2009 October Archive at themojocoach.com

Archive for October, 2009

Why You Might Not Want to Lose Weight

Published on October 25, 2009 in General. 2 Comments

In the last post I shared some simple weight loss math:

3500 Calories = 1 pound of fat

10 minutes of aerobic activity = about 100 calories burned

500 calories less (through changes in eating or exercise) per day = 1 pound lost per week

When it is all spelled out like that, it seems so easy and straightforward, doesn’t it? But we all know it isn’t quite that simple. Because making it all happen consistently - the exercise, the healthy eating - is hard!

Have you ever wondered why you lose weight, only to sabotage yourself and put the weight right back on? Before you get angry, frustrated and discouraged with yourself, give yourself some compassion because here may be a few reasons why you’re doing it.

While you may think it’s natural to want to lose excess weight, have you ever thought of what those extra pounds may be providing? Many people, whether they realize it or not, keep weight on…on purpose. There are many reasons for this.

1) Weight can provide a protective barrier - Remember when you used to hide behind your mom’s leg when you were scared? You may be using the excess weight to provide that same protection for you now. Maybe there are reasons why looking or feeling sexy or attractive brings about fear or discomfort for you, so keeping the weight on prevents those uncomfortable feelings from arising.

2) Being overweight is comfortable - Another reason you may keep weight on is because you’re unsure or uncomfortable with the expectations that may be placed on you with a new, fit, sexy body. At your current weight, you know what’s expected of you and there’s a sense of familiarity with it all. These feelings may be easier to deal with than the discomfort of the unknown; even if what’s familiar is being overweight and unhappy.

3) Partners in crime - Still another reason you may be keeping weight on may involve a partner. Maybe eating together is a connection you both have or cooking together is an activity you both share. Rather than risk breaking that bond, you continue the activity and habits you’ve developed to maintain that connection.

4) Being attractive could be a threat - Yet another reason may have to do with the threat a partner may feel if your weight loss means more attention from the opposite sex, higher self esteem and a greater sense of self confidence. Perhaps your spouse or partner is insecure, jealous and feels threatened by what your new look and improved self confidence may bring. Instead of working through those issues, many women find it’s easier to keep the weight on to avoid “rocking the boat” with their partner.

5) Habits are hard to break - Another reason we may keep the weight on has to do with your habits. You may eat the same foods, at the same times, in the same places from day to day. These habits you’ve created are now deeply ingrained within you; they’re a habitual part of your daily routine. For example, maybe you’ve grown used to skipping breakfast, grabbing a fast food lunch, coming home to eat a big dinner and relaxing in front of the TV at the end of a long day with a bag of potato chips. While these habits may be familiar, they can play a significant role in keeping extra weight on.

I’ve worked with many moms who’ve lost weight, then find a way to sabotage their weight loss efforts and quickly gain it right back. While often it’s a question of creating healthier habits to get the weight off once and for all, sometimes it’s important to dig deep and see if there’s a reason why you’ve been intentionally keeping the weight on. Of course, if you discover something too difficult to work through alone, you may need to get additional support.

Just because something has been a certain way for a while, doesn’t mean it has to stay that way if it doesn’t work for you anymore. You can make any change to your thoughts, actions and habits in order to slowly and gently discover your best self. It starts with awareness and the desire to change something that’s not working for you.

Do you have a story about how you have found a way to overcome obstacles in your life or relationships to move along the path to a healthier life? If so, I would love to hear about it! Please leave a comment below or send an e-mail to Debi (at) themojocoach.com.

Burning it up - Aerobic and Cardiovascular Exercise

Published on October 19, 2009 in General. 2 Comments

What is aerobic exercise?

In a nutshell, aerobic exercise is the type of sustained activity where you engage the large muscles of your body (legs and gluts) for a prolonged period of time. Aerobic exercise increases the need to oxygen that allows these muscles to perform, helps to flush toxins out of the bloodstream, increases your metabolism, and strengthens the heart and lungs. Aerobic activity also requires sustained energy in the form of calories that are used to fuel your workout. Calories stoke the aerobic flame as wood or coal stokes a furnace.

Calories expended = pounds lost. My favorite kind of math!

Math actually isn’t my favorite, but here are a couple of simple formulas for you.

3500 Calories = 1 Pound of body fat

500 Calories Less per Day X 7 Days = 1 Pound of body fat lost per week

Now that you know that math, there are a couple of ways you could go about this (and no, saying that’s too much and giving up is not one of them).

1) Burn 500 calories per day with exercise. You burn about 100 calories every ten minutes of sustained aerobic activity when exercising at a challenging level, so a 50 minute aerobic workout each day would burn the 500 calories. If that sound likes too much for some of you, here’s another option.

2) Burn 250 calories per day with exercise and eat 250 calories less each day.

The bottom line is, if you burn or expend more calories than you take in, you lose weight. If you take in more calories than you burn, you gain.

Knowing these numbers can also help clear up some issues about being discouraged with only a one or two pound weight loss each week. Two pounds is 7000 calories!! That’s a tremendous amount of calories to eliminate through less food or more activity.

The recommended daily intake of calories for the average woman ranges anywhere from 1500 to 2200 calories per day. So, don’t minimize your accomplishments, remember you’ve either burned or given up a lot of calories to lost a pound of fat!

When it comes to the appropriate type of aerobic activity for you, it’s a completely personal decision. One mom may love to walk, another may love to run, another may love to dance, hike, use the elliptical machine, swim, bike, or hit the courts for an hour of tennis. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you a) choose something you enjoy and b) DO IT!

If you find your aerobic exercise torturous, you’ll hardly look forward to it. But if you find it invigorating, rejuvenating, and inspiring - mark my words, you’ll miss it when you can’t do it!

You may be the type of person who becomes easily bored with routine. If that’s the case, mix things up a bit and discover a few different activities you enjoy. Try an organized sport that keeps you moving, or change your pace between high and low intensity while alternating between walking, jogging or running. You can build a library of fun exercise DVDs or take classes at a nearby health club. Maybe you want to go back to doing something you enjoyed before you had kids like jumping rope or rollerblading.

I’ll tell you a quick story.

When I was sixteen years old, I had my heart set on my first car, but I had no money to buy it. It was a fire-engine red Triumph TR7 with a pull-down sunroof. (I haven’t seen these cars on the road in years!) I wanted the car and needed to find a way to earn enough money to buy it.

I found a job at a nearby, fancy country club where I worked as a pool waitress during the day and a hostess in the main dining room at night. Since I didn’t have the car (yet) I had no transportation and needed to get to work, so I found an easy way to get there. I roller skated!

Imagine this picture: I’m wearing a white uniform with my black apron tied around my waist, and I’m roller skating to work in my skates with the hot pink wheels! Anyone who saw me got a good chuckle from the sight, but I was in great shape, resourceful, and earned enough money to buy the hottest car in my high school!

I told my kids this story, and after they told me how weird I was, I informed them that I was going to try skating again and anyone who wants to join me was welcome to. I gave my old skates away, but found roller derby skates that are similar to the ones I had before. Many falls and many laughs later, Disco Debi is back skating along to the same seventies music I enjoyed 25 years ago.

So find something that gets you moving that you enjoy. And then get out there and burn it up!

Ready, Set….Slow.

Published on October 12, 2009 in General. 1 Comment

When it comes to lasting weight loss, slow and steady wins the race.

Although many people take on the latest diet program, quick fix or promise of immediate results, most only find themselves right back where they started in a relatively short period of time. In fact, most people who take drastic measures to lose weight not only gain back what they lost, but gain even more leaving them more discouraged and frustrated with each attempt.

Why do we continue to put our time, effort and energy into the “quick fix” and why doesn’t it work?

Dieting doesn’t work for many reasons. The first reason is that drastic steps are temporary…at best. It isn’t realistic to commit into a 7-day-a-week exercise program if we haven’t been exercising at all or to think that we can drastically reduce our calories for the long term if we have many eating behaviors that caused the weight gain in the first place. If the changes we make can’t comfortably be worked into our day, our routine, our lifestyles and our lives, whatever we take on isn’t likely to continue. We may be able to commit to an overhaul in food choices or eating behaviors for a short while but when confronted with something that triggers us to overeat or abandon our best efforts, we will immediately go back to what is familiar and comfortable.

What is familiar and comfortable? Our habits. Whether they’re good or bad they’re what we’re comfortable with. That’s why when we want to lose weight those habits which originally caused the weight gain must be changed. We’ve all heard the saying “habits are hard to break” and because that’s true, a slow and steady approach needs to be used to develop new, healthier habits to replace the old, unhealthy ones.

So how do we break the habits which lead us to gain weight?

One thing we need to look at is our “diet mentality.” For many moms, we’re either on or off a diet at any given time. If we have that “all or nothing” or “black or white” extreme behavior when it comes to weight loss, there’s no room for error and no way to recover from any mistakes made along the way. If the road to weight loss doesn’t allow for some imperfection, it is unrealistic to think that we can stick it out for the long haul.

Life throws us some curveballs from time to time, that’s a given. How we handle those curveballs may require some adjustments to our eating plan. If our eating plan doesn’t allow for those adjustments, where does that leave us?

It leaves us right off our diet. Angry, frustrated and discouraged, we revert right back to what is so deeply ingrained within us. Any progress made is abandoned and for many moms, here’s where the negative self talk takes us even further away from believing weight loss success is possible as we berate ourselves with every bite of foods we’ve sworn off for good. So, if this sounds so familiar and you’ve had enough of “yo-yo dieting”, weight cycling and diet behavior, what can you do?

1) Understand that each time you start an unrealistic diet, you chip away at your confidence and belief in your ability that you can lose weight. The more you chip away at that confidence, the less you trust yourself and the more powerless you become.

2) Understand that although it doesn’t sound as appealing as a “miracle cure” or “immediate solution”, weight loss is a journey. The more you discover why you gained the weight and understand that your habits can and need to be changed, the more weight loss success you’ll have.

3) Focus on the fact that each habit you change serves as a stepping stone to greater confidence, trust and belief in yourself. When we isolate a habit we want to change, put our efforts into finding a solution to turn that habit into one that better suits us, we feel proud and happy with our ability to take control of our eating and our behavior. That simply feels good and enables us to see that our choices and decisions are within our control. It brings about a feeling of strength and empowerment as well as increases our confidence and self esteem.

When we feel confident, strong and empowered, we’re proud of ourselves and realize that anything is within our grasp. While it may be more exciting to believe that drastic efforts bring huge results, when it comes to weight loss, the greatest results are found by making the most minimal…but consistent changes.