Tag Archives: Support

Take Care of You to Take Care of Others

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15837s3rsga1hfaYesterday’s events in Connecticut may have left you reeling emotionally.

While it may feel selfish, now more than ever you need to focus on your own self-care.

This includes gently moving your body, getting enough rest, reaching for some highly nutritious foods, and taking some quiet time for meditation, prayer, or reflection.

And the number one thing you can do for your own wellness?

Ask for the support you need.

  • You may want to go it alone.
  • You may not feel comfortable asking for help.
  • You may be embarrassed by your emotions.

Much of holiday stress is feeling like you are in this alone.

And that’s a really tough, and painful road.

This is not the time to tough it out by yourself.

Study after study shows that having at least one person support you in meeting your wellness goals will dramatically increase your chances of success.

Having support helps you:

  • Normalize what you’re going through—You realize that everyone gets emotionally stressed, overwhelmed, overeats, and has moments of weakness. You are not a failure or a freak.
  • Notice and honor what you are doing for your self-care—Having someone to share the positive steps you are taking helps keep you motivated to take more steps.
  • Problem solve— You’ve got someone on your side who can see your situation more objectively and can help you brainstorm ways around any obstacles.
  • Re-find your inner peace—going it alone makes it easier to get caught in the negative thought spiral going on in your head. Having support helps break the inner patterns enabling you to refocus on the present and the blessings you have in your life.

Where can you find help?

  • Ask a friend or family member—Choose someone who is consistently positive, good at problem solving, and will be uplifting and inspiring.
  • Join a group—There are a number of on-line and in-person support groups. One such site is transformation.com. This incredible free community recognizes that emotions play a big role in wellness.
  • Hire a coach—Consider working one-on-one with a certified professional health or wellness coach who can help you stay focused on your self-care.
  • Go to a counselor–If your fear and grief are so intense that you are having trouble functioning, seek out the help of a professional counselor or therapist.

Taking care of yourself no matter what enables you to take care of others.

And if you have the inner resources to give, reach out to someone and offer unconditional support and encouragement—even love. The result is you both feel better—body, mind and spirit.

What can you do this weekend to reach out for—or give—support?

Having at least one person helping to cheer you on, boost morale, and problem solve will make it easier to take care of you, even in the face of really difficult circumstances.

Together we can do it!

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My blog is moving to my new website LoveYourWaySlim.com. For the next month, I will post both here and there. To keep following my posts after January 15, you will need to follow my new blog. I look forward to continuing the journey with you!

Thank You For Your Support!

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Yesterday, I sat back to think about what has been the most important factor in my maintaining my weight loss. I would have to say the number one thing that has helped the most is support.

Not only almost daily support for meeting my weight loss goals, but support and acceptance of who I am—the good, the bad, and the ugly—as well as encouragement to be the best possible version of me.

There’s been a number of ways that I have gotten this support. My husband has been incredible, and I know how fortunate I am to have a spouse who not only cheers me on, but helps facilitate the process. My Mom has been awesome, as have some of my friends, particularly one who has been an unwavering pillar of support and accountability. (Thanks, Julia!) In fact, it was Julia’s encouragement ringing in my ears back in August 2009 that got me out of bed that first morning to go workout. I don’t think I would be where I am right now without her.

The community on Bill Phillip’s Transformation.com has also been invaluable. This is a free website for people who are focused on losing weight, getting fit, and creating the life they want to live. Checking in daily with an accountability group, working with an accountability partner, and offering support and encouragement to others has truly been a huge factor in my success so far—and was where I discovered my love of coaching.

Social media and writing this blog has also put me in contact with amazingly supportive and giving people. One of the great things about the Internet is how you can become friends with people not only that you’ve never met, but that you’ve never even spoken to!

The fact that support has been the key factor for me is not surprising because research backs that up.

When doctors and researchers from the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health set out to discover the best diet, they found that all the plans worked about the same. As long as people lowered their calorie intake, they lost weight and improved their health.

What did make a difference was attending support group sessions. Study participants in the support group lost an average of 20 pounds over two years and the people who didn’t have the support lost only 9 pounds over the course of the project. That’s a 225 percent difference!

Sometimes, all you need to do to get support is ask! (It’s surprising how many people don’t think to do this.) Tell your partner, family, and friends what you are doing and why, and what you need help with. People are often willing to help you meet your goals.

But sometimes, even when you ask, your family or friends for whatever reason are not encouraging, or are actually opposed to the changes you want to make. In these circumstances, it’s even more important that you seek out the support you need.

Transformation is a great place to start. Others you can look at include P90X, which has a partially free support group, and Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat that has a fee-based support group. You can also get support at Weight Watchers, or you can hire a coach.

It is not weak to ask for support. It is one of the best things you can do to help you meet your goals and ensure your long-term success.

What can you do today to seek out support? How might this help you become the best possible version of you?

Together we can do it!

 

Photo by twobee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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

 

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

Thank You for All the Support!

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I am doing amazingly well after having a full hysterectomy on Wednesday. Even the doctor’s and nurses commented on how well I was doing before they sent me home yesterday. Other than being very sore, I feel good. And the soreness is no worse than how I have felt after a really intense workout.

The doctor’s orders are to walk 4 times a day, and I have already completed my first 10 minutes on the treadmill, am showered, and feel like getting in a short blog. My big plans for the rest of the day include watching at least one Christmas movie, doing some light reading, and napping. Even though I’m feeling good, I don’t plan to overdo it.

While I think being in good physical shape before the surgery and positively focusing on wellness have a lot to do with my recovery, I also believe the incredible support I have gotten from family, friends, and my fabulous readers has made a huge difference.

Seriously, I have been blown away by the positive thoughts, prayers, and messages coming my way. Thank you all so much. I can’t tell you how much it has meant to me.

Not only is this positive support a boost mentally, but there have been studies showing the power of prayer and intent. (If you are curious, check out The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World by Lynne McTaggart)

I have no doubt that the gifts you all have been giving me have made a huge difference to my wellness and wellbeing.

One of the things I’ve run into as a coach is that many people are really good at giving, but they have a hard time receiving.

How we receive gifts is a pretty good indication of how well we allow the Universe (God, Source, All-That-Is–whatever works for you) to work in our lives. If we won’t let others support us, we often are not letting the Universe support us, either.

Open your heart and mind to allowing yourself to receive the gifts that others want to give you. And then watch as other blessings flow into your life.

Together we can do it!