Much as been written about Oprah Winfrey buying Weight Watchers‘ stock for $40 million dollars and, in just a few days, tripling that investment, when stocks rose.
On the surface, like most media blitzes, the numbers look impressive.
And comics and cartoonists had fun with the idea that Oprah would make MORE money to add to her billions:
But beyond the media blitz and the jokes, there is something much more insidious and disappointing about this shoddy deal.
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Between Halloween and New Year’s Day, the average weight gain for people who struggle with excess weight is 8-10 pounds. If this describes you, kick this trend to the curb and find permanent weight loss. Here are some holiday eating tips. If permanent change has eluded you, here’s a hint at what it looks like:
Holiday eating tips for permanent weight loss.
Holiday Eating Tips
1. Enough with the Halloween candy! Make your party (and your kids’ focus) on fun, costumes, friends, connections. When my son was small, I let him eat some candy on Halloween, then he picked 7 items to keep (1 per day for the next week) and the rest went to the neighborhood fire station. Some dentists will PAY kids for their candy. YOU can pay your kids, or teach them about donating excess to others. NO ONE really needs another damned snickers bar, especially children. If your child is challenged by ADHD, anxiety or depression, get the crap out of sight now, and forever.
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As I maintained my own weight loss of 90+ lbs, I became more and more attuned to my body, following body cues for hunger and satiation. My clients in my enLIGHTen Your Life! Mastermind Course for Permanent Weight Loss learn to follow body cues to truly nourish their bodies.
It may sound simple, but it’s not that easy!
After all, our culture encourages us to eat fast, eat fat and eat again when we don’t have sustainable energy.
How does your plate look when you are following the body cues, eating only when hungry, and stopping when satiated?
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As I celebrate 14 years on the permanent weight loss road, my own little “self” anniversary, I’m making it a point to look back as well as forward.
Reflection is only useful if it brings greater awareness. Speaking from the beginning stages of weight loss, one of my newer clients asked me, “Oh, don’t you look back and feel bad for those days when you could enjoy eating anything you wanted?”
She was earnest, and honest, but looking through the lens of her own fears. And, no, the pleasures I feel and create today don’t even compare to pepperoni pizza. They couldn’t come close to that meaningless little chocolate truffle. No, they’re not even on the same planet.
Sure, food can be a pleasure but, when your senses are tuned into life, you are constantly creating heightened states of energy, ecstasy, and expansion — within your soul, not just your body.
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Part of my real-world research as I lost over 90 lbs involved following naturally thin people around. Asking questions. Posing challenges. Discerning habits. My merciless stalking, if you will, produced a wealth of information I had never learned in my food addicted upbringing.
Naturally thin people are not thin because they are smarter, stronger or have more willpower than other people. They are thin because they have developed habits that serve THIN, instead of making FAT. Here are the top six:
1. Never Eat Unless Hungry – Naturally thin people know hunger cues, and see them as signals for action. Without the green light, they don’t eat.
2. Stop Before Full – Naturally thin people never feel stuffed or uncomfortable. They feel a satiation cue which stops them right before they are completely full. Their connection to their bodies is strong, and they honor the feedback they get from their physical body.
3. Waste Food, Not Waist It – People who never struggle with their weight don’t worry about throwing food out when they are full, whether that means a to-go box, or the trash can. They know that refusing to “waste food” means “waisting” it, which is just like carrying your garbage around on your body for everyone to see.
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What a year!
I will never forget 2013!
It was a year of huge transition, growth and learning for me. Some years sweep by in a blurr, a flurry of activity, like when you are pregnant and anticipation is carrying you forward to an inevitable conclusion.
Some years crawl along like the slow, tortuous screeching sound on a blackboard, like the third year of weight loss when you’ve lost 55 pounds and know there’s more to go… but it’s just not happening. Those are the years when a huge opportunity arises: the opportunity to face yourself and refuse to do what you’ve always done before… which is give up.
But this year didn’t crawl or whirl.
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Even though this Winter in Wisconsin has been a very looooonnnnnngggg ordeal, it is finally looking like Spring. And I’ve become a spring cleaning whirlwind.
One of the metaphors of losing a substantial amount of weight is holding on. In order to lose weight, I had to let go of old ideas. The less I grasped at trivial things out of a mental sense of scarcity, the more abundance I found. And stuff… well, letting go of the saboteur in my mind was tough, but it mysteriously made throwing away the crap in the attic easy.
So, I love letting go of stuff. And I was busy letting go of lots of clutter in my home office this weekend when I opened a drawer that is sticky and often stuck. It obviously hadn’t been opened in years. I knew that because, inside, were…. old bank statements. Very old bank statements.
Some of the statements were so old they had returned checks inside (yes, that old!).
So, I sat on the floor and dragged this over:
As I began to feed the shredder, I was fascinated by what blurred past my eyes. It was a little snapshot of a true lifestyle change.
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I was once fat. Many people prefer another word but I like “Fat” and, since it was mine, I figure I get to call it any name I want.
In the year 1996, I weighed 242 lbs.! That’s quite a bit of fat, no matter what you like to call it. Like most people, I wasn’t fond of my fat. I desperately wanted to change it, and I had tried for over 20 years to solve fat. My first diet was at age 10. And, when you try to solve something for 20+ years, and aren’t successful, you get pretty pessimistic about the whole damned project.
The way I saw it, Fat got in the way of finding a career I loved. It got in the way of relationships. It affected how I felt about myself.
And, by 1996, I was seeing it pretty much as UNSOLVE-ABLE!
This wasn’t just an obstacle – it was the biggest obstacle of all time in my eyes. No matter what I had tried, and I had tried every diet, intervention and exercise modality known to wo/man, the excess weight always came back.
Like a stalker!
Like it had FAT GPS!
And I thought I was the only one in the world who had this problem!
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- Confused? Most people are. All this is diet advice from the perspective of what I call Diet Mentality. Based in fea… https://t.co/oLbdhU6utw
- https://t.co/0JcSIOHFVS https://t.co/0JcSIOHFVS
- I've always said exercise is more important than food control. What do you think? https://t.co/nRyJeKMZ9y
- Before and after pictures are usually complete fakes, and give us the misconception that the "after" picture is the… https://t.co/QUdTrITjeG
- Take a look! Wisdom! https://t.co/zjh6DbmIh9
