The Mentality to Eat Well

Changing your Mentality for Permanent Weight Loss

How do you catch yourself before you lose the battle? And how do you achieve a healthy weight without going through the dreaded and dangerous yo-yo cycle of gain and loss?
The diet mentality is a dinosaur approach these days. “Dieting side effects” of deprivation, headaches, acidity, semi-starvation, tummy bloating and irregular digestion, moodiness, dehydration, and angst over body shape and size only set us up for an exhaustive path to repeated failure and reduced confidence in both mind and body. If you are going to stave off long-term weight gain or maintain weight loss for a long period, staging a dramatic plan for yet another quick fix is not going to work. I’m sorry if you thought that you had finally found THE DIET, but picking a guru who tells you that a particular food or type of nutrient is causing your weight gain will not work.
Instead of endlessly switching diets to find the magic mixture, you have to start with your relationship with your own body. In order to maintain health, your approach to eating has to fit within a broader lifestyle that includes exercise, mental, social and spiritual health. Choose or create environments that make you think, “healthy living.” In my practice, we invite this mental shift by offering a spa environment where progressive nutrition programs incorporate massage, reflexology, and acupuncture. This approach fosters a mind-body connection.

Try these 6 steps to make a difference.

1) It’s All Begins in Your Mind, Believe It
Make a mental change to eat for life vs. being on a “diet.” Move away from the diet lifestyle to real healthy living. Tell yourself that you are going to change the way you eat and have belief that you are going to do it. Have confidence and trust that your body will respond to the healthy new choices you will make. Set yourself up for success. Your ability to achieve results starts from within.

2) Get Help
Seek professional advice and coaching. All too many of us are self-proclaimed diet experts with little success and training. Trying to sift through the diet of the week is unnecessary and often stressful, overwhelming, and unhealthy. An effective approach to healthy eating should combine nutrition science (yes, your coach should have medical and food knowledge as well as the ability to offer you options to make eating healthier easy and more pleasurable) and a working plan that will make this your last diet. It is worthwhile to share any health concerns you have with your nutrition specialist as they may be impeding your success.

3) Stimulate Your Metabolism
The key to releasing weight lies in increasing and maintaining a good metabolism. Start off by getting your motor running with a healthy breakfast. Eat throughout the day to stabilize blood sugar levels (and prevent a slowing of your burn rate). Keep anxiety levels and stress hormones at bay (a.k.a. RELAX) to allow the body to feel safe and free to burn and release weight. When the body is stressed it protects itself by holding onto stored energy (body fat), ratcheting down metabolism and promoting unstable blood sugar levels.

4) Get Fresh: Choose Real Food
Instead of wasting your time reading food labels and chasing the fad diet de jour, start by applying this rule only: Eat Real Food. Ask yourself is your food coming from the good mother earth, an animal or the factory down town? Avoid processed foods. The added sugars, fats, and salt slow digestion. Fresh is best for getting natural digestives and enzymes to speed metabolism and promote overall health. Organic grown herbs and spices bring simple fresh food to life and make eating the pleasure it was meant to be.

5) Be Flexible and Smile
There is no perfect way to eat. One may have certain general rules, but being too rigid will only set you up for failure. Stressing out is a sure fire way to short circuit healthy behaviors and work against metabolism. If being on the diet treadmill is exhausting you, give yourself a break and seek help. Keep your sense of humor and stay away from making judgments about “good” or “bad” food behavior. Accept that healthy weight change is a natural result of healthy eating and living.

6) Go! What are you waiting for?
Write out your goals and go for it!
If you are serious about changing your diet, start with a written food log. Get a grip as to what your eating habits are all about. Research says people who keep food records lose weight! Its all about staying in tune with yourself ...



Check out The Nutritional Wellness blog to Ask Rianne about more tips to keep you and your family eating healthy all year.
Have a great week
Stay Well

Rianne

Juicing your Juices ...

Liquid fasting diets are a great method of losing weight while getting rid of a number of unhealthy toxins from your body. Liquid fasting diets are very beneficial if followed properly. A liquid fasting diet gives your body a thorough internal cleaning while letting your digestive system take a much needed break. Juice or detox fasting diets are different from only water fasting diets because you can consume all kinds of liquids and juices while on a juice fast. Liquid fasting is also made easy by the fact that you can regulate your nutritional intake based on the amount of calorie burning that you do. Juice diets are basically called so because of the obvious fact that almost everything that you can consume while on this diet is in the form of some kind of juice. Investing in a juicer, if you do not already own one, is a good idea if you plan to take your juice diet seriously. Since juice diets are a kind of detox fasting, you are supposed to stay off milk and other liquid dairy products. Instead of making the juice in a blender, it is also advised that you use only a juicer. This is because a blended liquid still contains fiber which was present in the fruit or vegetable, while a juicer gives you an almost fiber free juice.

While juices with fiber are supposed to be healthy when you are on a normal diet, they are not advised when you are on a juice fast. This is because if you consume fibers or milk while on your liquid fast, your digestive system will still have to keep processing as normal. If you give your digestive system a break by taking fiber less foods, then the energy that usually goes towards digesting food can be applied towards healing the body. Apart from this, your immune system also gets a break from fighting food related bacteria and viruses and it can concentrate on other ailments attacking different parts of your body.

A juice fast thus has many benefits. It is one of the best types of detox fasting, since juices help in ridding your body of toxins. On the other hand, a steady intake of juices provides your body with a good amount of vitamins and minerals that one generally fails to consume in the required amounts when on a normal diet. Juice fasting is also a great weight loss method, since it helps in the removal of excess fatty tissues from the body. This kind of liquid fast also boosts your immune system.

On the other hand, you can continue with your normal lifestyle while on a juice fast, since you can get enough energy from drinking juices to do almost any kind of work. You can decide on the amount of juice that you want to consume based on the amount of activity that do and your appetite. How intense you want your detoxification to be is another factor that should determine your intake of juice, since the less juice you drink, the greater is the detoxification. Similarly, the benefits of weight loss and detoxification are directly proportional to your fasting period. You can fast for as less as three days and as long as 40 days. Once you are through with your liquid fast, you will feel revitalized and energized and even look and feel younger.

How To De-Stress and Renew

Follow my family and I while we energize and renew ourselves.

Taking regular stress stops during the day can instantly help boost your relaxation levels and improve your thinking and move.



Inhale. Exhale... and Repeat