Dear Dr. Meami: I just came from a doctor’s appointment where I was told to lose 50 pounds fast or my health may suffer, even being at risk for a heart attack. But I don’t think I really can follow the diet my doctor gave me. Help!
Signed, Beth from Brighton
Dear Beth from Brighton: It amazes me that in doctors’ offices across America, physicians still actually hand overweight woman a piece of paper with a diet printed on it, telling her to “start exercising,” and send her out the door to drop 10 pounds or more.
That’s like handing a toddler some sheet music and sitting her down at the piano to play a concerto—ain’t gonna happen!
And yet, many women reading this feel like a guilty failure because excess weight stays on, thinking it’s as simple as the old “calories in versus calories burned” routine.
If that’s you, read on please, and let 2018 be the year you create an internal shift inside yourself that allows you to release your extra pounds of pain by loving yourself into losing the weight.
There are all kinds of action steps you can take to be kind to yourself and take great care of yourself, but it goes very far beyond the trite advice women often get, like take a candlelit bubble bath or get a mani-pedi.
Here is my radical new viewpoint: if you take total control of all the clutter in your life you can best take control of all the eating in your life.
With my clients who need to lose weight, one of the first things we do is look carefully at organization in her home, workplace, car, e-mailbox, daily schedule, and even in her purse.
Yes, a healthy, happy body and mind can be created by you and for you by cleaning out your purse on a daily basis to start.
Why? It is a proven, scientific fact that clutter in your home and in your life causes women in particular to feel anxiety, which often causes stress overeating.
A study done by UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives and Families discovered women who live in messy, disorganized homes have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their bodies. Cortisol not only prevents weight loss, but it’s even linked to more fat in the belly area.
And get this: the study showed mess affects men’s cortisol levels, too, but at much lower levels. That’s why the man in your life can easily navigate his way through stacks of bills and over piles of dirty laundry and be unfazed by all the mess … and you as a woman cannot.
If the sleeve of Oreos tucked behind the healthy homemade kale chips begin calling you when you walk into your home that’s in disarray, you are not alone — but you are out of control in key areas of your life are directly linked to being overweight.
Committing to organized, intuitive eating on a unique plan you choose for yourself can give you a calming feeling of control over your entire life. Any sense of positive control we feel we have over our lives statistically leads to a greater feeling of happiness moment by moment, too.
The bottom line is that you can love yourself into losing weight with practical action steps including organizing your life without being overwhelmed in the process.
Or, you can look into the mirror right now, hate your current body shape so much you decide to punitively deprive yourself of food you enjoy to try to decrease the numbers on the scale. But thousands who lose that way inevitably gain it all back.
This says it all: the December 2017 issue of Good Housekeeping had this on its cover: “Eat and Drink: DON’T GAIN WEIGHT!”
That’s right, the great paradox is that women in America in 2018 are supposed to survive and thrive in our totally food-obsessed culture while remaining sleek, slim, and sexy no matter what.
The “ideal” woman shows up to a party in a slinky dress with stylish stilettos, but doesn’t drink the champagne or pop down one too many sausage cheese balls in fear she’ll explode into being a size 12 (or 14, God forbid, as most American women actually are) … with a big L on your forehead for LAZY, right? WRONG!
In this magazine, She Rocs, women are encouraged to claim themselves as they really are — as authentic human beings with smart minds eager to learn, souls full of savvy self love, hearts that hurt and heal, and a body we can relax about changing.
Now that’s empowerment.
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