Fat shaming response

body image, Stress

Comments About Your Weight

an angry fat woman

photo from TheConversation.com

Why is it that people feel entitled to make fat shaming comments about your weight? You don’t even know them? You’re eating at a restaurant, walking down the street, shopping for groceries. Maybe you have become hypersensitive to other’s eyes on you, their laughter after looking in your direction. You can feel their judgment of your personality as a cause for your weight- they think you must be lazy and can’t control yourself.

Can it be that others are so insensitive and mean that they feel alright to fat shame another person? Unfortunately, the answer is often “yes”.  They are lying if they tell you that they’re just trying to help you. “Oh really? I NEVER thought about your diet suggestion before! I’ll definitely have to try that out so I can get thin like you!”  N O T !!!!

Insensitive Comments

So many women (in particular) have fallen for the notion that they have to be thinner, that they are totally oblivious when they discuss that they were “bad” when they ate a cookie or cookies at an event in front other women who weighed a LOT more than them. This happens to me practically every day! Women are always talking about their body and what “bad” food they ate. They are so self-absorbed, lacking self confidence about their own appearance that they probably don’t even realize that you’re standing there and they are essentially fat shaming you!

Women have been taught to find fault in their bodies and that they NEED to be thin in order to be attractive. This brainwashing from a young age really does make us crazy! It’s so stressful to have to “watch your weight”! Thin women don’t watch their weight!  It take so much time and effort to clear it out that conditioning. So in some ways, you can feel sorry for a person who is judging herself and making her own life miserable with “watching her weight” and judging herself because she actually eats food! She may not yet have realized that all the lies from Dr. Oz, Oprah and the Diet Industry is only going to make her gain weight after each bout of dieting. YOU might actually be able to help her and relieve her stress about her body! She’s actually fat shaming herself!

AWARENESS and Assertiveness

For the person who is just uninformed about the futility of dieting, you could gently try to educate them. You could also let that person know that what they say can be hurtful to those around her.. even if it doesn’t hurt you! (I sure hope that is so!). But there is another flavor of the insensitive comment. It’s MEANT to be hurtful and it is mean and degrading – but that works only if you let it be so.

Only an opinion

The most important thing you can possibly do for yourself as a human being is to understand that ANYTHING that some utters is simply their opinion! YOU have opinions, and so does everyone else. Why get upset about a differing opinion from yours? If you do respond with anger or sadness you are giving your power away to another person.

Your opinion about me in none of my business.

Keep repeating that until it takes hold in your brain. There are few people on this planet who I believe in more than I believe myself- and those people are not going to be mean and shallow and want to be hurtful. If the people you listen to and believe are hurtful intentionally, it’s time to DUMP THEM!

 How to be Assertive

confident woman leaning forwardFor the rest, you must learn to be assertive and make them realize that it’s NOT OK to belittle or judge other people because of their appearance. That goes for their color, their age, their weight or any other characteristic. Only when there is awareness brought to bear will there be change.

And the statements that they make about their own weight being unattractive are not lost on those around them who are heavier than them! Let them know that words have power to hurt. And actually, those attacking words stay a lifetime. Is that how they want to be remembered??

Our strong memory of mean words are designed to stick for the purpose of preserving our lives! The people who say things like that are dangerous and to be avoided! That’s why those words have such staying power.

Try it yourself: think about the nasty things people have said to you that you remember from your past. Count them.. Then think about the nice things that people have said to you. I’ll bet you remember the negative ones more often than the nice ones?!

Assertive Template

So many times you walk away from an uneasy situation saying: “I SHOULD have said…..” and feeling even worse about yourself for not standing up. That’s why I encourage you to use my assertive template, where you always know what you want to say. This method gives the other person an “out” where you kind of let them off the hook. Because most time, people don’t want to hurt your feelings. They’re just not aware- and it’s your job to make them so!

You start with something like: I guess you didn’t realize ________________  but when you said (or did)  ____________________ I felt ____________. So I’d like to request that you do this __________________ instead.

This really works. I fact it opens the lines of communication between people and can improve relationships.

Assertiveness helps you feel better about yourself. But just remember, you’re not always going to get a response that you want from the other person. Many people become defensive, or even attacking. But just stick to your statement, and remember that what comes out of their mouth is about THEM not you!

You can do it- and you start changing the world, one person at a time.

 

 

 

 

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Diet Researchers Lie-

Diet Myths

drawing of a drowning person's hands holding an ice-cream cone

Researchers Lying With Statistics

The headline in a newspaper at the check out counter in the grocery store about how to lose 10 pounds in a week could capture your attention. But if you read that “Eating Ice-cream Increases Your Risk of Dying by Drowning”, it could make you wonder if you should stop eating ice-cream before going to the beach or a pool. This is the perfect example of lying with statistics and poorly designed research.

How Statistics can “Prove”  that Eating Ice-cream causes death by drowning

Let me explain: Just because two things occur at the same time doesn’t necessarily mean that one causes the other.
Summer is a time when it’s hot outside. More people eat ice-cream in the hot summer weather, and more people ALSO go into the water to cool down, so more people drown. A flawed study would report that eating ice-cream causes drowning because they both increased at the same time! Now you realize that it isn’t true that ice-cream causes drowning! They just occurred at the same time of year. But a combination of factors that seem linked because they occur at the same time is the example of poor research, and yet still becomes something that most people believe.

That’s how you lie with statistics – you leave out other important factors.The research left out the important considerations and jumped to the conclusion that eating ice-cream causes drowning. This is the same kind of poor research that many people read and believe.

Many people become so attached to believing this type of flawed study that they fight against findings that dispute their BELIEFS. Perhaps you’ve fallen for the study and joined the groups of people who now believe that eating butter, and saturated animal fat is causing heart disease. Yes, this too, is an “Ice-cream Causes Drowning” type of study. And finally, the media and medical doctors are starting to say, “oh, we were wrong”…. but that doesn’t help the people who died from cardiovascular disease caused by eating VEGETABLE OILS INSTEAD OF BUTTER!!

Eat Less and Exercise More: Another Statistical Lie

Another fervently held misconception is that eating less and exercising more will cause weight loss that is lasting. The fact that the Diet Industry doesn’t want you to know is that 95-98% of all diets fail to keep the weight off for more than a few months to a couple of years.

It’s next to impossible for something to fail for all of those people, unless there is something flawed with the process of dieting. But most people tell you: the common knowledge is the only way to lose weight is to “eat less & exercise more”. You’d be amazed at the things people call you when you challenge their beliefs! It’s not pretty, I can assure you!

Mother Nature Wants To Keep You Alive

The problem with dieting is it goes against everything that Mother Nature has designed to keep you alive. Dieting, by cutting calories slows your metabolism, as does excessive exercise. And when your metabolism is lowered by 30% UNDER what you are eating as diet food, and you are miserable and stressed, the weight will start coming back on its own. That’s only one part of Mother Nature’s plan to keep you alive!

But people who don’t have weight challenges want overweight people to believe they must continue this battle to lose weight for the rest of their lives– or they are lazy, and undisciplined. Yes, it’s easy for them to say: YOU have to make a “lifestyle” change!

From all the interviews I’ve done, I’ve found that the thinnest people eat the most. In fact, a few of my thin friends are trying to GAIN weight, and are unable to do so! Being 5 pounds underweight is actually more dangerous than being 75 pounds overweight according to actuary tables that insurance companies use. Why isn’t the country coming down on these people for being thin??

My experience with overweight people tells me exactly the opposite. Heavier people are unhappy with their appearance and have been chronically under-eating (dieting) and punishing themselves physically and emotionally for long periods of time. Their mindset has become chronically stressed from hating themselves, then giving in, and then again, being disgusted with themselves. In order to lose weight, most of them must stop dieting, and start nurturing themselves with food and LESS exercise, more sleep and forgive themselves for hating their body!

Negative Mindset Plays A Role in Weight

The Mindset of a dieter plays into the Law of Attraction, and Neuroscience – and not in a good way. It’s the mindset of deprivation, frustration, “can’t and should” that invites more misery, deprivation and frustration. And that’s just talking about their CONSCIOUS mindset. There’s the issue of unconscious and subconscious beliefs that are ALSO sabotaging their ability to lose weight and maintain it. While you are under the effects of your conscious thoughts and beliefs thirty percent of the time, you unconscious and subconscious mind is in the driver’s seat 70% of the time. It’s much harder to change that!

In order to lose weight, the focus of your mindset must change to appreciate, and nurture your body, as a beginning step. You must also break unconscious and subconscious belief patterns that are keeping you overweight.

food in the mediterranean diet

Findings Prove Researchers are Morons

This study had me screaming at my computer screen as I read it! A long term study epidemiological study tracked 19,000 people for four years to see if eating the Mediterranean Diet would have a protective effect on developing heart disease. Their findings were very important. But their conclusions convinced me that the researchers were either morons or completely blind to what was right in front of them. They found that the Mediterranean Diet did have the ability to lower heart disease, but primarily only in one group of the subjects.

They found that the diet was more effective on college educated people who were economically well-off. The subjects were essentially eating the same diet, did the same amount of exercise, were not smoking cigarettes, and yet only the richer participants had less heart disease. What did the researchers conclude from this study you may ask? ….

The researcher concluded that these people bought more expensive wine and food. ARE THEY KIDDING??? They couldn’t figure out that the economically challenged people had MORE STRESS in their lives?? Even the exercise didn’t make that difference in developing heart disease in this study.

This exemplifies how the Diet Industry does research. Their bias to blame the dieter causes researchers to blame weight issues and health on ANYTHING other than the real cause: STRESS.

             As Deepak Chopra once said: you can eat the healthiest foods, but under stress they turn to poison in your body.

Want to be healthy? Either you have to figure out a way to make a lot of money (in a job that’s not stressful), or work on stress relief.

How to Know if the Stress Relief You are Doing Works

If you want to live a happier, healthier and longer life, stress relief has to be a planned and practiced activity. But how do you know if what you’re doing is actually helping you? You need a way to watch your body and mind relax so you LEARN when the method you are doing is working – and when it’s not!

I found the research organization in the year 2000 when I was trying to find out why my resting heart rate was so high. Over the years, the HeartMath institute has studied the power of the heart to be able to calm the rest of the body. They developed the EmWave and the InnerBalance devices which are similar to biofeedback. They wanted people to be able to “learn” to effectively practice stress relief and then know their practice was working.

How The EmWave and Inner Balance Work

with your iPhone, stress relief is at handUsing a sensor that send your heart beat to the device, either by bluetooth or wired, both devices are sending on your bio-information to these small devices (or your phone!). The devices send you an auditory and visual signal when you are changing your heart rate variability (not just slowing down your heart, but making the beat to beat changes more “organized”). This is one of the methods used in a lie-detector test to figure out if you are feeling stressed, and probably lying! When you are calm, as determined by your Heart Rate Variablility (not the speed, but the organization of the beats), your body systems are getting into alignment and out of stress.

If you want to KNOW that the stress relief practice you are doing is actually working, I recommend getting one of these terrific devices from HeartMath – I’ve been using mine for over ten years – and I rarely get sick. It’s even helped me to deal with some really scary news that could have stressed me out, and made me feel miserable – because I’ve become a lot more resilient to stress.

Lots of people are feeling stressed out from the news right now. One of the stress relief methods I recommend is not watching it and torturing yourself with things you can’t change. And when you practice with the Inner Balance (for your iPhone and Android) or the Emwave- (a small version), you WILL feel the weight lifting off you – but you just can’t do it when you’re feeling lousy…. set aside time – even 5 minutes can be a big help!

Bottom Line: Eat Well and Practice Stress Relief

Read “research” with a skeptical eye. Try to find out who funded it.

Love yourself like your dog loves you- thin/fat – tall/short – young/old….. it matters not. That’s the number one stress relief. Accepting and appreciating yourself as you are.

Nurture yourself with good food, AND do the stress relief!

AND:  Don’t fall for the flawed research that makes you a victim. And enjoy that ice-cream especially in the summer time, because you deserve to nurture yourself, and you’re NOT going to drown!

8 Reasons Why Mindful Eating Fails

body image, Stress Diet

8 Reasons Mindful Eating Fails

Mindful eating is not easy to do if you’ve been on and off diets for a while. Many Mindful Eating “gurus” will tell you that you are failing because you are still restricting foods you eat. So, essentially, that’s having a mindset of still being on a diet. Mindful eating is NOT a diet. If you are learning this on your own from reading blogs, you’ll probably notice that most (if not all) of the gurus teaching this are thin, or relatively thin.

This raises reasonable assumptions in your mind. One of them being that these gurus were once fat and then did Mindful Eating (or intuitive eating) and lost weight. The other assumption can be that they were never heavy and are teaching you how to eat like them. Well, assumptions are not always correct.

Will I Lose Weight Eating Mindfully?

Let’s deals with the first assumption. Some people do lose weight using intuitive eating. Others gain weight, and still others stay the same weight. Think about a diet. There is almost a guarantee that after the suffering of going through a diet (any kind of restriction, or even “lifestyle change), you have a 95% chance of regaining the weight you lost, plus adding additional weight to your starting point. And it doesn’t matter if you exercise.

However, if you can maintain the practice of mindful eating, you will not be obsessive about what you eat, when you eat, or how much you eat. You will learn to trust your body, and pay attention to the natural signals of hunger and being full. Isn’t that a better way to go through life?

Rebuilding Trust In Your Body

To me, this is the most important issue with regard to the practice of mindfulness. It’s accepting that your body knows what the correct amount of food to eat is at any time.There’s never a once size fits all approach to how much to eat, like when you’ve been told to weigh your food, or make it fit into the palm of your hand size portion. This is totally worthless. And  if you’ve been a chronic dieter, you’ve probably gotten used to being hungry, ignoring your feelings of hunger. There are times when you are going to be hungrier- like after doing some hard exercise. You NEED more food at those times, and not eating is harmful to your metabolism.

Self Hatred

You’ve also been, at least dissatisfied with how your body looks. That dissatisfaction can be minor, or very extreme to the point where you HATE your body. Those feelings causes a physical response of stress within your physiology which have been clearly researched. Those negative mindset with hate filled words written on her bodyfeelings raise your cortisol level – the stress hormone. Your body feels attacked, and it doesn’t matter if the attack is from outside you, or inside you. It’s all the same.

Women, in particular have been conditioned to focus on their appearance from a very young age. We’re told as little girls that we’re so pretty, our clothes are pretty…. and that becomes the way we know we are valued and accepted. It’s not the same for boys who are told they’re smart or strong. And you can see the effect in life. Females are always concerned about their body- what clothes we wear, wearing shoes with high heels that can break your back, putting on make-up, dieting…. on to plastic surgery to fit what society says is the way we “should” look.

I’m particularly disgusted with the way that women feel like they have to be sexy and show off their bodies practically everywhere they go! When I go to the beach, women are almost naked. Men are wearing appropriate swimming attire that won’t get pulled down or off in a wave! I love tennis, but to see the difference in sports attire between men and women is sickening. Shorter and shorter tops and bottoms for women, and men wearing sports appropriate clothing. It’s time to wake up women!

It’s time to jettison this conditioning, this brainwashing and stop focusing on how our bodies look. Get out of the YOUniverse, and see your amazing, unique qualities that make you special. Dieting is part of the brainwashing – and it’s the “cure” (of fat) that CAUSES the condition (fat).

Realize that mindful eating is only going to be effective when you have learned how to manage stress. Your stress reaction is both a psychological response as well as a physical response. It can be to an event, or to harassment. You pick the things that you allow to stress you. Please don’t add self-hatred of our body. Stop dieting!

 

 

 

Best Exercise for Weight Management

exercise, Stress

 

Exercise for Weight Management

restorative yoga position lying comfortably and relaxing

If you have dieted to lose weight your mind and body has gone through stress. I know, everyone tells you that you need to exercise (sweat) to burn calories. But it’s just another one of those pesky diet industry lies that make you feel like a total failure when all those payments to the gym have not changed your weight.

Dieting Makes You A Victim

Very often you are feeling like you are being punished for something that you did wrong that got you “this way”.  After all, why is it that so many movie stars show how they’ve lost a ton of weight on Jenny Craig or other diet plans. Well, that was THEN – try to see a picture of them NOW! The vast majority of them have regained the weight, JUST LIKE YOU!

If you are dieting, you already feel like a failure because you gained weight in the first place! My best friend Yolanda could eat more than a sumo wrestler while I ate rabbit food. She NEVER gained weight – and she’s still thin. That’s her body type, which she was lucky enough to inherit! And unfortunately, it’s women with the other kind of body type- where you have a rounded shape, who want to lose weight the most, and will have the most impossible time, because you are fighting nature, and damaging your metabolism while trying!

Can’t Change Your Bodydifferent body types of Williams sisters

I’m a BIG tennis fan. I’ll be that most people will know about the famous Williams sisters: Venus and Serena. I am telling you that Serena (the shorter, muscular sister) could diet for the rest of her life, but she will NEVER have Venus’ ectomorphic tall, slender more boy-like body!

Are YOU trying to change something that you cannot change? And are you doing it because society has a preference for a certain body type for women? Well, it’s time you face reality. You cannot please everyone in the world – nor should you try! I’m still hoping that one day, Feminism will be back in style and women will throw out their high heels, low cut tops that sexualize their body for attention. Men don’t do that stuff. And you still find them sexy, correct?

Accept who you are

Over-exercising Causes Stress

Do you want to avoid damaging your metabolism? Then don’t over-exercise. Moderate exercise, with time for rest in between exercise is good for you. But exercise won’t make you lose weight. It may tighten up your muscles and change the appearance of your body, but you also can not spot reduce. I was dumb enough to think that different exercises would reduce the shape of my butt. All it did was make my cheekbones more Scientific-American article about exercise and burning calories. Astounding information!pronounced! And having more muscles also burns more calories, but not enough to have you lose a lot of weight!

I recently read an article in Scientific American that absolutely astounded me. I wouldn’t consider this publication a source of biased information. It was carefully researched by a scientist who compared calories burned by Africans chasing a wounded giraffe (it was going to be dinner for their tribe) with Americans who sit on their butts working in front of their computers all day. I had to read it a couple of times to really believe it. Apparently, there is some fail-safe mechanism in our bodies that prevents us from burning too many calories with activity. They describe it as an exercise paradox.

The Africans who ended up running over 20 miles until the wounded animal dropped dead – and then they had to carry it back all that way, only burned about 150 more calories doing all of that activity than office workers in the US. I SWEAR it’s true!

Dieting From Low Self-Esteem

We are ALL different – and that diversity is what is interesting about each one of us! You don’t need to conform to what society’s preference of the decade is. Be yourself: everyone else is taken!

“I have to be on a diet” mindset lowers your self-esteem and contributes to a victim mentality. “Needing” to lose weight puts your mind into a belief system that something is wrong with your body and you!  That negative self-esteem contributes to stress which then sabotages your metabolism! And stress alone can make you GAIN weight!

The Perfect Exercise

I bet you thought I was going to tell you that weight lifting is the best exercise you can do to change our body. If done properly, it will tighten your muscles and can improve your shape. Keep in mind that muscles weigh more than adipose tissue (fat) so it can seem like you’re gaining weight. But muscles use more calories than fat. Bottom line, please don’t weigh yourself. That’s diet mentality. Stop fighting a losing battle.

gentle yoga is powerful
good for health-not weight loss
yoga for all bodies

It turns out that slow yoga, restorative positions and mindful yoga (and mindful eating) are wonderful practices that re-establish a healthy relationship with your body and eating. Many men and women who have been on a chronic diet and have lost touch with their body’s signals of hunger and satiation. You may no longer HAVE an appetite (better check your body temperature to see if your thyroid is damaged from dieting!). And many who try to eat mindfully are still emotional eaters from stress. While mindful eating can help you figure out how much to eat, it’s not going to stop stress eating!  But these slow forms of yoga actually lower your stress levels, not only during class but for hours later. Having a yoga practice affects not just your mind, but your body as well.

Yoga opens you to a different view of your body. It also helps you manage the stress that changes your hormonal release and contributes to making you feel hungrier! And it’s been found that practicing slow restorative yoga results in twice as much weight loss as doing active exercise! (although there’s not a lot of weight loss, it’s still better than aerobics!) You see, the real cause of overweight is STRESS!

For many people, it’s not what you are eating, but what is eating you that is getting you fat. Make sure you get my free report to get the the real facts about how gentle yoga for stress relief is more effective for managing weight, than aerobic exercise!

 

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Is It Your Thyroid?

Stress Diet

Thyroid Gland Responsible for Your Weight Gain?

My entire life, I had a disordered perception of what my body looked like. I was a serial dieter. I’d try one diet, lose a couple of pounds, and then they would quickly return, bringing along with it an additional pound or two more. I was convinced there was something wrong with my thyroid gland. After all, my mom had a diagnosis of thyroid problems and was on medication. I must have inherited it, I was sure! 

Wrong Blood Test to Diagnose Thyroid Issues

But my doctor did one blood test: TSH: Thyroid Stimulating Hormone, and proclaimed me “normal”.  There’s nothing the matter with your thyroid he insisted. I couldn’t believe him. How is it possible to eat next to nothing and be unable to maintain weight loss – or even GAIN weight? 

It was a very long road, until I learned the truth about the ignorance of endocrinologists, and their proclivity to dismiss a woman’s symptoms and instead rely on a blood test that isn’t even checking their THYROID GLAND. It’s checking to see if the pituitary gland is releasing a hormone!  Thanks to Janie Bowthorpe for her amazing book which gave me the education I needed so I can speak intelligently to a doctor who wanted to dismiss my concerns. (I had to fire MANY doctors before I found a good one!).If you have found your weight increasing even though you’re not eating more, and have symptoms (see below), you may have an undiagnosed problem with your thyroid gland.

Yes, gaining weight is a very complex subject that is interwoven with many systems in your body. Your thyroid gland is the “master gland”, and thyroid hormones circulate throughout your body. A very sophisticated system can be thrown off easily as a response to lack of certain nutrients and minerals, or even stress…

Proper Diagnosis but Poor Choice of Medication

Furthermore, even with a diagnosis, and treatment, many people complain that pharmaceutic medications are not adequately fixing their thyroid problems. Many doctors are reluctant to prescribe medications that are made from dessicated thyroid glands from animals. They prefer to depend upon synthetic pharmaceuticals, and are not even willing to try treating with the alternative, even though many patients have a much better response to the animal product. And of course, your prescription drug plan probably won’t pay for it either! You don’t even need fancy blood tests to tell if the treatment is working. All you need is your thermometer! 

Symptoms of Hypothyroid

Be aware that there are many symptoms, you may have a few, or many! Although there are a number of disorders possible – Graves Disease (Hyperthyroid- more characteristic of weight loss), Hypothyroid (slow metabolism), and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (an autoimmune disease of the thyroid gland) a condition where many of the symptoms are both hyper and hypo!

There are many doctors that now believe that the standard blood tests do not adequately diagnose thyroid problems, and they are treating patients based upon symptoms, not just blood results!

Brittle nails

Cold hands and feet

Cold intolerance

Constipation

Depression

Difficulty swallowing

Dry skin

Elevated cholesterol

Essential hypertension

Eyelid swelling

Eyebrow outer 1/3 thinning

Fatigue

Hair loss

Hoarseness

Hypotension

Inability to concentrate

Infertility

Irritability

Menstrual Irregularities

Muscle Cramps

Muscle/Joint Pain

Muscle Weakness

Nervousness

Poor memory

Puffy Eyes

Slower heartbeat

Throat Pain

Weight Gain

If you have a preponderance of these symptoms, don’t take “NO” for an answer. If you are being treated with synthetic thyroid (Synthroid, Levothyroxine, etc) you may still have symptoms because these are not the best drugs according to many thyroid sufferers.  You will be amazed at how much better you feel when your thyroid gland is working as nature intended it.

The Best Way To Diagnose and Treat Your Thyroid Condition

Yes, there are alternative and complimentary treatments available. A great way to do a test at home is to check your body temperature and pulse. If you have cold hands and feet, that’s a first sign that you may have problems with your thyroid gland.

The next step is getting an accurate diagnosis to find out if you have a thyroid condition! Because I have been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (and had many symptoms of both hyper and hypo thyroid) I’ve read a ton of books and articles about the thyroid, and it’s really helped me to understand the tests that should be done, and to interpret the results. I highly recommend you read  Stop the Thyroid Madness: A Patient Revolution Against Decades of Inferior Treatment by Janie A. Bowthorpe, a woman who has gone through it all with inept and ignorant board certified endocrinologists. She finally became an expert herself by researching, speaking with thousands of other thyroid patients and finally finding good physicians.

Will I Lose Weight With Proper Thyroid Medication?

I want you to know that just by getting treatment for Hypothyroid symptoms is no guarantee that you lose weight. There may be foods to which you may have a food sensitivity.  Gluten can be problematic for those with thyroid problems.  Many doctors believe that for the majority of people with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (auto-immune disease of the thyroid) “gluten” (anything with wheat, and some other grains) should be eliminated from your diet. It’s not an easy condition to manage.

If you are not eating enough and often enough you will find that your body temperature is low.  Over-exercise can impact your thyroid condition by being stressful for your body. Lack of sleep is also very bad for your thyroid (and your health in general). Your thyroid gland is VERY SENSITIVE to stress! 

The best thing you can do, is get yourself informed.  And there is a genetic predisposition to inheriting it from YOUR family- and they may not even have been properly diagnosed. Don’t fool around with this disease – it is your Master gland, and addressing the problem can improve your health, your mood, your weight, your ability to think, and even long term health issues! In fact, Dr. Broda Barnes did exhaustive research with thousands of people, and realized that heart attacks are CAUSED in great measure by untreated thyroid conditions! 

The book above will give you the information you need so that you can be an advocate for your health with your doctor. Not every endocrinologist is going to honor your requests for special testing and treatment.  I recommend you get informed so you know if you have the symptoms, and then can find the right kind of doctor to help you! It’s not going to be easy, but when you feel better, you’ll know the effort was worth it!SaveSave

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Mindful Eating is Yoga for the Stomach

mindful eating, Stress Diet

Yoga for the Stomach

 

Mindful eating, or intentional eating is focusing your mind on the process of eating. The goal of yoga is focus your mind  on your body and your breath as you are doing asanas (positions). Mindful eating focuses your mind on the taste of the food, and your perception of fullness.

There are so many subtleties you can focus on while practicing yoga: how is your body aligned, are your muscles tighter on one side or another, how far can you go into the position, etc… With mindful eating, I realized that I’m doing a kind of yoga.

How to Eat Mindfully

I had a friend who once commented that he never saw anyone take so long to eat a small piece of chocolate. And it’s true! When I was on a chronic diet in my past life, I didn’t want to waste eating anything that didn’t taste good. And since I wasn’t eating a lot of food, I wanted to make it last longer. So, when I was going to have that treat of chocolate, I made it last by  breaking it into small pieces. I’d put in on the tip of my tongue and let it start melting. Then I’d move it around my mouth keeping my mind on where I was tasting it, the texture, what color it felt like, what aspects of the chocolate I loved the most. As you see, I could probably write
a booklet on the taste of chocolate and why I love it so much. It was like doing mouth yoga and then stomach yoga when listening for signs that I had enough.

 

If the phone rang while I was eating chocolate, they could WAIT until I finished! And no, I was NOT going to rush! I love Trader Joe’s big bar of Belgium chocolate because it breaks into small squares. And I break those square into smaller pieces. And NO, it’s not because I’m dieting – because I will NEVER DIET AGAIN. It’s a waste of effort – and you are probably at a point in your life where you understand this, because you are reading on this site! All those years of restricting and starving ended up making me gain weight each time I was fooled into trying a new and better diet.

Your Brain Changes the Way You Perceive Taste

And by the way, did you know that as you are continuously eating a particular food, your brain actually makes it not taste as good as it was when you first started eating it? Think about this: if you are a coffee drinker, the first sip in the morning tastes the best, correct? And then as your drinking it, you get less of a delight as you get to the bottom of the cup.

You taste in your mouth, not your stomach!

Now, I am NOT telling you to eat less food or be on a diet. But what I’m trying to explain is this: enjoy what you eat. If you just stuff it into your mouth mindlessly, you’re not going to enjoy it that much, and more likely to OVER-eat because you’re not paying attention to your stomach’s feeling of satiation. The slower you eat, the more your stomach has a chance to tell you when to stop eating because you’ve had enough. And that way you don’t have to use some artificial one size fits all portion control size like those worthless diet plans use!  Eat mindfully, eat intentionally what you like and what’s good for you, and until you’ve had enough.

Cold Hands & Cold Feet

Stress, Thyroid

Are you always cold?

Do you have a low body temperature, under about 97.8? Your body temperature is an indication of the strength of your metabolism. Healthy children typically have warm little bodies. Their hands and feet are warm, their hair is thick and shiny.

Many adults complain that they are always cold. Even living in Tucson in the summer wasn’t enough to get my feet warm when going to bed at night (until I uncovered the mystery why and got treatment).

Check Your Body Temperature

Many doctors will check your temperature and if it’s above 99º, they tell you that you have a fever. But mysteriously, when your body temperature is below “normal” they tell you to ignore it. Well I’m here to tell you to ignore them! Your body temperature is an important indicator of your vitality and health. In fact, it’s the method that has been used to diagnose hypothyroid before there were blood tests. And it is an accurate measure of whether your body is working properly!

Please check through to see if you have these symptoms . If you have low body temperature, it’s important to check your thyroid gland. Most people who have symptoms of low thyroid (hypothyroid) have these symptoms due to the auto-immune disease, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. As your body is attacking your thyroid gland, you will have symptoms of both hypo and hyper-thyroid. Your doctor may be treating you with Synthroid (synthetic T4) which doesn’t work well for many patients. If you are being treated and still have low temperatures and other symptoms – YOU ARE NOT BEING CORRECTED. Don’t continue to let your doctor tell you that “you are fine”. If your doctor won’t address your symptoms, or tells you that you have a mental or emotional problem, find another doctor!

However, if you are fortunate and do not have thyroid problems, but still have cold hands and feet, you are probably not eating enough, or you are taking in too much liquid in your diet. I highly recommend you Matt Stone’s book: Eat for Heat. He has a goofy style, but he is truly an independent health researcher that sees through the “fake” diet industry claims. He gave me the keys that released me from Diet Prison!

What instigates an attack of your thyroid gland and resulting symptoms? STRESS. Symptoms are exacerbated by STRESS.  It is imperative for you to practice stress relief – not just when you are feeling stressed out; but at least daily to become more resilient to stress and control your physical symptoms!

I recommend Restorative yoga, Heartmath Stress relief, EFT (meridian tapping) and Chi-Gong. The idea is to do the practice daily. You can switch them so you don’t get bored. I recommend you keep a chart of your symptoms, and then do an experiment. Do a week of stress relief, and then check your symptoms to watch how they improve. And make sure you keep a record of your body temps (but don’t get perfectionistic about it). Observe when you are cold, and when you are warm. Watch how certain foods make you warm, and others don’t. Remember, when you are cold, your metabolism is not working optimally.

It’s important for you to learn about your body so you can take good care of yourself. It’s really not hard: Eat, Sleep, Poop and Play. And do stress relief every day!

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