will mean greater weight loss and an improvement in strength.

2) Manage stress in the following ways:

• Identify your stressors
• Learn & implement stress management strategies such as breathing techniques & stretching
• Monitor stress levels

3) Optimise your home-work balance

4) Take fish oil supplements

5) Have adequate sleep, remembering you need more in winter

6) Embrace positive psychology by

• Firstly, keeping a gratitude journal. On a daily basis, write down 3 things that have gone well and that you are grateful for
• Secondly, by focusing on positive events & feelings because this has been clinically proved to reduce stress and elevate mood

Photo credit:  sxc.hu

Related posts:

1. A Bit of Motivation from Buddha for Those Who Have Lost Their Weight Loss Mojo or Think Losing Weight is Just Too Hard
2. To Add Years To Your Life You Need to Exercise – Here’s Why!
3. Is Cutting Calories Sufficient for Weight Loss?

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Post tags: how stress affects weight, over-exercise, stress and eating, stress and exercise, stress and weight, stress and weight loss

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Of course, while we all know that the real reason for Christmas is to celebrate the birth of a well known figure in history, and that Easter is to celebrate the death and resurrection of that same person, we turn these events into a ‘food fest’ and a drain on our finances. Yes, very silly!

In light of the recent economic downturn and the number of people on the planet with expanding waist lines, DietPsyche is encouraging all and sundry to interpret special events like Christmas, Easter and social occasions as opportunities to practice values such as:

• self-discipline,
• mindfulness,
• accountability,
• commitment and
• follow-through in relation to our physical health and to build mental fitness.

So, let’s do the right thing for our bodies and our bank accounts by being mindful of our actions.

Here are FOUR KEYS to curb celebratory cheer.

1. Practise self-discipline

• Learn a useful phrase taught to DietPsyche by a famous red-haired client. “No thanks; I don’t need it!”. This of course, can be shortened to “No!” Learning to say no, without guilt can be liberating.
• Eat to appetite; do not over-eat. Your body will be eternally grateful.
• Only put food out at meal times and serve directly on to a plate and avoid using central dishes that allow you to keep helping yourself.
• Clear the table immediately after eating to stop yourself picking at food, including other people’s food!

2. Practise moderation:

• Eat small frequent meals throughout the Christmas, Easter and holiday periods
• Keep snacks small if you absolutely must have one
• Delay dessert till afternoon tea or supper depending on when you have your main  meal because by the time dessert comes you will likely have eaten enough!
• Watch how much you drink be it fruit juice, soft drink or alcohol. The easiest way to put on weight is to drink it on.

i.      Instead of juice, cordial and soft drink, drink water, soda water with a slice of lemon or plain mineral water!

ii.      Women should not have more than two standard alcoholic drinks in a sitting. Men should not have more than four standard alcoholic drinks in a sitting.

iii.      For every glass of alcohol, have a glass of water. Look after your liver, it is a very busy part of your body and can’t effectively detox excessive amounts of toxins like alcohol on top of all the other work it has to do!

3. Practise nutritional responsibility

• Avoid pork crackle, chicken and duck skin and other obvious sources of saturated, artery clogging fat on  and in meats and wrapped around meats and fish like pastry and batter
• Instead of roasting vegetables in oil, dry roast them or alternatively steam them or have salads.
• Use herbs and spices to flavour food, instead of oils, creams and dressings
• When providing salads avoid potato salads, rice salads and pasta salads that are loaded with full fat mayonnaise and oils. Keep it simple and go for fresh salads not based on rice, pasta or potato dressed in oils and mayonnaise.
• Skip the Christmas and Wedding and other celebratory Cakes and decadent desserts and have fruit instead. Don’t forget, dried fruit is loaded with kilojoules. Fresh is best.
• Do not give people high kilojoule or high calorie foods like Christmas cake, plum pudding and short bread biscuits for Christmas, or chocolates and tortes at other special occasions; you are not doing them a favour. If someone gives you a high joule orcalorie food like chocolates or Christmas Cake, pass it on or throw it in the bin. Remember, “You don’t need it!”
• Consider a cold Christmas lunch or BBQ with salad for Christmas lunch, with a light fruit based dessert – especially if you live in the southern hemisphere. People who live DownUnder do not need heavy roasts on hot Christmas days and those that live in the Northern Hemisphere, need to watch their waists.

4. Do special events differently

• Just as there is a trend for eco-friendly travel and even eco-friendly weddings, we need to think about more eco-weight friendly celebratory events
• Consider a BBQ or picnic instead of the traditional heavy Christmas or Easter fare
• have your BBQ or picnic in a park where it is cumbersome to take too much food
• offer a platter of char grilled or dry roasted vegetables for entrée, or crudités and use tomato or yoghurt based dips
• bake pita breads in the oven until crisp and break them up when cool to use for dips instead of chips and high fat biscuits
• leave out a fruit bowl instead of bowls of lollies, chocolates and chips
• don’t let your hair down because it is Christmas Day or some other special event; do it differently and eat mindfully and appropriately for your body

Photo credit: sxc.hu

© Mindz Matter Pty Ltd

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© anita for DietPsyche: Making Life a Healthy Habit, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: eating at special events, losing weight at christmas, weight loss

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