Hi ,
Summer is almost over and a new season will be upon us. Fall brings crisp air, beautiful colors, and the anticipation of the holiday season. It’s also the time of year many people put on a lot of weight. It doesn’t have to be though.
With life, as well as weight loss, timing is everything. Fall is a great time to learn how to manage your eating and weight before the holiday season arrives. The worst thing a person can do is say, “I’ll eat everything I want during the holidays and then I’ll start my diet again in January.”
This kind of thinking is a license to overindulge and is guaranteed to pack on the pounds. There will always be holidays and celebrations throughout the year, and successful weight management requires learning how to navigate these times.
The sad truth is most people put on weight over the
holidays, and never really lose it. Most who try to diet in January will be unsuccessful. That means that the weight gain is permanent. A person can easily accumulate 20-75 pounds over a lifetime just from the weight gained over the holiday season.
This doesn’t mean one should be trying to lose weight over the holidays
either. The best thing is to try to maintain your weight during this time. This can be really hard though if you’ve never learned how to deal successfully with cravings and temptations, learned to eat mindfully, or know how to listen to your physical cues to hunger and satiety, and not view eating through the lens of black and white (all or nothing) thinking.
It’s all about moderation and learning to eat in a way that you can sustain for life. That means you can have your cake and eat it too. There is a time and a place for all foods in a well-balanced eating plan.
These are some of the skills my course, The Weight Loss Masters Club Session 1, aims to teach you. The Fall Session begins Sept 24, which gives you plenty of time to practice these skills before the holiday season arrives. In these 6 sessions, you will learn skills that will last you
a lifetime.
But before you embark on another program, I want to talk with you a bit more about timing. Timing with your weight loss efforts are everything. If you’re not really ready or motivated to do the real work change requires, you shouldn’t try. Otherwise, you will fail and you will be left feeling defeated,
hopeless, and ineffectual. Half-hearted attempts simply reinforce a pattern of failure and quitting. You need to get yourself fully on board to give yourself a real chance at success.
Many women say to me, “Catherine, I feel I must or should do something about it, so therefore I try to diet all the time.” But the truth
is they get nowhere with it. Every day they wake up with the best of intentions and by noon or the afternoon their resolve is shot, the diet is blown, and they’re telling themselves they will start again tomorrow.
They’ve been telling themselves this story for years now. This is the diet hamster wheel or yo-yo diet
syndrome in a nutshell. No wonder they feel like such failures.
How many more years do you want to continue to do this? It’s insanity!
You
know how this story goes, and how it ends (and it isn’t pretty). If you want a different ending, you need to start participating in a different story.
As I like to say, “Want different? Do different!”
If you're not willing to do things differently, quit beating yourself up; let go, and put your energy elsewhere. You're not going to shame, browbeat, or hate yourself into losing weight. Going through the motions when your heart isn’t in it never works for very long. Accept that when the time is right you will be ready to do something about it.
Until then, all other nonsense is self-abuse. Accept the fact you’re overweight and focus your energies on something more life affirming. To continue to complain and make yourself miserable with no intention to move beyond your self-defeating ways is pure self-sabotaging madness!
You are the common denominator in all your problems. If you keep looking outside of yourself, you will never find the solution. You are the problem, and therefore, you are the solution. When you change your attitude, your beliefs, your feelings, and your focus, you can easily change your ways and the problem disappears.
Besides mindful eating, this is the heart of what I teach, because unlike a diet, which is a temporary Band-Aid, my work, if continually practiced, has a lasting lifelong impact. And I’m all about permanent solutions.
If you don’t believe this is possible, well, I am a living example of this. I have 27 years of recovery from binge and compulsive, emotional overeating. Everything changed for me when I changed my mind. After that, it was only a matter of time before my eating, my body, and then my whole world realigned itself to match my new mindset and belief
system. This is why my tagline is “how you do food is how you do life!”
So let’s get REAL, as in Realistic Eating Approach for the Long Term. You’ve got the rest of your life ahead of you.
Do you need to keep yo-yo dieting until your yo just can’t go anymore?
Why not give the yo a go right now and start putting your efforts in being the change you say you want to be?
What have you got to lose?
I’d say it’s a way of living and eating that isn’t working for you.
What are you going to gain?
Peace of mind, peace with food, a lightness of being, and regaining a sense of freedom and aliveness that will allow you to live the life you were meant to
live.
"You can make yourself strong or you can make yourself miserable. The amount of work is the same."
— Carlos Castaneda
Since the amount of work is the same, why not focus your time, energy, and efforts where you will actually see results?
The Weight Loss Masters Club Session 2 - more advanced than Session 1, Starts Oct. 1.
Note: Sessions don't have to be taken in order. Session 1 contain a mindful eating module, Session 2 is about the root causes of emotional eating, and focuses on emotional and spiritual healing.
P. S. If you feel you need some personal support, accountability, and
encouragement to make changes, I offer a free consultation. Contact Me! How you do food is how you do life! ® 
