**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.**

You want to lose weight.  So you clean up your diet and you start to exercise.  This sounds like a good plan.

But let me ask you- how did you get to where you are now?  Are you an emotional eater?  Are you someone who does not exercise regularly and lack motivation?

Many people start on a weight loss journey focused on temporary change.  “If I go on a diet, I can lose the weight”.  You have all heard this before.

But let’s look at from an attraction point of view.

If you focus on weight loss, you set up a resistance to food, exercise and a lifestyle change.  Because you are only focused on a number and not the behavior, the thoughts, or the feelings associated with the weight you gained.

As you clean up your diet and exercise more, you may lose the weight you want.  But because you never addressed the beliefs or feelings around how you live, eat and exercise, 9 times out of 10 you gain the weight back.

Problem #1: Temporary change.  You want fast weight loss, you change lots of things.  Then you feel deprived because it was too much change too soon, you consider it a diet and then you rebel and “celebrate” once you have reached your goal-which usually starts the habits and patterns that have you gain the weight right back.

Solution: Clean up your life, not just your diet.  Start to “think thin” like we do on our 6 Week Beach Body Program.  Download the 4 week plan of Fit 2 Love and REALLY do the exercises especially around the food.  Make one change every month so you make it part of your daily or weekly routine.  Post a comment on this blog so I can give you more specific action steps to implement into your life.  I AM a problem solver so let me help you!

Problem #2: Delaying your happiness.  “I’ll only be happy when I lose 10 pounds”.  This statement goes against your inner being and your higher self so your body and spirit say “ then you will never be happy “  and your body says “ if you can’t love me the way I am, then I am NOT changing for you!”  Your “then” never comes.  There is always something else.  You set yourself up to fail IMMEDIATELY and delay your happiness and results in the process.  Accepting yourself where you are, as you are, right now is the ONLY way to make a real shift.  Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time until you and your body go back to the exact state it was in before or worse.

Solution: Find appreciation with your body and health right now. When you do that, you release resistance and your body will shift ad change.  Your body will appreciate the love and positive attention and respond JUST like a person.  You can download the free Fit 2 Love 4 Week Plan and start changing your relationship with your body and practice being happy NOW.  Let’s face it, one of the only reasons you want to lose weight in the first place is because you THINK you will be happy once you get it.  So pretend you have it now and stop delaying the HAPPY PART!  It gets you no where to hold your ground of unhappiness.  You practice that and that’s what you are good at.  So when you get to “happy”, you might not stay there long because you are too good at “unhappy”.

**What you lose, you can find. Don’t concentrate on loss but on transformation and releasing.**

JJ Flizanes is the author of Fit 2 Love: How to Get Physically, Emotionally, and Spiritually Fit to Attract the Love of Your Life and Knack Absolute Abs: Routines for a Fit and Firm Core.  She was named best personal trainer in Los Angeles for 2007 by Elite Traveler Magazine and is the Director of Invisible Fitness. JJ’s passion is helping men and women get results with their body and love on the outside as well as the inside. View JJ on video on YouTube or visit her blog at http://www.jjflizanes.com.

This is an excerpt from my book, Fit 2 Love: How to Get Physically, Emotionally, and Spiritually Fit to Attract the Love of Your Life.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”                                  Virginia Woolf

We have lost touch with our relationship to food. With at least three opportunities every day to practice receiving the transfer of energy from our meals to our cells, eating has become a source of confusion and conflict, rather than a delightful pleasure. The lack of respect and abuse of food is one of the reasons why our health, as a culture, is rapidly declining. For some of us, the concept of doing anything except ordering in or going out seems like too much work. Our lives are too busy to slow down and prepare a home-cooked meal. Having a food love affair means having a deep, meaningful, respectful, and loving relationship to the food we put in our bodies.

In cultures throughout history, hunting, gathering, raising, and preparing foods was an honored and respected daily ritual. People were in tune with the abundance of each season and the different foods the earth provided throughout the year. Modern living has taken away the need of our attention to this. If you are looking for love, practice these principles with your food first. You have to create a love affair with food to attract the respect of your body and have success with health and weight management. To heal the obsession of dieting and calorie counting, you are going to treat food as your new lover, with whom you see the potential for a committed relationship. Rather than making food the enemy, you want to fall in love with food.

The Courtship

When you meet a man who interests you, the curiosity can be overwhelming. You want to know so many things: Who he is? Where he is from? What does he do for a living? How was he raised? Passion and excitement surround the quest for knowledge about this new person. It is an important step in finding the right partner. I want you to take a similar heightened interest in what you eat. Every day you fill your body with ingredients that make a huge impact on your health, state of mind, emotional well-being, and size of your waist. Take a look inside your refrigerator and kitchen cupboards and ask these questions: How did this get made? How does it affect my body? Where did it come from? Start to be more curious about seeking knowledge of the most vital relationship you already have—your diet. We take for granted what we consume everyday and how it impacts our lives. We are missing the spiritual connection to food.

Imagine you are looking at a red pepper. How does it affect your body? How was it grown? Did the farmers use pesticides on the plants? Was it just picked, or has it been sitting in a grocery store for a few weeks after being shipped from a warehouse? What’s the difference? I chose the red pepper because my husband and I have just started growing our own vegetables, and we have green and red bell peppers. Prior to planting a garden, we were regularly shopping at the local farmer’s market. At the last minute while preparing brunch for guests, I had the direct experience of comparing the shelf life of farm fresh veggies over the grocery store bought version. The store bought celery started to turn brown after two days, while the farmer’s market celery lasted for over two weeks. This confirmed my choice to go directly to the farmers to get my produce as often as possible.

The red bell pepper has many nutrients you want to know about. Studies have shown that red bell peppers have significantly higher levels of nutrients than green. Red bell peppers contain lycopene, which helps to protect against cancer and heart disease. They are a good source of vitamin C, vitamin B6, beta carotene, and folic acid. Peppers contain a large amount of phytochemicals that act as antioxidants to protect against cataracts, blood clot formation, and reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Sounds good, yes? Can you get more excited about eating a red bell pepper and all the wonderful things it can help your body do? If you find yourself more interested in the red pepper, this is good news. You are creating a love affair with food.

In my book, I cover a few more steps and ways in which we engage with food and how it can enhance different parts of our lives as well as our bodies.

I am doing a complimentary class on 3 of these stages at Whole Foods Market Redondo Beach.  Click here to get more info and learn how to register for these classes.

Just like your relationship to a person, food is no different.  Your relationship with food can always be improved and deepened for a more satisfying union!

Over the next year and a half, I proclaimed that I was NEVER (ha ha) giving up dairy because I loved my cheese and I was already gluten free.  That was in 2009.  In February of 2010, I decided I could give up dairy for 4 months to clean out my system and strengthen my digestive system.

Did you know that about 80% of your immunity comes from your digestive system?

Several nights a week I would experience congestion before bed so I knew it was something I was eating or drinking that was causing a problem.  After getting the results back of my Alcat test, I made a video to share all the products I picked up in order to substitute my favorite foods as an easy transition into a new diet.

After completing a few months of dairy free living, I added it back in.  It was no shock to have the congestion come back and I realized that maybe I need to remove it from my diet period.  When it comes to gluten, I rarely have it.  Maybe once every 6 weeks-but I plan for it.  I take some enzymes and usually have it while I am on my menstrual cycle because there are days I am more bloated anyway.

I still consume some dairy but I have cut down dramatically. Cheese was a part of my daily diet and would appear in often 2 meals a day.  Nowadays, I probably have cheese once a week.  The substitutions I made when I eliminated it for 4 months have stuck.  I use mostly coconut creamers, almond and coconut milk and buy hemp or coconut ice cream if I want some dairy-like dessert.   The products I have been using have become my favorite products and I honestly don’t miss the cheese.

My friends, before the wedding, would tell you that I was a cheese-a-holic.  And I clearly was not ready in 2009 to even consider it.  But as time went on, I realized that it is ONLY food and at the end of the day, my health and body are important to me.  I found some suitable substitutes and my palate has changed.  Thank god.

Growing a garden has been the best way to enter into a healthy marriage with my food- this reference is from the food chapter of Fit 2 Love: How to Get Physically, Emotionally, and Spiritually Fit to Attract the Love of Your Life.

Our garden is small and we don’t currently have enough planted to produce vegetables for lunch and dinner every day.  When we do, I get very excited about finding new ways to prepare what we are harvesting.  But right now we are in mid-season.  The eggplant is growing, the tomatoes are in process and the zucchini is starting to take off but none are ready to eat.

A few months ago, I was interviewed on film for a documentary about Raw Food.  The chapter in Fit 2 Love was a missing piece in the film about our relationship to what we consume and how to nurture a healthier relationship with food.

I consume raw products but I have always thought it was too hard and unrealistic to eat Raw 100% of the time.  But I have hit a point in my life where I love focusing on my food and I need a new goal!  Going raw for a week or two seems like the next step for me.

Here is the trailer for the movie, I am in frame 3:26. The Raw Natural Movie that is due out this summer!

http://www.therawnatural.com/

I have one or two people who are going to be doing this experiment with me.  If you’d like to join me, we start on Saturday July 30^th!

Mark your calendars because I will also be doing a 3 part class at the Whole Foods Redondo Beach in September to transform your relationship with food! Based on the Fit 2 Love principles, get your copy today and look for the emails about registering. The class is limited and it is FREE!

This past weekend we had a local church putting on a Greek Food Festival.  For those of you who do not know, I am Greek (and Italian).  I grew up in the Greek Church for 13 years and we also put on a food festival every year. So I know and love this food…..

However, it’s not gluten free and it’s mostly high fat, high calorie dishes.  So what did I do?

I planned for it!  ALL week long, I ate and exercised with the idea that I was going to be eating more than I normally do on Friday and Saturday evenings (and taking more digestive enzymes to help my body break down the gluten and dairy).  Each day I did about 45 minutes of cardio and kept my other meals small and clean.  I was super excited about enjoying my Greek food-I knew exactly where I wanted to “spend” my calories.

When we got there Friday night, I focused on only the foods I knew I loved.  Surprisingly, I was not very impressed with the way these foods were prepared. My mother is a great cook and I eat some of these foods every year anyway but the Greek Food Festivals of my past were legendary so you can imagine my disappointment when my taste buds were not singing after a few bits of each of my favorite dishes.

This was Friday night, the first day of the festival.  In my mind, I had planned to go Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  The good news here is that because I was not impressed, we could skip Sunday and I would be eating WAY less than planned on Saturday.

The one item they did very well were the Loukoumades- honey dipped fried dough balls.  Yes, I said fried dough.  I don’t eat many fried things but this food is part of my childhood and I remember helping the ladies put the dough into the oil when I was young and then soaking them in honey and sugar solution when they came out.  The last time I had one of these, I was in Greece in 2005.  Before that, it’s probably been at least ten years since I had one of these desserts.  Saturday morning, I made sure I got my butt on my spin bike for at least 45 minutes and I even jumped in the pool for a bit before we met our friends at the festival on Saturday to enjoy the second half of the day and early evening.

I want to outline a few key points about this past weekend, how I handled it and the lessons I hope to pass on to you.

1. I love and appreciate food. When it’s really important to me, I say yes to whatever it is and I plan for it (digestive enzymes)
2. I don’t want to gain any weight so I planned my meals and activity to balance out the indulgence I was planning to have. (45 minutes of cardio everyday and super clean, protein and veggie based meals before that with no starchy carbs)
3. Once I tasted the food I was so excited about and didn’t love it, I stopped eating it.  It wasn’t “worth it”
4. When I found something I could really enjoy, I ate only that and savored it.  I decided to enjoy the time with my friends, listen to the music and make the food festival NOT about food.

How you can use these points to make a difference in how you celebrate or occasionally indulge with your favorite foods. (think holidays)

1. In Fit 2 Love, I talk about a having a Food Love Affair.  A healthy relationship with food means you can appreciate it, enjoy it and have power over it- not the other way around.  In most cases where someone does not have a healthy relationship with food, my food festival weekend would have still continued and you may have continued to eat all the food even after realizing it was not as good as it “should” be or that you planned for.
2. Planning and thinking ahead- it takes less than 3 minutes to look ahead for the day or week to see where there may be outing, parties, or gaps of time where you will need to eat.  I often here people tell me they do not have time to think about their food but YOU DO ANYWAY!  We all eat…. So take an extra 3 minutes to plan it out in your head.  If you need help with this, ask!
3. “Is it worth it” is a phrase I teach all my clients.  If nothing else, ask yourself before you eat something that you think maybe you “shouldn’t”, IS IT WORTH IT?  If it’s not worth gaining weight over or not losing weight, then put it down.  In one respect, it’s only food.  You can replace it with different food.  If it IS worth it (in the case of the fried honey balls for me), then accept it and its consequences and PLAN.  I took my enzymes, I did my exercise.  So there is no guilt or problem.   I loved them and it’s OK.
4. Just because it’s there does not mean you are hungry or that you need it.  Someone people are so hypnotized by having food in front of them, they must think the food is yelling “EAT ME!”  Thanksgiving dinners are the prime example of overeating JUST BECAUSE it’s there.  I use to do it too but in the last 7 or 8 years, I have had a completely different relationship with holidays because I could hear my mind chatter and I changed it.  A habit is just a habit because you keep doing it and haven’t changed your internal conversation. You CAN change that internal conversation but first you have to be aware of what you are ALREADY saying to yourself.
5. Food Vs Exercise: THEY ARE BOTH IMPORTANT!

Results are in. After the first two weeks of JJ’s 6-Week Beach Body Cleanse I’ve lost 6 pounds! And that’s even “cheating” for two days of it! Doh!

Feeling much better today. Less tired. 

I was thinking about what I posted last night about how my moods have been much more level.  I attribute that to not eating as much (hardly any) sugar.  Even if I didn’t lose one pound but had the benefit of not feeling like I’m on an emotional roller coaster…THE CLEANSE WAS WORTH IT!!!!

My cravings have decreased immensely. I crave protein over sugar.  Still waiting for more energy to kick in but I think it’s that I still have over 100 pounds to lose and I work like a mad-dog. Long hours-LONG days!

Proud of myself.

So , tomorrow is the last day of my cleanse…thank God! It was easy in the beginning and then got harder toward the end because I grew very bored and hungry!

I do feel SO much better though, more emotionally stable, not so many ups and downs (as JJ likes to call my “drama”).   I feel lighter and I’m eager to see how much weight I have lost.  I wasn’t 100% good on the cleanse.  Mid-way through it brought up a lot of old stuff about dieting and restricting food.  This goes back to as early as around 11 years-old for me.  I remember being at a friend’s slumber party and we were given small cups of trail mix and there I was picking the M&M’s out of the trail mix because I was on a diet and couldn’t eat them.  Yuck. I hate that memory.  I was a kid! Eat the M&M’s at the slumber party for goodness sake!!!!

So, I had a couple of times where I ate, mostly over sadness, or out of boredom or out of rebellion or I was just plain hungry!

I will say, though, that these shakes that JJ has me on are FABULOUS! Even after the cleanse I’m going to continue to use them as my dinner because I get home so late in the evenings and they are so yummy and filling!

Things are generally good. I’ve starting my gym workouts again and I feel so much better already.  Exercising is the key for me to feel better all around.

On the dating front: NADA.  Mr. “almost was the dog killer” is nice but I’m not feeling the connection so I will continue to look.  I am focusing more on me becoming the person that I want to be in relationship with and that feels good.  It’s making me take more risks and be more active.

One day at a time. The weigh-in is tomorrow. Will check back then.

Just a quick check-in.  For me this detox has been tough.  I think that the detox of fruits, veggies and nuts would have been fine had I not had all of the additional stressors the past two days.  I’m PMSing so my body is craving meat meat meat! Like no one’s business and I’ve had major work stressors come up.

Oddly enough, I’m doin’ pretty damn good besides the fact that all of my co-workers looked like eggs because all I can think about is the hard boiled eggs that I get to eat tomorrow morning. Ok OK! I cheated and had two tonight! Geesh-you got it outta me!

That’s an interesting thing though that my cravings have shifted in, literally, less than 48 hours from that of sugary things to protein.  Good start!

I was so overwhelmed with stress that I finally did what JJ has been telling me to do which is step back and let some things go.  I realized that I can’t control everything and I  don’t know if it’s because I’m exhausted or what but I give! UNCLE!  Today I just let things go and released a lot. I can’t tell you how it happened or what I did to make it happen. Hypnosis?  It was just a thought and then my body followed and I felt much lighter.

On the dating front  HE IS NOT THE DOG KILLER! YEAAAA!!!!  We have been emailing and he says he’s going to call tomorrow. We’ll see.

Nighty-night.

This is the story of my life.  I know that I’m supposed to not take dating personally but not being liked because of my weight is A (if not THE) core issue in my life.

So, my dilema is this. I want someone to love me for me.  I’m afraid that when I lose my weight that I will get much more romantic attention, find a man and then be stuck with the fear of, “What if I gain weight? Will he still love me? Will he leave?” So, I’d almost rather find a partner while I’m fat because then I know he loves me for me. BUT I know that (and some of you may disagree) most people aren’t attracted to fat people.

That’s my belief that only comes from my personal experience. I’m not talking about someone you know but I am talking on pure attraction, first time meeting only, the first time two people lay eyes on each other. Initially, I don’t think that people (or most people) are attracted to fat.  I am fat and I am one of these people.  If I see a photo of a man who is over 100 pounds overweight I will not be attracted to him BUT if we begin to talk and he’s funny and smart then the attraction may begin to grow. But, let’s be honest, this is rare and in the online dating world there’s only a photo and a blurb.  

In the case with this boy it breaks my heart because I KNOW he was into me. I FELT it, he SAID it and after the fat disclosure I was left with NOTHING. NADA. ZIP. ZERO.

So sad that my personality doesn’t outweigh (pardon the pun) what I look like. I guess that begs the question, “Am I enough?” (More tears).

My friends and family always tell me how great I am and amazing and loving and loyal and that I would make a great partner and mom.  One good friend went so far as to say, “You’re doing a disservice to men by NOT dating.” That’s one of the “ah-ha moments” that got me back into the game.  After last night, feeling so crappy, what I realized is that all of the things that my friends and family tell me are true and I really do believe them but they know me in a completely different context.  They may not even see my fat anymore because they see so many other amazing things about me whereas, meeting or seeing someone for the first time, my fat could be ALL that they see.

So, I’m feeling stuck. Do I put dating on hold until I lose more weight? Do I continue to go for it and put  myself out there?  The walls aren’t back up but the construction crew has arrived and they’re ready to go-just waiting for my “ok”.  I guess I’m hangin’ on the sidelines—do I go fo the bench or get back in the game?

Help.

I got very excited about making a video and spent at least 2 hours doing it so I hope you enjoy it!

Inspired at all to starting growing OR cooking?

This is OUR first garden, I grew up in PA with a big garden as a child.  Some years, the garden would be filled with all kinds of vegetables that my father would grow and my mother would cook.

But that didn’t happen every year.

I moved out at 17, off to NY, and have been living in apartments ever since. It wasn’t until 2010 when my husband and I moved into our first “real” home that I have been able to enjoy a home grown garden again.

We STILL do not have a lot of room for a full garden but as you can see, we are making the best of what we have!  You can grow something in any situation.

Any even if you can’t grow it, you sure can buy it, pick it, order it AND cook it!

Let me know if there are any of the recipes from the pictures you see on the video that you would like.  Like a painter with a brush, I sort of do my “own thing” and taste as I go-I will do my best to write out what I remember doing if you want a recipe.

Creating a food love affair is step #3 in Fit 2 Love and one of the most important steps to healing your relationship with food.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” Virginia Woolf