New Year's Resolutions Re-visited

Today was the first day of the demise of New Year's Resolutions at the gym. How do I know? It was no longer difficult to find a parking space when I pulled into the parking lot at the gym this morning. I knew it was coming, it does every year, but today I was sad thinking that once again the goal to be healthier only lasted a few weeks for so many people.

Here are a couple of insights into how to keep your New Year's Resolutions after the novelty has worn off.

1. The key to change is to focus on what you are doing right. When you do well, or stick to your word, it gives you confidence. Confidence breeds success. Keep a Success Journal. Each night right down everything you did right during the day and re-read those entries to inspire and motivate you to keep going. Remember, success can be measured in little, tiny accomplishments.

2. Believe in the process knowing that it is going to be hard. You have not failed because it is hard. You have not failed because you are tempted by brownies at work. You have not failed because this morning you wanted to push the snooze button one more time. Sometimes we believe that being tempted is failure. Not so. Change is difficult at best. Go into it knowing that it is going to be hard and develop a strategy for those hard moments. You will be tempted!

3. Check it off. Often we become immobilized and don't know where to begin once we have slid off of our plan. Get a small index card and write 3 simple tasks that you will do today towards your goal. Each task gets a big check mark. The one check mark will feel like a victory and usually gives you the emotional boost you need to move on to the next.

Do not abandon your goals! Get up and get going again.

Ride The Wave

Ride the Wave this Summer!

We often believe that when we hit our healthy weight, we will be free from cravings once and for all. Unfortunately, environmental triggers, physiological triggers, emotional triggers, and addictive triggers will still be hiding around some unsuspecting corner. The problem arises when we feel like a failure simply because we really want to eat that piece of cake or fast food that we know will stimulate the addictive eating area of the brain, sending us into a mindless eating frenzy.

Well, stop the demoralizing mind chatter, and realize that you will never be able to eliminate being exposed to triggers or cravings. The goal is to eliminate the affect and power these triggers have on your actions. Keep building your tools and strength, and you will soon find that desire trumps those cravings and triggers.

I like to compare cravings to riding a wave. They come in big and strong, but when you ride them out, they lose all strength and power. Each time you master a craving, it is like mastering that big wave: You become better skilled and masterful. It soon becomes natural.

Remember, cravings are common for all of us; they are not a sign of weakness or failure. Ride the wave with patience and persistence, and feel your own strength as the wave loses all power.

Potato Chips For Breakfast?

Potato Chips for Breakfast?

The key to weight management is not another diet with someone telling you what, when, and how to eat. The key to weight management is understanding the "why" to cravings, both physical and emotional. Let me give you an example of a "why" to a craving and what could have become a downward spiral into the black hole of guilt and eating.

I began a new form of movement this past week. It is an indoor cycling camp, which lasts 5 months, and is a pretty rigorous training to prepare for next spring’s outdoor road cycling. Because it is new to my body and the sessions are longer than I have been currently experiencing, they have been fairly difficult for me. Well, when I returned from class this morning, there was a bag of potato chips left on the counter from the night before. I don't really like potato chips, nor are they a food that sets off addictive eating or obsessive thoughts for me. However, I took a few chips to eat while I was preparing my breakfast. Oh wow! They tasted so good, and soon I was grabbing more and more. I stopped, asked myself, "what is going on? Why am I eating these chips like crazy? What is it that they are giving me that is creating this craving?" I soon realized that it was the salt. My body had actually been depleted from my new exercise of important salt, and my body was letting me know.

Now I wouldn't recommend getting your salt intake from potato chips, but that is actually what I did. They tasted so good, and I needed the salt. So instead of beating myself up, I just ate potato chips for breakfast. What did I learn from it? I need to watch my salt intake when I am exercising and exerting a lot of effort and sweat. Then, I need to make sure I get enough salt from a healthy source to compensate, or I risk having those very strong cravings for anything with salt.

Listen to your body! Find the real reason of cravings. Emotional and physical changes cause physiological cravings. Visit Totellwellness.com for help with your emotional and physical cravings.

Endless Cravings

It was a lovely Halloween with all of the candy and treats, which could tempt anyone during the entire month of October. For me, it wasn't any of those dastardly treats that got under my skin or into my stomach, it was my mother's homemade chili, rolls, homemade sugar and pumpkin cookies, and even doughnuts (which I don't particularly like) that sent me reeling into the big black hole of bingeing on Halloween night. I reminded myself, before heading to my mother's party, that food is not love, that I can choose what I eat, that if I stay away from sugar I will be able to hold to my healthy goals only to last – hmmm let me think – two minutes before I was devouring the cookies and moving on to everything else with vim and vigor.

I left my mother's party with a stomachache and that gnawing negative mind chatter, "I always do this; I have no discipline; what is wrong with me?" It reminds me of the doomed King Sisyphus from Greek mythology who was punished by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, repeatedly for eternity. In my most dramatic self talk, I repeated, "Will this always be my battle? Can't I just eat one and be done when I am at my mom's? Will this ever end?"

My first response was that I will always be fighting my mother's cheese, butter, cream and sugar. But my more educated and calm response was that no, I know what it takes to change neural pathways in my brain. This change is hard business, but it is achievable. We must commit to the process, the time, the patience and the endurance, whether it is a day, a month, a year, or even many years.

Neural pathways in our brain, which are linked to cravings and comfort, are like ruts in the brain. It takes lots of driving over them, grading them, and filling them in to create new pathways. It took years to create the old ruts and, although with conscious effort it can be shorter, it takes a lot of hard work to change them. Sometimes we give up and consider ourselves "doomed" simply because we don't realize how long it really takes. We feel defeated and give up. Well, I'm here to tell you, don't give up! Just keep going. If you haven't reached the transformation, it doesn't mean your efforts have gone to waste. Those efforts are smoothing out those ruts, and if your neural signals do get stuck in part of those old grooves, learn from it quickly. Get right back to the task of changing your responses and neural pathways.

It can be done. I know it, because I work on it daily. Is it easy? Actually, once you truly understand cravings and what is causing them, it is easier. When you understand what is happening physically in your mind and body, it is easier not to beat yourself up emotionally and to stay your course. Keep pushing the rock up the hill, and you will be surprised when one day it just lands in a nice grassy area and never budges again. Keep going; you can do it!