Core value eating

Who is more likely to sustain desirable weight, the valued self or the devalued self?

If you believe it is hard to lose weight and keep it off because you lack something, like discipline, will power, or just common sense, your efforts will come from shame of what you are, rather than value of your health and well being.

When the shame gets exhausting, distracting, confusing, or overwhelming, as it always does, human nature makes us revert to the familiar, which requires far less mental energy. That means the old eating habits.

Your problem in reaching and maintaining your desired weight is not due to personal failings. You have plenty of discipline – you have gone through so much trouble time and time again to lose weight. You certainly have will power or you wouldn’t keep trying after each failure.

The problem lies not in you, but in your weight-loss programs, which set you up to fail.

No weight control program can succeed by dominating your consciousness with food and weight. This actually increases the unconscious impulse to eat.

Setting "goals" for weight loss makes you fail in the long run. In other words, you win some, you lose some. In the long run, winning and losing even out and put you back at your original weight, if not higher.

No weight control program can succeed unless it helps you regulate the core hurts that make you overeat and attack food.

A successful program must develop a conditioned response to regulate eating automatically. Otherwise, you will have to do the near impossible: “stop and think about it,” when swept up in a rush to eat.

With Core Value Eating, you stop thinking so much about weight and start looking at yourself and others with more compassion.

Instead of making goals, you create more value in your life. You value yourself more, which automatically makes you value your health and well being.

You learn to motivate yourself with "Acts of Kindness," especially when you relapse. (Who are more likely to repeat mistakes, those who punish themselves with guilt or shame or those who value themselves?)

Compassionate eating conditions Core Value to occur with the impulse to eat. The reflex of Core Value will then motivate whatever you do, including food consumption.

Begin Core Value Eating with a list of five “Acts of Kindness” you will do for yourself when you have a temporary relapse of overeating or an attack on food. The point is to change the motivation to eat from avoiding core hurts to experiencing Core Value. In making your list, think of what will help you eat from your Core Value next time.

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2.

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5.

With Core Value Eating, you learn to view your cores hurts compassionately, and when they occur, to look for the light of Core Value.

In that light, emanating from deep within, you will not have to worry about “managing” your weight. Your Core Value will do it for you.

Core Value makes us worthy by motivating us to accept, value, love, and, most important, feel compassion for self and others.

Health and well being depend far more on how much we value than how much we are valued, even though we’re a lot more sensitive to the latter. You are probably quite aware of the times in your life when you didn’t feel valued in relationships at work or at home. What you did not notice is that those were times when you valued far less.

Here’s a little test to show the power of value. List of the qualities that you believe make a person worthy of love. Just think of people who you believe are lovable, and list their most lovable qualities.

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2.

3.

4.

5.

Your list consists of various aspects of compassion. You have described a person who is accepting, valuing, and loving, someone who makes an emotional investment in others, not just herself. You have described someone who is compassionate.

When you feel compassion for yourself and others, you cannot feel a core hurt and you do not have an impulse to overeat.

The secrets to weight loss after pregnancy

Sarah is a pregnant mother of three who continues to breast-feed her 18-month-old. After each of her pregnancies, she has had difficulty losing weight. With all of her responsibilities, weight loss isn’t a priority. Still, she wishes that, once this pregnancy is over, she will be able to return to her pre-marriage weight.

The average woman gains more than 25 pounds during her pregnancy. The procedure of childbirth may result in a weight loss of up to 14 pounds, which means that new moms still have considerable weight to lose once they leave the hospital. However, some women simply assume that this “baby fat” will never go away. Yet, it is entirely possible to lose weight during the post-partum period.

A number of medical experts recommend easing into a weight loss program after the birth of your baby. This means that you will not start dieting until about three months following birth. You should combine a low-fat diet with moderate exercise in order to achieve weight loss.

Don’t expect instant results. It will take you a good nine months to get back to your weight prior to pregnancy. A go-slow approach is best because you need to give your body time to recover after childbirth. Certainly, you might be able to lose weight faster, but you might be sacrificing valuable nutrients as a result.

Interestingly enough, breastfeeding actually enhances weight loss. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has found that breastfeeding leads to the release of hormones which enable your uterus to return to its normal size. However, breastfeeding alone won’t bring down your weight. You need to combine it with a sensible diet and a moderate exercise program. Keep in mind that you need to have at least 1800 calories a day while breastfeeding in order to keep yourself and your baby healthy. Still, stay clear of junk food during this period. You should rely on food with high nutritional value to maintain the proper level of calories each day.

There are many good reasons to exercise during the post-partum period. In addition to helping to accelerate weight reduction, exercise can help alleviate post-partum depression, improve your mood, and boost your confidence. Exercise can also “clear your head” so that you’re better able to meet the demands of motherhood. You might consider joining a “Mommy and Me” exercise class so that your baby can exercise right along with you. Another helpful hint is to enlist the help of a friend or relative to act as your exercise buddy so that you’ll have some emotional support while exercising. An added bonus of exercise is that it should boost your energy level, which is quite important when battling the fatigue which comes from caring for a newborn.

Your diet should generally be low-fat but not fat-free; vitamin rich; and high-fiber. Under no circumstances should you go on a fad diet. Such a diet could be quite harmful to your health and could actually slow your recovery from childbirth. It’s a good idea to set weight-loss goals, but don’t go overboard. Recognize that there’s a limit to the amount of weight you can lose during a given period of time.

You may see a number of actress-moms gracing the covers of magazines shortly after the birth of their children. They appear svelte and elegant, totally devoid of baby fat. In the accompanying article, they may even talk about exercising right after childbirth. Such articles send new mothers a dangerous message: that you must do all you can to become thin as quickly as possible after your baby is born. Such a philosophy is not only ridiculous, it’s also unhealthy. As a result, you’ll need to “tune out” such messages from the media and stay the course with your own gradual weight loss plan.

The time right after the birth of a child can be quite challenging, taxing both your physical and emotional strength. While it is certainly a good idea to eat healthy, you’ll need to pace yourself as far as weight loss is concerned. Over time, you should be able to lose the weight you gained during your pregnancy. In fact, you might find that you’re actually healthier after your baby is born.

Are atkins diet and low carb diets safe

Are low carb diets safe? How safe is Atkins diet? Are low carb and Atkins diets dangerous to your health? These are burning questions for dieters all over the world.

I have personally tried low carb diets and Atkins diet and these diets made me lose weight very quickly. However not only did I lose body fat weight, I also lost muscle weight. I had very obvious muscle and fat loss because I can visually see my reduced muscle mass in the mirror.

This certainly isn’t healthy. Furthermore, the more muscle mass that you lose, the less toned your body shape is. The end result is that you will end up thin and yet looked flabby with lose skin.

The frustrating part will be that after you are off the low carb or Atkins diet, you will very probably gain back all the weight that you have loss and even more. This is because your muscles are active and they continuously burn calories. Since you have less fewer muscle mass now, your body’s metabolism or capacity to burn calories slows down tremendously.

In other words, when you put on weight again, you are putting on body fat instead of muscles if you do not exercise. You will be fatter and less healthy than before you went on the low carb or Atkins diet. To compound matters, because of lesser muscle tissues resulting in lower metabolism and thus lesser calories being burnt, you are going to get fatter.

Since then I have stayed off both low carb and Atkins diet. Both types of diets are almost similar as they require you to cut down drastically on your consumption of carbohydrates. Atkins diet went a step further by advocating almost no carbohydrate consumption for 2 weeks before adding some carbs to your meals gradually thereafter.

Besides losing muscles, how safe are low carb diets? This is what Dr Lyn Steffen and Dr Jennifer Nettleton from the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health commentated in a Lancet report, “Low carbohydrate diets for weight management are far from healthy, given their association with ketosis, constipation or diarrhea, halitosis, headache and general fatigue to name a few.”

The doctors warned that the diet increases protein load on the kidneys and alters the balance of acid in the body. This also results in loss of minerals from the bone stores and affect bone strength. The doctors went on to say that, “Our most important criterion should be indisputable safety and low carbohydrate diets currently fall short of this benchmark.”

Dr Atkins, the creator of the Atkins diet died in 2003 after he was alleged to have slipped on an icy road and hurt his head fatally. However his medical report stated that he had a history of heart attack, hypertension and congestive heart failure.

Were Dr Atkins medical conditions related to his low carbohydrates diet is anybody’s guess. Do you want to take the risk by going on a low carb diet? I don’t think I will. If I ever want to lose weight again, I will rather go on the proven method of healthy eating and regular exercises instead of jumping on any fad diets.