Archive for Food/Nutrition

LESSONS FROM MY HUMIDIFIER

February 14, 2023 · Filed under Fitness/Exercise, Food/Nutrition, You/Mind

Recently, I went on wirecutter to figure out what humidifier I should buy. For those of you who aren’t familiar with wirecutter, it is a product review website, owned by the NY Times, that does in-depth research on a plethora of products. Need a new toaster? WIRECUTTER. Do you want to know about the best travel products? WIRECUTTER. I’m hooked. In a flash, my amazon-purchased humidifier arrived, and I love it.

The only problem with having a humidifier is that you have to clean it regularly. Under the best of circumstances, I’m not a competent manual reader. This humidifier’s cleaning instructions brought things to a whole new level–my head nearly exploded when I turned to the “care & maintenance” section. Thankfully, I’m not alone in feeling this way. One of my clients, who has the same model, said that she felt that she needed a PhD to understand what to do.

Of course, the next step, when one is confused, is to turn to YouTube. So, I did. I typed in how to clean my brand’s humidifier and I clicked on the first video that popped up. I was shocked at how simple it was!   The video was just under 5 minutes, and I felt overjoyed knowing that I would be able to do this every few weeks without a problem. A minute later, when I was busy de-scaling, another YouTube video popped up about cleaning the same model. This video, instead, was over 20 minutes long. The demonstrator was following the user manual instructions to the T. 

While the first video wasn’t as thorough, the cleaning was easy and doable. By contrast, the second video was complicated and overwhelming—I felt that I would NEVER be able to do it.

I bet you know where this is going. So often, when it comes to diet and exercise, we make things way too complicated, which causes PARALYSIS. Instead of worrying about the breakdown of protein, fat and carbohydrates in your diet, why not just try to reduce processed foods and eat more fruits and vegetables? Why not start drinking one extra glass of water a day? Why not cook one more meal every week? When it comes to exercise, instead of pondering which type of exercise you should be doing, why not just go for a walk? Or do a 10-minute abs video? Or put on some music and dance around? Once you begin, you can always do more. Given that the most difficult part is STARTING, it makes more sense to introduce small steps, one at a time.

I must confess—I was guilty of procrastinating when it came to cleaning that humidifier. But now that I have a small tool (that YouTube-less-than-5 minute-video), it’s going to be easy. Do the same with your approach to diet and exercise. Keep it simple and you’ll do it!

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OH, THAT DIET MENTALITY 🙄

January 18, 2023 · Filed under Food/Nutrition

It’s January so I am hearing the 4-letter word that I despise: DIET. I have written endless blogs of why I abhor diets, so I won’t repeat myself. If you want to lose weight and feel healthy there are two things that you need to focus on. You need to look at your nutrition, and you need to look at your relationship with food. Ironically, it’s the latter that is the most important.

So many of you know what to include to have a healthy diet: Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, beans, and lower-fat dairy. You need to limit things like sugar, alcohol and processed foods and try your best to eat food that comes from the ground. You need drink a lot of water. This is the nutrition piece. Having the knowledge is easy; executing it is much more difficult.

The “diet mentality” is your greatest foe.  It’s what sabotages everything. If you are stuck in this way of thinking you will,,..

  • Believe that there are “good” foods and “bad” foods
  • Feel as if you ruined everything if you eat some of these “bad foods” so you might as well eat everything in sight and start over tomorrow. (Or Monday)
  • Feel guilty and awful to be in this cycle, which leads to a lot of self-loathing and negative self-talk. 

There is so much restriction, so much rigidity and so much inconsistency when you have this mentality. While you can eat a squeaky-clean diet for a while, over time it is impossible to maintain. So of course, you are going to fall off the wagon and eat the foods that you have been restricting.

The best way to break this pattern is to re-boot the way you think about food. You need to practice what a client of mine calls THOUGHTFUL eating.  When you are eating thoughtfully, you are in touch with your body. You are paying attention to what you are in the mood for, how hungry you are and when you’ve had enough. You are listening to your body and not just going through the motions of eating mindlessly. You are focusing on food in a different way—you are noticing how food makes you feel. If you pay attention, you will see that eating clean, healthy food will make you feel more energized, and less sluggish. Perhaps some digestive issues will disappear. Notice these changes. Eating thoughtfully is a skill that you need to practice continuously. Over time, you will get better at being in touch with your body. 

Next, you have to get rid of the idea that there are forbidden foods.  Food is just food and should not be classified into GOOD or BAD. You are not “bad” because you ate a cookie. You are “bad” if you deliberately ran over your neighbor’s dog! For many of you, this will be extremely challenging because this has been indoctrinated into the fabric of who you are.

My clients that have shifted their thinking about food have been successful at weight loss. It is a slow process so please be aware that this is NOT a quick fix. It is the way you build a lifestyle change. It means you are a thoughtful eater when you are home, when you are eating in a restaurant, or when you are on vacation. It’s just the way you eat. It’s just who you are.

Since this is not an easy task, you might need to seek some professional help from a nutritionist or a therapist. Educate yourself on healthy food but work hard at understanding your relationship with food.

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A STRANGE 2023 MESSAGE

December 17, 2022 · Filed under Fitness/Exercise, Food/Nutrition, You/Mind

When the pandemic hit us back in 2020, we collectively felt our worlds shift as life, as we knew it, was completely different. I spent months doing on-line training and hating every second of it. I felt disoriented, disconnected, and “off” in so many aspects of my life. It’s hard to believe that we now getting ready to cross into 2023. While so many things have returned to “normal”, I somehow haven’t recovered from what I’ll call “COVID confusion.” Thank goodness I’m not alone! Several of my clients also feel it too–we can’t seem to grasp what month we’re in, what season it is and if we are coming or going. 

That’s why I find it mind boggling that 2023 is almost here. Does that mean it’s time to reflect? Make resolutions? Think about changes that we’d like to make? Sure! Yet any day can be a time to reflect, or to set goal or to make a change—you just have to be ready to do it.  In fact, if you are feeling like me, you can convince yourself that tomorrow is January 1st.

Every year I say the same thing about goal setting and despite my “COVID confusion”, this year is no different. If you are ready to make a change, be kind to yourself. Don’t make elaborate goals that involve changing too much at once. These kinds of goals never work. You know what I’m talking about—something like, “Starting tomorrow no more carbs, sugar, or wine.” Instead, set a small, realistic, and measurable goal. This would be better: “I am going to have 1 glass of wine, 3 times a week instead of 2 glasses of wine, 4 times a week.” When you have that mastered, you can then tweak again.

The same holds true of an exercise goal. “I want to exercise 5 times a week”, is an unrealistic goal for a person who is currently doing nothing. Instead, this would be better: “I’m going to do an exercise video for 15 minutes twice a week.” I know this doesn’t seem like much, but if you pick something you like to do, you’ll want to do it. And once you start, you will want to do more than 15 minutes twice a week.

When we set unrealistic goals, we wind up doing nothing and that nothing leads to negative self-talk, which is the farthest thing away from being kind to yourself.

So, January 1, 2023 or tomorrow……. make sure you keep those goals simple and you will succeed. Of course instead of saying, HAPPY NEW YEAR, what I’d really like to say is HAPPY JULY 4th! (hee hee)

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WEIGHT LOSS: A FRESH PESPECTIVE

September 11, 2022 · Filed under Food/Nutrition, Health

Many clients come to me wanting to lose weight. They are looking for me to give them an eating plan that they can follow so that they can shed those extra pounds. The only problem is that I don’t do this.

A prescribed eating plan is no different than a diet. And diets don’t work. Diets don’t work because calorie/food restriction cannot be maintained in the long run. You follow the diet, and you lose weight. You stop following it, and you gain the weight back (and usually more). And yet, we are somehow programed to continue this trend after multiple failures. Yes, it’s insanity.

I’m not suggesting that you don’t lose weight if you need to. However, you need to re-frame your thinking about it and have a fresh perspective. Exclusively focusing on weight loss might be sabotaging your progress. Instead, I’d like you to think about changing your diet in order to get healthier.

As our bodies age, things start changing: We wake up stiffer in the morning from arthritis. We become more sensitive to carbohydrates and begin to become insulin resistance. Our stomachs are more sensitive.  Our cholesterol and blood pressure might start creeping up. All of these things don’t get BETTER as we get older. That’s why, when we change our diets to address these issues, we have to think about implementing these dietary “tweaks” for, forever. And when we do it this way, focusing on our health, we are making real lifestyle changes that do the body good in the long-run! And these healthier adjustments lead to weight loss. 

No matter how you decide to tackle your issue (doing your own research/program or seeking out professional help), having a new perspective will be helpful. Change your inner dialogue from, “I need to lose weight” to “I want to get healthier”. This fresh perspective could make a huge difference.

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A MOM, A SON, DIETS AND WISDOM

July 9, 2022 · Filed under Food/Nutrition, Health, You/Mind

One of the best parts about my job is how much I learn from each client. And most of my blog posts are, indeed, about my clients. This one is about my son. And about being a mom. And about his wisdom.

If you are a mother, you understand what happens when you have a baby: Those maternal instincts kick in, and your mission is to love that baby, to nourish that baby and to protect that baby in any way that you can and at all costs. It is pure unconditional love. The problem with these feelings is that they never go away. So, when your “baby” is a 28-year old grown man, you are still stuck feeling exactly the same way as you did when he was 4-months old. This is why mothers say “eye-rolling things” to their grown children. It’s just bigger than us! 

For years my son has been overweight. It’s not his weight per se that has bothered me—it is that he was leading a very unhealthy lifestyle. (Tangent: I firmly believe that you can have extra weight on your body and still be healthy if your lipids, blood sugar, blood pressure and cardiovascular fitness are good.) Putting aside my profession, as his mom, I wanted him to WANT to get healthy. I prayed to God, to Jesus, to Allah, to deceased relatives, to the universe, to ANYONE, for him to want this for himself. I tried my best to keep my mouth shut because I know that change does not happen ONE SECOND before the person in question is ready to make the change. So, I did what I tell my clients to do in similar situations with loved ones: Keep your mouth shut, be a good role model, offer support and just love your child/spouse/relative. That’s what I did most of the time. 

Recently, my boy got the memo. He decided he was ready to change his life. Thankfully, he decided to make lifestyle changes and NOT go on a diet. (How many blogs have I written about how much I HATE diets since they don’t work!) He made changes slowly–he started tracking his calories, moving more, drinking more water, eating cleaner food, reducing sugar and figuring out what worked for him.  He started feeling better, and had more energy, which motivated him even more. As his mother, the joy that I feel, watching him on this journey, is pure elation. It’s as if all of my 3 trillion cells have their hands in the air and are dancing and cheering him on. He finally wanted this for himself.

The other day, he sent me a text and after reading it, I thought that I had to share this. (With his permission, of course.) He said the following:

“If anything that I’ve learned doing this is that as long as you are willing and able to put in the work the results will show up.

Anybody can do this–but all of the work comes from within you. Diets don’t work because someone else did the work for you and you didn’t make it yours.”

I never thought about diets in that way but it’s so true. A diet is a plan that someone else created. It’s not YOURS. And given that we are all so different, you actually DO have to do the work to figure out what works for you. And in doing so, you are creating a lifestyle change that will last–not a quick fix that you will follow temporarily.

My boy knows that this will be a forever thing for him. So, all I can do now, is keep my mouth shut, be a good role model, offer him a ton of support and continue to just love him. Thankfully, he’s really easy to love.

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