Pampering Yourself to Fitness

So...my good friend Josh has a blog...totally insane and hillarious...and recently on his blog he asked for advice about weight loss.  You can read all about it on here: You Just Became My Personal Trainer.

Being the good friend that I am (humble too), naturally I had to send him an e-mail and share the World's Best Weight Loss Advice.  In fact, it is such good advice that I decided to share it here with you!  Lucky you!  (oh yes, I am in a good mood today!)

Josh,

Ok, ok, I know you were joking, and I know I am the last person that one would expect to be giving advice about losing weight...for the obvious reason that I need to lose weight myself. But seriously, seriously, I know the answer!!!

Actually the answer has three parts...are you ready for this wisdom? Ok, serious now..

#1 A person who has serious weight issues, we're not talking about those 5-20 lbs now, but serious issues...first must determine the emotional reasons that cause them to overeat. Self-control...phooey...Take yourself for example...you go to work regularly, you help at church, you help with the kids...you do plenty of things that exhibit self-control...only sometimes you eat more calories than you burn...why the breakdown in that area? Until you figure that out and resolve it this won't go away. There are many stories of women who have weight loss surgery and then afterward acquire some other addictive behavior like gambling...they lost the weight but they didn't deal with the emotional issues. (I don't even have to be a therapist to figure this stuff out, LOL!)

#2 Find a physical activity that you LOVE. Something that calls to you! For me that is racquetball and bike riding. I feel a little guilty making time to do these two things because I love them so much! If you have an activity that you love, it is so much easier to do. It needs to be something accessible of course...if you love swimming but don't have access to a pool then you need to get access or find a different activity.

#3 Eat food that remembers where it came from...in other words the less processed the better. An apple is good, but applesauce not as good and apple pie...uh oh! Think about Venezuela...what did you eat there? Let me guess...black beans and rice...tons of rice. Sometimes a little chicken. Those are all foods that remember where they came from!

I call this plan "pampering yourself to fitness", because really when you eat whole foods and do exercise you LOVE, it feels so good!

So why don't I do it then? Well, that brings us back to #1...I am dissociative. So while I sit here now and tell you what I think is THE best plan for weight loss and fitness (I'm absolutely serious)...tomorrow (or even later today after therapy...if it is hard) another part of me will say, "to Hell with that, give me some chocolate!" or sometimes I get in a funk and I just don't think to eat at all. My husband says everyone goes through this anorexia/binging/eating healthy cycle...but I say they don't do it to the same extreme that I (as a dissociative person) do.

Think of it like this...if I were a healthy weight and I said, "I don't like the way my body looks, I need to lose weight." You might laugh and think, "women are never happy with their bodies."  However, if I were a normal weight but had a history of anorexia or bulimia and I said exactly the same thing, now there are alarm bells going off in your head.  That is the difference between my anorexia/binging/eating healthy cycles and a "normal" person's.

So is there a prize for being the best personal trainer ever??? You know my address... LOL!