Archives 2019

This week I’ve got a lovely tip for you.

It’s especially good if you regularly beat yourself up or are hard on yourself.

Research shows that self-compassion is a critical ingredient for our happiness, health and weight loss.

Even small amounts of self-compassion influence our eating habits in a very very positive manner.

The challenge though is that most of us women, we really struggle to be nice to ourselves for more than five minutes.

So here’s a wee tip to help you remember to support yourself, you be kinder to yourself, to be nicer to yourself, more and more often.

What I suggest you do is…

Add a few ‘pop ups’ in your phone calendar.

Just like you would with an appointment with a friend.

But this is an appointment with yourself.

It might be something like:

            “Good for you on eating slowly!”

            “Well done for being more and more mindful.”

            “Nice work for breathing deeply.”

            “Congratulations on going for that morning walk.”

            “High five for being awesome!!!”

Add a pop up that resonates with you.

The first time I heard this I was like:

            “Whatever! How can something so small possibly work?!”

But it does!

As they pop up during the day, they remind you to be relentlessly encouraging of yourself.

I have four or five pop-ups every day, and even if I only read the first couple of words – rather than the whole message – those words are sooooo supportive.

“Well done…..”, “Rock on……”, “Nice one…….”,”Hats off……..”

Often private clients share how if they’re in a bit of a funk, that pop-up will pop up, and snap them right out of it.

It’s that gentle, encouraging voice helping you to keep on going towards your happy shape and size.

I hope you found that helpful. How

So go ahead, put some encouraging pop-ups in your calendar today.

I’ll see you next week : )

Today’s tip is about the healing power of gratitude. Counting your blessing has soooo man benefits for weight loss.

For example, when we’re in a state of appreciation, our self-repair mechanisms work better, we heal more quickly, we digest our food more efficiently.

Now to be clear, this isn’t about denial or being all Pollyanna.

When we focus on gratitude, we release serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin into our body. Those are all the good-feeling hormones.

Who doesn’t want more of that?!

In the Lighten Up programme, we explore a whole bunch of gratitude tools, but one of the favourites and the one I want to share today is all appreciating your food.

Can you remember the olden days when we’d say grace at the dinner table? Haha, no not in my family either—but we’ve all seen it in the movies!

By saying grace, the intention was to bless the food, to be grateful for it.

The next time you sit down to eat, remind yourself that food is scared.

Chances are if you’re eating, an animal died to provide for your nutrition.

So appreciate the animal, be grateful to the farmer who raised the crop or the secondary school student in the supermarket who packed your groceries.

            “Thank you for the food, thank you to my miraculous body for taking nutrition from this food, thank you… thank you…thank you.”

It’s as easy as that!

So thank you for being here with me this week. I appreciate you : )

I look forward to seeing you next week for another Making Peace With Food tip.

Hands up if physical exercise is something you tend to have a love-hate relationship with?

I remember when I was a child, my PE teacher told me,

             “If you don’t keep your heart rate elevated for at least 30 minutes, then it doesn’t count as exercise.”

How depressing I thought at the time : (

Good news though because today, I have some wonderful news.

It turns out that old way of thinking is not true.

According to research even short bouts of low-intensity physical activity has substantial health benefits.

YAY!

We’re talking about things like walking your kids to school, hanging out the washing instead of using the dryer, cooking from scratch instead of ordering in take-aways.

Basically, it’s living your life like our grandparents did before all the technological advancements, and we became very sedentary.

If you’re thinking

             “hmmmm, can activities like gardening or cooking have a measurable impact on health?’. After      all, those things aren’t ‘exercise’, right?”

Fortunately, turns out that our bodies don’t care whether those things are ‘exercise’ or not.

Our bodies just love to move.

And anything that reduces us being sedentary is positive.

So, here’s a couple of ways you can add more activity and movement into your day without exercising:

• Use a basket at the supermarket instead of the trolley.
• Hang your washing on the line instead of using the dryer.
• Walk your kids to school.
• Take the stairs! How often do you take the elevator up or down a single floor? Cut it out! The elevator and robs you of movement and it doesn’t save time.

If you work on the 20th floor, leave the elevator on the 18th and walk the last two floors.

This sounds weird, but my personal strategy is to drink a lot of green tea. When you’re continually sipping fluids, you’ll need to pee. Often. That’s a five-minute stroll every hour, right there.

It’s so easy to forget to go for a stroll or take a short break every hour, but it’s impossible to forget to go pee. So you might want to try that one on.

You can see that none of these activities is big in isolation.

But start doing them.

Use the old fashioned method – instead of technological advances…. because these do add up over time.

Lazy tip to super-charge your goal setting!

This week’s tip is one of my favourites because it’s easy, it’s fun, and it appeals to my laaaaazy side.

We all know the power of goal setting. We all know that right?

How often do you write your weight loss goal in a beautiful sparkly journal, then put it aside somewhere, maybe in the top drawer of your desk and then get busy with life?

What I encourage you to do is write down your goal – because that’s important to put it to paper.

Here’s the super-charging tip.

Create a password around your specific goal.

For example, if your goal is to feel ‘slim chic and savvy’ then make your new password – ‘slimchic&savvy73’, or whatever it is that works for you.

If your goal is to be an active, fun mum, make, ‘playfulfunmum’ your password.

Now, by typing your new password into your computer keyboard 5, 10, 20 times per day, into social media, your bank account, your Trademe account – it keeps your goal top of mind, which is a great place for your goal to be.

It so appeals to my lazy side because once you’ve set it up, the system is supporting you, every time you type in your password.

You’re reaping the dividends, without even thinking about it. How cool is that?

So go try it.

What’s your new super-charged password going to be?

Remember, if there’s a part of you cynically thinking these tips are too small to make a difference, remember that small steps add up to radical change over time.

I hope you found that helpful and useful.

This week’s tip is all about the power of language.

What I want you to do is replace the word “loss”, and “losing”, as in “weight loss” or “losing weight.”

Think about the very very negative connotations in English of the word ‘loss’.

For example, “I lost my mobile phone!”

Or, “We lost the match—grrrr.”

Or, there’s that ‘charming’ insult that teenagers hurl at each other – “you’re a loser!!”

Nobody wants to lose anything or be a loser.

You see, our natural response, when we lose something, is to want to find it again.

You do NOT want to regain this weight, right!!

Instead, I encourage you to replace the word ‘loss’ with something more neutral like ‘shifting’ or ‘letting go’ or ‘releasing.’

Or, I  have a spiritually-minded client who sends me texts every month or so reading, “I’ve donated another dress size to the universe!!!”

How awesome is that?!

Another client says “I’m not losing anything, I’m regaining the real me.”

That’s a lovely positive twist.

So start using whatever word feels appropriate for you as an alternative to ‘losing.’

I hope you found that useful.

I’ll see you next week for another tip on making peace with food.