A “Diet” of Self-Love Is the Only One That Really Works

As a Women’s Wellness and Weight Expert, I often surprise people when they hear I don’t believe in dieting.

Having struggled with weight and food for many years myself, I found that the whole mentality of deprivation, and relying on outside sources for my guidance about what to eat, took me far from where I wanted to be – and also resulted in significant weight gain over time.

Many of us have been there, right? You diet, and then you go off the diet and gain the weight back. And in the process you’ve probably lost muscle so your metabolism is slower, and then you diet again, etc., etc., etc. Do you know anyone who really resolved her weight problem through dieting?

In addition to the negative impacts on your body, there are real problems here for your mind and heart. It’s discouraging to constantly fail, of course, which really erodes one’s confidence and self-esteem. But even more troubling is the emotional pain behind the choice to deprive ourselves of nourishment and gratification. That’s why I say (and I’m way over-simplifying here) that a “diet” of self-love is the only one that really works. Our relationship with food is a primary one, a foundation for all our other relationships. So healing this through self-love, which is what I’ve done myself and with my clients, has amazingly wonderful ripple effects throughout the rest of our lives.

It also frees us up to make genuinely healthy choices about food. When we are free of emotional pain around food and weight, we get to explore what works for us nutritionally – and since we are all unique, this is different for everyone. Some people thrive as vegetarians, for example, and others really don’t.

In the Gourmet Wellness program that I’ve developed, we utilize two powerful sciences as the roadmap to our most intelligent choices about food. One is Dr. Peter D’Adamo’s (Eat Right 4 Your Type) “blood type diet,” a cutting-edge science which describes the physiology of each of the four blood types, and the best and worst food and lifestyle choices to nurture them. The other is Ayurveda, a sister science to yoga, whose ancient wisdom offers specific guidance to balance each of three different constitutional types.

The resulting twelve archetypes in the Gourmet Wellness program allow women to discover and validate their own truth about what’s right for them. Some women have laughed triumphantly when they’ve learned about their archetype’s recommendations, others have sobbed. It’s always illuminating, often healing, and definitely about self-love – because that’s the only “diet” that really works.

Superbowl Victory Wisdom: “Love Is The Most Important Thing”

In honor of Valentine’s Day this week, there’s been lots of talk about love. As most of us know, there are many kinds of love: romantic love, maternal love, love of the divine, love of country, and many more. For those of us in heart-based businesses, love is always there in the background as one of the things that drives us to do what we do.

I must admit to being surprised, however, by something I saw last week on the Dave Letterman show. It was the night after the Superbowl, and Dave was doing what he does every year the night after the Superbowl, interviewing the quarterback of the winning team.

So there Dave was with Eli Manning, two-time winning quarterback and MVP of the NY Giants. He was excited about the tremendous last-minute win and all over Manning with questions. The one that surprised me was when he asked Manning what was “the most important thing” for the team that led to their victory. And Manning, without missing a beat, said “Love is the most important thing, love of your teammates.”

Like I said, in my world we assume that love is an important driving force. But my world is a pretty mushy place. When I think of the Superbowl, I think of a really macho event driven by testosterone. Manning’s response wasn’t what I expected at all.

It got me to thinking, though. It got me to thinking about what this says, in a very hopeful way, about the state of our world. About what it really takes to succeed. And Eli Manning, who recently succeeded in front of over 100 million viewers, is telling us that love is the most important thing for success. Sweet.

Maybe that’s all that needs to be said.

Love,
Susan

It’s So Good To Be Reminded…

The weather in NY has been cold and dreary this week, but there have been so many bright spots that I’ve hardly minded. In addition to seeing friends and family and other treats, I just finished reading a true gem of a book that I’m burning to share.

Published back in 1943, the author, Katharine Butler Hathaway, speaks to the transformative power of the human spirit in a way I’ve never heard before. And it is incredibly timely for us in 2012, now that our collective conscious is experiencing the most profound shift that has ever taken place in human history.
Her book, The Little Locksmith, is Butler Hathaway’s memoir of a life stricken with spinal tuberculosis. It is, almost paradoxically, one of the most joyful stories I’ve ever read.

Born in 1890, she took ill at the age of five, and the most advanced treatment at the time was to keep her strapped to a board for ten years, to minimize the curvature of the spine that would result. But she never grew taller than “a ten year old child”, and from within an apparently deformed body, she shares a view of the possibilities of life that is absolutely breathtaking.

Butler Hathaway’s story has been with me all week. It has reminded me, because of her exquisite writing and all the richness it evokes, of the transcendental quality available all around us. She has gently pointed out that my own typical sensory experience is all too two-dimensional – at a time that we are supposedly transitioning from the third dimension into the fifth.

I must admit that I had forgotten about the holiness of everything we encounter, and that we have the mental power to create much richer realities than our physical world seems to offer. Truly, I cannot remember ever being so charmingly shaken from my habitual perceptions, than by this small woman who created many worlds from within a body that had been completely immobilized.

In this year of transformation, it’s so good to be reminded of the power we have to experience the depth of life in every moment. If you’re seeking, or even open to, some real inspiration for what you want to create, you may want to step into Katharine Butler Hathaway’s world for awhile.

The Little Locksmith is available on Amazon.

Busting the Low-Fat Myth

Happy new year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season, and are psyched for what 2012 will bring. This year does already somehow feel different, and everything I’m hearing is that it will be a year of change on many levels.

There’s a specific change I’d really like to see, and here it is: busting the low-fat myth. If this surprises you, please read on. It’s especially important for those of us in the wellness field to learn how misinformed we’ve been about what’s really good for us.

I distinctly remember back in the mid-1980’s when the whole “low-fat” thing caught on as popular wisdom. The basic rationale was that since fat had more calories than protein or carbs (9 vs. 4 per gram, respectively), it was the most “fattening” food group and should be avoided. We assumed we could fill up on carbs, which had fewer calories per gram, and get a leg up on the whole weight loss thing. Interestingly, however, the rates of obesity in the United States have dramatically increased since then.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably experienced significant personal evolution since the 1980’s. Truly, our world is virtually unrecognizable — and I mean that both literally and figuratively, since the internet itself a reflection of our dynamic reality, where everything is inter-related and reacting to everything else. So why are we still giving credence to this very simplistic linear assumption about calorie consumption?

The truth is that the human body is an exquisitely dynamic miracle, not a mechanistic machine. Calories play just a tiny role in the whole equation, and it turns out that balancing insulin and blood sugar, along with maintaining lean muscle tissue, have far more to do with sculpting lean healthy bodies than does calorie counting. And carbohydrates, even the complex carbohydrates we’ve been told to favor as a primary fuel source, are the high-glycemic foods that mess with our blood sugar and insulin. So they may be our worst sources of energy, not the best.

Here’s another big problem: because so many people got on the low-fat bandwagon, food companies responded with all these reduced fat foods. And the key ingredient that’s been used as a fat substitute is high fructose corn syrup, which is absolutely the worst thing you can consume if you want to reduce body fat. Corn itself directly contributes to insulin resistance for many people, and high fructose corn syrup is a nutritional abomination. I am certain this is the main reason for the rise in obesity.

Of course, I am certainly not suggesting that you avoid naturally wonderful low-in-fat foods like vegetables. But I implore you to read the labels of all “low-fat” processed foods to see for yourself that high fructose corn syrup is a main ingredient, and to understand that you’ve been completely misled about these as healthy choices.

In fact, we now know that healthy fats are very important to overall health, and that low-fat simply doesn’t work as a weight loss strategy. If you want to enhance your own wellbeing in this new year, busting the low-fat myth is a great place to start.

Completing 2011

With all the holiday hubbub and things to get done before ringing in 2012, there was actually something I almost forgot to do, and it’s the last thing I’d like to share with you this year in case you forgot, too.

Actually, I was reminded about this last week by my friend Dianne Collins, author of Do You Quantum Think, during a study group call that she hosted last week entitled “Clear the Decks and Deck the Halls.” Simply put, Dianne reminded me about the importance of completing 2011 before embarking on 2012.

During the call, I was kind of shocked to realize that my year end To Do list didn’t include reviewing my accomplishments for this year, or bringing completion to all my projects. And although I’m still not done with it all, there are still two days left for all of us to put the finishing touches on 2011.

Have you also neglected to acknowledge this year’s accomplishments? If so, I invite you to join me in taking some time to bask in what we’ve done and become over the last twelve months. Much of the time, we’re focusing on the undone stuff on our lists, and that doesn’t necessarily produce the best states of mind. When I took a look, I was really gratified to see how long my To Done list really is.

And the completion part, well, Dianne reminded me about how powerful this can be in clearing our mental and emotional energy. What it involves is reviewing and reclassifying the items on our To Do lists in one of several ways:

• Crossing off the things that really are done, and acknowledging ourselves for accomplishing them
• “Declaring” completion for the things that are still in process, at the stage they’re at right now, which allows us to begin the next stage with a fresh start
• ‘Fessing up that some things are just never going to get done, and completing them by removing them from the list

Thank you again, Dianne, for all your wisdom. And thank all of you, dear readers, for being part of my 2011.

I wish all of us the blessings that 2012 has in store, and the gratitude to appreciate them.

Happy New Year!

Women and Food: A Cultural Neurosis? Part II

Just today, I received an email from Dr. Oz about a new potentially “safe” weight loss drug that may be on the horizon. Really??? It’s distressing that someone as well-respected as Dr. Oz simply doesn’t get it: the solution to this problem will not come in the form of a pill.

I’ve been speaking up more and more about this cultural neurosis lately, and other women are encouraging me to take the conversation further. Just last night, I was at a quasi-networking event here in Florida, and when I said I work with women and their self-hate around food and weight, virtually every woman of every size jumped on the subject.

Yes, there are some women who look at me blankly when I say that, women who are able to simply eat when they’re hungry and don’t resonate with the self-hate thing. And as for men, they almost never know what I’m talking about. But most women seem relieved and almost excited to admit out loud that their relationship with food isn’t exactly joyful.

In the Neuro-Linguistic Programming model, we are always looking for the positive intentions behind our behavior. As an NLP practitioner, I’ve been exploring the food/weight issue with women for many years, and have learned so much about the “payoffs” for creating and holding on to excess weight. These include an almost universal pattern of childhood sexual abuse with adult overweight, as well as usually unconscious issues specific to each woman. By now, though, many of us have drilled deep into our issues, revealed the conceivable payoffs, and done a lot of internal housecleaning. So why are we still torturing ourselves about what we do and don’t put in our mouths?

Here’s a radical thought to consider: maybe it’s ultimately not about the food or the weight, but about the self-torture itself.

When I read Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now back in 2003, he introduced me to the concept of the “pain-body.” (If you haven’t read this book yet, I highly recommend it.) The pain-body is a pretty complex subject, but here’s a very brief summary. Basically, Tolle explains that we live in a very dysfunctional world, that the atrocities committed throughout human history have left a residue of pain in the human psyche, and that to some extent we all carry some of this around (I believe we even wear it). Much of the time the pain-body in each of us is dormant, but when triggered, it’s almost like a vampire that comes out to feed, and it actually seeks to create more pain to feed upon. We are literally almost taken over by a destructive entity that seems to be out of our control, and there’s no positive intention to find. Can you relate?

The answer, according to Tolle, is this: understand the situation for what it is, disidentify from the pain-body that is masquerading as our true self, and allow in a new consciousness. I call it “staring down the pain-body.”

Admittedly, this is not as simple as taking a pill. But I believe that women’s cultural neurosis around food and weight is a big fat expression of the pain-body, and it’s time to stare it down. My gaze is pretty steady at this point, and if you like, I am more than happy to share the view….

Women and Food: A Cultural Neurosis?

Many years ago, shortly after leaving a corporate career to discover what I was really here to do, I received a “message”: to help other women with their weight problems. At the time, I was a bit confused and quite disappointed, because with training in NLP, my vision had more to do with saving the world than reducing pounds or kilos. The message was quite specific and insistent, however, and detailed some important truths that have become increasingly valid to me over the years.

This is what the message explained: on the path of healing, people need to walk through whatever door is in front of them. If someone wakes up in the morning and her entirely reality is “I hate myself because I’m so fat,” then that dominates her experience and doesn’t allow for much else. So it’s where she needs to start.

Having lived through a number of years of waking up in the morning and hating myself because I was fat, I had to admit that the message made sense. So while disappointed, I was also assured that
over time there would be additional value for me to offer the world, and I did start a practice as a weight loss counselor.

Many years have passed, my horizons have been vastly expanded, and there are now many more gifts and skills for me to offer the world. I no longer describe myself as a weight loss counselor, and no longer believe that weight itself is the real issue. But after years of both working with other women and exploring the depths of my own being, I do believe there is a cultural neurosis that many women share about food, and that it frames the rest of our life experience much more deeply that we usually recognize.

In the movie Eat, Pray, Love, Julia Roberts’ character was eating pizza in Naples and said something like, “I’m done getting up every day and weighing myself to decide how much self-hate to take with my into the shower.” I just loved that. Her character wasn’t even overweight, but she still had been torturing herself about food.

Here’s what I’d like to leave you with today: food is the primary way we get fed by life, and if that relationship isn’t a healthy one, then it’s hard to get everything else right. A woman doesn’t even have to be fat to experience self-hate around food, and that can really mess with her. When this gets resolved, beautiful things tend to happen in all areas of life. The message I received years ago was wise: for women seeking wellness, food is a key place to start. If your relationship with food isn’t truly nourishing you, I invite you to approach it with a new consciousness. And if you could use some support in that area, I would be honored to hear from you.

Sisterhood: “Be the change you want to see in the world”

This quote by Mahatma Gandhi is one of my favorites. It’s a beautiful reminder of the power we have to create our reality, and I was reminded of it this week as I engaged in a number of deep, delicious conversations with members of our “Tribe” of women in wellness.

It was one of those wonderful Sisterhood weeks when I found myself re-connecting with about a dozen amazing women in my life, both in person and on Skype all over the world, sharing about

our dreams, visions, struggles, and accomplishments. I felt invigorated by the support I was able to offer my sisters, and so grateful for the gifts they had for me. And I was reminded again of two major paradigms out there: competition and collaboration.

I of course was expressing my view of what we can create together, of the potential we have to collectively make a tremendous positive impact on the world, of the win-win opportunities we can embrace. The ideas were flying, and the generosity in the conversations themselves was so yummy. (One conversation was even interrupted when a friend dropped everything to be with another women who’d been called in to the doctor to check out an irregular pap smear — sisterhood in action.)

And while most of the other women were on the same page, I also heard the other point of view: that some women practitioners are reluctant to refer clients to other practitioners,for example, because they’re afraid of losing business themselves, and aren’t that interested in educating clients about other wellness approaches for the same reason. Although I recognize the validity of this concern in a scarity-based competitive paradigm, I find it short-sighted and a little sad. Why focus on divvying up a limited pie, when we could be putting our energies into making it bigger?

The world population has just reached 7 billion people — there is no shortage of potential clients who could be well served by wellness services! Consider that we all could benefit by promoting more of a wellness culture out there, and that, as Gandhi reminds us, we all get to initiate that change ourselves.

Hygieas is prepared to be the change we want to see in the world. We’re here to remind our sisters (and like-minded brothers) that we don’t have to go it alone, that the power of our collaborative efforts can benefit everyone, and that all of our choices make a difference. What change do you want to see?

Do You Quantum Think?

This question is actually the title of a book I recently finished reading, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I need to tell you that the author, Dianne Collins, is a woman I’ve known and admired for a number of years. But I’m not simply trying to plug a friend’s book; this is a very important read.

The reason I think it’s so important is that like every other human I know, my experience is largely defined by what I think — and as someone who’s been pursuing spiritual work for many years, this drives me crazy.

Yes, yes, I know that I’m not my mind, but as a practical matter, I haven’t figured out how to either live in the world without it, or free myself from its habitual patterns. Like perhaps many of us seeking a more conscious life, wanting full soul expression, my mind has felt like the “weakest link” in the evolution of my being. But Dianne has taken this on! She offers a system of thinking that actually transcends what we typically think of as thinking….

Here’s the thing: although we’re now living in the 21st century, and we know from quantum physics and “What the Bleep” that the world is not the orderly, linear, matter-bound place that it appears, we have still been erroneously conditioned to think as though we’re living in a Newtonian physics, mechanistic, cause-effect world. Even thinking “out of the box” is a challenge for many of us! We’ve been traveling along a basically linear mental highway, not realizing how arbitrary and limited a reality that actually offers us.

Then along comes Dianne, who obviously left the interstate a long time ago, with a system of thinking that more truly reflects the nature of our quantum reality. When I discovered her work in 2006, I described it as a personal software upgrade. With the publication of her book this year, she has made this amazing body of work quite accessible, even friendly. Dianne offers us 21 different “distinctions,” to contemplate and experience, and I’d like to share one of them with you here. Simple as this is, it could be a life-changer….

It’s called “Both/And,” and she offers it in contrast to the way most of us are used to thinking, which is “Either/Or.” Until Dianne pointed it out, I wasn’t even aware that I was limited by a lifelong habit of thinking in term of Either/Or. It seems simple enough, but until I started playing with it, I had no idea….

Here’s a tiny little example, which I actually used just last night. I was having dinner at my aunt’s house, and she was serving quiche. There were 2 nice pieces, and she asked me if I wanted the mushroom or the broccoli. Having explored living in a Both/And world for quite a while now, my immediate answer was, “Let’s both have half of each!” My aunt was dumbfounded, saying that she never would have thought of that.

So it makes me wonder: where else have we been choosing between mushroom or broccoli, when we could have had both? If you’re also intrigued by the implications of this question, you may want to check out http://diannecollins.com. And obviously, I highy recommend the book.

Walking my talk….

I actually wrote this last winter, in the expectation of posting in on my blog. So here it is now – very timely in NY, where it suddenly feels like winter again!

Although it’s really cold out today, I bundled myself up from head to toe, and just returned from a 30 minute session of walking my talk.

I mean this both literally and figuratively. For the past half hour, I was actually taking my brother’s dog on a brisk trek up and down the hilly road that they live on. So that begins to explain the walking part. And for the other, I really enjoy being able to say that I do honestly follow the advice I give to all my clients (and anyone who will listen, really): barring any limiting disability, make walking a part of your life, no matter what.

I’ve been walking since April of 1980, when a major transit strike in New York forced many of us to walk to work and back. At the time, I worked about 2 miles (3k) away from where I lived, and the four-mile round trip initially seemed arduous. But like many locals, I did get used to it during the two weeks of the strike, and New York quickly became a walking city. (We even got used to the common sight of women in Nikes and business suits!)

One of the important things I noticed, when I started the enjoyable habit of walking whenever possible, was that for the first time in my adult life (I was 24 at the time), I could basically eat whatever I wanted without gaining weight. As both a “foodie” and someone who had previously struggled with weight for many years, this was absolutely fantastic.  

Aside from the issue of weight, walking is just a great form of exercise. You can do it almost anywhere most of the time, it can get you out into nature, and it’s even an energy-efficient form of transportation, as we learned back in 1980. Walking is also ideal for those of us seeking weight-bearing exercise to strengthen our bones and prevent osteoporosis. And it’s free! While I love walking outdoors and prefer that whenever possible, even I won’t be walking around outside when it’s too cold, hot, wet or dark. There are times when I resort to a treadmill, which is tolerable with either music or a buddy for distraction.

Although I don’t regularly walk four miles a day anymore, and am now 30 years older, I still find that consistent walking is one of the few things I need to do to manage my weight. There are times, such as now, that I am ready to let go of some extra weight that I’ve allowed to accumulate. 2009 was a difficult year for many of us, and for me it included a divorce and some other destabilizing experiences, so I’ve allowed myself to rely on the satisfaction of food more than I normally do, and now I’m wearing it. I no longer suffer about carrying a few extra pounds, but I am finally tired of it. Getting back to my most comfortable size is sounding really good. So I’ve got my sneakers on.

The other things I’ll be doing to help get myself back into my black jeans are drinking lots of water (hot with fresh lemon juice is the ideal), and eating much more selectively. French Women Don’t Get Fat  by Mireille Giuliano is one of my inspirations for using pleasure and reward, instead of deprivation and guilt, for dealing with unwanted weight.

So yes, I’ve been walking my talk. Up and down a snowy road in the dead of winter. And following my own good advice as a wellness coach for how to live and eat most joyfully. Care to join me?