Perserverance

Again with a manifesto. Habitudes in the Classroom - Teaching the Habits and Attitudes our Students Need in the 21st Century.

There are several Habitudes the author lists but for today, I want to focus on Perseverance.

...steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., esp. in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.

Obviously, if you're reading this blog, you are old enough to understand that obstacles get in the way of what you are trying to accomplish. Even young kids understand this -- they might not like it -- they might fight against it -- but they understand it happens. (wait ... doesn't that apply to all but the most sanguine of us???)

The big question then is -- what do we do when faced with an obstacle? Do we chuck all our good intentions out the window until tomorrow? (maybe sometimes)

Do we give up?

Do we try again? Learn from the situation? Find a way to go over, around, or through the obstacle? I hope so!

"Persevering learners view failure as a learning experience, using each mistake as tuition and each situation as an opportunity to lean something new."

Does this describe you? Are you viewing each eating opportunity to learn something new? Are you curious about how much sugar is too much for you? How much protein you can eat before you feel sluggish? How few bites it really takes to alleviate your physical hunger?

Obstacles happen in learning a new skill. You don't get to have the perfect environment to develop those skills (and even if you did -- you would still need to learn how to using them in the real, less-than-perfect world).

Are you going to persevere today?

Do something Friday

The power of one thing....

This was the advice my Tai Chi instructor gave me the other day. I was asking him how he promotes his classes and he said when he feels like he needs to increase the number of classes he teaches per week, he does one thing a day -- whether it is dropping information off at a new fitness facility or nursing home or making a call he has been intending to make....one action per day.

He has found that if he does this for about a month, he gets the offers to teach he is looking for.

So, I have been trying to find greater opportunities to teach EC classes. I decided to take up the one action challenge. Here's what I have found:

I have to journal -- in the morning and in the evening. It is easier to do the one thing if I have a plan for what it is going to be. Life is busy and to think on the fly doesn't always work well -- if I have a direction for the day, there is more of a chance I will complete the action.

Journaling in the evening allows me to say I did it (gold start for me!!) or not (regroup, reassess and make a plan for the next day). I am only 15 action days into the experiment -- I don't have more classes yet -- but I have made some contacts that might lead to more classes.

What I have really noticed is that I some days I am doing more than one thing because the opportunity presents itself and I am paying more attention to the one thing goal. I am becoming more mindful of seeing the opportunities to talk about Eating Coach to people that might be interested.

Here's the thought for you: If you are struggling to be mindful all day -- set it aside for a while. Concentrate on doing one mindful something per day. Whether it is eating your piece of toast sitting down and tasting it or drinking the first four sips of coffee with your full attention. It doesn't have to be the same thing each day -- just pick something, write it down, and do that one thing. Each day you will learn something new -- what works and what doesn't. Learn the areas that are easier to make changes in.

I expect what you will find is you will start seeing more opportunities to be mindful during the day. And because you aren't overwhelmed with a huge mindfulness plan -- you will have time and energy to taste (or put down)whatever it is that you have noticed.

Before you realize it -- mindfulness will become a growing habit.

Do something Friday

Habits are interesting things. On one hands, they are the skills that allow us to get a lot of things done and free up brain space for other activities (think parking your car at work in the same place every day and so you can walk out to it without wondering where you left it). And other times, our habits keep us chained in situations we no longer want to be in (I am specifically talking about eating habit -- go figure :)

The key to having habits work for you is to once in a while take an objective look at what you do on autopilot.

Example: walking into the fast food restaurant and ordering a double or large anything.

If you are looking to lose weight, this might not be a helpful habit. What if you chose the kid's meal? Small cheeseburger, small fry, small drink. Would that be enough food to move you from hungry to no longer hungry? Quite possibly. Would it make you FULL? Probably not -- but do you want to be FULL on fast food? And last question -- are you going to save some calories with a kids meal compared to what you normally order? Absolutely!

Okay -- now your coffee drink.

Do you really need all of the size you currently order? Could you enjoy the next size smaller and not feel deprived?

(Now remember, I am the girl who LOVES 32 oz. fountain Cokes. There is something about the extravagance of having a ridiculous amount that makes my fountain Coke drinking a luxury because I can drink as much as I want and throw the rest away -- I don't want to drink all of the 20 oz Coke -- not the same experience.)

Look at your normal breakfast -- I just had a genius client tell me she realized she was fine eating only one piece of toast (instead of two) with her normal breakfast -- it didn't change how hungry she was throughout the day -- she just always made two pieces until she took a look at the behavior and realized it was modifiable.

I am not saying you have to do any of these things. I am asking you to take a look at a couple eating behaviors you do on autopilot and see if there are any changes you can make to them so you can save a few bites (or gulps) here and a few there.

For those of you still clinging to the hope that a diet will save you...

Please do me a favor and pick up a copy of the book In Defense of Food. I will confess that I am only 50 pages into the book, however, I have learned a ton about the U.S. culture of being concerned with nutrients and health, as opposed to taste, dining, the experience of food.

The author makes the distinction between real food and imitation food (margarine, Cheez Wiz, low-fat snack cakes that actually have a shelf-life longer than the warranty on my car. How certain macronutrients have been vilifies (protein by Dr. Kellogg of corn flake fame, fat as the scapegoat for heart disease and cancer even though there was good science to prove other wise).

The author puts forth the position -- Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

What if you adopted this as your guiding principle? You wouldn't have to worry about what you were eating because there isn't a magic formula. You don't need to try to get the balance right because balance is inherently right. These are common sense thoughts -- not too much food -- make sure it is really food (at least most of the time). Eat a lot of plants.

If this was your criteria for eating, how would it change how you shopped at the grocery store? You would spend more time in the produce aisle. You might spend more time preparing your foods at home -- but honestly, it might be more energy preparing dinner but I bet it wouldn't be more time that it takes to run through the drive thru to pick up dinner and bring it home.

The author's principles would change how you looked at a menu at a restaurant. Gone would be the thought that this has too much fat and you just shouldn't have that. If you are eating 600 calories of something -- it is 600 calories and it doesn't matter where the calories come from.

I believe that your acheiving a healthy weight comes down to learning to enjoy your food more and eat less of it. No magic bean. No magic fat burning food combinations. As a nation, we eat too much. We don't eat what would really make our hearts sing, is fabulous. Go for fabulous, my friends. Open the menu and experience the pleasure of looking it over to see what looks the most delicious. Having high fat food won't kill you (otherwise there would be no one left in France) -- you just need to enjoy it more and eat less of it.

We have tried to eat less in the past -- maybe you should consider trying the "Eat only what is Fabulous" diet. If it doesn't look/taste/smell fabulous, don't eat it -- save those calories for something that is fabulous. Eat and enjoy.

How do you want to feel?

When you get up from the table, what sensations do you want to feel? Can you put it into words?

It took me a while to develop a vocabulary to talk about my hunger/fullness sensations -- so if you don't have a good vocabulary quite yet, don't worry -- just give it some thought.

To get you started, I will describe my experiences. When I get up from the table, I want to feel light. I want to feel satisfied with the taste of my food (I have had enough flavor) but do not want to feel more than just the beginning sensations of anything sitting in my stomach.

I do not like the feeling of being full. I do not like feeling the waist of my pants tight (although with the style of pants right now -- they don't really have waists that get tight -- but I don't like that feeling of my stomach being physically bigger than I am used to). I do not like the sensation of feeling tired after I eat (happens because when a person has a lot of food needing to be digested, the blood flow gets diverted to the stomach and intestines to supply the working muscles and pick up the nutrients from digestion).

I like the feeling of know I could eat more but am choosing not to. I feel successful when I know I made a choice that fit me and I was listening to my body.

I ate a terrific meal yesterday. Food was fabulous. Company was lively and fun. Service was marvelous. I got to eat a wonderful salad and then a perfectly prepared entree. I enjoyed every bite. I have everything positive to say about the whole experience.

What I can tell you for sure is that I wouldn't have such a glowing memory of lunch yesterday had I eaten more than I did. Even though the food was delicious, had I eaten more than I did, I wouldn't have felt successful in my eating and that would have colored the whole experience in a less positive light.

So here is the thought I have for you today -- enjoy everything and leave wanting more (more of the taste of the food, more of the company, more of the whole experience) knowing that you can have it again -- you don't have to get it all right now. If you can do that (pace your eating) you will feel more positive about the whole experience. As that happens, it will motivate you to eat less and enjoy what you do eat more. Positive experience begetting positive experience. And soon, it will be second nature to eat less and enjoy more. Now there is a habit worth pursuing.

Switch: How to change things when change is Hard

I just got done reading an excerpt from a book with the above title.

Fabulous article to get you thinking (the book just went on my to-do list)-- here is the gist:

Find a bright spot and clone it

The authors have pointed out that we are solution oriented thinkers. If there is a problem, we jump right to finding a solution. The issue with this is: When the problem is too big, we look for the correspondingly large solution and get bogged down by details.

At the start of every group coaching session, I ask each of the participants what they did well during the previous week. Even with advanced warning, the first week most of my clients have a difficult time coming up with one decision they feel positive about. In the beginning, they are looking for HUGE decisions that are earth-shattering. That is not really the stuff of life.

Life is lived in the small decisions. The quiet moments. The three minutes spent staring into the fridge at 9:30pm when you aren't hungry, aren't really sure why you are looking in there or how you got there in the first place.

The small moments are where mindful decisions can have a big impact. Define the ones that make you feel successful and figure out how you can adapt the success to other similar situations to achieve success there, as well.

If you are looking for bright spots, you don't have to reconstruct your life to be the perfect setting to achieve the perfect weight. If you are looking for the bright spots, you can look for more opportunities to insert "bright spot" eating decisions into your day -- if that is your focus, you can achieve success every day. You won't have to wait until you hit the "magic number" on the scale before you get the feedback that says you are on the right track. Most of all, you won't have to overhaul your life in unrealistic ways to achieve your goals. One eating decision at a time is each it's own success.

Unmade beds

Relearning to be mindful when you eat is just like making your bed. You need to be willing to see when your bed is a mess of covers. Every time your bed looks like that, you have a choice to do something about it or not. If having a made bed is important to you, after choosing to make it day after day, it becomes the most natural thing in the world to hop (or drag) yourself out of bed in the morning and make it right away. It ceases to take that much effort because by then it is just habit. It is just what you do.

So the first step is being willing to acknowledge the bed is a mess. The second step is to take action. And, yup, it will be something you do every day.

Ebb and Flow

Okay -- the above is not my favorite phrase. A couple of years ago, I actually hated that phrase. It was spoken to me (again and again) by a dear friend with the best of intentions, talking above how one moves through life -- sometimes you are going with the current -- things are smooth -- you can do no wrong and then....sometime not. There is no groove to be found. Everything is hard and unrewarding and unsuccessful and fruitless. Sure...it is easy to love the phrase when you are in the flow. When you're in the ebb -- not so much, to say the least.

But here's the thing about ebb and flow: when you are in one stage -- the other is coming -- no avoiding it, that is how life works. The secret is to trust in the cycle -- a whole "this too shall pass" mentality. The goal being an average that ends up more in the flow than the ebb.

There are times when I fear winter. I HATE being cold. I like the snow. I like being outside. I like the beauty. But I really HATE being cold because it causes me pain.

Today, it was beautiful outside. So sunny that it was almost blinding. And after multiple days of it being darned cold, today was only reasonably cold -- so all things considered, not bad at all temperature wise.

Besides being cold, the other thing I HATE about the winter is the dark. The short days of winter, going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark, get to me. But today was not one of those days. Today there was so much sun I didn't know what to do with myself first. So, today, I opted for a run...outside...in the winter...crazy!

IT WAS BEAUTIFUL!!

And the best thing about it was I could smell spring. Okay -- it isn't even Ground Hog's Day. And I don't know where you are from but I know where I live, we have plenty of winter left. But it smelled like spring was coming. AND I know it will. You know why?? Because the weather has gotten warmer and the days have gotten longer every spring I have been alive. Ebb and flow. Sometimes it is dark and cold and then the days get longer and the weather warmer.

I sit here tonight and am just tired! (no...not from the run...it wasn't that long) I don't know why I am tired. I went to bed pretty early all weekend. I relaxed this weekend. I got things done this weekend -- pretty balanced weekend. But here I am tired. Guess what? Tonight I am tired (did I mention it is still early in the evening?) and maybe tomorrow I will be tired too but eventually I won't be tired at this time of the evening -- I will be full of energy and ready to do something really fun -- Ebb and Flow.

Sometimes I can crank out posts to you guys like there is no tomorrow -- the words and ideas fly out of my fingers and on to the screen. And sometimes there isn't an idea to be had -- not one -- and it is like pullin' teeth to come up with something to say to get you thinkin'. Ebb and Flow.

How many times have I written a post telling y'all how starving I was -- how I thought I was just going to die before I got something to eat?? And there is always the other side of it for me -- the one that drives my friends crazy -- when I have no appetite and don't really want to eat. Ebb and Flow. Sure, you've also heard me tell you I have gotten to the freak out stage where I scare myself to death about how hungry I am and how (in my head) I think I am going to gain a 1000 pounds if I keep eating like I am eating right then. But it doesn't happen because right about then whatever was going on to make me sooooo hungry turns off and I am less hungry than normal for a while and things even out. Ebb and Flow.

The thing that makes ebb and flow survivable is understanding that this isn't the one time where it isn't going to work. Every winter, I need to have faith that spring will return. Every time I am discouraged because I am unreasonably tired (and I shouldn't be!!!), I need to have faith that for some reason, my body is calling for more sleep and I will feel well rested and full of energy again. When I have greater physical hunger, I need to stop my freaking out and have faith that there is nothing wrong with me. My hunger signals will diminish when my body has enough calories.

And at some point in the future, the world will be cold and dark again. I will be tired again (for no reason!!), my hunger will be seemingly unstoppable again. Ebb and Flow.

And the more I try to deny that I hate being cold, I am tired, that I am insanely, physically hungry -- the more I will slow myself down. I will waste energy fighting against something I cannot change -- the Earth's rotations, my fatigue, my body's need for energy. I will fight. I will get frustrated (with myself, with the world, with the people who seemingly don't have to fight as hard as I do...) until I realize that I don't have to fight either.

My job is to understand what it going on. See and acknowledge the patterns of ebb and flow. Learn how to work with the world (and my body). And appreciate what each state can teach me.

Easier said than done. But so worth it if you can get there -- at least during the flow -- it is so much harder to remember during the ebb.

For those of you who loved the idea of "not right now"...

How do you feel about Michelle May's statement: This lawsuit [Weight Watchers suing Jenny Craig]and your own experience should not cause you to ask, "What do I do now?" but "What do I do from now on?"


Changes you can live with. Perhaps even changes that make you feel great -- not because you're losing weight (although that can be part of it) but the changes that make you feel like you are successfully in charge of your destiny.

Sometimes, choosing to have the perfect dessert at the end of a beautiful meal is what is going to make you feel successful. Sometimes, choosing to say "not right now" is the success of the moment. But here's the important part: You are choosing. You are not running on autopilot or letting yourself be run by habits that are no longer working for you.

Mindfulness -- getting into tune with your sensations of hunger and fullness -- learning to ask the question "Am I hungry?"/"Do I want this right now?"/"Is this piece of xyz worth it to me right now?" --We are not looking for rules to follow -- we are looking to find what fits most perfectly in THIS moment. Long term success is a string of "This Moment" successes.

Do Something Friday

Inertia: inertness, esp. with regard to effort, motion, action, and the like; inactivity; sluggishness.

I was just reading Jena Strong's blog -- Bulls Eye, Baby and one of her sentences jumped out at me in connection.

Doing: the antidote to to inertia.

What struck me about this phrase is that it didn't talk about the quality of the doing. Just doing something breaks the inactivity, sluggishness, or non-motion.

Once your doing, you can fine tune the process.

The other day, I had my first official golf lesson (wonderful experience, by the way!! If you are looking for a pro to help you out -- I definitely recommend Clark). What struck me about the pro's teaching was he kept telling me not to worry about where the ball was going just yet. He wanted to me to get the feel for the swing mechanics he was trying to show me. "Feel the swing -- follow through -- don't worry about the ball just yet".

Putting the ball in front of me creates a mental block. Practice swings can look pretty good but put a ball down and ask me to hit it and that is all I can think about -- the swing work goes right out the window because I am focusing on where I want to ball to go instead of working on the swing mechanics and letting correct mechanics control the ball's flight.

This makes me think about mindful eating and trying to lose weight. Without the pressure of losing weight, many people work on adopting mindful eating practices, reconnecting with their sensations of hunger and fullness -- all of it becoming more pleasurable as they learn the skills.

When you throw in the wrinkle of weight loss, it just adds pressures to the mix. Much like my focus on the path I want the ball to take, when a person feels the pressure of losing weight, their newly learned, more efficient mindful skills go right out the window in their attempt to get the weight gone.

So...think about this for the weekend. Work on appreciating all of the pleasure being more mindful can bring to your eating experiences. Let it just be what it is this weekend. Don't worry about whether or not you are losing weight -- just taste, appreciate, and enjoy your foods. When they stop tasting Fantastic!! and are merely tasting good -- then stop eating. Remember -- practice the swing until it feels more natural than anything else.

AND -- if you are looking for a fun opportunity to get out and move -- think about stopping by the golf dome in Schoolcraft and say "hi" to Clark!

Do something Friday

A client recently asked me about food choices. She and I have worked together on and off for a couple years. Her afternoon snack is a staple behavior because by late afternoon she is physically hungry. By eating the snack, it allows her to be at a reasonable hunger level (level 3) by dinner and not closer to a 1.5 where she would be unable to be in charge of her eating speed.

For a number of reasons, she has "fallen off" the mindful eating wagon and is starting to get herself back on. However, when she fell off the wagon, she reverted back to the "diet" mentality of assessing a food's "goodness" or "badness" as a means of deciding what to eat instead of figuring out what really sounds wonderful to eat. Consequently, her afternoon snacks are not as satisfying to her as they used to be.

This lack of satisfaction seems reasonable to me. One size does not fit all. My favorite satisfying snack will not necessarily be satisfying to you. The snack that fits perfectly for the summer (think fresh strawberries) will not necessarily be the perfect snack in the winter (when a nice hot Chai latte would be so much more satisfying).

When we don't reach a certain satisfaction level with our food choices, we keep searching (and eating) until we get there. In the end, we eat more calories by trying to "be good" than if we had just had what we really wanted in the first place.

So the question becomes: What are you eating because you "should" and what are you denying yourself that would really satisfy you?

Think of it this way:

500 calories of salad vs. 500 calories of steak and baked potato with sour cream and butter.

If you are working on the diet mentality, you will choose the 500 calories of salad because that is what you "should" do -- and we have all been trained steak and baked potato (with or without the butter and sour cream) are not foods you eat to lose weight. But...500 calories is still 500 calories -- it doesn't matter where they come from.

But...you say...500 calories of salad is a larger volume of food than 500 calories of steak and baked potato. True. But...what is it you really want?

If a greater sensation of physical fullness is important then you would probably want to chose the salad.

If you really want the warmth and satisfaction of steak and baked potato -- and you are willing to be satisfied but not have as great a degree of physical stretching of your stomach -- then it makes sense to eat the steak. You will walk away from the table in the same spot as it relates to weight loss (having consumed the same number of calories you would have with the salad) but you will have a greater degree of satisfaction with the meal and be less likely to seek out something else to make you feel satisfied because you already are.

This weekend -- be aware of why you are making the choices you are making. Are you basing everything on the "diet" mentality and seeking out more opportunities to eat as a way to increase your satisfaction with food? If there were no "diet rules", what would you chose to eat? And are you willing to eat less of those things if you get to lose weight while being able to eat them?

Welcome to the New Year

Is anyone else stressed to the gills already??

My job is crazy, busy time of year (think tax season for accountants). Lots of people have joined the ranks at BHFC and I love that!! People who have decided to be healthier in 2010 than they were in 2009 -- very cool!

The end result of this is a busier me. Lots of people who need to be seen, introduced to the facility, gotten off on the correct eating and exercise programs for each of them.

Plus, I was minding my own business the other day when a colleague asked if I would create an series of lectures on Increasing Activity to go along with her diet-based weight control program. Which, of course, I said yes to.

And the Eating Coach website isn't done (although the e-course is -- one small victory anyway).

And I have a Spring Learning Series to plan.

And I have to pick the dates for the spring Eating Coach classes.

And I just started back strength training (my official start date was February .....2009 -- so I would be in good strength for wake boarding season -- which is right around the corner, now that the days are getting longer).

And...

And...

And...

All of that to say -- Holy Cow!! Life is crazy and I want to lay down and take a nap. But I can't -- all of the above needs to get done. Some quicker than others but it all needs to happen. So now what???

If you are feeling like this -- think about stopping for just a minute and taking a breath. Slow in...slow out. Becoming aware of what is going on (as opposed to running on autopilot) is the first step. There is no easy answer to the to-do list -- like I said, it all needs to get done. But I don't want it to take me down in the process.

It is times like this where clients tend to fall off the Mindful Eating wagon. They stress eat or just end up grabbing whatever super-sized anything they can get their hands on just because it is convenient.

Don't let your stress derail you. Make a plan. Sunday I was smart enough to make a big pot of soup for lunches this week (okay -- there is another small victory). At least, I will have something easy to pack for lunch so I am not tempted to skip it and grab a big bag of chips on the way home.

Take your drive time to think about how hungry you are feeling so when you get home you have an idea of how much you are going to need to eat at dinner to relieve the physical hunger of the day.

Pay attention to how hungry you are in the morning when you first wake up. Are you hungrier than normal (don't freak out about this -- when you are busier and burning more calories running around you will feel hungrier) or do you feel what you always feel?

Are you more tempted to grab that high carb/high salt snack from the vending machine in the afternoon? Why? Are you bored or stressed about the work waiting for you back at your desk? Or are you truly hungry?

Keep notes about how you are feeling (stressed, bored, let down from the holidays, still fighting with your sibling over a holiday incident...) to see if you can see patterns in your eating.

Most of all -- and if you do nothing else -- Breathe. One slow one in and then slowly out. Appreciate the way your lungs expand and contract. Let the stress go -- it all needs to be done, believe me, I understand -- but one thing at a time -- Mindfully.

Do something Friday

Are you journaling?

Most of my clients wrinkle their noses at the idea of writing down everything that goes into their mouths -- "It's too much of a pain in the neck" they say.

But really, that is the point. If you are going to eat 3 pretzels from the break table but then you know you are going to have to go write them down, it tests your commitment to how badly you want those pretzels. If they aren't worth the effort of writing them down in the journal, you probably don't want them that badly in the first place.

You don't have to weigh or measure either.

Grab a notepad and write down the time you are eating, what you ate, whether you were physically hungry when you started eating and how full you were when you got done. Your goal is to do this as close to the time that you eat as possible. People are notoriously bad at remembering all of the little bites they took during the day if they journal for the whole day at the end of the day.

That's it. Not rocket science and it will give you all of the information you need to know to help you eliminate the calories that aren't adding value to your life and lose weight without feeling deprived.

Do something Friday

Today, make a commitment to enjoy your weekend. All of it.

The shopping.
The driving in the snow.
The shoveling the sidewalk.
The eating.
The parties.

Whatever you have scheduled, make a conscious effort to enjoy it -- tis the season!

You can teach yourself the habit of enjoying life more -- but you have to make a choice about how you want to look at life.

Yourself as a guest

Over the next couple weeks, you are bound to entertain and to be entertained. Pay attention. How do good hosts and hostesses make you feel? How do they welcome you to their home and their tables? How do you welcome your guests? What thoughts go through your head as you prepare for their arrival?

Now think about how you welcome yourself home? Or don't you, this time of year? Do you set out lovely tableware for yourself so that eating can be an event? Do you take the extra 20 minutes to prepare something you are really hungry for or do you just eat whatever and then feel unsatisfied when you leave the table?

Yes...I know everyone is busy. But honestly, when are we not?? You can say that this is a crazy season (and I would agree) but realistically, will it get slower in January? February? Once the kids are out of school? If you are like me, you can pretty much bet it won't slow down all that much -- it is just that the activities change and "the season" isn't the only thing people are talking about.

So give some thought to how you can welcome yourself home and welcome yourself to your own table.

My theory

I have a theory about keeping a house clean -- It is going to take 4 hours (let's say) per week to keep the house looking good. Now...I can spread that cleaning out over the week (think hanging up my clothes each time I change instead of throwing them on the floor to be dealt with all at once) -- so that I do the onesy, twosey things (the equivalent of 3 hours of work) through out the week in 1 -5 minute intervals and leaves me with with a balance of 1ish hours at the end of the week where I clean the tubs, vacuum, etc. OR...

I can do nothing all week (leave the clothes on the bottom of the closet, not lightly sweep the kitchen after the kids cook dinner, etc.) and spend 4 hours on Saturday morning cleaning like a banshee.

With the later scenario, I don't have to do as much throughout the week, but I also don't get the pleasure of walking into a house that, for the most part, looks pretty good every evening when I get home.

The same is true for eating patterns.

You are going to have to put the work in in one direction or another. You can consciously think about your eating habits most of the time. Eliminate unmeaningful bites here and there throughout the course of each day OR...

You can not give it any thought (but of course you really will -- it will just be those "beat yourself up" kind of thoughts that aren't productive) -- throughout the course of time but eventually you will reach a point where you are unable to deal with your weight and then it will require a concerted "dieting" effort to get you back to the place you want to be.

There is no "Get out of Jail Free" card. There are no easy answers to controlling our weight in our culture right now. The best you can hope for is to find a way to manage what you eat that lets you enjoy life, be happy with the decisions you are making, and gives you the best shot at "living long" and "dying short".

Consistency

I was just thinking about my blogging and some of the other blogs that I read. Some people only blog once a week -- I update Monday through Friday. Here is the thing that keeps me coming back to their blogs -- a certain amount of consistency. It doesn't have to be everyday -- it just means that there has to be some kind of regularity.

This is true for many of my client's weight loss attitudes, as well. Sure, who wouldn't like to lose 5 pounds every week? But most of us would be pretty content with 1-2 pounds every week if they didn't feel like they were killing themselves or feeling so deprived from all good things in life.

To have a consistent weight loss, you need to be eating just a little bit less --CONSISTENTLY. If you are doing that -- you won't need to make big sacrifices or feel deprived!

Focusing on the urgent not the important

In the reading I have done in the last week, the title idea has come up over and over again. The October 18 entry of Simple Abundance, one of Seth Godin's blogs last week and in three magazine articles I picked up over the weekend.

How much time do you spend running from one fire to another, trying to put them out? It's exhausting! Plus, how many of those urgent things are really that important to you? Or are they a priority now because someone is making so much noise about it you are dealing with it just to shut them up?

So...this week, give it some thought. What is really important to you and what are you doing because it is urgent. Yes...we all have fires that need to be put out but is your weight urgent (and if you say yes, why? You didn't get to the weight you are since yesterday? What is driving you to say losing weight is urgent now?) Or...is it important but not a three-alarm fire just yet?

Great! Important I can work with. Important means you put it in your schedule to deal with right now -- today. For lunch, what is your plan for eating 3 bites less than you normally would? Can you Kid's Meal your lunch? Could you box half of it up before you dig in?

Take action today -- not because it is urgent but because it is important.

Is Mindful Eating a Free Pass?

I have talked in the past about diet rules and how they provide structure to a program. They provide a box for you to stay inside of. Sometimes, that is a nice, safe feeling -- for a while anyway.

So where is the box when you are trying to eat mindfully? Clients, in the past, have sometimes mistaken me when I say "Eat what sounds great!" for "Eat as much as you want of whatever you want and you will still lose weight". This is not the case.

The box with mindful eating is that you are reconnecting with your sensations of hunger and fullness. And learning to differentiate between physical hunger and trigger eating. Saying no to yourself when you feel the urge to trigger eat (in response to stress, let's say) can be a very empowering thing. It is your higher self taking action and moving you in the direction you want to go.

Now, as far as the eat whatever sounds great, the box is that you have to be paying attention and eat the smallest amount that gives you the greatest amount of pleasure. Let's be honest, how often do you eat just one Hershey's Kiss? One CAN be enough IF you are paying attention to the texture, flavor and aroma --not just popping it in, chewing like a fiend and looking for the next one before the first one is totally swallowed.

It takes real work to learn to pay attention. It doesn't just happen. If you are eating mindfully, you can eat anything you want but that freedom comes with the responsibility to pay attention through the whole process -- and not overeat!

Candy dishes

With so many of us being overweight, why are there candy dishes out all over the place? Especially at work when distraction from what I am sick of doing comes, more often than not, in the form of food?

Why don't people have a big bowl of apples on their desk? Maybe this time of year, some do, but most of the time?

We don't need the candy -- put it away. Or only put it out on Fridays -- that way it is a real TREAT.