Dump Your Stress – Dump Your Pounds

Why? Because stress increases cortisol levels, and cortisol likes to store weight in your stomach, says Michael Jensen, MD, an endocrinologist and obesity expert at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. (Researchers aren't sure why.) It could also slow down your metabolism. When stressed and non-stressed women ate the same high-fat meal, the harried ones burned fewer calories at rest afterward, found a study in Biological Psychiatry.

Here are some ideas for easing your stress in a short time:

10 Minutes: Chew a Stick of Gum

Researchers from Australia and England found that in moments of stress, gum chewers felt less anxious and had 18 percent less cortisol (the stress hormone) in their saliva. "Chewing increases blood flow to the brain—which may make us feel more alert—and it may also distract us from stressors," says study coauthor Andrew Scholey, PhD, director of the Centre for Human Psychopharmacology at Swinburne University.

12 Minutes: Brew Some Black Tea

People who drank four servings of black tea a day for six weeks were able to de-stress faster and had lower levels of cortisol after a stressful event, according to a study from University College London. Chemical compounds in the antioxidant-packed beverage may relax us through their effect on neurotransmitters in the brain. Actually, I prefer green tea.

15 Minutes: Try a DIY Massage

The International Journal of Neuroscience reported that a 15-minute chair massage twice weekly can lower stress, likely by calming the sympathetic nervous system. The at-home approach is an effective alternative. "Simply rolling a tennis ball over muscles with the palm of your hand can trigger a similar response," says Tiffany Field, PhD, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine.

20 Minutes: Put Pen to Paper

A 2010 study in Anxiety, Stress & Coping found that writing about a stressful event for just 20 minutes on two different days lowered levels of perceived stress. Putting feelings on paper appears to organize thoughts, helping us process unpleasant experiences and release negative emotions.

30 Minutes: Put on Music You Love

Music can elicit positive emotions and reduce your levels of stress hormones. A study in the Journal of Advanced Nursing found that patients who listened to songs of their choice were less anxious before surgery. Boost your mood even more by dancing along to trigger the release of feel-good endorphins.

45 Minutes: Take a Tech Break

In a study by University of California, Irvine, and U.S. Army researchers, heart rate monitors showed that checking e-mail put subjects on constant high alert with heart rates that indicated stress. "We found that shutting off e-mail eases anxiety," says study coauthor Gloria Mark, PhD. Commit to no e-mail for 45 minutes a day to begin weaning yourself off.

60 Minutes: Clean House

Housework's repetitive nature can help release tension. "We get lost in the rhythm of folding clothes or vacuuming, which can disrupt stressful thought patterns and trigger the body's relaxation response," says Herbert Benson, MD, director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Source: From the December 2012 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine

Scare Yourself Thin

Scare Yourself Thin

Sometimes knowledge can motivate (scare!!) us into better behavior. It is a kind of „away from“ method but it works for many people.  Personally, I use both the „away from“ and the „toward“ types of motivation.

Read on and observe your feelings and motivation to lose weight and get fit:

Before Dr. Frederick Banting and his colleagues at the University of Toronto isolated insulin in the 1920s, doctors tried to treat diabetes with high doses of salicylates, a group of aspirin-like compounds. (They were desperate and also tried morphine and heroin.) Sure enough, the salicylate approach reduced sugar levels, but at a high price: side effects included a constant ringing in the ears, headaches and dizziness. Today’s treatments for diabetes are much safer and generally work by replacing insulin, boosting its production or helping the body make more efficient use of the hormone. But researchers over the past few years have been re-examining the salicylate approach for new clues about how diabetes develops.

What they have discovered is a complex interplay between inflammation, insulin and fat — either in the diet or in large folds under the skin. (Indeed, fat cells behave a lot like immune cells, spewing out inflammatory cytokines, particularly as you gain weight.) Where inflammation fits into this scenario — as either a cause or an effect — remains unclear. But the case for a central role is getting stronger. Dr. Steve Shoelson, a senior investigator at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, has bred a strain of mice whose fat cells are supercharged inflammation factories. The mice become less efficient at using insulin and go on to develop diabetes. “We can reproduce the whole syndrome just by inciting inflammation,” Shoelson says.

When doctors treating Alzheimer’s patients took a closer look at who seemed to be succumbing to the disease, they uncovered a tantalizing clue: those who were already taking anti-inflammatory drugs for arthritis or heart disease tended to develop the disorder later than those who weren’t. Perhaps the immune system mistakenly saw the characteristic plaques and tangles that build up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients as damaged tissue that needed to be cleared out. If so, the ensuing inflammatory reaction was doing more harm than good. Blocking it with anti-inflammatories might limit, or at least delay, any damage to cognitive functions.

Losing weight induces those fat cells — remember them? — to produce fewer cytokines. So does regular exercise, 30 minutes a day most days of the week. Flossing your teeth combats gum disease, another source of chronic inflammation. Fruits, vegetables and fish are full of substances that disable free radicals.

How about the connection between overweight and hair loss:

Overweight people tend to lead sedentary lifestyles, which for various reasons helps to create the conditions that trigger hair loss.

Very little exercise also means lower peripheral circulation of blood, and this can be a problem for the health of the hair follicles, but it is also true that it is a statistical fact that the obese people eat too much fatty food and especially saturated fatty acids, which are the most damaging to your hair and overall health.

So the cholesterol levels rise, the sebaceous glands get irritated because the sebum contains one of the two forms of DHT, and the hair falls out.

In addition, obesity is a condition that can cause hormonal imbalances, and this can trigger the thinning of your hair.

Or, if you are pregnant or trying to get pregnant:

Being overweight during pregnancy can cause complications for you and your baby. The more overweight you are, the more likely you are to have pregnancy complications and the more risk the child has for defects after birth.

(CNN) „Risks of major birth defects increased in step with the severity of a mother's obesity or overweight, a study published in the BMJ medical journal found.

Based on these results, women should be encouraged to adopt a healthy lifestyle and be at a normal body weight before conception, said researchers led by Martina Persson, a researcher in the clinical epidemiology unit at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.“

Overweight and Alzheimer’s

Weight, which includes obesity, is linked with Alzheimer’s disease. This is an area of very active investigation as researchers discover associations between brain health and the body chemistry that controls weight.

Too much body weight often means too much fat tissue, and fat tissue can have dangerous effects on health. Overweight or obesity, too, increases the risk for many medical diseases. In the United States, more than a third of adults are obese. The medical cost each year for an obese adult is estimated to be $1,429 higher than for someone of normal weight.¹ Some scientists point with alarm to the increase in obesity. They warn that this is going to raise the rate of Alzheimer’s disease development in our population, which is already increasing due to higher numbers of people who are older or overweight.²

1. http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html 2. Nepal B, Brown LJ, and Anstey KJ. Rising midlife obesity will worsen future prevalence of dementia. PLOS ONE September 2014;9:1-5.

Proper exercise and a healthy diet are easily accessible tools that can help us reduce the risk not only for Alzheimer’s disease but for many other medical problems as well. Stated in a more positive way, a healthy lifestyle, which includes weight management, can increase the likelihood of optimal aging, prolonged independence, and a greater quality of life.

What kinds of health problems are linked to overweight and obesity?

Excess weight may increase the risk for many health problems, including

• type 2 diabetes
• high blood pressure
• heart disease and strokes
• certain types of cancer
• sleep apnea
• osteoarthritis
• fatty liver disease
• kidney disease
• pregnancy problems, such as high blood sugar during pregnancy, high blood pressure, and increased risk for cesarean delivery (C-section)

I don’t know about you but I’m inspired to go for a brisk walk and then eat a healthy meal consisting of veggies and a salad.

You in?

Is Your Mind Your Haven? Or Hell.

Is your mind your haven? Your safe place? The element of yourself that motivates you to lose weight, declutter our lives, go for new goal, enjoy rewarding relationships?

I was doing my yoga and listening to some wonderful guided meditations by the Honest Guys. They have some soothing yet powerful thoughts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e33dETmxAr0#t=563.269666

Or, my favorite guided meditation for letting go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG71OxOoqEM

Our minds should be a safe place, our haven.

But is this so? Are we perhaps our own worst enemies?

Does your thinking empower or weaken you?

THE ‘PLUS ONE MINUTE’ IMPROVEMENT PLAN

THE ‘PLUS ONE MINUTE’ IMPROVEMENT PLAN

I was watching this video this evening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DbvSl_C_kY

It reminded me that reaching goals doesn’t have to be hard.

Get 1% Better Every Day: The pleasant Way to Self-Improvement

Instead of trying to make radical changes in a short amount of time, just make small improvements every day that will gradually lead to the change you want. Just like compound interest, you start with a small amount yet you end up with riches by taking what you’ve saved plus interest. Repeat...

So, each day, just focus on getting 1% better in whatever it is you’re trying to improve. That’s it. Just 1%.

If you want to learn to play an instrument, practice 10 minutes. The next day, you practice 10 minutes plus 10x1%= 11 minutes.

You want to improve your core strength by doing planks for a certain time, say 10 seconds.  The next day, you do your plank for 11 seconds. The third day, 11x1%. It won’t exhaust or frustrate you but you will get stronger daily.

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens — and when it happens, it lasts.” —John Wooden

• Want to start the exercise habit? Just do a single push-up as soon as you roll out of bed in the morning. The next morning, add another. And so on and so forth. In two months, you’ll be doing 60 push-ups in the morning. Or run in place for 10 seconds. Add one second each day.
• Want to establish a morning and evening routine? Start with the evening, and concentrate on the 10 minutes right before you go to bed. Plan what you’ll do during those 10 minutes — it might be meditative breathing for one minute, brushing your teeth, then stretching, and reading for 7 — and make it a habit. Every day, add 5 more intentional minutes until your whole evening becomes a satisfying routine. Boom! You have a great evening ritual. Then work on the morning.
• Want to start writing? Instead of making it a goal to write a page each day, just start off with writing for a minute. That’s all. You might only get a sentence or two down, but that’s okay. The next day, add a minute. In a month, you’ll be writing for 30 minutes.
• Want to start meditating? Begin with a minute of breathing exercises. Or being quiet and still for one minute. Or start with 10 seconds and add 1% each day.
• Want to lose weight? Cut out one fast food meal. Or a sugary soda. Or cut your usual dinner portion in half.

Avoid the temptation to get impatient and start rushing forward and taking big leaps. Take it slow, steady, and consistent.

Simply try to do a little bit better than you did the day before.

Losing Weight is a Mental Challenge that you can WIN!

Losing Weight is a Mental Challenge that you can WIN!

There are many reasons why we let our weight balloon:

You’ve Developed Poor Habits

You associate crazy eating with social acceptance

You Eat for Comfort

You Like to Push Your “Feel Good” Buttons

You avoided fats and didn’t notice the increase in sugar

You Think “Why Even Bother?” confusing that with „I Am Good the Way I Am“

You’re Embarrassed to Go to the Gym

You Think Black and White/All or Nothing

You’re Depressed

You’re Comparing Yourself to Others

These are solid, but not insurmountable, hurdles.

We know by now that vegetables and fruits plus lots of water should make up the largest portion of what we put into our mouths.  We also know the dangers of fast food, sugar and pre-prepared foods. Then there’s the exercise we need to be getting, even if not as difficult as Navy SEALs training.

Okay, it’s a cinch.  We know what we need to do so we do it.

Daggone!  It’s not a cinch at all!

It’s not which „diet“ you chose.  In the long run, it is the diet you can stick to that will be the perfect diet for you. If you plan to be on your diet temporarily, if you are shooting for a specific weight and then back to „normal“ eating, your weight loss will be temporary.  Which diet aka “healthy way of eating” do you want to marry until death do you part?  That question is up to YOU, not researchers or diet gurus trying to sell books, courses and products.

Weight loss isn’t about finding the perfect diet, it’s about changing your life.  

Aye, there’s the rub.  What you’ve been doing up until now has been so pleasant.  We are hardwired to do things that make us feel good.  And that __________ (pizza, ice cream, beer, MacBurger – you fill in the blank) is promising to do just that.

If you think of it, you weren’t born craving those things.  You learned to love them.  And you can learn (re-learn) to love foods that are real foods and not junk.  Sure that is harder than if you’d gone through your life with other habits.

It’s a challenge!

Everyone has to make the decision for himself or herself.  It’s a mental process, not a physical process… You need to pour yourself even more into changing your mental attitude towards food and exercise.  Having a mental plan is not as hard as it sounds.

Begin by looking at damaging habits

You may have learned to eat candy and pizza from your family and friends but you don’t have to keep doing that.  It’s all about changing habits that are destructing your success.  You might be dipping into your secretary’s bowl of goodies.  Or perhaps you spend your evenings in front of some sort of screen and absentmindedly munch something unhealthy. Maybe your portions are just too large.

Write down all the habits that are keeping you from being slender, from sleep deprivation to chocolate bars in your desk.

Pick one of those habits, maybe a relatively easy one, to change.  What do you want to do instead of that habit?  You can replace the bad habit with a good one. If you’re craving that morning pastry, for instance, eating a piece of sweet fruit instead might be easier than just going without altogether.

Bad Habit	What I do now	What I want to do from now on?	How am I going to go about it?

Questions you might ask yourself:

... am I eating the rest of this meal because I’m still hungry or am I eating it because it’s there?

... do I really need to reward or comfort myself with crappy edibles? Or is there another way?

... do I feel in control of my eating habits? 

... do I know how to deal with negative thoughts?  Your thoughts are not necessarily correct, just because they pop into your head! („Oh, I just ate a donut. Well, my diet is down the drain now so I might as well eat another one.“)

… how can I avoid unhealthy carbohydrates and processed sugar (baked sweets, candy) today?

You might also take an approach in which you lose about 10-20 pounds/kilos at a time, and then maintain that weight for 4-9 months before trying to lose another chunk.  In that “maintenance” period, try to figure out how to eat to keep that new weight.  Once you prove to yourself that you can maintain it with ease, restart your effort to lose further weight.  This way you are very confident in your ability to maintain what you’ve already lost and only need to focus on the new challenge ahead.

Tuning into our bodies is the secret.  What is really going on?  As soon as we are aware of the weight and its consequences plus the reasons we eat, we have a great chance of developing the motivation to persevere.

Find out what other people have done and decide what is right for you. Get support from your family, friends and co-workers.  If they know how important it is, they will back you.

As I’ve suggested earlier this is much more of a mental challenge than a physical one.

Wake up everyday and think, “What do I have to do today to be healthy?”  As you can see, you are rewriting your story!

4 Secrets to Mental Toughness for Weight Loss

What we can Learn from Navy SEALs’ Training

I love to watch YouTube videos of Navy SEALs training. No, I don’t like combat. The part that fascinates me is the training.  Many candidates start the training but only a very small portion actually make it through without giving up.

Since this blog is about using your mind to change your body, I wanted to find out the mental secrets of the soldiers who succeeded.

It took the military a while, but they finally got psychologists and brain experts to help them find out what the successful candidates did differently than the quitters.

4 Ways to Acquire Navy Seals’ Mental Toughness

It turns out that there are 4 “secrets” of success in this endeavor and they can definitely be used to help us in ours.

The four pillars of success are:

Goal Setting

Visualization

Self-Talk

Emotion control

Goal Setting

SEALS learn not only to set long-term, mid-term and weekly goals, they set micro-goals.  The training is so strenuous that they often think only extremely short-term: “The next 100 sit-ups”; “Make it through until breakfast”, etc.

If you have trouble with snacking, set a micro-goal like “I can make it this next half-hour snack free”, can help enormously. Of course, it helps to distract yourself, drink water and move, too!

Write down your long- and short-term goals. Perhaps, long-range, you want to achieve a certain weight, muscles toned, and wear a certain size in clothes. Short-term you might set the goal of having only healthy foods in the house or making your own meals with fresh produce.

Using the next technique will increase your chances of success.

Visualization

Visualization is mental rehearsal, which means you practice in your head.  You can do this in three ways:

1) Imagine running through an activity successfully. Picture yourself doing what you want to do in the best possible way. Do this many, many times and your brain will learn what to do when the “real” (unimagined) opportunity comes.

I remember in Mark Phelps’ book how he described his mental preparation. He was a winner even before getting into the pool. Everything was taking place the way he knew it by heart: the diving board, the water, hand movements – he’d practiced it all thousands of times in the pool and in his mind.

Even when water started to enter into his goggles in a very important race. He could not see…. But Phelps had also trained this scenario in his mind. Sight would not be a problem for him because he knew by heart how many hand movements he needed to make until reaching the final wall. He dealt with the problem as he had rehearsed in his mind over and over, then went on to win the race.

This is the power of mental rehearsal.

Confront the adverse situation in your mind numerous times and it will come naturally when you face it in reality.

2) Watch other people successfully doing what you want to achieve. This is called observation training. Then, close your eyes and watch the same scene in your mind. Step into the picture or movie and experience doing the successful activity yourself.

3) There is another way of using imagery to increase your self-confidence and self-efficacy. Think of all the strengths and resources you have now that you didn’t have earlier in your life.  Enjoy the feeling of strength and competency. Feeling this strength, go back through an unpleasant (no traumas here, please) experience and change the outcome so that you feel better about it. Go ahead, just change it so that the outcome makes you feel satisfied.

Self-Talk

There is a great possibility that positive, motivating self-talk can override signals from the amydala. The amygdala is part of the limbic system and its purpose is to regulate emotional reactions such as fear and aggression and it developed prior to our neocortex (the thinking brain).

Whenever in peril, the amygdala kicks in as the first commander; it sends signals to the hippocampus (another part of the limbic system), which in turn releases stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline; they prepare our body for the fight or flight response.  Thus, all the energy available is hijacked and directed to the feet for running or to the hands for fighting the imminent danger.

According to a new study, giving yourself advice and encouragement in the second-person before an upcoming task may actually boost your performance more than first-person self-talk.

Researchers also asked 135 students to write down advice to themselves in relation to exercising more often in the next two weeks. Those who wrote in the second-person, again, reported a more positive attitude toward the task and even planned to do more exercise than the students who referred to themselves in first-person. (This study was published online in the European Journal of Social Psychology on June 23, 2014.)

Emotion control

This is more of a physical exercise. It focuses on breathing and it requires to deliberately breathe slower as it would help counteract some of the effects of panic. When you panic, you take faster, shorter breaths, which is a forerunner of hyperventilation.

Two ways of breathing

Long exhales mimic the process of relaxation within the body.
Long inhales provide much more oxygen to the brain which results in better cognition processes.

4X4 breathing

Breathe in, slowly, counting to four.

Breathe out slowly, counting to four.

Repeat until calm

The Lengthened Exhalation

My favorite way to relax myself is to let the body inhale of it’s own accord and then lengthen the exhalation gently. Breathe out slowly and as long as it is comfortable. Don’t force. Just follow the breath.

Why shouldn’t we use the same techniques of mental toughness that successful warriors use? We don’t have to plow into combat; we just need to harness the power of our minds.

Getting Your Exercise in During the Workday

Focused Work AND Exercise, Every Day!

Lots of us are really tired at the end of a workday.  That is one of the reasons that we plop down on the couch and the only other exercise we get is pressing the buttons on the remote and lifting our hand from snack to mouth.

We know we need to exercise to increase our success at weight loss. The spirit is willing but the body is tired. ;-)

One way to get in your exercise and stretching daily and also improve the quality of your work at the same time is the Concentration Enhancement Method.  That’s a big name for a simple technique!

How long can you concentrate optimally?

Current researchers make a case that the average attention span of American adults has dropped and it is limited to 20, 10, or even five minutes.  Concentration is also increased if a person is able to perform the task fluently, compared to a person who has difficulty performing the task, or to the same person when he or she is just learning the task. Fatigue, hunger, noise, and emotional stress reduce the time focused on the task. “Common estimates for sustained attention to a freely chosen task range from about five minutes for a two-year-old child, to a maximum of around 20 minutes in older children and adults” (Source:Wikipedia).  

Now here is the cool part. What you do in your break time makes all the difference.

Exercise increases mental sharpness, memory, and concentration according to a Harvard Men’s Health Watch in 2013. “Exercise stimulates brain regions that are involved in memory function to release a chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Only the brain can make it, and (especially) with regular exercise”, the greater the intensity, the more likely BDNF production will increase.  (Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, 2008)

(In recent years studies have demonstrated that engaging in intermittent fasting and/or caloric restriction can likely increase a person’s lifespan and general health. One way intermittent fasting and caloric restriction help is by increasing the amount of BDNF signaling within the brain.)

In addition to improving concentration and overall brain functioning, the effects of physical activity may be linked to preventing a range of cognitive and neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's disease and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. (Mary Carmichael, "Newsweek")

The Concentration Enhancement Method

1) Figure out how long your Deep Work block is going to be. You might have to build up your focus “muscle”.  Try for 20 minutes with no interruptions (set a timer) and then 25, and then 30, etc. One Italian even named this method Pomodoro (tomato) Technique because his timer was shaped like a tomato! His concentration unit was 25 minutes. You might work for 50 minutes and then rest for 10.

You allow yourself NO distractions – no phone, no Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or any other time waster (but they are great for after hours!). Plan what you want to get done in your designated time period. Set your timer and GO!

2) Work intensely on One Main Thing, your intent being to finish it off during this work unit.

3) When the timer goes off, you take an Active-Break. Take a walk, get some water, and do some physical activity.  Don’t take a break in front of your computer—your brain won’t get the pause it needs. Depending on your Concentration Unit, you’ll take a break between 5-10 minutes.  Studies have shown that 10 minutes are enough. If you take longer breaks, it’s hard to buckle down and concentrate again.

4) Try for at least four to five of these intense work/break units before you take a longer break.

5) Improve Work Quality and Get Fit at the Same Time!!

Here are some short exercise videos from YouTube, which you can do as your Power Pause:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR1AWOp6t30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSGR805EOUc

One or more of the breaks could be used for Office Yoga:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzkfOKkIteA

With this yoga break, you even have time for a toilet experience afterward:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xbCfTHz3mU

By the time you go home after work, you’ve done your exercise and stretching. It’s happened before that people have felt less tired after a workday built up in this way. Some even walk or bike to and from work as their energy increases. But that’s (calorie-less) icing on the cake.

Give it a try.

Let me know your experiences with this method. :-D