I think there's a misconception out there that we're supposed to feel happy all the time. Think happy thoughts. Stay positive. Turn that frown upside down. There is room in this life for every emotion. It's healthy and normal to experience negative feelings. Nevertheless, many of us go to great lengths in order to avoid anything that feels uncomfortable. We choose distraction via food over feeling - time and time again. We think feeling our negative emotions will be so unbearable that we're willing to risk our health. Push it down. Cover it up. Resist. Distract. Pretend. Binge. Pass the wine. If you do nothing else but make the decision that you will be willing to feel your feelings instead of eat, you will lose weight. Let that really … [Read more...] about How to Process Negative Emotion (without food)
How We Sabotage Our Success
Last Saturday - while enjoying the sunset and a nice glass of wine with my husband, I found myself thinking... Life is good. Such a lovely thought, right? Who doesn't want life to be good? Heck, there's an entire clothing line devoted to it. Well, here's how it went down. Immediately after thinking, life is good - my brain jumped straight to... It won't last! And if we believe that our happiness won't last, we'll take actions to ensure we get what we're wishing for. Because we will always try to prove ourselves right. That's why we have to be vigilant and pay very close attention to our thinking. Truth is, I've had a bunch of practice with things not going well. I'm kind of awesome at dealing with things not going well - dysfunctional … [Read more...] about How We Sabotage Our Success
Trying to Do It Perfectly (+ a peek at my food journals)
When I introduce a new weight coaching tool to my clients, they sometimes feel compelled to do it perfectly - right away. And it usually always backfires. Take the Hunger Scale for example (please click here if you missed last week's post on this topic). The purpose of the Hunger Scale is not to do it perfectly. In order to get really good at something, we have to be willing to be a beginner. For example - it's just not possible to rock out a competition worthy tango after our first ballroom dance class, right? When doing it perfectly is our main objective - it's easy to become frustrated and give up. But when the goal is to learn - we simply cannot fail. To recap, the purpose of using the Hunger Scale is to... get acquainted with our … [Read more...] about Trying to Do It Perfectly (+ a peek at my food journals)
Be Willing to Suck at It
Wouldn't it be nice if we could be experts right away - without all the flopping and floundering and failing? Or would it? Last week, I gave my very first webinar. It required stepping WAY out of my comfort zone. Let's just pretend that my comfort zone "boundary" is the state of Colorado. Well, giving a webinar (WITH my oh so experienced and brilliant mentor) required me to venture past the Colorado state line and travel to - oh, I don't know - Mongolia. I'm not exaggerating. Okay, maybe a teeny bit, but... ...as a child, my shyness and social anxiety were so severe that my first grade teacher recommended I see a therapist. I've come a pretty long way since then. But here's the deal. I was willing to fail, to suck at it, to make mistakes - … [Read more...] about Be Willing to Suck at It