The Fear Factor

The Fear Factor

How many times have you tried to lose some weight and failed? Oh, you lost some weight all right. Losing it is not the problem, it’s the gaining it right back that haunts you, isn’t it? The thought of trying and being disappointed one more time can be overwhelming. It’s not you that failed, it was the diet or “plan” you tried to follow that wasn’t in tune to you or your lifestyle. Anytime you find yourself thinking about how many more days you have to endure an eating plan, then you already know any weight you’ve lost will be temporary.

Any reduction in food overall will help you shed pounds but unless it’s something you enjoy and will continue, any change you achieve will not last. That’s to be expected. It works the other way too. If you gain extra weight over the holidays, you’ll probably drop those pounds as soon as you get back into your regular routine. That’s generally how it works for people without a weight problem.

It only backfires when you stay in the “eating machine” mode into the New Year and then clear through to summer, when you realize none of your shorts fit and now you’re in trouble.

Are You Ready to Make a Change?

This year can be different. This can be the year you make a change in those old habits, if you’re ready. How do you know when you’re ready? You have had all you can take, you may get angry (not at yourself but at the false promises you’re so tired of hearing). You get motivated to take back control of your health–away from doctors who do nothing but prescribe pills or TV commercials that entice you with promises they cannot keep.

Now, anyone who has stayed on a reduced calorie plan for a long period of time, and many of you have done this, has the power within, will power it’s usually called, to accomplish anything you set your mind to accomplish. In fact, you can accomplish anything at all, if you truly want it. It’s not a matter of overcoming your desire to eat more than you need, it’s shifting your thinking to what do you want more? You may reach the point where you say, “Enough is enough.”

I use a multi-phased process to make changes in my life. Simply deciding I’m going to make a change rarely works because I forget all about it and keep doing my regular things in the regular way. It’s only with a systematic approach, a planned attack that I’m able to really make a change, and yes, it does takes effort. There is no magic trick, no wham and it’s all done now program. All those advertised products and plans you hear that claim you’ll never be hungry, it’s effortless, eat-all-you-can and still lose all you want, are simply designed to drain your pocketbook and deliver nothing in exchange except more disappointment.

Advertisers know what you want to hear and they deliver it (politicians do this too at election time). They tell you it will be easy, because you want it to be easy. They tell you you’ll drop a lot of weight because that’s what you want to hear. If they didn’t say it would be easy, would you still be interested? Probably not.

If fear of failure is getting in the way of your trying something that really could work, then work on the fear. The most common thing I hear is, “I know I could use EFT on my craving, but I don’t. I go ahead and eat, and then I feel guilty and mad at myself. Why do I keep doing this?”

It usually comes down to one or two things, sometimes both: Fear of failure, and fear that you’ll never get to eat your favorites again if you stop the cravings. Both are false. If you follow-through, using these techniques, then you will succeed.

If you use EFT on the cravings, you’ll gain an understanding of why you can eat what you truly love, when you want, without guilt, and why you can also sometimes choose not to eat at all or save it for later.

It sounds simple, and it is, but it also takes that initial effort to put it all into practice. The more often you practice the better you’ll get just like learning any new skill. At first you might be clumsy and it feels awkward, but as time goes on it begins to feel more and more effortless, until one day you’re an expert and now you’re teaching what you know to others.

“Even though I can’t face failing one more time, I deeply and completely accept myself.”

“Even though I don’t think I can do this, I deeply and completely accept myself.”

“Even though I can’t stand the thought of failing again, I deeply and completely accept myself.”

If you don’t like or want to say, “deeply and completely accept myself” change it to something else. It’s fine to change the wording. These are examples. It’s easiest to memorize the process using the same basic pattern, but once you know the steps, go ahead and say what you want. It all works.

Learning new techniques but never following through may be what you’ve done in the past, and now perhaps you’re ready to put the One More Bite ideas and concepts to use. This process will work, if you take it one day at a time, one issue at a time, one bite at a time, and give yourself time. It’s not going to be a one-day, one-time thing. This is life work. Stop trying to fix yourself. You aren’t broken. You may have a habit or two you’d like to change, and that’s okay. Work on that habit and only that habit and let go all the other things you think are wrong. They can be addressed another day.

It’s true that when the project becomes too overwhelming all efforts stop, so if you are the project, whittle it down into little bits (or bites). Even if only a tiny twig is removed, eventually the path is cleared. Have you seen ants at work? They don’t move much at once but the job gets done because they are persistent.

Work on the fear factor–“Even though I’m afraid, I deeply and completely accept myself.” Three times a day for one week, then check back to see if you still are as afraid.

Boobs McGee Workout Fail

Home Workouts Can be Hazardous to Your Health

I was trying to learn how to videotape myself working out, so happened to have the camera rolling when this happened …

Fat Muscle Replicas

Model of Fat and Muscle

Fat vs Muscle

I’m often asked where to buy those fat/muscle replica models that I show in my post about whether you can (or should) say “Muscle Weighs More Than Fat.” One current place is Enasco.com. They have a very nice catalog they’ll mail if you request one.

See Yourself Thinner Instantly

It’s fun to alter photos, and here’s one for helping your face (or your friends’ faces?). Look younger, see how you’d look after that face lift you’ve been wanting. lose some fat cheeks? Sure, just in a photo, but hey, it’s a start. Check out Real Allusion. Note: The model they use is hardly 20-years-old so it’s not a huge change.

Here’s a tutorial on using Photoshop to alter photos (Hint: this is what they do to magazine photos which is why everyone looks so perfect).

Someone sent me a link to a web site that can alter pics to make you look thinner. Now I can’t find that link, so if you know of anyone doing this, please send me a note or comment below and let me know! Here is one I found on my own (maybe it’s the same, I’m not sure) Fit Pics.com, for just $19.95 they’ll alter the photo you send to make you look as you would if you lost some weight. This can a be a great way to visualize yourself thinner and also to get emotionally over that hump (the “who will I be without my weight issue hump). The price is much less than trying to learn to do this yourself, but if you already have Photoshop there are lots of tutorials out there, just search Google or your fav search engine for “photographs instant weight loss” or something similar.

When Art Gets Fat

OMG, David! You’ve Let Yourself Go

Saw this on Facebook and trying to find a reference I discovered Eternally Cool. “EternallyCool.net is Rome’s hip hub – here you can keep up with all that’s happening in the world’s oldest and coolest city. From art to food, from fashion to furniture, from advertising to literature, and from street life to art exhibits, we’ll keep you up on everything that makes Rome eternally cool.”

Apparently this statute, and another of Lincoln grown fat just sitting all these years in his chair at the Lincoln Monument for too long, was part of an advertising campaign by Advertising Agency: Scholz & Friends, Hamburg, Germany

Ashton Kutcher First to Million plus Millions to Stop Malaria

High School Students Make a Difference

I only knew about this because a friend’s daughter was involved in NothingButNets.net so when I saw Ashton Kutcher, @aplusk on Twitter.com getting involved I thought that was pretty awesome. He started with a contest between himself and CNN for the title of first Twitter User with over 1,000,000 followers. He succeeded and narrowly beat CNN for the honor of being first to have one million followers. Why does this matter?

It matters to me because even before his challenge to CNN, Kutcher had posted on Twitter he would buy 1,000 nets in the fight to end Malaria, mentioning MalariaNoMore.org. That’s making a difference and I applaud him for both bringing more awareness to the plight of Malaria and also for getting more people involved with Twitter.

Someone said Twitter was silly and nothing more than a way to talk about what you’re having for breakfast, but yet, there’s this social army giving millions to charity, and of course, breaking news from CNN, very worthwhile and very cool.

If you haven’t joined the fun, get an account. Go to Twitter.com, choose a user name and you’re good to go. You choose who to join, effectively killing off the spammers (just unfriend if you get one by mistake), and tools like TweetDeck make it even more fun.

Find me at @onemorebite and send a Tweet saying hello! I’m tweeting on EFT for Weight Loss (naturally) and also ways I increase my weight loss coaching business via marketing on the Internet.

FDA Ignores 100,000 Annual Prescription Drug Deaths

Pill bottle100,000 Die from Prescriptions Every Year

Yet, apparently that’s a-okay with the US Govt since nothing at all is done about it. Drug ads continue to state the side effects include death, yet no big outrage there either. Yet an herbal product is “claimed” to have contributed to less than 20 deaths and the FDA yanks that right off the market! This is ridiculous. I’m sick of being run by big pharmacy.

Between the drug companies and the banks we are being held hostage. Banks run this country, and drug companies are making sure everyone in the country is on some prescription including tiny children. Stop the madness.

How to Get Healthier and Stay Out of Doctor’s Offices?

Start with what you eat. Yes, you’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again and again. The food supply in the United States of American is simply horrible. There is no way to test the safety of our food supply, and recalls are announced months after products have sold. I heard one recently for pistachio nuts that had been sold three months prior. When’s the last time you bought a bag of nuts and didn’t eat them pretty much right away?

Why Buy Organic and/or So Called “Natural” Foods?

Because the quality of our food supply and distribution is horrifying. According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) each year 76 million cases of foodborne illness occur and more than 300,000 persons are hospitalized and 5,000 die from foodborne illness. And the media went crazy went less than 20 people died from the recent swine flu outbreak!?!

Yet Far More Die from Properly Prescribed Prescription Drugs

The Journal of the American Medical Association in 1994 estimated that 76,000 to 137,000 people died from properly prescribed prescription drugs. That would make so-called adverse drug reactions between the sixth and fourth leading cause of death in the United States.

Why does the FDA go up in arms over herbals remedies yet allow this insane number of deaths to occur?

You can fight back at the grocery store. Eat well and reduce your prescriptions too (it’s possible, I’m not suggesting to toss prescriptions, but the connection is clear). The first complaint is organic food is too expensive. Partly because supply and demand creates the higher prices: once more people buy healthier foods prices will drop but you can save 10 to 50% now by joining the first organic and natural foods buying club, The Green Polkadot Box.

You can be sure there will be lots more online organic and natural food buying clubs, but Green PolkaDot Box is the first and best. As of this writing the site is not complete, that’s why they are offering incentives to register early. It costs nothing to pre-register (they will not charge membership fee until opening day), and you have an instant extra 5% discount on everything you buy for the lifetime of your membership. No risk, they are allowing up to 90 days after they launch to change your mind! If you could receive a 5% lifetime discount where you shop now would you refuse?

References:

JAMA April 15, 1998;279(15):1200-5
US hospitals too many serious and fatal drug reactions

Costs are staggering too, so why does this continue? Big pharmacy. Notice there’s a new drug for everything? Notice too they say “you have to continue taking this medication…” Ridiculous, and how about the disclosure they list at the end, including “death” as a side effect?

If you’re sick and tired of this it’s time to take back your health and eating healthier is the best place to start. It’s not impossible to eat fairly well at a traditional grocery but processed foods are not your friend. I’m not suggesting you have to give everything up, just consider what you are fueling your body with and start making some better choices.

Once the majority are buying healthier foods costs will lower — the crappy food prices would be dirt cheap if not for the billions spent on advertising them to us. We are paying for those advertisements. Sheesh, it’s easy to get into rant mode. I only want to perhaps open someone’s eyes to the fact that we are being killed by what we’re eating. It’s not impossible to change that equation if you get ready for the revolution.

Organic Foods Too Expensive? Not If You Know Where To Shop

Think Organic Foods are Too Expensive! Maybe until now

What if you could buy the same organic foods you do now but save 10 to 50%?

Announcing the first, online organic and natural foods buying club: Green PolkaDot Box. You’ll save money and enjoy the convenience of shopping at home (helping to save fuel costs too). During pre-launch you will receive bonuses and rewards just for registering early (later you’d need to refer up to 20 new members to receive the same bonuses).

This is not a box store, and you don’t have to buy in huge quantities like Costco. You pay an annual membership fee (like Costco) then shop online and food is delivered to your door. Order $150 or more and shipping is free, otherwise pay the low set shipping fee (not crazy like some online merchants either).

Get in on the launch. I can offer Associate Memberships with even more rewards but you must pre-register at GreenPolkaDot Box soon.

See 11 Ways to Save Money on Organic Food. They don’t know about Green PolkaDot Box, but if they did you’d see 12 ways.

Healthy Snacks Aid in Weight Loss

Just that Time of Year

It’s that time of year. From a nip in the air to a massive snow and ice storm, there is a difference now. It’s colder and the tendency is to put on a few pounds. We’ve generally accepted that it is nature’s way of helping us provide a little extra winter fat — just in case. But how long since you last had a food shortage or had to wait out the winter for your next meal? This year can be different.

Today consider making one small change

When you make a small change, it is easier to handle, you are more likely to incorporate it into your daily life, and you are more likely to succeed, than if you try to make a global change to your whole way of being.

Start by adding more fresh fruit and vegetables to your diet. Just for today, throw out your rules — if you follow any diet that forbids fruit or your favorite vegetables — because fresh foods are too important to miss. Fresh foods are sweet, satisfying and full of vitamins, minerals, bioflavonoids, and other things that your body requires for optimum health.

Choose a few you particularly enjoy. This time of year apples are good, bananas year around, citrus fruits are plentiful … Get some and start carrying a food sack everywhere you go. You can little packages of baby carrots, etc. A fellow I know always has a bagful of chopped cauliflower, carrots, and others that he munches on.

You Must be Crazy! I can’t Eat Fruits and Vegetables!

What? Have you lost your mind? Hear me out. The idea is when hunger strikes (or what you think is hunger), no matter where you are, you’ll now have a healthy snack handy. It’s not that you couldn’t wait out your hunger, but the tendency is to think about all the yummy foods you are trying so hard not to eat and this type of “I can’t have any” thinking sets you up for a massive binge once you do get ready to eat.

Instead, when you decide you are hungry, turn to your fruit/vegi sack for a quick, healthy snack.  Give it a go and let me know what happens.