Monthly Archives: December 2011

On the Eve of the Year 2012

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On the eve of the Year 2012, I wish for you much love, laughter, wellness, and wellbeing. May you be present to the adventure of right now, and delight in delving into each opportunity—even if others call them hardships, problems, or obstacles.

May you marvel at what you have and maintain your confidence in what you are becoming. My you tackle each endeavor with enthusiasm and eagerness—from washing dishes, to typing an email, to relaxing on vacation, to engaging in your truest passion.

May your mind be mostly engaged in reflecting on the good things that happen and all that you appreciate. And as you lay your head on your pillow each night, may you look forward to tomorrow with happy anticipation.

These things I also resolve for myself.

Happy New Year! May this be the year where you allow all your dreams to come true!

Together we can do it!

 

Photo by Felixco, Inc./freedigitalphotos.net

 

Accountability

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Accountability for December 30, 2011

After falling into the cookies, on December 20, I committed to being accountable through the New Year to you Fabulous Readers about my diet and exercise as I recover from surgery.

 

Weighed this morning and I have maintained over the holidays, surgery, and recovery. Woo hoo! It’s clear I will meet my goals of maintaining my weight and feeling great on January 2.

In addition to 20 minutes of walk/jog intervals, I got in two short walks yesterday. Also ate well with the only splurges at dinner out with friends being half a cocktail, two bites of apple cobbler, and two peppermint hard candies. I’ll take it!

Today I will do a low-weight upper body workout and will get in at least one short walk. Tonight’s New Year’s celebration with friends will be my free meal for the week, and I will be back on track tomorrow with our area’s traditional New Year’s day meal of collard greens and black-eyed peas.

Thank you Fabulous Readers for helping me meet my post-surgery diet and exercise goals!

 

Are you making New Year’s Resolutions and have a goal on which you would like to be held accountable? Feel free to use the comment space on each of my accountability blogs, and I will cheer you on. Just let me know what your goal is, what you will be doing to meet it, and how often you will be reporting in.

 

Resolve to Feel Good

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I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts about the importance of setting goals and resolutions for the New Year. All of them are right that focusing on new desires is important and gets the life-juices flowing.

But one of the reasons that New Year’s resolutions are often dead by February 1 is that unknowingly, people are focused more on not having the thing they so desperately want. They don’t have enough money, aren’t thin enough, aren’t fit enough, aren’t healthy enough, aren’t organized enough—what they want is missing from their lives and they will finally be happy when they meet their goal.

And even though they set the resolution to get out of debt, lose weight, get fit, healthy, or organized, the majority of their thoughts and energy are still focused on the fact that they lack whatever their resolution is focused on.

When you think about the foundation principle that Energy Attracts Like Energy (also known at the Law of Attraction), you can begin to see that thoughts are our mental capital to invest wherever we want, with the dividends being our future life-experiences.

For instance, when you invest the majority of your mental capital on the fact that you don’t have enough money, you are actually building the account that creates more life experiences without enough money. If you invest that mental capital in the belief that you have more than enough money to meet all of your needs, your account includes an increase in life experiences of having more than enough money.

It’s often difficult to recognize where you are investing your thoughts. It seems like if you are focused on money—regardless if it is lack or abundance of money—you should get more money. It can be incredibly frustrating and discouraging to think you are focused on more money only to continue to get lack of money. But your life experiences are always letting you know where you are investing most of your mental capital.

A good way to tell where you are investing your thoughts and energy is by paying attention to how you feel. Focusing on lack feels like yearning or even desperation. This is why wanting often gets a bad rap; people confuse wanting with yearning. A feeling of lack always feels bad.

Wanting is a feeling of confidence that you will get the thing you desire. It’s knowing the goal you have set is yours. It’s enjoying the thought of what you want and being thrilled as you watch the process of life shifting to help you achieve your goal. It’s feeling engaged and excited to do the things you can do to bring your request to fruition and letting go of what you can’t control with an absolute knowing that the Universe (God, All-That-Is, Higher Self—whatever works for you.) is happily engaging all of its incredible resources on your behalf.

But it can be hard to shift your focus from yearning for something to thriving in the process of life that will bring you to your goal. Often it is easier to move yourself forward by shifting your mental capital from the account of money (or whatever your goal is) and to instead invest it in more general life accounts, such as feeling good most of the time, loving and laughing more easily, and enjoying your life more.

You are still investing your mental capital where you would like to build your life experiences, but there is less risk that the investments aren’t going into the account you truly intend. You can tell if you are investing more wisely because you feel good.

If you want to make New Year’s resolutions, by all means do it. Just pay attention to how you feel, and think about diversifying you mental and energetic investments so that you get a better return. You can tell you are putting your mental capital where you want because you get the immediate bonus of feeling good and having more fun right now.

Together we can do it!

Photo by Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Accountability

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Accountability for December 29, 2011

After falling into the cookies, on December 20, I committed to being accountable through the New Year to you Fabulous Readers about my diet and exercise as I recover from surgery.

With my doctor’s OK to slowly go back to my regular workouts, yesterday I did a low-weight lower body workout and it felt awesome! Also go in a nice walk with the dogs. Am a little sore this morning, which lets me know I hit the intensity level just right for where I am in my recovery.

This morning I did 20 minutes of walk/jog intervals and I plan to get a walk or two in, as well.

Eating was pretty clean yesterday. Only thing off plan was two peppermint hard candies to satisfy my post-dinner sweet-tooth. We are going out to dinner tonight with friends, so will do my best to stay on track.

Definite progress!

Are you making New Year’s Resolutions and have a goal on which you would like to be held accountable? Feel free to use the comment space on each of my accountability blogs, and I will cheer you on. Just let me know what your goal is, what you will be doing to meet it, and how often you will be reporting in.

Look for an Excuse to Workout

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I had my first post-surgery appointment with the doctor yesterday and he confirmed that I am recovering remarkably well. He gave me permission to slowly go back to my regular workouts, and assured me that my body will let me know if I am doing too much.

It’s gratifying to me that I have missed my workouts for the past two weeks, and am looking forward to getting back to them.

In the past when life got stressful, the first thing to go would be my energy for workouts. That would be closely tied with my eating for comfort rather than wellness. Pretty quickly, even the idea of working out would be emotionally and physically draining. This would often be the beginning of my wellness spinning out of control, resulting in my regaining the weight I had recently lost—and then some.

The first time I really saw this change was in the summer of 2010 when my husband was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. It was an incredibly scary time when my vibrant and active husband suddenly became so pain-ridden he couldn’t get out of bed without assistance. It was several weeks before we got a diagnosis, and several more before treatment gave him some pain relief.

Instead of using that incredibly stressful time as an excuse to stop my personal care, if anything it motivated me to take care of myself even more because I knew if I wasn’t feeling good, I wouldn’t be able to take care of David. The best way I could help him, was to take care of myself.

That doesn’t mean it was easy. There were days I had to make myself go workout, even if it was for 10 minutes. Fortunately, getting started was often the hardest part and once I did my 10 minutes, I usually was able to keep going and get in my full workout.

And I reached out for a lot of support. Not only were my friends and family incredible during this time, but I also leaned on the transformation.com community—a free on-line support site focused on physical, mental, and emotional fitness. (I still participate in the Fabulous Friends accountability group, and would love to have you join us if you are looking for support in meeting your wellness goals.)

As a result, I not only survived this extremely stressful situation, but I thrived and used that time as an opportunity to move towards who I am truly meant to be.

This time, it was me who was facing the medical challenge—fortunately a much-less serious one than my husband continues to face with remarkable aplomb. In addition, because it was happening to me, I found it much easier because I was more in control and could tap into my inner confidence in my personal wellness and wellbeing. It was easier to be focused on what I could do to speed my recovery—following the doctor’s orders to take it easy, and getting in four walks a day and drinking lots of water. I also know the benefit of eating healthy foods and the impact that has on how I feel.

I also have the personal experience that exercise relieves stress, and now I use stress as an excuse to workout rather than a reason to avoid it.

While it may feel like the very last thing you want to do, focus on the stress-relieving benefits of exercise and how much better you’ll feel afterwards. And when you do the workout and are in that better-feeling place, notice it, focus on it, and celebrate it so that you can remember it the next time you are trying to convince yourself to go workout.

Figure out the minimum that you can do that will make you feel like you’re making progress. Even a walk around the block has benefits and will help clear your mind, and it’s a lot easier to convince yourself to at least get that walk in. And if you really can’t motivate yourself to get a workout in today, forgive yourself and focus on doing what you can do to take care of you, even if it’s putting away the bag of potato chips, or saying “No” to the cookies.

The results will be worth it.

Together we can do it!

 

Photo by Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Accountability

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Accountability for December 28, 2011

After falling into the cookies, on December 20, I committed to being accountable through the New Year to you Fabulous Readers about my diet and exercise as I recover from surgery.

Had my first post-surgery appointment with the doctor yesterday and he confirmed that I am recovering remarkably well. He even expressed surprise at how well I’m doing! I attribute this to the power of a positive mind-set, minding the doctor’s instructions to walk and drink lots of water, and eating well most of the time. As my accountability posts attest, perfection is not required for fabulous results!

I have permission to slowly go back to my regular workouts. My body will let me know if I am doing too much.

Did get in all my walks yesterday, and ate clean until we joined friends for dinner and drinks. I splurged a bit on two drinks, a few bites of my husband’s French fries (they were worthy!), a couple of bites of the macaroni and cheese appetizer, and a bite of peanut butter pie. All in all, I think I did pretty darn well.

Did stay up probably a little too late (thus the tardiness of my posts this morning), which I think contributed to the headache I went to bed with last night, but I feel great this morning!

Looking forward to getting a gentle workout in today, as well as a couple of walks!

 

Are you making New Year’s Resolutions and have a goal on which you would like to be held accountable? Feel free to use the comment space on each of my accountability blogs, and I will cheer you on. Just let me know what your goal is, what you will be doing to meet it, and how often you will be reporting in.

 

Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Body

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Most people know that eating healthy foods and moving our bodies is pretty darn important to achieving optimal wellness.

But how important is what you think about your body—and yourself?

This is the missing link at the heart of why so many people try to lose weight and fail.

Our thoughts are directly linked to our body processes. Negative thoughts create draining, destructive catabolic energy that releases stress chemicals and other harmful processes that literally eat way at your cells.

Positive thoughts release constructive, anabolic energy that generate physical processes that support—and rebuild—your body.

Often, changing your underlying thoughts, emotions, and beliefs is necessary to sustain lasting weight loss. And an added benefit is more positive thoughts also improve the quality—and enjoyment—of your life!

Your life won’t get better as a result of losing the weight. Your life will get better as a result of changing your thoughts about your weight. If you don’t change the underlying thoughts, your life will be the same whether you lose the weight or not.

Not only do I see this in my clients, but I know it from personal experience. My negative self-perception—and my resulting struggle with my weight—raged for more than 35 years. My negative thoughts bled over into all areas of my life. I was often depressed. I shied away from taking leadership roles at work, and I had a hard time making close friends.

So in addition to consistently moving my body and eating healthy foods, I began looking for inaccurate thinking and practicing new thoughts of appreciation, praise, and support for my body—and myself.

Successfully making these internal changes helped me reduce my weight by 35 pounds, and to keep it off now for more than a year.

But more importantly, those same internal changes have given me the confidence and self-empowerment to go after the life of my dreams.

What thoughts do you consistently think about your body—and about you? How can you ease up on the criticism and add more appreciation and praise? Notice the difference in how you feel mind, body, and spirit.

Together we can do it!

 

 

Photo by dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net