What even five figure fitness program cannot do for you

Over the weekend I picked up a free magazine Energy Times which featured Arnold Schwarzeneger look-alike Roland Kickinger. On the cover this Austrian body-builder, actor, certified personal trainer and nutritionist is proudly flexes huge guns while smiling angelically.
I could not help but to be impressed with this guy looks and his portfolio – he can, among other things, sword-fight and dance ballet! But when I read about his personal business – a three week fitness emergence for his clients –that’s when my eyes truly glazed over… His guests stay over in his guest house, work out every day under his supervision and eat 5 super-clean low-carb meals a day prepared by this gentle giant! Understand that it is hot and sticky humid in New York, and I feel a little unmotivated to slave over the stove, and am scraping the bottom of the motivation well for my daily workouts. Let’s face it: I am sweating without moving, so... Oh, how wonderful would it be to have a fitness authority figure prodding me on, telling me what to do and when, so I can just blindly follow the instructions and eat perfect meals put in front of me! It is a day dream I want to hold on to for as long as I can, but wait – how much does this experience cost? The article says vaguely: five figures. I have to strain my overheated brain to process that. “Five figure” means… anywhere from $10, 000 to $99,999! What??? The day dream evaporates. No way can I afford either the time or the money! And what is it that he does that I cannot do myself? I am capable of measuring portions, counting calories and following the recipes, of packing my lunches and snacks, and as far as exercise I have all the instructions I need from the best in fitness business: Tony and Debbie, Chalene and Shaun! I have it all now; I am empowered by knowledge, the method and the system! I don’t need to be rich (and idle) to be in the best shape of my life at any age! All I need to do is follow the program! And that even a fitness and nutrition guru like Roland Kickinger cannot do for me. He says as much himself: ”Ultimately, you have to take action; no one can do this for you. You can take all kinds of supplements, you can pay a trainer a lot of money, but you still have to take responsibility and act. They can only give you a key, but you have to go through the door yourself, on your own.” From his lips and into my ears!

You got to be in it to win it!

Happy mothers’ day, dear people!
This morning my husband and I treated ourselves to a brunch in a restaurant. We were sitting in a warm sunny spot in the outdoor space, basking in the glory of the day and taking stock of the good things in our lives. The most important thing for both of us was that we’re both healthy and we’re committed to staying that way. We are making an effort to eat healthy food and maintain a good exercise routine. I exercise 4 to 6 times a week, mixing cardio, strength and flexibility training. I am constantly refining my diet and exercise, tweaking little things, shaking things up to keep myself excited about it. I am always trying to learn new things from the health experts and coaches who I admire and follow. Joe is not quite there yet, but he runs at least 2 -3 times a week and does stretching routine daily and really enjoys all of it. I am hoping that one day soon we will be able to exercise together - it will be so much fun to challenge each other. Overall, we are in the good place health-wise and I hope it will only improve from here onwards.
It wasn’t always that way. When Joe and I married more than 10 years ago, we put two different routines together and the sum was not equal to its part, not in a good way, anyway, so I started gaining weight, was not feeling good and was not happy about it. But I was not about to give up. For years I’ve tried different things; when one thing failed, I tried another. Finally I’ve found Beachbody and understood what my body needs to stay fit and healthy. The sense of newly acquired control was incredible, and there was no turning back. I cannot imagine where I would be now, had I not tried to improve my lifestyle. I am truly proud of the progress I’ve made and am looking forward to taking my fitness to the next level.
What is the point of my story? Real simple: if I can do it, you can do it too. But you have to try. You and only you can do it! As the old adage goes: you got to be in it to win it!
Bring it!

Weight Loss: Stages of change - Action

OK, we are finally coming to the point when we are ready to bit the bullet and spring into action.
You are starting this phase with renewed commitment to weight loss.
You made all the necessary preparations
You know that cheap change won't do - only the hard work!
You know there is no "magic bullet" - you will try to employ all the techniques and processes you've learned about and reach for all the support you can get from friends and family!
You will let go of old coping mechanisms, all the situations the led you to overeating and develop new habit

Even though the success is never guaranteed, utilizing tool at your disposal will help you avoid the usual pitfalls and traps.
When you are dieting, and you are experiencing a "snack attack", try to employ a countering and counterthinking and environment control and reward techniques.
The countering techniques are:

1) Active diversion:

Piano playing, crossword puzzle, knitting, walking, reading, calling a friend on a phone all constitute a good active diversion from eating.
You can come up with a few of your own!

2) Exercise

you know it is good for you and should be a part of your weight loss program in a first place!

3) Relaxation

We are all emotional eaters! Relaxing, putting your mind at ease can eliminate the desire of snacking as it eliminate the reason my we reach out for food when we are not hungry!!!
Relaxation can have other, very desirable, side effects such as increased energy, decreased blood pressure and muscle tension, decreased anxiety, improved sleep, improved concentration and overall health!

4) The counterthinking :

Eliminating self-deprecation thoughts that lead to anxiety by more positive and constructive thoughts. Instead of thinking "Everybody must love me" think "what is the worst can happen if some of my husband's new friends won't take note of me?" Instead of "I hate eating food that don't taste good" think "I like how the thin feels!" You get the drift! The anxiety induced craving should subside when you think that way!

The environment control techniques are:
1) Avoidance
We already talked about avoiding known situations in which your need to overeat is hard to control. You can't be a member of the Baker of the Month contest and be on a hard carb-limiting diet!
2) Cues
You can't avoid the situations in which you overeat forever. Eventually you'll be forced by life in one of those, so you better be prepared. A good prep for trigger inducing situations is to play the scenarios in your mind! Use your imagination to create a event and work out your reactions in advance! This sounds like a child play, but it works!


The reward techniques are:

Whenever you successfully resisted the temptation, give yourself a reward! Give yourself a pep talk for a job well done, take yourself on a shopping trip once you achieved you weight loss milestone! if As easy as it sounds some people have a problem rewarding themselves - you can even save up the money by not eating Three Musketeers every afternoon and give these money to charities, if that feels less selfish to you! Reward yourself by giving to others!The positive reinforcement of good behavior puts you on the road to weight loss for good!

Stages of Change - Preparation

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There is a subtle but a very important stage between contemplation and action the presence or absence of which can really make or break the effort to change. This stage is preparation.
I see a lot people I try to help to lose weight jumping onto a good system without being really prepared for it. Needless to say it leads to delaying the action in the best case, and disappointment in the worst.

Preparation is a lot like contemplation but a lot more forward looking, with focus on the future you.
It involves careful planning, positive self re-evaluation and commitment.

In the preparation stage we start to turn away from the past. Letting go of the activities and circumstances that lead us to overeating, like eating while in an depressed state, changing hobbies - picking up knitting instead of baking, finding new fiends who enjoy exercising and healthy eating.

Also in this stage it is important to insure support of your family.You need to explain to them that you decided to get fit and lose some weight in the process and it will require certain investment of time and resources as well as some changes in the usual routine.

During the preparation stage:

- Take small steps:

Details are important: buy exercise clothes or a set of measuring cups or a small scale for your kitchen, or any other logistics that you need for the weight loos program you selected. There is an excitement in little steps like this that build up for the big day! Speaking of date...

- Set a date.

Once you feel ready - set a date within a month, not longer so that your excitement does not wear out.
Once you set the date - stick to it - no excuses!


- Go public:

Announce your decision to lose weight to people in your daily life. That includes work, and people outside your family. That will helps you stay accountable and won't keep your colleagues and friends guessing.

- Treat your change as a major event:

Yes, it is as if you had an appointment for a serious operation. It is that important and will require all the emotional energy you can master!

- Create your own plan of action:

You can borrow other people plans but you must adapt it for yourself. Learn from other people plans of actions but don't follow them blindly. If the program requires you to workout on empty stomach and you are not a morning person, come up with a plan on doing the afternoon workout that will allow you to comply with the recommendation. If you are following a diet plan from a book but are vegetation, make appropriate substitutes. If the program call for a 2 day fast and you don't like to fast - find out if fast is mandatory!

- Commit to your plan!

Commitment is a "willingness to act, but also a belief in your ability to change, which in turn reinforces your will."* You evaluated your problem, worked through pros and cons of losing weight and honestly believe that your life will be enhanced by losing weight! Keeping in mind all of the above, you are ready for action!

Stages of Change - Contemplation

Transition from denial to contemplation stage of the change happens quietly, but once it happens you find yourself listening to people that offer you their advice for losing weight. You don’t switch the channel if the commercial is about some piece of exercise equipment; you find yourself picking a copy of Fitness magazine in the hair salon and actually reading it with interest!

This is an important stage to educate yourself about your weight loss, and design a strategy.
Things to beware in that stage:

- Avoid wishful thinking: wishing you could achieve your weight and fitness goal without having to change.
We all wish for a diet pill that would allow us sleep in and eat from sunrise to sunset and be in ideal shape. There is not such diet, so stop day dreaming and get to it!

- Don’t jump into action:
The rush to act may turn against you. You need to do a certain amount of prep before you are ready. Starting a diet without really committing to change may lead to a conclusion that "dieting is really not for me". Keep in mind: you cannot successfully diet and still be on your baking recipe circle or your bacon tasting club. Prepare a ground for yourself: insure support of your family, clean up your house of junk food and insure support of people who are successful at getting their diet under control.

- Don’t get into analysis paralysis. This is another extreme: trying to acquire a perfect understanding of you weight problem and perfect solution!
Some people take forever to learn everything there is to learn about the weight loss and can't commit to any program while waiting for a in depth understanding of the issue. While theoretical knowledge about various diets is good, you will not know what work for you until you try! So, get your feet wet, already!

- Don’t wait for magic moment to start the weight loss program: while some circumstances are less then ideal, like starting a new job, moving to another city, starting a new relationship, when you are handling way too much on your plate, there isn't a perfect moment to start a new regiment, so once you got your plan together - go for it!

The sugar fix – more than a weight problem!

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So, yeah, if the diet high in fructose was only affecting the expanding waist lines, that would be half as bad.
But the weight problem leads to high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, kidney and liver disease, and metabolic syndrome which is a cluster of all health problems mentioned above.

How does fructose cause this terrible damage?

Apparently, high fructose has sneaky habits.
High fructose does not satisfy your appetite. Dr Johnson explains: ”When you eat most types of sugar, your body responds by producing appetite hormones, which signal your brain that your body has consumed enough food to meet its energy needs. As this occurs, the feelings of hunger subside. But unlike other sugars, fructose escapes the attention of appetite hormones. Because of this phenomenon, your brain never gets the message that your body has consumed a load of calories. “
No wonder I felt hungrier after eating McD than I was before (It was a looooooooooooooong time ago, but I remember being puzzled by that and avoiding McDs as a plague!)

What’s more – high-fructose foods may interfere with the signaling system that controls your appetite for all foods. “Chronic consumption of sugary foods seems to promote biochemical changes that prevent the brain from receiving messages from appetite hormones – even when you are not consuming fructose”!

Studies show that fructose is not metabolized in the same way as other sugars, and because of that causes rapid weight gain. Once conditioned this way, it may very well sabotage the weight-loss effort, because the body becomes ultra-sensitive to even small amounts of high fructose and resists weight loss!

I am convinced more than ever that the clean diet is the way to go - all the more reason to stay away from the highly processed foods and eat foods from the top of Michi’s ladder!

Bring it in the kitchen, people!

The Sugar Fix - Introducing HFCS

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One rainy Saturday my husband and I were caught in the rain and went to the Dunkin Doughnuts that was separated only by a glass window from the hallway leading to the adjacent Pathmark supermarket. As we were sitting drinking our coffee the people with full shopping cards were marching down to the parking lot allowing us a perfect view of some of the content of their shopping carts and their not too slim figures. It seemed too much of a coincidence that almost every person’s shopping cart contained soft drinks.
As a nation today 32% Americans are obese. Add to that 1/3 of Americans that are overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Weight problem reached epidemic proportions; it affected rich and poor, adults and children, people form every educational and racial background.
The epidemics seemed to occur in the last 3-4 decades.
Could all of us at one acquire bad genetics?
Or did something drastically change in our environment?
Richard J Johnson, MD, the author of the new book “The sugar fix” thinks that the reason for the epidemics lies with increase in high fructose consumption. “Americans consume 30 percent more fructose today than in 1970. Our rising consumption of this sugar begun at roughly the same time that obesity rates in the United States were climbing sharply”.
Dr Johnson goes on explaining that fructose consumption increased due to the wide spread usage of the controversial sweetener called high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS):”which is used in wide variety of processed foods and beverages. If you were to start reading product labels, you’d find that HFCS is also in many foods that might surprise you, such as pasta sauce, yogurt, soups, ketchup and other condiments, and sandwich bread.
In 1970, the average American consumed less than ½ pound of HFCS per year. By 200, per capita consumption of the corn-based sweetener had risen to more than 42 pounds per year”
42 pounds per year of stuff that should make you fat and does not fail to! That’s the figure I’ll leave you with until the next time when we explore the health threats that HFCS contains, other than obvious increase in bulge.
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