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How do you know you are Prepared to change your Relationship with Food?

food, health, positive thinking, therapy, Uncategorized, weight loss, wellness

At age 28 I woke up to prepare for work like any other day, except that day when I opened my closet I had no clothes that fit, nothing to wear for work. I froze for a minute in fear then decided I needed to do something. I remembered attending weight watcher meetings with my Mom at age 5, so I called in sick to work, found a meeting and became a weight watcher that day. I walked through the door scared, embarrassed but determined to do whatever I needed to do, whatever they told me to do to lose weight and get healthy. I lost 25 pounds in 2 years. That may seem like a long time to some, but I was more interested in learning and changing so I could keep it off for a long time. So 28 years later I have sustained that weight loss, plus a little more.

I worked 10 years in the weight loss industry, but early on I discovered a food relationship is so much more than I could ever imagine. That fueled my passion to pursue a career as a Psychotherapist helping adults understand their current disordered food relationship and create a sustainable one supported by psychological, behavior and lifestyle factors.

This post will introduce you to the Psychological factors of readiness, change, success-failure of weight loss and maintenance.

Readiness: Dr. Kelly Brownell and other researchers in the field of obesity believe one of the most predictors of weight loss success is one’s psychological readiness to follow a program. Determining ahead of time which factors might stand in the way of your losing weight gives you a chance to correct them so that you can focus your energy on getting weight healthy.

Transtheoretical Model of behavior change (Stages of Change): originally used to define changes in addictive behavior, it has been applied to the adoption of positive health behaviors. It has 5 distinct stages in the change process: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance. These stages represent the “readiness” of an individual to make a change.

Attribution Theory: Psychologist Bernard Weiner found that the difference between achievers and non-achievers doesn’t depend on the number of failures or successes a person has, but rather on the conclusions one draws about why those successes and failures happened. In general if a person “attributes” failure to a personal defect-like incompetence-and explains success as a stroke of luck, then he is reasoning like a pessimist. An optimistic attitude generates hope and persistence-which, coincidentally, are the ingredients required to make permanent weight-loss changes. Ignoring difficulties doesn’t make them disappear-focusing on solutions does. The positive perspective must take reality into account for it to work.

This is just an introduction to the world of healing a food relationship utilizing psychological constructs. One of the most fundamental building blocks of nutritional metabolism is our relationship with food, or our food psychology paradigm – the sum total of our innermost thoughts and feelings about what we eat. Our relationship with food is as deep and revealing as any we might ever have in life.

I help adults conquer eating issues, calm anxiety, and recover happiness at any age.

One Step At A Time

health, mental health, stress, therapy, Uncategorized, wellness

ELM Mental Wellness is continuously adjusting and adapting to our ever changing world. I am offering walk-and-talk therapy as an additional alternative to my current Telehealth therapy. Walk-talk is a mindfulness-based body oriented therapy that can make it easier for clients to relax, stop ruminating, release physical tension, breathe deep and receive mind-body insight while processing experiences in a different way. As the name describes, clients talk with me while walking outdoors rather than being online or sitting in a therapy office. Walking enables some clients to feel more comfortable when sharing in the therapy process. Additionally, receiving the feel-good brain chemical benefits of exercise, mindfulness practice and eco-psychology.

Walking side by side, we’ll discuss what comes to mind that day in the context of overall goals, just like sitting inside an office. At times we might take a few moments to stand in silent reflection, deep breathe or sit in guided visualization. By the end, you’ll have gained some understanding, let loose a little and noticed a helpful shift in your level of stress and anxiety. Walking is good for your physical and mental health, and in times like these, it’s more important than ever. My hope is the fresh air and sunshine will assist with clearing your mind and boosting your mood.

An outdoor consent form must be completed for the session to be conducted. If weather is uncooperative, all sessions will be automatically shifted to Telehealth. You will be notified that morning. We will meet at my office parking lot across from Lunken Airport to walk on safe paths in the area. Join me one step at a time.

How we can contribute to our environment and community to build better living spaces.

spiritual wellness, Uncategorized

INSPIRING ACTION To start integrating sustainability efforts, join forces. Many organizations have a task force overseeing and implementing reduce/reuse/recycle strategies. Team up to share ideas, expand reach, and amplify efforts with consistent messaging. If there isn’t a green team — which may be housed under the umbrella of corporate social responsibility, launch one.

Reaching the Hard to Reach

Concerned about reactions from people who don’t understand or believe the facts? A report by the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University states the most effective approach is to frame sustainable living messages in terms of personal benefits like having clean air and water, being healthier, and saving money. Learn more: connectingonclimate.org.

Meanwhile, here’s a way to press the easy button and start influencing change: Add trackable sustainability activities to your next well-being challenge; come up with your own to match workforce needs and interests. Before long, participants will expect to see earth-friendly activities alongside step tracking and medita¬tion as habits equally vital to well-being.

A few examples:

• Slash use of plastics/disposables. People can pack their own bamboo, metal, or other reusable utensils, dishes, and straws. Reusable grocery bags, cloth napkins, and washable paper towel alternatives eliminate a lot of household waste. And food storage is a cinch with glass containers, silicone bags, and wax-coated cloth wraps.

• Shrink your carbon footprint. Share a tool like the EPA’s Carbon Footprint Calculator (epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator); challenge participants and their families to make everyday choices that reduce carbon output.

• Get outside and play. When people spend time enjoying nature — from hiking in a national park to fishing and camping with their families — they’re more likely to have a heart for protecting it. Time in natural surroundings also offers unique physical and mental health benefits. Learn more in The Nature Fix by Florence Williams and A Healthy Dose of Nature Is Good for Business — Promoting Green Exercise for Employee Well-Being (hesonline.com/white-papers).

• Use alternative transportation. Distribute bike commuting details and discounted or free passes to make public transit benefits evident and linked to your wellness program.

“When people spend time enjoying nature — from hiking in a national park to fishing and camping with their families — they’re more likely to have a heart for protecting it.”

RESOURCES

• Act on Climate Change Yale Program on Climate Change Communication: climatecommunication.yale.edu/news-events/act-on-climate-change

• Tips to Use Less Plastic Green Education Foundation greeneducationfoundation.org/nationalgreenweeksub/waste-reduction-tips/tips-to-use-less-plastic.html

• Top 20 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint GlobalStewards.org globalstewards.org/reduce-carbon-footprint.htm

5 Reasons Hibernating During Winter Is Good for You

mental health, Uncategorized, wellness

The winter blahs can certainly get you feeling sleepy, lethargic, and downright uninspired. It’s cold and dark, and people tend to get worn down from the holiday festivities. Rather than fighting the feeling that tells you to hibernate, why not listen to your body?

According to Ayurvedic doctor Virender Sodhi, “Your body is nature’s pharmacy, it has everything you need to be healthy.” This refers to the process of listening to the signals that your body gives you and then acting on them. So, what does your body actually need when it’s saying, “Binge eat!”, “Stay indoors!”, or “Crawl under a pile of blankets and watch rom coms!”?

Rest More

If you follow nature’s cues, days are shorter and nights are longer. This could indicate that a longer sleep time is necessary. When you feel tired and yet it’s only 8:30 p.m., that’s not time to muscle through and keep working, it’s time to feel your body and recognize ‘If I feel like it’s a lot later than 8:30, what can I do about this? Maybe I should go to bed?’

Getting a full night’s rest isn’t a sign of weakness—it’s a smart way to feel better and be healthier. A sure sign you need more sleep is if you are waking up already tired. Aim to get to bed early enough that you can wake up on your own without an alarm clock.

Wrap Up

Crawling under layers of blankets can be a sign that your body is just not at its peak temperature. For some people, a warm snuggly blanket feels like a hug from a friend. If you check in with why you want that blanket on, maybe you’re trying to soothe yourself or maybe you are actually cold. When you have that desire to start snuggling under blankets, check to see what the temperature of your fingers and toes is. Then check your ears and nose. If these extremities are actually physically cold, it’s no wonder you want a blanket!

But what if you’re not cold? What if everything feels warm and you still have this desire? Maybe you need the emotional support a hug or the physical touch of a snuggle. A massage might be in order.

Eat Well

Humans seem to be slaves to their food cravings in these wintry months. This is a time to listen to your body. Be a detective. Think about what is it asking you to eat and then find a natural healthy alternative. If you’re craving potato chips, you could try plantain chips instead. If you’re craving chocolate, you could try carob mint bites. Your body is trying to tell you something; however, if your pattern in the past has been a quick hit of sugar, starch, or salt to fix this craving, you need to pay close attention to retrain those patterns. Winter is a time for warm, hearty, and healthy foods like stews and curries.

Go Outside

The days are shorter and sometimes this means your morning run or your evening dog walk are missed. Instead of removing these moments where you get fresh air, natural light, and exercise from your day, try to make time to get outside regularly during your lunch break or in the late afternoon. Schedule it! It is easier to accomplish something when it is on your calendar. The time outside will help you to feel less sloth-like.

Spend Some Time Alone

The last thing you might consider when you are wanting to hibernate is that it may be a sign that you need some alone time. The holidays are filled with parties, dinners, shopping malls, and airports packed with people. After this overstimulation it’s okay for you to want some time alone. Just because you love your family or enjoy your colleagues, it doesn’t mean you want to be with them all day, every day. If you’re feeling the need for space, give it to yourself. Alone and lonely are not the same. Spending some time alone can feel luxurious.

Cocooning in the winter means you can be freshly reborn in spring. Be gentle with yourself when you feel lazy. It doesn’t help at all to berate yourself for your lack of energy or inspiration. Stay cozy, fuel yourself with good food, and give yourself big bear hug. When you are ready, you can emerge revitalized and ready for great things.

Why losing weight is so hard and gaining weight is so easy.

health, nutrition, self care, therapy, Uncategorized, weight, wellness

You just enjoyed the holidays and come to find out that you gained 5 pounds. In your disbelief, you quickly curse the Weight Gods for being so cruel. Sound familiar? This was me the last couple of months. A little cookie baking, eating the holiday yummies, packed it on quick. This inspired me to discuss the seemingly unbalanced equation of weight gain vs. weight loss, the facts that surround the issue and how losing the 5 pounds feels so much harder than gaining them:

FACT 1 – It is Simple Math: To maintain your ideal weight, you need to eat as many calories as you burn in one day. The balanced equation looks like this:

Calories Eaten = Basal Metabolic Rate + Physical Activity

If what you eat equals more than what your body uses, you will gain weight. In the situation of a holiday, it is likely that you eat more unhealthy food than normal and possibly get less exercise, resulting in an imbalanced equation, with a higher number of calories on the eaten side than on the burned side. That imbalance over the course of a few days can easily represent a few pounds.

FACT 2 – A Pound is a Pound is a Pound: One pound of body mass represents 3,500 calories. Regardless, if you are trying to lose a pound or gain a pound, the pound will always represent 3,500 calories. So, if you eat 3,500 calories more than your body requires, you will gain 1 pound. Similarly, if you eat 3,500 calories less than your body requires, you will lose 1 pound.

FACT 3 – Exercise is Weight Discriminating: Whether you are 120 pounds or 175 pounds, you will gain one pound from eating 3,500 calories more than you need. Unfortunately, this doesn’t hold true for burning calories. How much you weigh actually dictates how many calories you burn per hour. The more you weigh, the more you burn, and as a result, the easier it is to lose the pound…sound crazy? It is true.

FACT 4 – Aging Contributes to Weight Gain: As if aging doesn’t contribute enough to unfavorable things, it also contributes to weight gain. As we get older, our metabolism slows down, requiring us to need less food and calories. If you don’t modify your caloric intake as you get older to reflect this change in metabolism, you will start to see weight gain.

The Bad News: Unfortunately, eating an extra couple of unhealthy snacks or drinking a few extra glasses of wine can happen in a blink of an eye. However, the time and energy required to burn off those calories takes a lot more effort. We have provided a chart on what 1,000 calories looks like on both sides in the chart below (remember, it is 3,500 calories that make up a pound).

The Good News: Whether it is rapid or slow weight gain that you have experienced, losing the extra weight can be tackled through two avenues (and should be): calorie reduction and exercise. Choosing to lose weight through both calorie reduction and exercise will accelerate the process. If for seven days you burn 200 extra calories through exercise and reduce your food intake by 300 calories each day, you will lose that extra pound. Further, it is a lot easier than trying to either reduce your caloric intake by 3,500 calories (which is physically impossible) or burning an extra 3,500 calories during exercise (which takes a ridiculous amount of time and energy).

What you Can Do: Assess whether your weight gain was a rapid gain due to atypical behavior (E.g., vacationing) or a longer-term gain. If it was a rapid gain, there is a good chance you will lose the weight by returning to your normal habits. You might have to be a little strict for a day or two, but you shouldn’t feel like a major overhaul is in order. If, however, you have gained the weight over a period of time, assess your habits and think about what has changed in your life. Have you stopped exercising? Have you let your eating habits go? Have you hit a milestone birthday? Once you can assess the reality of your situation, remember the equation: to maintain balance, burn the calories you eat.

ELM Mental Wellness Nutrition Counseling is in depth and lifelong. It begins with multiple assessments including family history of eating patterns and health risk, habits-routines-rituals, emotional connection with food. Changing our dietary patterns is grueling. I help clients with meal planning and shopping, self monitoring, goal setting, stimulus control, problem solving, cognitive restructuring, and relapse prevention to move toward a state of lifetime optimal health.

Secrets for a Wellness Inspired Holiday Season

Exercise, health, holiday, mental health, positive thinking, self care, stress, Uncategorized, weight, wellness

‘Tis the season to spend time with friends, family, and loved ones – and to celebrate, indulge, and be merry.

But, the holiday cheer can also invite quite a setback in your mind-body health goals and wellness routine. To avoid the stress and weight gain of the season – and remain light in your mind and body – follow my guide to indulge, without losing your healthy edge.

Let me show you how to:

EAT healthy and in moderation.
MOVE your body, stretch, and get your heart rate up.
DE-STRESS and balance your emotions during the busy chaos of the holidays.

How do you enjoy the holiday season without falling into the trap of weight gain, sugar crashes, and poor choices? Sticking to a healthy plan is important. However, depriving yourself of certain foods can have negative results. Restrictive eating can lead to binge eating as well as disliking healthy foods by associating them with something you ‘have’ to do. When it’s time to pile food on your plate, eat what you know you love, guilt free, but keep this advice in mind:

If smaller plates are an option, use them. You’ll fill larger plates just because room is available. Second trips are better than overeating on the first round.
If you’re trying something new, only take a bite-size portion.
Eat a snack before you arrive so you aren’t at the onset of the feast.
You fall in love with your Aunt’s new dessert and even though you’re too full to enjoy it, you’re tempted to have a second portion. Instead of grabbing the last bite in fear of not eating it again until next year, ask her to email the recipe out to the whole family for those who can’t wait another year.

Maintain an Exercise Plan

Holiday gatherings often consist of sitting, eating, talking, drinking, and more eating. We often find ourselves sitting for longer periods of time because we enjoy the conversation. Your legs want to move, the food is on the counter, and off you go for food you’re not even hungry for.

This year, try some of these actions with the family to reduce the march to the kitchen:

Go for a 5-10 minute walk after each meal to aid digestion. Increase that walk to 15 minutes after every meal to help lower blood sugar levels, especially after eating holiday sweets. You may be surprised at those who will join you for your walk!
Run/walk the stairs in your home.
Organize a family yoga session, check out YouTube sessions’.
Go for a family hike.
Bring a board game to the family feast. Although you’re still sitting, this can provide some excitement and victory movement. Plus, it’ better than just eating.
Shovel snow
Ice skate
Make snow angels
Dance to Christmas music
Walk the neighborhood or mall to see the holiday decorations.

Stress and fatigue are often unwelcome guests during the holiday season. Stress might join you while cooking a holiday meal, decorating your house in preparation for a party, or shopping at a crowded mall. It can manifest as aches and pains, prevent you from sleeping through the night, and dampen your spirits during the holidays. You can beat back stress, and the inevitable fatigue it causes on your body.

Focus on the Positive – bring your attention to the experiences you most enjoy about the holidays. Try going into each holiday gathering or interaction with a positive and loving intention. It’s easier to maintain a positive attitude when you arrive in that mental state.

Spend Time Outdoors in Nature – spending time outdoors in nature can help enhance mental clarity, energize your mind and body, and connect you to your loved ones as well as the environment.

Let Go of the Past – pretend you are a newcomer to your own family. Approach them with curiosity and excitement. Forget past transgressions, arguments, tears. You are not condoning past wrongs by letting them go; you are just saying they cannot hurt you anymore.

Take Time for Yourself – the holidays can be a time when we put everyone else’s needs first. It’s easy to lose yourself in the chaos of the season. Take some time to reflect on what practices you do to keep you balanced and peaceful throughout the year and make sure to adhere to them when things get crazy.

Stay in the Present – what is the best gift you could give to yourself and others at your holiday gathering? Being present. Cultivate appreciation for your friends and family in your life at the moment.

Hold realistic Expectations – if you become frustrated that the holidays aren’t going according to plan, remember there is no such thing as a perfect family or perfect holiday. What can you learn and how can you grow from your family?

Maintain Your Routine – as much as possible, maintain your typical sleeping, eating, and exercise schedules. Your vitality can be weakened by changes in routine, which can lead to feelings of anxiety or irritation.

Make Clear Requests – your friends and family won’t know what’s important to you unless you voice it. Clearly stating your needs can help to reduce holiday stress and develop closer family ties.

Practice Gratitude – gratitude is a powerful force that you can use to expand your happiness, improve your health, and – you guessed it – help you cope with stress. Organize a time when your family sits down to share what they love about the holidays, or about individual members of the family.

Say Cheese – no one can deny the mind-body connection. So, it you’re looking for a way out of stress, you’ll need to smile more. Organize a family photo shoot or make sure to have your camera on-hand when everyone first arrives to the holiday meal, gathering, or party. Capture those first hugs, ask for the best grins, and snap all those treasured moments. You can revisit them mid-year to remember how great the holidays can actually be.

Make Restful Sleep a Priority – good quality rest is one of the pillars of healthy living. In rhythm with the sun going down and birds flocking to their nests, we should also go to sleep early, ideally before 10pm. If you are a late riser, try shifting your bedtime closer to 10pm by 15 minutes per night. This will give you the time to enjoy nature’s early morning calm, ever-more important during the stressful holiday season.

The Secret to making your holiday inspiring is actually quite simple. Be inspiring yourself. As with any change, you must be the change you want to see in others.

All of us at ELM Mental Wellness wish you and your family a Safe, Happy, Inspiring Holiday Season!