Yummy Life

Yes, I have seen them. Overweight women boasting even bigger bellies due to pregnancy. I’m not sure if it should give me hope or whether I should be afraid for these women who may be experiencing complications in their pregnancies. I wonder if they had to do fertility treatments or if it happened naturally.

Since I have been contraceptive-free for the last 10 years and have yet to experience the miracle of pregnancy, I am thinking that being fat just isn’t working for me. I’ve been overweight for the last 10 years, but I have not been close to my “fertile weight”. It’s the one thing I haven’t tried yet! I’ve been striving to get healthy and improve my PCOS symptoms, losing over 30 lbs in the last year, but I am still not close to my “fertile weight”.

I am happy to know that my fertile weight is actually higher than my actual “ideal” weight. I can still be a little chunky and have a baby – woo hoo! The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) suggests that as little as a 10 percent decrease in weight can have a profound difference on a woman’s ability to conceive. According to this, I am already more fertile than I was before – great news!

The ASRM asserts that more than 70 percent of women who are infertile as a result of body weight disorders will conceive spontaneously if their weight is corrected through either weight loss or weight gain. WOW! Shouldn’t this be a wake up call?

Releasing weight is not the easiest thing to do. There are a million different diets and approaches to losing fat, so how do we know if we are doing the right thing? Getting down to a BMI of around 25 can put you in the “fertile weight” category, but it is important to follow a diet that supports fertility. What exactly is that?

I am conducting a FREE call on the topic of “Demystifying the Fertility Diet” on April 1, 2010 at 8:30 pm. I’ll present some of the latest results of research and let you decide if you are doing enough to support your own fertility. As always, a special bonus to anyone who joins me live on the call!

http://www.yummylifecoaching.com/Teleclasses.html

I hope to “see” you on the call!

Holly

So many overweight women worry that their children will also have a weight problem.  If you have ever seen Dr. Phil or some of the other talk shows, I am sure that you have seen the overweight parents with severely overweight children.  It is clear that there is a link there. Genetics?  Perhaps a little, but mostly it is about lifestyle.  Allow me to elaborate.

I have been sort of nonchalantly watching my daughter lately.  Watching her eat, that is.  My mother-in-law is always worried about what she eats, that she isn’t eating enough meat, etc.  But my observations have really led me to believe that she is getting what she needs for now.  Sometimes she just is not hungry, so she doesn’t eat.  When she does eat, she eats until she has had enough and has no qualms about leaving food on her plate and walking away (or feeding her leftovers to the dogs).  She really enjoys her food and eats very slowly.  Sometimes she even makes “mmmmm mmmmm” sounds when she eats if she really likes it.  She is a typical 3-year old, she likes things that are sweet.  She prefers bread (but I only buy whole grain with no HFCS) to vegetables and does not like anything too spicy or “nasty” as she calls it.  She snacks on almonds, dried figs, whole wheat pretzels and other various fresh fruits.  She accepts that we do not eat ice cream every day.  I like to have her “help” me make food on a regular basis.  She can stir and pour in ingredients.  I turn it into a little lesson for her – we talk about what goes in the food, why we eat it, or talk about what letters all the ingredients start with.  I love that she knows what agave nectar is!

I really try to avoid making a big deal out of eating.  Because I am trying my best to live a healthy lifestyle, you will rarely find junk food in my house.  I make one meal for dinner, either Lili eats it or she doesn’t.  I offer praise for trying new foods.  I hide vegetables whenever possible.  I would like her to think that this healthy way of eating is “normal”.  Of course she has not gotten to the age when she goes over to friends’ houses and samples their perhaps not so healthy lifestyles.  I do not ever tell her to “clean her plate”.  Food is just food.  It gives us nourishment and energy.  I really try my best to not use food as a reward, though I have bribed with a healthy dessert a few times when Lili was on a hunger strike.

Of course, a healthy lifestyle is more than just the food we chose to shove in our mouths.  I feel pretty good that Lili knows what all of my exercise equipment is called.  She likes to do my bhangra dance videos with me (I think she does it better than me to – she has rhythm!).  She enjoys going hiking in the woods, loves to swim, and is a great running partner even though she doesn’t run.  She does, however, tell me to “go faster!” and yells at me if I stop.  We try to incorporate some activity into every day.  Sometimes we turn on some silly songs and dance, sometimes we go to the playground and run around, sometimes we go to open gym at a gymnastics studio.  I don’t make a big deal out of it, it’s just something we do.  She does not appreciate the fact that I limit her TV time, but that’s part of life – learning to deal with things that we do not like.

I am no different than many other women.  Having been overweight most of my life, I do not want my daughter to have to go through that.  But I am not modeling the tactics used by my own parents.  I think these things made my problems worse.  Of course back then I did not know I had PCOS, and this in retrospect is probably a blessing since that probably would have made my mother put a lock on the refrigerator and cupboards.  I am not attempting to control, just model healthy behaviors the majority of the time.  I keep healthy food in the house, not buy junk food and tell her not to eat it.  I will NEVER NEVER tell her she is fat or give her nicknames like Thunder Thighs.  I will not drag her to Weight Watchers meetings when she is 10 years old.  I have to be careful about what I say too – I need to watch my own self-criticism because I do not want her to repeat it.  Most of all, I do not ever want her to think I do not love her exactly the way she is.  So many fat kids grow up thinking that their parents can only love them if they are thin.  I know I did.

Right now, Lili is a confident and active little girl.  I would like her to stay that way.  And I think the best way for me to do that is to give up some control, to have faith that she knows what she needs most of the time.  When it comes to food anyway.  There will be no Clean Plate Club in my house.  And no sugared cereals either.  Or white bread.  Ice cream is always organic and natural with no chemicals in it.  We are keeping it real around here.  And for now, we are all OK with that.  And it’s good to be OK!

I am very familiar with the feeling of guilt. No, I don’t have a terrible secret.  Many women experience this feeling as they continue on their journey to better health.  They describe themselves as being “good” or “bad”, depending on whether or not they have followed their eating plan for the day.  They describe foods as being “good” or “bad”, depending on their fat, calorie or carb content.  My question for all of you would be this:  Is this actually helpful?

According to Dictionary.com, this is the definition of the word guilt:

Oh my, we are talking about FOOD, not committing assault or murder!  I have been playing the weight loss game most of my life, and can admit that I too have viewed food and eating in similar terms.  I have used food to punish myself and reward myself.  When I am “bad”, I don’t get to eat foods I like.  When I am “good”, I get to eat things that taste good.  The problem is that the “good” foods used to reward are often not very nutritious and do not help me reach my goals, therefore once I have rewarded myself I have been “bad” again!  See how this can turn into a never ending roller coaster?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what food really is, and how I can help my clients let go of this guilt.  Definition 2 comes closest to what I think women who are trying to lose weight and get healthy feel in regard to food.  They often feel that if they eat something not so nutritious they have committed an offense.  And it reality, this offense is imagined.  Check the law books, I bet that eating a brownie is not on the law books as a serious crime.  So why do we treat it as though it is?

In part I believe that society and the diet industry has programmed us to think this way.  We come to view weight loss professionals, whether they be the person behind the Weight Watchers counter or a dietician, as the food police.  We often try to conceal our crimes by wearing light clothing before a weigh in or starving ourselves a couple of days before.  If confronted with our crimes, we sometimes “confess” as though we are about to be thrown in the slammer.  Once again I ask the question, is this helpful?

My answer would be no.  Viewing ourselves as always being on parole makes us feel like we are “bad” for being overweight in the first place.  Like we are second class citizens who need to be publicly flogged.  I am a believer in positive thinking and positive energy.  I think the more we think in these negative terms, the more negativity we will attract.

Instead, I believe in taking responsibility for our state of being and our actions.  This means letting go of the “shoulds” and “trying” and actually taking positive actions.  Punishing yourself is not a positive action, so throw away the handcuffs!  You may need to take a look at the way you view the foods that you eat.  As human beings we have the tendency to rebel when told we can’t do something, so making foods “bad” makes us want them even more.  And if we think of nutritious foods as something used to pay penance for our crimes, this will definitely not make us enjoy or crave them.

Tastes can definitely be influenced by the way we think.  Since I have trained myself to view food as something that heals and nourishes the body, I no longer crave some of my favorite “reward” foods.  A few weeks ago I ate something that was on the “bad” list, something that I had not eaten in quite some time.  It was too sweet, and tasted like chemicals.  Why would I reward myself by poisoning myself with high fructose corn syrup and other artificial, possibly cancer-causing ingredients?  It just didn’t make sense!

Is your thinking making sense?  Are you punishing yourself, and running from the food police?

If you are looking for a different solution to your weight problem, visit my new web site:

http://www.yummylifecoaching.com

I’m offering a special bonus to the first 5 people who sign up for a FREE “Recipe for Success” Discovery session.  Just fill out the Contact form on the web site.  This just may be your Get Out of Jail card

Be Well!

Holly

You can’t eat anything white.  No rice, no potatoes, no white pasta, no white bread.  When you are first trying to balance yourself out, you really can’t have any carbs at all.  So you can’t have ANY rice, pasta, bread, tortillas.  Oh, and no corn or peas either.  And for right now, no beans or lentils.  Absolutely no sugar.  None.

Read the above statement to yourself a few times.  Now take note of how you are feeling.  Do you want to be a rebel and go on a junk food binge?  Do you want to cry?  Does it make you mourn for all of your old “friends”?  Are you telling yourself “I can’t do this”?

You want to be healthy.  You want to release unwanted weight and feel better.  You want to be diabetes free and have the energy to live an active life.  You might even want to have a baby and you know that you are in no condition to conceive at the moment.  Being on any kind of restrictive diet is very difficult.  It’s hard to stick to long term, and impossible to do alone.  Every woman is unique and every woman’s body reacts to certain foods in different ways.  So what works for your friend who has PCOS may not work for you, even though you share the same condition.  How frustrating is that?

You don’t need to go on a “diet”.  You need to embrace a new, healthier lifestyle.  That includes some retraining of your brain as well.  It will not be easy to change your life if you focus on what is missing in your life.  Focusing on “can’t” will give you exactly that result – you won’t be able to make permanent changes.  Can you learn to love eating healthy food?  Absolutely!  There might be some steps that you need to take in order for this to become possible for you.  I’m not talking about gagging on a stalk of broccoli that you eat just because it’s good for you.  If you really hate something, don’t eat it!  But you may be surprised at how real food not only tastes yummy but also makes you feel better than you ever thought possible.

You can eat fresh, organic produce!  You can use alternative flours to make yummy desserts on occasion!  You can have creamy almond milk to make smoothies and shakes!  You can make your own ice cream!  You can eat exotic grains that do not leave you feeling sluggish and bloated!  You can have natural, organic meats that taste way better than the conventional stuff.  It may seem odd to you that eventually you will crave grilled veggie kabobs and baked cinnamon apples.

Do you want to spend your life really enjoying it or whining about what you “can’t have”?  The truth is, you can have your favorite things every once in awhile.  But chances are that if you really learn to listen to your body and focus on how great you feel, after a while you won’t even want to eat anything that doesn’t help you feel healthy and energetic.

I invite you to take a look at how you feel about eating healthy foods.  Does your mind drift back to things you’d rather be eating?  How can you change your thinking in order to make eating more enjoyable for you?  After all, it’s just food. More on that later…

Be Well!

Holly

According to the National Soap and Detergent Association, getting rid of the clutter in our homes would eliminate 40% of the housework we do!  We spend hours upon hours not only cleaning our clutter but also looking for items that get lost amid all the mess.  Something I have come to realize is:  MESS = STRESS.  Clutter causes chaos, frustration, and sprained ankles (from tripping over stuff!).  One of my favorite episodes of Oprah was where she had overweight people on her show that were total pack rats.  They had MAJOR clutter.  There is a huge correlation between clutter and being overweight.  If your kitchen is cluttered and gross, you probably don’t want to prepare food in it.  If the kitchen table has stuff piled to the ceiling, it’s a little hard to sit down for a relaxing and healthy meal.

If your house is constantly cluttered and you fret and get frustrated by this clutter on an almost daily basis, you are subjecting your body to constant stress!  This sort of stress is so unnecessary, and so easy to fix.  Throwing away junk is truly freeing.  It feels like you instantly lose 20 pounds!  If you have weight to lose, and have been having trouble getting motivated and you are feeling stressed, take a look at your home.  Take a look at what you have been holding on to.  Chances are, some of that stuff causes stress simply due to what it represents for you.  Clearing out the junk can be a big task (yikes, more stress!) but it also burns calories and you will feel SO much better when it’s done.  And giving away stuff to charity makes you feel good.  Please recycle!  Oh, and there’s always Craigslist and Ebay.  Make a little money while you’re at it.  Clean out the garage and have a garage sale!  Clutter can also hide – in closets, under beds, in the basement.  In order to have room for the new, more positive things in your life to take over, you need to make room for them.

I challenge you to take a look at your favorite spaces and see what you may be able to do without.  A life with less stress can SAVE your life – why not start with something easy?

Relax and Be Well!

Holly

There have been several studies and connections made between clutter and obesity.  One dietician that worked with gastric bypass patients found that cleaning up reduced stress and a very common by-product of stress:  overeating.  Releasing clutter can be a mental high – it gets rid of useless things and clears up space and time for more positive things, such as exercise.  Haven’t you met someone whose house was so messy that they couldn’t even work out to an exercise DVD?  Then there’s the exercise equipment that is used as the proverbial clothes hanger.  

Clear the clutter – release the weight!

Women especially can be so mean to themselves.  They overlook all of the small but important achievements that they accomplish.  For me, I  have lost some weight, but not so many pounds that make people say, “WAY TO GO!”  But I have really toned my body – my arms are muscular and look really good.  And my calves are power calves!  I can do so many more push ups than I ever could before, and in spite of an injured shoulder, I can do tricep exercises and yoga.  Most of all, I am so energetic these days even though I have sleep problems.  If I only focused on the numbers on the scale, I probably would have given up trying to get healthy by now.  I lose .5 or 1 lb per week at the most usually, and it is not because I am not eating well.  I have just accepted that this is how it is for me, and I am not as young as I used to be.  I’d rather have the weight come off slowly than not at all.  And I have learned to recognize the other accomplishments that really are important.  

Feeling like throwing the scale out the window?  Maybe you should!

Of all the struggles, aside from the infertility, that I have faced due to PCOS, weight has been the biggest one.  I’ve toyed with accepting myself the way I am. Maybe I am just destined to be this way?  My weight is a gift from God?  I’m not really that fat, my boobs are just big!  Yeah, excuses…lots of them…when the going gets tough, I get going making excuses and procrastinating getting healthy.  

The weight often comes off very slowly for myself and others like me.  It can be hard to deal with, after all, we want to be healthy RIGHT NOW.  We often have to resort to diets that others would consider to be drastic in order to see results.  I’ve been told “you should just eat healthy, and you’ll lose weight.”  I DO EAT HEALTY.  Most of the time.  But what is “healthy” for others may not be healthy for me.  

What does your “healthy” look like?

Even though I wanted a baby  more than anything in the world when we were doing fertility treatment, I did not do the one thing that I should have done in order to make the treatment successful.  I didn’t lose weight.  I was telling myself “I can’t lose weight”, “I have PCOS, it’s impossible”, “this isn’t going to work anyway”, and “we might as well adopt right now”.  All in all, I did NOT have a good attitude.  I hated every moment that I was injecting myself and going to the doctor.  I’ll admit, it wasn’t a good time to try to do this.  My husband was overseas for work, and we had to freeze his sperm.  I was lonely and resentful that I had to go through this by myself.  I really did think that it was a waste of time.  I WANTED TO ADOPT.  And what ended up happening?  We adopted.  We got exactly what I wanted.  I wish I would have sought h elp from a life coach during that time – my attitude was horrible.  I attracted exactly what I was putting out to the universe.  I accepted it as “God’s plan”.  When I look back on it, I do think it was God’s plan.  I  guess I don’t really understand why I put myself through such hell if I just wanted to adopt anyway.  I still want to have a baby, I still want to be pregnant.  I thik I did want to be pregnant, I just think I didn’t believe it could happen.  I didn’t want to entertain the possiblity that I may NEVER have a child.  

When I undertake my next journey, I will have a better attitude.  I will not sabotage my success.  I will seek support from a coach, therapist, friends, family, and my husband.  I will be as healthy as I can be.  I WILL GET PREGNANT!!!