Every year, I tally up my exercise logs from the year.
I don’t track food in any way (never have), but exercise is different.
One of the things I realized this year is: I have a long history with exercise.
I never thought I’d say that!
It’s amazing because I was once the couch potato queen. I used to HATE exercise, as in hate with a fiery white passion.
But, things change.
And, if you are driving change from an empowered place, change is good!
But I want to talk to those you who are just now, at the beginning of a new year, struggling with the idea of exercise. The many myths about exercise in our culture can actually cause more harm than good when they break down the body, resulting in extreme depletion, fatigue or injury.
Here are a few things I learned as I lost 92 lbs and kept it off for fifteen years:
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2012 is drawing to a close! It’s time for my annual contest where YOU guess how many exercise sessions I completed this year. The winner will receive a set of Catalyst products, including workbooks and CD audio classes worth more than $500, to illuminate your permanent weight loss journey!
For anyone who’s new to this blog, I’m a proponent of non-diet, permanent weight loss through true lifestyle change.
Diets are temporary ways to eat with endless mind games and emphasize willpower. True lifestyle change addresses the deeper need for food and lasts forever. My twenty-year struggle taught me to deal with the deeper needs in life, so those deeper needs don’t sabotage healthy efforts.
My Approach to Exercise or Activity
I don’t use fancy apps to track my exercise and I’ve lost over 90 pounds without counting a calorie. I know a calorie is not a calorie when it comes to fuel for the body. If you don’t understand the calorie game, get my audio class called “The Hard Cold Truth About Permanent Weight Loss” NOW!)
Here’s my “foolproof” recording method:
Yep, that’s 12 sheets of paper, calendar style, for 2013! It works because the physical act of recording, with a pen, is magical in terms of claiming your work. And you never have to worry about losing it via a computer problem. I have years of these calendars. It’s an instant reference when I need to remember how far I’ve come, or what I was doing that year I lost 20 lbs., or whatever.
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The popular movie, The Hunger Games, is raking in the profits after capitalizing on the word-of-mouth from readers of the popular teen book and a boatload of publicity.
I wish I had come up with this name for the book I am writing. The Hunger Games – doesn’t it sound like a self-help book for pulling yourself out of food addiction?
Well, here are some REAL Hunger Games we play. Which one’s your favorite?
1. Diet/Avoid Food All Morning and Binge the Rest of the Day
This is the surest road to excess weight. I did it for years. I thought I was “saving up calories” for the rest of the day and exercising my willpower muscles, but I was creating more hunger and programming my body to store fat faster and more efficiently. I was also losing touch with what real hunger felt like and teaching my body I would not respond to its natural hunger cues.
2. Plan Days/Events/Activities Around Eating
OK, my bad on this one. It’s still my favorite example though. I used to choose an Overeaters Anonymous meeting because it was near one of my favorite restaurants. Since I was the one doing it, I can cop to it now. It’s so counter-intuitive, it’s amazing. Many of my clients tell me they hit goal weight in Weight Watchers and have already planned their “reward binge” or mapped out the directions to the nearest fast food restaurant. Yeah, it makes no sense, but it happens. A lot. It’s a sign nothing has changed.
Do you choose events or movies because you like a restaurant nearby? Does “being in the neighborhood” sound like a good excuse to hit a favorite type of food? Or do you say, “Who knows when I’ll get a chance to eat this again?” That’s not a real reason to eat, just a Hunger Game.
3. Eating as Entertainment (Food Focused or Foodcentric Lifestyle)
When you get together with friends, family or a partner, is your main focus eating? A movie is entertainment. A bike ride is activity. Eating is functional. It’s the gas station. Fuel. It can taste great and transport your taste buds, but if it’s your main source of entertainment, it’s time to branch out and see more of life.
4. Fear of Hunger
Many of my clients stash food in their cars, offices, gym lockers, computer cases and bedrooms so they will never be without a fix. What’s so scary about being hungry? Well, it’s usually not hunger we really fear, but the needs underneath. These needs, often subconscious and unexplored, are darker and usually created long ago, in childhood. However, it doesn’t matter if it’s unlikely to happen (running out of food or not being able to get to food in our society???), fear loves to run our behaviors.
5. I’ll Fix it Later
This is my favorite. We live under the illusion, reinforced by the diet industry, that choices today are unimportant because we have the ability to fix our weight later. Have that rich, fat-laden five course meal and promise to run every day next week to make up for it. Turn into the drive-thru – it’s OK because you’re going to the gym tonight.
This is simply untrue. Dieting rarely works, and reinforcing this negative belief (or LIE) of the “quick fix later” just makes it feel true. The truth is, once fat is processed, it’s more difficult to remove and resists dieting and excessive exercise. In fact, the longer you work out, the less fat you will burn every minute.
Understanding how the body works is the key to ending the Hunger Games in your life. Being consistently healthy is simpler and more effective than playing games too.
If you (or anyone you know) is ready to end the Hunger Games in life, share this post with them and check out my next enLIGHTen Your Life! class starting soon! Click here for information.
As the last few days of 2011 whisk by, it’s time for our annual contest where YOU guess how many exercise sessions I completed this year. The winner will receive a set of Catalyst products, including workbooks and CD audio classes worth $295.99, that will illuminate the journey to permanent weight loss!
For anyone who’s new to this blog, I’m a proponent of non-diet, permanent weight loss through true lifestyle change. After all, diets are temporary ways to eat, while changing behavior and the deeper needs for food are modifications that last forever.
My weight loss is close to 90 lbs. and my weight loss will be sustained 12 years on March 13, 2012!
After years of battling excess weight and yo-yo-ing up and down the scale,
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My two favorite things are change and commitment. It wasn’t always that way. In fact, I’m laughing out loud as I write those words.
Before I learned what it took to alter my weight permanently, change felt really scary and even threatening. I never committed to anything. Oh, I said it did, but I wasn’t reaching any of my goals, so now I know I wasn’t committed to anything.
In those days, I usually decided to diet in the evening, after eating too much all day, and, by 10 a.m., I’d have blown my diet. Every day began with hope and ended in regret.
I liked to gather all my willpower for the latest fad diet, then lose 10 lbs and regain 15.
I studied books, diets and nutrition advice, then wonder why they didn’t work long-term.
I used various food avoidance behaviors, sometimes going most of the day without food, then binging at night.
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During an interview this week, I was asked a question that stopped me in my tracks.
“What derails you?”
It took me a couple minutes of thought before I could even get my head around this. It felt a little familiar – like maybe I once knew what it was like, but it was a dim memory.
I’ve been losing weight a long time. Like, if there’s an award for long-term change, I’m in line for it. But what happens when you keep going is that some things that seemed like BIG CONCEPTS and HUGE AH-HAs become…
well…
just life.
So I told the interviewer:
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Ya gotta laugh at the way many so-called “journalistic” websites report the news about obesity. Take this article on the new drug combination Qnexa, for example. (View full article here.)
They’re so anxious to report that something, anything, will fix the overweight condition, they’re willing to write around some obvious truths and obscure the real news people need.
Here are my notes on key segments of the story:
A combination of two drugs — along with advice regarding healthy diet and exercise — may be an effective treatment for obesity, a new study suggests.
Pat’s Note: The words “along with advice regarding healthy diet and exercise” – ADVICE? How about adherence? That’s all you need. And why do they always say “it works, along with healthy diet and exercise”? If healthy diet and exercise were present, we wouldn’t need drugs. They actually include that phrase as a way out – when it doesn’t work, they blame the patient for not adding the “healthy diet and exercise.”
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The new movie “Limitless”, starring Bradley Cooper as a blocked writer seeking a pharmaceutical boost to meet a publisher’s deadline, inspired this post.
The movie is built around several cliches, including the one known as “blocked writer syndrome” (I’m always incredulous when I hear “blocked writers with publishers’ deadlines”, since I have 3 books ready for publication right here on my desk, can always meet a deadline, am a self-starter and finisher (because I can coach myself out of any hesitancy), and have no contract yet) — but its bigger themes include “power is seductive” and “today’s world lacks humanity.”
Another cliche caught my attention though. It’s the “quick fix.” Our growing cultural belief that we can “fast forward”
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