I LOOOOOOOVE what I do. I love talking to folks about their health. The more I learn about it, I think the body is an amazing organism, and the way it works is brilliant. The body’s primary goal is to keep us alive. So, it will do everything that it needs to do to preserve our life. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, or is counteractive to what we want (like losing body fat. We want to look good, but the body sees that fat as storing energy for some famine-day when it might need it!), but most everything it does, it does to preserve our life. A few weekends ago, I was talking to a woman I had just met about her health. She was complaining that over the past few months, she’d gained almost 30 lbs! She was frustrated – and understandably! I don’t Read More . . .
Why goals might not get you to your goal
There are no shortage of memes about goals. “A goal without a plan is just a wish” “Set your goals high, and don’t stop until you get there” “Goals that are not written down are just wishes” Aaaah! They’re endless! Not only were goals a huge part of my early success with my weight, but they were a cornerstone of my health coaching business for a long time. I would teach folks about SMART Goals. How to create them, and help them through the process. But I’ve changed my attitude about goals. I don’t think they’re necessary anymore. I have a client who’s daughter is one of the most disciplined kids that I know. Every year, she’d create New Years Resolutions, and actually complete them! I Know! Who does that?!? I think they were tests of her willpower. When she was in high-school, she created a New Years Resolution to perform Read More . . .
Get Over Your Motivation Problems – 3 steps
Yesterday when I woke, I drank my liquid wake up potion, and headed to my workout room to get that started. It was supposed to be a simple workout – one that I had done before & it would be over in 30 minutes. But yesterday the weight felt heavier than it usually does. My body didn’t move as well as it usually does. My push-ups and planks were harder. Everything just seemed so difficult. For some, this could have been permission to stop because I just didn’t ‘feel it’. I think that most people believe that we have to be motivated to exercise. Like every day I get up, jump out of bed with a smile on my face, and greet the day with a Tony the Tiger, “I Feel GGGRRRRRREEEAAT! I’m going to do lift weights with my TEETH!” Yeah – no. That doesn’t happen. I don’t even know Read More . . .
Foundations of Your Life Coaching
Foundations of Your Life Health Coaching Program is a 6 month comprehensive nutritional approach designed to gently overhaul your approach to the way you view, think about, and eat food. Through this program, you will lean in to improving your health behaviors through focusing on one foundational health habit for two weeks at a time. Once you have that easy-to-do habit mastered and are ready to move on, we’ll add another simple habit. At the end of the program, you’ll have made small, deliberate steps that will lead to massive change in the way that you think about your food and your health. Who is Habit-Based Coaching for? My coaching program is for folks who are looking for a better understanding of how their body works. It’s for people who are tired of fighting/hating on their body, and wishing that it was different. This is for women who wonder what the secret is Read More . . .
Buzz
Television House Hunters International We had the opportunity to be on House Hunters International after we moved to Mexico. It was a fun experience, and even though we filmed about 40 hours, and that got boiled down to 22 minutes, we were happy with the result. Click Here to enjoy the show! Podcasts Unf*ck Your Brain Podcast with Kara Lowentheil Ep# 258: Myths about Women in Midlife: A Conversation with Karen Anderson, Elizabeth Sherman, and Jill Angie Something that breaks my heart is how women who are in midlife, or even younger, start having this thought pattern that their life is over, it’s too late to change things, or that their lot in life is chosen and it’s all downhill from this point onwards. I’ve seen this pattern only get worse over time, but the great news is these thoughts aren’t facts. To declare that your life is over Read More . . .
Testimonials
From Lisa: “I think the other thing, too, is what I least expected was the support of the group and, like the incredible women that we were in this group with and I still like there’s a group of us in contact pretty much almost every day. So I think that, like that was the piece that was most helpful Was this idea that there’s a lot of us that have these struggles and like having this group, that was just we didn’t know each other. We had, like, no background or introduction. Our introduction was the program and seeing how, like, we developed these friendships and these relationships and the support network was really incredible and, I think, really made it successful in ways that I didn’t anticipate.” From Stephanie: “I think what I really loved about the program was just, you know, obviously the tools that I feel Read More . . .
There are No Short Cutz
Studies show that one of the keys to losing and maintaining weight loss is a strong social support system. But what if you don’t have a strong social support system? Are you doomed to a future of being overweight? Nope. Not at all. If you know my story, you know that it took me a long time to get where I am today, and I don’t know if I would be where I am without my support family. I don’t really remember when it happened, but Gary had started working out with his trainer, Mike, who was really into bodybuilding. It was through Gary that I learned about the user forums on bodybuilding.com. I started participating in the online forums there, & learned a LOT about lifting weights, eating cleanly, and losing weight. I also learned that although the forums were moderated, any shmoe with a keyboard can write whatever Read More . . .
You Can’t Fool Mother Nature
Last night I saw this commercial for the Jenny Craig weight loss system. It's Valerie Bertinelli stating that for the first year in 20 years that she will not be making a new year's resolution for weight loss, because she has hit her goal & maintained it. The commercial kind of hit a chord with me because I feel very similarly. For the first time since I've been on my nutrition journey, I feel like I'm not 'white knuckling' it. People who know me probably want to smack me right now. They'd probably say, "What the h*ll are you talking about? You're not fat." I was over-fat 10 years ago & came to my smaller resting size about 6-7 years ago. To the unobserving eye, although my weight has shifted in small increments (maybe not even enough to notice), I haven't had huge fluctuations; I am at a good size Read More . . .
To Be or Not To Be … Vegetarian
Wanting to leave the world in a better place than I received it is how I started in the health field. At the time, I interpreted that as a duty to serve my fellow humans by spreading the message of wellness to all. Nowdays with so much attention to being earth-friendly, I try to incorporate 'green' practices into my own life as much as I can. I try not to waste gasoline; I turn off the lights & fans when I leave a room; I recycle; I eat local foods when they're available to me, and definitely stay away from produce shipped in from South America when the same US produce is sitting in the next bin over at the store. But now I'm starting to turn my attentions to other areas of my diet: protein. As a Nutritionist, I know how vital protein is to our bodies for muscle Read More . . .
The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.
It’s not that people lie on purpose; when it comes to weight loss, the most recent statistics show overweight people underreporting daily food intake by 30-40% while normal weight individuals underreport by 16%. Virtually no one over-reports their food intake. Additionally, they’ll overestimate how much they move. The combination of those two little white lies that folks tell themselves is partially to blame the expanding waistline of the American public. I’m not immune to these lies. I feel like I’ve struggled with my weight for years. Well, wait… let me back up there. For most of my life I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. It wasn’t until I was in my first marriage that I used food to emotionally cope with my problems. Although I wasn’t fit when I got married, I was thin, and when I got divorced,I was definitely fat. Here’s my transformation in case you’ve Read More . . .