**there will be a blog post added eventually to this in the future so please watch the video for now and comment below with any thoughts or questions.**

It’s been a rough couple of days.

The situation with my friend got worse yesterday. To make a long story short and to save you from the boring details, she had given me some feedback about me that I didn’t like. The content of the conversation isn’t as important as how I was left feeling. A lot of shame, judgment and self-doubt came up.  SHAME is a huge emotion that seems to have a strong hold once it comes up. And it’s one that I tend to eat and eat and eat on top of. 

When taking a bird’s eye view of the situation, I really don’t have anything to be ashamed of so I think this presence of shame is old. It’s an old pattern that stems from my childhood about me not being good enough and not doing things perfectly. I never thought I was the perfectionist type and I don’t think that I am on the outside but when sitting with these feelings for the past 24 hours or so I think that I approach how I relate to myself with  perfectionist expectations. I would never relate to anyone like this especially someone I cared deeply for so why am I so mean to myself? (Crying).

It feels so confining. This feeling is what makes me stay stagnant. I don’t want to try anything new, go beyond my comfort zone, go for what I REALLY want, be vulnerable, put myself “out there” for partnership, release weight…whatever the new challenge is I don’t want to do it for fear that I will fail. I’ve learned that it’s much easier for me to think/believe that I can be successful at whatever I put my mind to without actually having to try and test that belief. I really do believe this but I have spent much of my life stuck thinking this rather than actually living it and I think a big part of this is because of my perfectionist expectation of myself. YUCK! I even hate the word!

So, I have more work to do. I’ve got some serious self-forgiving to get moving on.

Yesterday was tough. I ate and ate and ate and ate. And I ate crap. Chocolate, candy, carbs. I felt like shit at the end of the day.

But today is a new day…

I promised JJ that I would be coachable. I would do everything she said even when I didn’t feel like it and I will keep my word to her.  So, I’ve been listening to my hypnosis sessions from the “6 Week Beach Body Program” and even with the current stress in my life I have slept like a friggin’ rock the past two nights! I don’t know what’s up with that woman’s voice but she starts talking and I’m out like a trout and I stay asleep all night.  I haven’t even stayed awake through the end of the session yet. I really hope that I’m not going to start clucking like a chicken or something because who knows what she ways saying to my subconscious mind! LOL!!!!! In all seriousness, if you have trouble sleeping, get going on this hypnosis stuff. It works!

And today I start my “6 Week Beach Body Program Detox.” Which means no coffee.  Oy. And I think I’m PMSing. I sure hope I don’t kill someone this week.

I am looking forward to feeling better and healing on all levels. Starting my gym workouts again tonight too.

Detox Day 1: 277 pounds.

On the dating front (this is the part that makes me sick to my stomach). Met another nice guy through eHarmony. We finally got to the point in the process where we can email each other on our own. I feel like we’ve been dating for 6 months because it takes so damn long to get through all of those steps! Geesh! Anyway, I found out his last name so, in true “times of technology” fashion, I Googled him and what I found, or potentially found was horrifying.

A man with the same first and last name and middle initial and same career but different part of the country had been brought up on animal cruelty charges for kicking and killing a dog. THIS IS MY WORST NIGHTMARE. I wanted to throw up when I saw this story pop up.  And if you don’t know me the one thing you would know within 5 minutes of meeting ms is that I’m the crazy dog lady. I love animals more than humans! (Issues? We’ll re-visit this another time)

So, I have a feeling it’s the same guy but I didn’t want to make any assumptions so I just sent him an email asking if he had practiced in this specific part of the country last year. We’ll see. If it’s him I will NOT be able to move forward with things even if he was protecting his dog from another. I just can’t be with someone with that much anger that they would kick a dog that hard to create a blood clot and kill it.  I hope I’m wrong on this one.

So, I’m feeling, once again, beat down on the dating front BUT I will stay true to my commitment and continue kissing toads until one of them surprises me by being a prince.  Someone had given me great feedback on this blog suggesting that I should stay open to dating but not make it the main forefront of where I put my energy. I think she’s exactly right.

In “Fit 2 Love” people tell amazing, transformational stories about how they prepared themselves for partnership and how the partner then showed up. Some of the stories are truly miraculous and inspirational. The common theme to all of them was to be the person that I want to be in relationship with.  That’s a challenge that excites me because the person that I want to be with has similar values but lives a much more active lifestyle. I guess I need to get into action!

So, here I go. I continue to forge on.

More to come…

Last night I found myself getting angry because of a conversation I had with a friend of mine.  It brought up many judgments about myself and I started question who I was, what I stood for and how I communicated with people.  Basically it brought forward a lot of self-doubt.

Did I workout? No.

Did I call a friend for support? Nope.

Did I journal my feelings? Hello no.

I’m embarrassed to say that my OLD patterns kicked right in and I found myself at 7-11 at 9pm purchasing a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.  I came home, turned on the TV and dug in. And, it did its job.  The thoughts and feelings quickly dissipated and were gone by the time my spoon hit the bottom of the cardboard carton.

Truthfully for the past week my eating has been sliding. I found myself not being as aware of what I was putting into my mouth and I was making choices that were not the healthiest.  I also haven’t been working out as much.

I woke up today in a total food hangover. I woke up angry, cranky, tired, pessimistic (I’ll never find a man…blah, blah, blah) and feeling uber lazy.  When I wake feeling this way, I know to check two things: 1. What have I been eating? 2. How much am I exercising?  Lately it’s been too much food and not enough movement.

So, I reach out to all of you to publically disclose this and to re-commit to myself.  I did read JJ’s book, “Fit 2 Love.” It’s a GREAT book! And I am now embarking on starting on the workbook that accompanies it. I’ll be starting a cleanse this week (oy, I hope I’m not a total bitch during the cleanse…LOL!).  So, hopefully, I will turn this around.

I’m just amazed at how I can be so convinced that I won’t revert to old patterns and then find myself at 7-11 on a food binge.

I’ve learned that the old patterns are never truly gone but just may be dormant for a time but they’re always there waiting in the wings. So, what there is to do is to just continue to practicing new ways of being with food, exercise and my thoughts about myself.  The more I practice this, the stronger that muscle will be and hopefully the old ways will get weaker and weaker over time.

Although painful, I appreciate these oh-so-human moments that remind me to not get too cocky and that I need to stay looking forward, not backward and working my new ways of being.

Yes, that’s my confession.

If any of you were watching me however, you would not have noticed.  Here is what I did.  I made gluten free pasta for lunch and added some pesto, a chopped up heirloom tomato and 2-3 tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese.

That’s not all.

Then I finished this gluten free pecan crusted, cream cheese frosted homemade buttermilk spice cake.  I had made 2 gluten free homemade cakes for Labor Day (yes I even made the buttermilk!) and the WORSE thing I could do is keep them in the house.

It’s not often I get to have a gluten free cake.  So when it’s here, it CALLS TO ME.  I know you can relate.

Well here’s the catch.  Food PORTION wise, I didn’t really overeat.  Food CHOICE, I had way too many carbs coming from starch. But the thing that disturbs me the most is that I ate it to FEEL better.

Life has been tough recently and the stress got to me.  I caved.  I am so bummed.

But the reason I am sharing it is because I know you go through it too. Maybe more often than you’d like to admit.  And the fact that I have not “emotionally ate” in SO LONG brought me back to feeling powerless, sad and worried.  And now I can relate to what many people go through every day.

Ok so I had a bad day.  With cake in the house for a week, I didn’t have a really great week but I ate it in moderation and usually the cake was the only starch of the day.  The point is IT HAPPENED, IT’S OVER, TIME TO LEARN FROM IT AND MOVE ON.

Then last week I read WOMEN FOOD AND GOD and it reminded me of how I felt the week before.

Shit happens (sorry there is no better way to say this) and you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep going.  I did not use my bad day as an excuse to get down on myself and repeat the pattern.

I love myself and I care about my health and the state of my emotional health.  I know you care about yours too.  The trick is to tap into that when things are crazy and emotions are high.  Eating won’t fix it.  Drinking, drugs, TV, and working too much won’t make it go away either.  Face the fear, sit with it, yell at it, cry, scream and do whatever you have to.  Once you are IN IT,  you will see that the emotion might just pass, just like a storm.

No matter how many storms you may have come your way, I trust you can use your umbrella and dig down to your soul, the part of you that loves you, supports you and KNOWS you are stronger, smarter and bigger than anything you might be dealing with right now.

Eat the cake.  Then throw the rest out and start a new day.  If I can do it, so can you.

Since our 6 Week Beach Body Program uses MIND TOOLS such as EFT, hypnosis and meditation, I wanted to share with you WHY and HOW you can lose weight by changing the way you THINK.

For some of you , the idea of hypnosis is being told to act like a chicken.  Wrong.

This article was written by Susan French, C.Ht.

Hypnosis is a powerful tool but exactly HOW does it work? The real magic is that hypnosis works as both a “magic wand” and as a “snowball gathering snow.”

Let’s take a look at each separately and then how they work together.

The magic-wand effect is when you have a hypnosis session and your issue is solved instantly and without further effort. Magic!

The snowball effect is what you experience with several hypnosis sessions, in which each session reinforces and enhances the relief created by previous sessions.

The reality is that both effects create permanent change. Hypnosis creates the initial change. Reinforcement ensures that the change lasts.

Reinforcement occurs when you regularly use a reinforcement CD made by your hypnotherapist, induce self-hypnosis, or through continued subsequent sessions with your hypnotherapist. Your hypnotherapist guides you in creating the initial change and reinforcing it, thereby accomplishing your goal of permanent, positive change.

Now, let’s look at it a little more closely.

We use hypnosis to change responses and behaviors. All responses and behaviors are learned. All that hypnosis really does is cause very rapid learning (or relearning) to take place so that new responses and behaviors become automatic.

Hypnosis allows this rapid learning to occur by interrupting the conscious, critical factor of the mind/brain. For reasons of survival, the critical factor of the mind/brain slows down the learning process. However, when those initial survival reasons are no longer necessary, it makes sense to interrupt or bypass the critical factor, which is precisely what hypnosis does – painlessly, safely, and effectively.

We know that no learning is INSTANT. You didn’t learn to ride a bike instantly. You didn’t learn to speak instantly. You didn’t learn to read or write instantly. You were taught the initial ideas and methods and those ideas were repeatedly reinforced until they become automatic.

Hypnosis allows that learning or relearning to happen more rapidly. However, as with any learning process, it needs to be reinforced. Thus, hypnosis is both a “magic wand” and a “snowball gathering snow.”

Let’s take a look at Joanna’s experience to get a better idea of exactly how hypnosis DOES work:

Joanna was sitting in the waiting room at the Hypnosis Motivation Institute. She was waiting for her first hypnotherapy appointment. She was desperate to lose weight. She had lost and gained at least three hundred pounds in her thirty-two years. Now, here she was, seventy pounds overweight again. She had tried everything.

She had heard some say that hypnosis could be like a magic wand. She had heard others say it didn’t work at all. Her best friend Martha had just lost fifty-five pounds using hypnosis. She said it was easy and it worked, but that Joanna would have to do her part too. Would it work for her?

If this reminds you of your own questions about weight loss and hypnosis, keep reading.

We can call the habit of overeating a food addiction, compulsive overeating, or a self-destructive habit. Whatever we call it, though, once that kind of behavior takes control, you will need to unlearn old, destructive behaviors and relearn new, constructive ones.

Joanna followed through with her hypnosis for weight loss. She learned the reasons she ate for comfort and she altered those behaviors. She learned that eating good, fueling foods were essential, and she incorporated those ideas into her daily life. She also learned that she needed to move her body more. Exercise became her oasis. It became her “me-time” every day.

Joanna lost her seventy pounds easily and happily and has maintained her new weight because she created a new relationship with food, with her body, and with life itself. That was five years ago.

Hypnosis makes the process of transforming counterproductive behaviors to productive behaviors easy, effective, and empowering. Any behavior that does not serve your goals and dreams can be changed using hypnosis.

Hypnosis accelerates your learning process so that what might have taken you twenty years to “learn” can be restructured in four to six sessions.

Hypnosis is being used in major medical institutions, such as, Harvard Medical School, UCLA, Stanford, Kaiser Permanente, Beth Israel Deaconness Hospital, and many burn centers, to ease pain, fear, and treatment [, and accelerate healing] for their patients.

Hypnosis is approved by, both, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) for Complementary and Alternative Medical Treatment and as an adjunct to traditional treatments.

The moral of this story is this: if you are wondering if hypnosis is a magic wand or a cumulative change response (snowball effect), it is both!

If all else has failed and you are ready and committed to achieving your goals, it is time to try hypnosis. It works!

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And that’s why we use it as the foundation for changing your MIND on the 6 Week Beach Body Program.  We want you to have long lasting change, not temporary results!   http://www.6weekbeachbody.com