How do you get what you want?

There are lots of ways to get what you want.
One way is to give it to yourself.
Then you get exactly what you wanted. No mistakes.

I tried another way this Mother’s Day.
I asked.
Really specifically.
I even sent him the link to the exact supplier I love.

And guess what,
Mother’s Day morning.
Breakfast in bed.
Squeals of delight.
The exact beeswax candle I wanted.
Happiness all round.

I used to wait to see if he knew.
Maybe I’d drop some hints.
Maybe I’d purposefully say nothing to see if he was telepathic,
if he remembered.
Various ways of testing that didn’t serve me or him.
Didn’t feel good.

I realized that I was putting a high value on him reading my mind.
Like lovers do in movies and fairytale novels.
But when I really thought about it,
What I want from my lover is that he listens to me.
Hears me.
Derives pleasure from getting me exactly what I want.

Well, if that’s what’s important to me from my husband.
I need to tell him.
So he has the possibility of fulfilling this desire I have of him.

The outcome was soooo much better than playing subversive testing games.

It was very clean.

I say what I want.

He knows what I want.

I get what I want.

That’s another way of getting what you want.
With a big slice of loving and feelgood all round.

What are you pretending you don’t know?

I had a mystery in my life for years.

I talked about it a lot.
Over lunches with friends,
phone conversations with my sister,
emails with my coaching forum.

I was very dramatic about the not knowing.
I would exclaim, with great emphasis
“I have absolutely NO IDEA why this is so”
And they would agree with me.
It sounded so legitimate.

We would go round and round on the mystery.
It looked as if we were addressing the problem.
We were paying so much attention to it.
Dedicating so much time to it.

I never realized, that the belief “I don’t know ..”
was blocking me from finding out.

I was never going to know as long as I told myself that I didn’t.
That’s because we always take actions to prove our beliefs.
This way we can keep telling ourselves how right we are.

As long as I believed I didn’t know the answer,
Well, I wouldn’t go looking for it.
And I didn’t.

I just kept spinning in “I Don’t Know” Land.
It was quite comforting there actually.
Very childish and victim-y.

I was just waiting there for someone else to figure it out
and tell me the answer.
And what to do about it as well.
Or maybe they’d just fix it for me while they’re here?

Guess what?
If I had just changed my belief to
“I’m going to find out why this is so”
I would have skipped some of those lunches and done some detective work.

I didn’t need to know exactly what to do or how to find out
in order to believe it.
All I needed was the belief that I will do what it takes to figure this out.

Guess what?
The answer was as simple as “1+1 does not= 2”
That’s all I needed to see.
Then the rest of the path to “I do know” became clear.
That’s all it took.

I don’t know = poison.
What are you pretending you don’t know?

Email me and I’ll help you reveal that belief for the poison it is.
It’s on me.
Because I do know.
That you do know.
That you are guided.
Just like me. Whenever I believe I am.
And you too.

Sugar? Stevia? Splenda? Agave? Sucanat?

I have fallen madly in love.
Seven times last week.
My new group.
Every woman.
Love them to death.
So honoured that they are open to hope.
So awed that they are trusting me to guide them to a different way.

We had a fascinating conversation in my front hallway on Sunday.
We’d just finished a sparkling zumba class with the unbeatable Marda Sperber, followed by an hour of laughing about the lies we tell ourselves
about why we weigh the number we weigh and why we ate what we just ate.

Someone asked about sweeteners.
Seven women, seven different opinions on the best sweetener for your health and weight.
Actually, eight.
One woman had two  conflicting opinions!
Her nutritionist told her that Splenda originates from sugar and is therefore the best.
But her doctor told her that stevia is superior.
Then someone said too much stevia can tax your spleen.
And that agave, which someone thought was the new wonder sweetener,  must be avoided because it turns to fructose.

Me, I was prancing around holding my bag of Sucanat, and restraining myself from sticking my tongue right inside, I am so in love with it.
And bragging about how it’s simply dehydrated cane juice, complete with all the minerals and vitamins found in sugar cane.

We laughed about how we go to parties and everyone is pigging out on dessert, at the same time as passing around the aspartame to sweeten their coffees.

Confused?

Good.

I think all of those opinions have their basis in science.
All have been proven.
So could this: a teaspoon of sugar contains less than 20 calories.
Believe me, the sugar in your tea is not making you fat.

So how do you decide?

Here’s how: same way you decide about everything you put in your mouth.

How does your body feel when you eat it?

I used to be an obsessive follower of natural products,
and I remember rushing to buy agave syrup when it was touted as the answer to all our sweetener prayers.
I also remember that it never felt good inside my body, and I eventually threw it out.
Later, when I read that it’s not so good for us, I was so proud of my body for letting me know this, and  relieved that I no longer had to read every natural health publication to find out how to keep myself healthy.

Sucanat, on the other hand, tastes like a perfect, caramelly sweetener, and it feels very cozy in my body.
Sounds crazy I know, but it really does.
My daughter refuses to use it.
And that’s fine, she’s a teen after all, and it’s developmentally appropriate for her to reject her mommy’s stuff.

What if you could just take yourself off the whole argument?

What if it really didn’t matter which sweetener you use? or whether you use any at all?

I know many severely overweight people who don’t sweeten their drinks.
And many skinny people who do.

What if you bypass the stress that all this worrying about food is causing you?

What if you trust the messages your body gives you after you’ve used a sweetener, or any other food, to decide?

What if you knew best?

You truly do.

You just have to listen. Who are you listening to? Your nutritionist? Dr. Oz? Or you?

The best way to hear your body’s messages about what serves you is to detoxify regularly. Every time I cleanse I emerge changed – sometimes subtly and other times more dramatically. Always closer to clarity.  I’m starting my spring cleanse this Sunday and I’m teaching a brave group how to do it with me. I’d really love you to be one of them! Time’s running out – we start this Sunday @ 9p.m. EST and there won’t be another one until fall.

Why can’t I stop thinking about my weight?

Many of my clients are highly successful professionally.
They earn awards, promotions and  coveted projects.
They tell me that all they can think about as they receive their recognition
is how fat they are.
They also tell me that they think
that everyone else is thinking about how fat they are.

I know what they’re talking about.
I have a bunch of university degrees.
In almost every one, I was top of the class.
Tons of award ceremonies and graduations.
Every time,  all I could think about on the way up to the stage
was how fat I looked.

Studying was easy for me.
Dieting was hard.
Staying thin after my diet was even harder.

I never connected my underlying sense of aloneness
(although outwardly I seemed so self-sufficient)
of feeling slightly different
(although outwardly I fit in so well),
of feeling disconnected
(although outwardly I seemed so in touch with myself,
of feeling deeply lonely
(although outwardly I had tons of friends).

The women in my family struggled with the same problem
so they couldn’t help me
or even articulate the struggle.
We just talked about it as our eternal struggle to get and stay thin.

My friends were all thin
and I could never understand how this could be
as we all ate about the same when we were together.

Now I understand.

They had other ways to ease their pain.

My secret and shameful solitary eating was mine.

Even as a teen,
reaching for food to numb this unnamed sense of aloneness
(which could never be named as long as I was using food to numb it)
had become so habitual that I never connected the two.

Food had become my medicator
for all painful emotions.

In adulthood, I also became addicted to personal growth.
I took every course, read every book,
and became more and more insightful and knowledgable about the connection between my mind, my soul and my body.

And still,
continued secret and shameful eating.
Often straight after a particularly enlightening lecture or blissful yoga class.

I was mystified about this.
Why, when I was feeling so connected, did I still medicate with food?

Now I understand why.
My addiction to the act of eating to avoid feeling terrible
had prevented me from the experience of feeling wonderful.

If you think of your emotions as a continuum, from most positive to most negative, it’s easy to understand why -
As far along the negative side  I cut off
That’s how far I was unable to feel on the positive side.

So when I approached a really positive emotion
it was scary for me
so I turned to my addictive behaviour: solo bingeing.

While I was engaging in this agonizing dance with myself
the answers continued to elude me
despite all my efforts to heal myself.

It was only when I finally, recently, recognized that my emotional eating was an addiction that I could see my story with some clarity.

So that, dear readers, is the first step to recovery from addiction.
When I first introduced this idea of emotional eating as it’s own addiction, I told you that the first step is to stop.
My husband correctly reminded me that that’s only possible after you recognize that you are an addict.

Then you stop.

Only when you stop, do you get access to the ‘why’.
Why can’t I stop eating?
Why did I gain all my weight back?
Why did I eat that when I didn’t even enjoy it?
Why can’t I just eat one slice?
Why can’t I stop thinking about my weight, what I just ate, what I’m going to eat?
Why can’t I just enjoy that ice cream cone?

If you are ready to do this
you should really join me and my fellow addicts
as we cleanse and discover together.

This may apply to you even if you’re thin.
I have clients who are and have always been thin.
Yet they have the same struggles with their thinking about food as I do.

I’m especially excited because this cleanse class will be taught on the phone and in our private online forum.
When we’re starting to explore this scary side of our weight problems,
It’s so much easier to talk freely when no one can see you
and your fellow journeyers are halfway around the world.

So join me on Sunday April 28th to hear more about the fun we’re going to have by emailing me and putting YES! in the subject line (even if you can’t come, I’ll send you a recording).

Or just be brave and sign up here

Who says you can’t stick to your eating plan when you’re travelling?

I’m off to sunny California today!
It’s the annual Mastermind gathering of my people at The Life Coach school,
where I’m proud to be alumnus and faculty.

Problem is, it’s also the last day of my 2 week juice cleanse.
Well, a few years ago, it would have been a problem.
Today it’s a challenge.
I’ve decided to approach this cleanse with the intention of exploring commitment.

I committed to a two week cleanse.
This word ‘commitment’ used to be a scary word for me.
These days, I’m playing with it being exciting.
A challenge.
Freeing.

A few years ago, my travel plans would have been a perfect reason excuse to end my cleanse a day early.
I’ve completed 90% of it, got the benefits – “clear mind, lost some of the pounds I’d gained recently, figured out what I was hiding from, rediscovered my connection to my hunger signals, and re-ignited my passion for all things green and alive – well done to me” I would have thought.
And all of this would have been true.
A day really makes little difference at this point.

Except.
I made a commitment to myself to juice for 14 days.
Not 13.

And I want to be a person who keeps commitments.
This, as my children will assure you, is an ongoing project for me.
So I’ve decided to start with myself.

How am I going to trust myself if I keep breaking my promises?

So…. I decided to view my commitment to my commitment as a fun challenge.

And I did it.
Here’s how:

Nope, that’s not my usual morning decafsoycaramelXhot latte.
That’s my venti full of fresh pressed green juice.
(Thank you Starbucks for the disposable cup).
Prep’d last night and waiting for me in the fridge.

Together with the 100ml dollar store bottles boasting green juice and raw almond milk instead of shampoo and conditioner. (Aren’t they so pretty? My ten year old wanted to steal them!)

Easy.
Fun.
Creative.
Resourceful.
I like being those.

This should see me well on my way to Phoenix airport,
where I haven’t yet located a juice or smoothie bar despite some searching.
I’m confident I will.

And if I don’t,
being obsessed is definitely not something I like being.
So I’ve stashed a few Greens Plus bars in my bag to tide me over until El Dorado Hills,
Where Nuggets, a short walk away from my hotel, is waiting with my green juices ready to go.
Awesome, as I’m learning, happens in the grey.

Ooh.
I just realized.
All those juices.
Airplane toilets.

Excuse me.
Off to buy some wipes and gloves.
Think they sell them at duty free?

Want more cleansing inspiration? Tons over here on my free cleanse call (which you register for by emailing me and putting YES! in the subject line)and even more in my six week cleanse class.

How do I know when I’m no longer hungry?

A cornerstone of my approach to permanent, deprivation-free weight loss is inviting clients to stop eating when they’re no longer hungry. Of course, we all know we should do this, but it’s really hard for many of us.

Most of us truly don’t know what physical hunger feels like.
Two reasons:
1. we’ve lost touch with our bodies because we eat according to external triggers like time of day, social events, passing the kitchen, or, in my case, passing the SOMA chocolate store!
2. we confuse emotional hunger with physical hunger – we feel some kind of emptiness and have learned that it will feel less empty if we fill it with food.

I have experimented, personally and with individual clients, with the best way to reestablish this connection with our physical hunger/satisfaction signals, and for the first time, I’m bringing it to you in a class size format.

Like any other addiction, the first step is to stop doing whatever you’re addicted to.

If you’re like me, you discovered early on that eating numbed your pain, and so you kept doing it until it became a habit.
Even when the consequences impacted your health and relationships.
I call this an emotional eating addiction.
And I’m proud to say that I am a recovering emotional eating addict.

The first step in recovery from any addiction is to stop.
Problem is, we really can’t stop eating for any length of time.

Cleansing is the bridge.
It’s a surefire way to get in touch with your amazing genius of a body.
You choose to eat from a limited range of whole nourishing real foods.
You commit to opt out of the foods that you usually eat from emotional hunger.
And then.
Magic.
Your body teaches you about what hunger and satisfaction feels like.

And, because you’ve commited not to eat foods that feed your emotional hunger, you’ll learn to recognize that too.
It’s the essential first step to freedom.

And when you cleanse with me, you learn how to address your emotional hunger at the same time so that after the cleanse, you’re equipped to continue losing weight by eating according to your physical hunger, and taking care of your emotional needs with all the tools I teach you.
It’s the essential second step to freedom.

Which means  you don’t gain your weight back like most people do.

Interested? Excited? YES?
mindbodysoul cleanse class starts Sunday May 5 @ 9.00 pm EST.
$129

Ready to commit? Sign up here

Need more info? Join me on a free call Sunday April 28th @ 9.00p.m. EST for a free call to learn more. I’ll share all the material I use so you can even go ahead and do it on your own if you want to.  Can’t make it? Register anyway by emailing me and putting YES! in the subject line and I’ll send you a recording.

Can you be fat and amazing?

My last blog struck  a chord.
I got tons of emails – women all over the world telling my they are sad AND amazing.
My people.
Choosing to be amazing no matter what.

Here’s an even harder one for you:
I gained weight over the past few months.
Seven pounds.
It makes a difference.
I feel heavier. Wider. Clothes are tight.
And.
I am choosing to be amazing.

A lot of my identity rests on being thin.
I’m the weight loss coach who lost a lot of weight without a moment of deprivation
All the while increasing my sense of peace and joy.
I like it. This identity.
I really like my thin energetic and toned body.
That fits into size 6 clothes, and sometimes even size 4.

And now.
Those clothes are a bit more snug.
I know why.
I’ve been choosing fuel foods that are not of the highest quality for my body.
More carbs. Lots more. My body doesn’t process carbs as well as it processes my usual fuel of fruits and veggies and tofu and nuts.

I’ve been opening up a lot.
Lots of personal development.
Learning to be real, vulnerable, intimate.
Even when it’s scary. Uncharted. Brand new.
And it is scary.

As well as infinitely expansive, rewarding and indescribably worth it.
And.
I feel more grounded when I eat heavier foods.
More solid.

I thought I was over this.
But I have discovered that I’m not.

For a few weeks I reverted to some old thoughts, about how I should lose weight, journal my food meticulously, and be really conscious about eating only one Joy eat a day.
And that felt constricting.
While I’m expanding.

I’m choosing this body for now.
It’s the perfect body for this part of my journey toward my highest self.
I love that I choose my weight every day.
I know exactly how to weigh 138.
And I know how to weigh 145.
And way above and way below.

And I also choose to consider myself extremely amazing.
As an eternal quality, completely unrelated to my body or any part of my appearance.
Amazing.
Awesome.
Perfect.

My clients protest that it’s easy for me at my weight.
How can they be amazing at 190? 205? 178?
I tell them I can always show them someone who would think they were beyond amazing if only they weighed 190 or 205 or 178.
And I know many women who would think they were obese at my thinnest weight of 138.

So it has nothing to do with the body you’re inhabiting.
It has to do with what you’re choosing to think about that body.

I’m choosing Amazing. Awesome. Perfect.
You?

Can you be sad and amazing?

Lubs Mary. / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

I recently discovered that I can be sad and amazing.
This was new for me.
I have always focused so much on food as my medicator,
that I never realized that I have a few more.

I dug some up during my week at Onsite‘s Living Centred Program.
For the first time, I wasn’t focused on my relationship with food
so I got to look at what’s been hiding underneath.

I learned that masking can be a medicator.
I put on a mask to hide my true feelings?
(Totally missed this – guess how much time I’ve spent obsessing about food?)
The thing that makes this tricky is that my mask feels really real to me.
It’s called Amazing.

I explored this idea a bit.
I usually feel very amazing.
I have tools to feel better when I don’t.

And I think I’m expected to be amazing.
and inspiring.
and happy.

All the time.

Recently, I’ve been feeling sad
and scared
and angry
sometimes.

As well as often amazing
and inspired
and happy.

So I realized that I can be both sad AND amazing at the same time.

It’s a very freeing concept that I’m exploring here.

I don’t have to be happy and smiley in order to be the amazing person I was born as.
I just have to be
in order to be the amazing person I was born as.

Exactly as I am
at every moment.

That is the amazing me.

So, yes, you can be sad and amazing,
scared and amazing
happy and amazing
inspiring and amazing.

All at the same time
or on different days.

And none of these mean anything about you
other than that you were born to feel the entire range of emotions available to us humans
without one making you more amazing than the other.

Which I personally consider to be a pretty amazing discovery.

What’s your type of treat?

I turned 49 today.
Thanks to all of you for your birthday hugs.
I truly felt them.|

Here’s my heavenly day:

Morning snuggles and cuddles in bed with various sized family members.
Drooling over my new MacBook Air.
Moksha yoga.
Lunch with one of my oldest and most loved friends, Christine -
Salads, dips, and a tiny portion of baklava.
Energy tune-up with my luminous healer.
Looooong bath.
Veggie bi bim bap at Sakura. Yum.
And I believe my hubby has something planned for me after which should take me to the end of the night…… and perhaps into the morning…..

Contrast this with my birthday five years ago.
It was all about food.
And allowing myself to not do anything.
Using my birthday as an excuse to check out and eat everything I encountered.

This kind of thinking fascinates me now.
My clients will often tell me that they ate a lot of non-nutritious food because it was a celebration of some kind, like a birthday or anniversary.
They say it as if it’s really obvious that that is why they did it.
Kind of as obvious as “it’s Monday so I will go to work”
“It’s my birthday so I will eat every junky food I can until I feel sick”
I’m puzzled.

I want to feel alive and alert to all the magic in my life.
Especially on my birthday and other celebrations.
I can’t have that if I’m stuffed and lethargic, can you?

How is it that we use a celebration as a reason to abuse our bodies?
And then we use catastrophes as a reason to abuse them in the same way?

What if, on our birthday, we decided to celebrate by being truly, authentically, consciously true to ourselves?

What day would you pick then?

I pick the exact day I just had.

xoxoxo

photo courtesy of Stuart Miles and FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How do you become a regular exerciser?

This may surprise you:
It’s all in the language you use.
Your wording influences how you feel.

I spent the last two summers in Miami.
The first week, I started swimming forty laps each day while my kids were playing.
I called it my “Daily Forty”, and soon my kids were joining me
(I like to think it was because of my enthusiasm rather than the $5.00 I paid them).

I didn’t even think about my ‘daily forty’ as exercise –
my workout was my evening run on Bal Harbour boardwalk.
It was just part of our daily Miami routine,
and I swam slowly, rested after every ten laps, and never really got breathless.
Yet I quickly noticed how toned my arms and chest were becoming
which was amazing to me because it didn’t feel like hard work.

But there it was, definite results.

I also noticed that I never missed.
Even if we were out all day, I would dash down to make sure I got my ‘daily forty’ in before the pool closed.
When we came back to Toronto, I drove to friends’ pools until they froze.

And my family always accommodated my ‘daily forty’.
Only because I called it that.
It was simply a reality.

I never consciously made a commitment to swim forty laps every day.
I believe that the reason it became a regular part of my day,
with no resolutions or struggle or will power
is because of the words I used to describe it to my self and to other people.

The Daily Forty.

Kind of makes you think it’s a daily occurrence huh?
Sort of like showering.
Not something you really think about.
Just happens because you think of it as a daily occurrence
so it becomes one.

If you’re yearning to become a regular exerciser with ease and fun, join me and the unbelievable Marda Sperber for a 6 week life-changer: one hour of zumba followed  by one hour of weight loss coaching. I rarely coach in person so if you prefer live interaction, here’s your chance! Here’s all the details!

photo courtesy of Melody Campbell