All of these benefits for strength training.  Yes, cardio is important but strength training definitely deserves a VIP place in your fitness program.

Believe In Yourself,
Cathy, CLC
Certified Life Coach, Weight Loss Surgery Coach
Certified Back On Track Facilitator

The ideal is to eat within 30 minutes of your workout, but if you don’t eat within that time frame, aim for as soon as you possibly can.

The reasons behind this strategy: It is during the several hours after exercise that your muscles respond to the exertion, becoming stronger or more aerobic (depending on whether your workout has been strength-training or cardiovascular). By eating during this important window of opportunity, you’re giving your muscles the nutrients they need to rebuild.

Honestly, the best time to exercise is when you will do it.  The statistics may tell you that morning or evening is the best time.  However, what is the best time for you is when you will exercise regularly and consistently.  Here’s a concept – when do YOU like to exercise?  When is the best time for you and your schedule?   The answer to those questions as to when you like to exercise and what works best for your schedule are what is most important.  The answers that are personal to you are all that matters.

For me, I like to exercise when as few people as possible are in the gym.  I don’t like waiting for equipment or having people talk to me when all I want to do is work out.  I have a treadmill at home which is great.  I work out when it is best in my schedule.  Sometimes, depending on my appointments and meetings, I prefer exercising early before things get into full swing.  Other times, I like working out in the evenings.  Depending on the weather, I’ll take walks in the day AND in the evening.  So, the answer for me is dependent on my schedule and how I feel.  When do I want to do it?  As long as I exercise and am active in some way, that is what matters to me.

Rather than go by the statistics and research along with the opinions of many experts, go by what is best for you.  After all, what matters is what is best for you!!

Believe In Yourself,
Cathy, CLC
Certified Life Coach, Weight Loss Surgery Coach
Certified Back on Track Facilitator

Do you want to lose weight?  Are you hoping for a different way of life that includes losing weight, feeling good in your body, wearing a smaller size, and have a strong sense of confidence in yourself?  You can have it.  It is yours to make happen.  To reach any goal worth having, you need to be committed.  To lose weight requires persistence and consistency.  It requires saying “no” to food choices when sometimes you’d rather indulge.  It requires a commitment to your diet and along with a promise to yourself.

If you had a friend that constantly made promises to you yet regularly broke them, what would you think of that friend? Would you want that person in your life? Would you trust that person? When you don’t come through on your diet and regularly succumb to poor food choices, you let yourself down by a broken promise. You keep the promise of more often than not following a diet by commitment. A wishy-washy diet is nothing more than a wish. To lose weight and follow through on your promise to yourself is commitment.

A commitment is the sincere and steadfast movement toward a purpose. To be committed is to bind yourself to a course of action. When you want to lose weight, your purpose is to follow your diet, exercise regularly and adhere to healthy habits that you’ve adopted for yourself. You bind yourself to a healthy course of action by making healthy food choices (even when you don’t want to), exercise, being more active and incorporating movement into your day (again, even when you don’t want to). By each of these acts, you re-enforce your commitment to yourself to lose weight and confirm the promise you make to yourself.

Wishing for something to happen is passive. Usually wishing is stagnant and doesn’t involve any action on your part. It is similar to hoping lightening strikes and drops losing weight in your life overnight. Wishing is throwing a penny into a pool of water, shut your eyes and make a wish. Wishes are fun but wishes won’t make something happen as your reality.

Commitment is all about action. You can’t be committed without taking action. You can’t stand still as you want to make your commitment a reality. You want to make that commitment happen. Commitment is inside you, inside your heart. You want your commitment to evolve to fruition in your life. If you are committed to a cause, you go about fulfilling that commitment full speed. Bring that action of your commitment and go for losing weight – full speed ahead. Live your commitment to losing weight and the promise to yourself.

Believe In Yourself,
Cathy, CLC
Certified Life Coach, Weight Loss Surgery Coach
Certified Back On Track Facilitator

Begin shifting your perceptions of movement from something that you have to do to lose weight or change your body, to more immediate gratifying internal factors:

* instant gratification of enhanced psychological well-being.

* movement feels good.

* social aspects of exercise (work out with a friend or trainer).

* stress reduction.

* connection with body.

* better sleep.

* relaxation.

* eating better.

* opportunity to be outside.

* breathing fresh air.

* thinking clearer.

* movement is something you want to do (not something you should do).

Another main difference is that active people expect fitness to be fun, while inactive people dread the event.  Of course, it you haven’t been active in a while, it may take a while for exercise to feel good. It’s normal that you’ll be out of shape, out of breath, and have a tendency to get sore if you overdo it. So how do you take an activity that’s foreign and give it a positive spin?  Go slow and don’t overwork things in the beginning.

Treat your body gently and with loving kindness.  Find ways to focus on the IMMEDIATE payoffs of the exercise itself, such as feeling better, learning new skills, or having fun, or better yet — reward yourself. Develop a daily, weekly, and monthly reward list. Get a tape recorder and stroke yourself with “Yes I can” messages. Pay yourself, and enlist others to contribute to your fund. Our partners are always asking how they can help us achieve our goals, so involve them somehow in the process. Make this time for yourself and being with yourself or exercise with others.  Mostly, make it enjoyable!

As you exercise, check in with yourself.  How are you feeling – a higher self-esteem, feeling better about yourself, having fun???  Remember these wonderful feelings so you’ll actually want to enjoy them again!

Believe In Yourself,
Cathy, CLC,
Certified Life Coach, Weight Loss Surgery Coach
Back On Track Facilitator

Are you still using food to solve emotional issues? Is that what you repeatedly do?  Healthy behaviors  create healthy habits so you do not use food as an emotional band-aid.  If you engage in unhealthy behaviors such as eating junk, grazing, eating fast food, or eating refined carbs as one of your main food groups, your body size and weight are going to reflect those habits.

It is actually very simple, if you want a strong, healthy normal weight and body size, you are what you repeatedly do so adopt habits that reflect the body that you want.  It is a bit of a cliche but we are what we do, we are what we eat.

When you set goals, you are shaping the process of success. That means deciding what characteristics, like commitment and dedication, you need in order to reach your targets.  The determination of success is staying committed to your goals when times and emotions are raging.  It is easy to stay on track when things are going your way.  The real commitment to your goals is reflected when you’ve had an argument with your spouse, your kids are behaving less than you’d like, you have a conflict at work, etc.  If you hang tough and don’t emotionally eat no matter what, that determines success in reaching your weight loss goals.

What strategies do you have in place to counteract the old habits of turning to food each time you get stressed or want to emotionally overeat?  As we know, you are going to have more stress in your life and more opportunities to emotionally overeat. Might as well plan NOW for how you can handle the next situation more successfully!

Remember, there is NO NEW FOOD! How many binges does it take to solve work, financial and family stress?  Food really doesn’t solve anything and creates even more problems.  Turn to yourself, not food to solve your problems and ease your emotions.  Food holds NO power.  You hold the power to to deal with emotions and situations in a healthy way.  You don’t need food from emotional eating.  You are all you need!!

Believe In Yourself,
Cathy, CLC
Certified Life Coach, Weight Loss Surgery Coach

Now, if you are further post-op, small choices still make big differences.  Enough 1+1+1′s equal big numbers thus big differences.  If you haven’t quite reached your goal.  Let’s say you are 50 pounds away from your desired goal and are a couple of years or longer post-operatively.  Those pounds will probably come off slower and require more of a consistent chain of healthy choices.  If you make consistent healthy choices, however small you think they may be, will result in your weight loss of 50 pounds.

Examples of small choices could be rather than have a larger portion of a complex carbohydrate in a meal, make it smaller and eat more protein; eat two bites of protein for every one bite of vegetable, complex carb or fruit; instead of eating a large dinner and small mini-meals throughout the day, spread them out equally through your day for sustained sugar levels, energy levels and minimize hunger.

For exercise, adopt a no-give philosophy of exercising a minimum of 20 minutes per day.  For that minimum of 20 minutes, aim for 30-45 minutes of cardio including strength training.  If unable to make that time commitment, your 20 minutes no-give could be something as simple as walking in place or anything that constitutes activity.

As you go through your day today, you are creating many of the circumstances which you will live tomorrow.  If you eat a plate of cookies, you’ll wear them tomorrow!  If you pass up eating the cookies, you will carry the same or less weight on your body tomorrow.  It is all in the small choices you make.  Small, positive choices and actions today bring greater value and rewards as you move forward not only in tomorrow but in your future weight loss success.

You cannot instantly wake up and lost 50 pounds to your weight loss goal or lose those regained pounds.  However, you can have a significant and dramatic impact on where you will be tomorrow and the day after and the day after.  By making a healthy choice by not eating the plate of cookies or even one cookie, that is a success.  That success will create a momentum for successes today and into tomorrow and on.  Making an unhealthy choice can set you up to cycle through unhealthy choices that compound on themselves.
You cannot change where you already are.  Yet you can have a significant and dramatic effect on where you will soon be.

After easily maintaining my weight for years after my surgery, I had a major life transition and regained some weight.  Yes, I got it off but it was so much harder than the first time around.  I couldn’t tell you of the temporary fix of all the food I ate to regain that weight.  I sure can tell you about the challenge of losing those regained pounds.  Was it worth it?  Of course, no.

Make choices today that set you up to build and create momentum.  You cannot instantly change your circumstances. You can, however, instantly change the direction in which you’re headed.  The small choices you make today you will enjoy not only today but tomorrow.

You’ve heard the saying that nothing tastes as good as thin feels.  Unfortunately this has become a bit of a cliche but it is true.  Food is fleeting.  How long does it take you to eat that cookie, bag of chips, or other food choice?  That “enjoyment” (if you want to call it that) is very temporary.  But the feeling of overcoming the head hunger, the emotional eating trigger to eat something lasts a long time and the results are long-lasting as in smaller body size, lower weight, healthier body, and a feeling of well-being and sense of control.

Set yourself up by the choices you make to plant yourself firmly and resolutely in the direction of your weight loss goals and life dreams. For where you choose right now to go, is where you will soon be.

Believe In Yourself,
Cathy, CLC
Certified Life Coach, Weight Loss Surgery Coach

When we’ve lost weight, it takes awhile for our brains to catch up with our new, smaller body size.  We still see ourselves as being overweight.  Sometimes to the point of being very critical which can derail our weight loss efforts.

I’m asked often by clients about why they don’t see their bodies smaller.  After we’ve been overweight or morbidly obese for a period of time, that becomes engrained in our mindset.  It feels as though it is part of our identity.  We’ve focused on our weight and large body size that that continues to be how we see ourselves.  Your brain will catch up with your body but it takes awhile.  It will happen.  Here are some of the strategies that I share with my clients to help that process occur sooner:

* Take photos of yourself.  Compare them to photos taken before you lost weight.  Look at them often, or better yet, put them in a prominent place (such as the refrigerator!) so you see them regularly.

* Compare some of your pre-weight loss clothes to the ones you wear now.  Notice the difference in sizes by holding them up and see the difference.  Putting on your pre-weight loss clothes now and enjoy the bagginess that you now feel versus how you used to feel wearing them.

Find a photo of yourself taken in the past.  Place it alongside a recent shot. Write down two or three adjectives to describe the “you” pictured in each photo. How have you changed?  Take photos monthly so you have a visual record of how your body has changed.  I did that as I lost weight and they are amazing.  Take the photos in the same clothes and in the same location.  A good idea is to take the photos as you stand in a door frame.  You’ll be able to watch the difference in space between your body and the frame.

Keep focused and moving forward with your weight loss and healthy habits.  Before you know it, you’ll see your body accurately and you’ll be able to enjoy and appreciate your weight loss even more.

Keep doing this as you progress to your goal weight.  Celebrate how far you’ve come every pound of the way!

Believe In Yourself,
Cathy, CLC
Certified Life Coach, Weight Loss Surgery Coach

You already possess the power to transform your dream into a reality and reach your weight loss goal?  Have a plan of your own to follow.  Sports teams have a game plan, businesses have business plans, for anything successful, you have a plan.  All you need is to follow the process that allows ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things.  Reach for the sky – the sky’s the limit when it comes to achieving your goals.

When you look at yourself do you see the person you want to be, doing the things in life you want to do?

STEP NUMBER ONE:  DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.
Ask yourself:  What do you want?  That is a very powerful question.  To gain a success in reaching a goal, you need to name it.

STEP NUMBER TWO:  WRITE DOWN YOUR GOALS.
By writing it down, you commit to your goal.  You can put it in a prominent place that you will see it such as a sticky post on your bathroom mirror or on your refrigerator.  Don’t keep it floating around in your brain.  Solidify your goals by writing them down.

STEP NUMBER THREE: CHECK IN DAILY! LET ME AS YOUR COACH SUPPORT YOU!
How are you doing with your goals?  What did you do yesterday to move forward to your goal(s)?  What are you going to do today to move toward your goal(s)?  With a daily check in, you stay on track and focused on your goals.  Keep your eye on the prize of achieving those goals.

STEP NUMBER FOUR: BREAK YOUR GOAL INTO STEPS…..ONE STEP AT A TIME!
Your goal may be to lose weight.  That’s great but how are you going to get there.  Break in down into more manageable, small steps that you can experience successes along the way.  For losing 10 pounds, load 10 songs on your iPod, get a massage, or other celebration and acknowledgement of reaching that goal.  You reach big goals by one step at a time.

Lastly, do you believe you’ll reach your goals?  It is a wish or a belief?  Do you see yourself as losing weight and reaching your ideal weight?  Visualize yourself fitting into a smaller size, stepping on the scale and seeing your ideal weight number, and moving throughout your day in a smaller body and how that feels.  If YOU believe it you WILL achieve it!

Believe In Yourself,
Cathy, CLC
Certified Life Coach, Weight Loss Surgery Coach

The media has covered that revealing the calorie information prominently to patrons is causing a huge awareness and backlash.  Customers can easily see how many calories are in their favorite foods and beverages they regularly consume.  Restaurants that are required to comply with this mandatory regulation will be fined if they are do not comply.  The health community eagerly awaits the compilation of data as to how these new regulations are impacting food and beverages choices that we make.  Additional studies will be made as to the overall dietary, caloric intake and body weight are also effected.

Similar regulations will go into effect in many other cites and town later this year.  I completely support these regulations.  I believe it will go a long way to making a difference in the obesity epidemic in our country.

Pre-operatively, I ate McDonald’s for probably two meals most days of the week.  Of course, I drove through because I was too ashamed of how much food I ordered and there was only one person in the car!  I went as far as to act as if my order were for myself and someone else waiting at home.  Would it have given me pause if I’d seen how many calories were in my normal meal of a Big Mac or Quarter Pounder With Cheese, Large Fry, Diet Soda (I was saving calories, right), and Apple or Cherry Pie and a Carmel Sundae with extra nuts (for protein, right)?  It possibly would have made me think twice.  I am good at math and adding up those calorie values for only one meal would have at least brought awareness of the numbers of what I was consuming.  With junk food consumption, ignorance is NOT bliss.  Of course, I knew I was eating way too many calories.  But seeing the hard, cold calorie content would have at least made me think twice.

I hope it doesn’t sound as though I’m blaming Micky D’s for my morbid obesity.  Nope, I take fully responsibility for my food choices.  If the calorie counts were right there available and in my face, I would have definitely added up my meal(s) and I believe it would have caused me to pause.  What I would have done with that pause, I will never know for sure.  With these new mandatory regulations, I definitely know that it would cause me to make a u-turn and escape the calorie and unhealthy trappings of Micky D’s.

Just as checking price tags on items in stores that we want to purchase and what is contained in the fabrics of clothing we buy, why not food?  Are those steamed vegetables truly steamed vegetables or sopped in butter and drained before brought out to the table?   We ask ourselves if a potential purchase is worth the price, this new regulation also allows us to ask ourselves if that Big Mac is really worth 600+ calories.

Whether with education or in disclosure of calorie and food labeling – Knowledge is Power!

Believe In Yourself,
Cathy, CLC
Certified Life Coach, Weight Loss Surgery Coach

Pre-op, Krispy Kremes were my thing. I loved them. I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I could down an entire dozen easily in a day. I can’t believe it but it is true.

Now being more health conscious and incorporating healthy habits in my life, I am more respectful of what I eat. As we all know, Krispy Kremes are NOT a healthy choice……fat and sugar. That’s it.

Check this out……as if it couldn’t get worse:

Believe In Yourself,
Cathy, CLC
Certified Life Coach, Weight Loss Surgery Coach