Food Is Not The Enemy

Our relationship with food is primal and complex.

We need to eat to live, but modern convenience combined with sedentary jobs means we often eat more than we need or food which does not nourish us.

As children, our mothers and others often "loved" us with food, or we learned ways to satisfy emotional needs with food and if those habits continued into adulthood, we find ourselves eating not for hunger, but for other reasons.

If you have been 'dieting' for many years, you may be surprised at how quickly you regain weight after the 'diet' has ended and how you manage to gain a little more each time.

You have effectively been teaching your metabolism to become more efficient at fat storage.

For long-term, sustainable fat-loss that you can maintain once you reach a healthy weight range is most effective when you examine your relationship with food and make some changes about the way you think of food in your life and in your body.

You may be used to the following kind of thoughts:

• food is a temptation
  
• food means being out of control
• food means gaining weight
  
• food means wanting things I can't have
• food gives me comfort
  
• food me guilty
• food is the enemy.

Well stop right there!

Shifting your thinking around food will shift your experience of food.

Try these thoughts for a week and notice the difference you experience:

• food means energy
• food means strength
• food means having enough vitality to work
• food means not getting tired before the end
• food means I have what I need
• food means brainpower
• food means muscle
• food is my best friend

Working with a food diary, without making any changes to what you usually eat, gives you a more accurate map of what you're currently doing. Don't judge, just record.

When you really know where you are, you know what to do to get to where you want to be.

The Perfect Omlette

This omlette recipe is so versatile you can fill it with any veggies you like and eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner (but not all in one day! ;)

Ingredients:
2 - 3 eggs, one yolk
1 - 2 cups in total of vegetables, chopped/diced to same size pieces
small sprinkling of grated cheese (optional)

Choose from mushrooms, celery, bok/pak choy, tomato, capsicum, coleslaw mix (yes it's great cooked!) spinach, zucchini, onion, or any other vegetable you can chop up and put in it.

Some tips and tricks for the perfect omlette, every time:

• Whisk or beat your egg mixture until there are bubbles sitting on top
• Make sure your pan, preferably non-stick with a spray of olive oil, is hot.
• Pre-cook the veggies as they won't cook through in the omlette.

Set vegetable aside, wipe the pan and re-spray with olive oil

Reduce the heat to medium and add the egg mixture to the pan.

Use your spatula to gently scrape the middle of the omlette, allowing the mixture to fill in the spaces.

Give the egg a couple of minutes to cook then add the veggie mix to one half of the omlette, sprinkle the cheese and flip the other side over to cover the veggies.

Turn off the heat, give it another couple of minutes and serve.

As Julia Childs, played by Meryl Streep, would say... "Bon appetite!"

Fresh Is Best

This article by Pauls Goodyer reviews The End Of Overeating by David Kessler, a former commissioner with the US Food and Drug Administration.

Kessler argues that there’s something going on in food manufacturing that’s conditioning us to overeat. He calls it hyper-palatability and, put simply, it’s the creation of moreish flavours in food that so stimulate the appetite that they override the body’s normal controls to stop eating.

Kessler, a Harvard trained doctor and lawyer - and former overeater - wanted to understand why he and so many other people had such trouble resisting foods high in fat, sugar and salt. His search for answers resulted in The End of Overeating, a book that looks at emerging research into food addiction and concludes that, for many of us, highly flavoured foods oversupplied with fat sugar and salt, are too easy to overeat.

If you find it difficult to resist the temptation of eating too much when you indulge in take-away or restaurant food, you may be surprised to learn how much more goes into these "foods" than the same thing prepared by you at home.

Fresh food really is the best for you, you know what's in it, you have control of what you add to it and learning to enjoy the natural flavours of food can be a delightful new taste sensation.

Eat well, live well, love well.

Stories To Inspire You

Keep up your amazing work, live your life well & love what you do!


Dr Oz has some tips for maintaining weight loss

Read about this woman's road to health & fitness

This mum educated herself about nutrition and reaped the benefits

You CAN reach your goals!

Training - Your Low-Cost Health Care Solution

There are a lot of viruses getting around right now and your best defence against a lengthy illness is to keep doing what you need to do to stay fit & healthy - eat real food, get enough sleep & train your body to be strong.

This article from Terri Walsh, owner of TW Training NYC and 25 year veteran of the fitness industry, talks about how much we can do to keep ourselves healthy.

"GETTING SICK IS EXPENSIVE.

Yes, look at it in big bold letters. Everyone is the USA is focused on health care. On how expensive it is. Here’s the thing that drives me NUTS. It’s much cheaper over the long run, to exercise, and reduce your RISKS! I HATE how much I pay for my insurance, and I’m a freelance person, so it’s even harder….but staying healthy has reduced my overall costs over the cost of my lifetime up to this point.

Of course you can’t control everything, and sometimes you can still get sick. BUT you CAN control your activity level, the food you eat, and the quality of those things. And you can also do them reasonably on ANY budget. Tough times, need tough people. Exercising regularly keeps you ready to handle life's ups and downs. This goes way beyond how we look. It’s about who we ARE.

Please do not let rough times wear down your health!"

Stay Strong & Get It Done!

Health Checks

If you would like any of the following information about your general health, please ask at your next training session.

Blood pressure: a blood pressure monitor gives you an accurate reading, as well as your resting heart rate, both of which give you useful information about your cardiovascular health.

Blood Glucose Levels: best done before the first meal of the day to test 'fasting' sugar levels. Higher than usual blood glucose levels may indicate a pre-diabetic condition, which when managed with adjustments to diet & exercise, reduces your chances of diabetes by up to 70%.

If any of your readings are outside the 'normal' range, I urge you to make an appointment with your GP.

Having a general health check once a year, especially if you're over 40, helps you stay healthy and allows early intervention if there are any issues.

Finally, look at these disturbing graphs from the Centres for Disease Control in the United States, showing the increase in obesity over time.
(use the 'previous' button to go back to 1994, when data was collected for all states.)

Given Australia's propensity for following US trends, this should concern us all.

Alternative Medicine

The cold season is in full swing and it's not even Winter yet!

Our family was laid low back in March and took the entire month to recover, what with runny nose, coughing, stuffed head and aches & pains, and as it was viral, no effective medicines were available from the doctors.

I know anything that doesn't require a prescription is viewed sceptically by some as "alternative medicine", and less effective than a pill, but since when did good food, adequate sleep & restorative exercise become "alternative"?

If you're currently down with a cold or flu, do pay special attention to your health and general well-being.

Eat plenty of fresh foods, especially leafy greens and try a couple of whole oranges each day (no, the juice is not enough, you're just drinking sugar).

Get enough rest & sleep; don't just try to push through if you're really sick, no one at your workplace wants the germs and you're way less productive trying to think and work through a head-cold fog.

Unless you're achy throughout your body, try to maintain a reduced exercise program; even walking every other day will maintain the fitness gains you've made this year.

There is a time for everything and when you're sick, it's taking care of Self time.
This too shall pass and you'll be right back into loving the busy-ness of your life, with a greater appreciation of how truly important good health is.

You have made an amazing difference in this past year, for your health and the rest of your life.

You have made a commitment to your Self that is bringing benefits you may never have imagined, as well as the one's you notice every day.

You are stronger, fitter, healthier, better than you were a year ago.

YOU are the person in charge of making this happen!

Keep Getting It Done!!