Archive

Where are the Diet and Exercise Tips?

You might be wondering since I’m a weight loss coach and all, where are the diet and exercise tips? Where are the diet book recommendations and the newest exercises we should all be doing? Well, I can tell you I don’t plan on doing many “Top Ten Tips to Tighten Your Thighs” lists. You may notice I hardly talk about diet and exercise.

There are zillions of excellent nutrition and exercise resources out there and I will periodically share the ones I like. It’s just not the main point of what I do. Focusing solely on diet and exercise is focusing on the symptoms of the weight solely by trying to control what you eat and how you move. Don’t get me wrong, what you eat and how much you move are absolutely important. However, the critical component I focus on is the cause of the weight—the why’s.

Without looking at why the extra weight is on your body, losing weight is like trying to stop a flood. You stack sandbag after sandbag and hope you’ve stacked enough to keep the water (weight) from coming in. It’s a helpless position, you don’t know how much water is coming, when it may come and if it will be devastating this time. You just stack the sandbags in the form of dieting and exercise and hope it works.

Looking at the cause of the weight is like going upstream of the flood and discovering there’s a broken levy there. You’ve now discovered the cause of the flood. Once you repair the levy, you no longer have to frantically stack sandbags and white-knuckle it. You know the flood won’t come.

This is why I talk a lot about beliefs, thinking and feelings, because that’s where the cause of the weight can be found. It’s in the awful things we tell ourselves, the beliefs we have about food, weight and exercise, and even in what we believe about the world around us and the people in it. Those are the levies we need to repair. Once you do that work, eating and exercise are simply things we do to keep our body fueled and healthy.

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Now in complete contradiction of the above post, here’s an exercise tip just for fun. This one is courtesy of my friend and kind torturer Laura Robinson of 5Focus Wellness Studio here in Seattle.

• Lay on your back with your knees up, feet on the floor.
• Tie one of those stretchy-band things into a knot so it forms a circle.
• Put that bad boy right around your knees. (oh you may want to do that before you lay down, I suck at this!)
• Lift your butt up while keeping your head, shoulders and feet on the floor.
• Now move your feet out sideways stretching that band until your feet and knees are wider than shoulder-width apart.
• Now pulse your knees outward for 60 seconds or until your butt feels like it’s on fire, whichever comes first.

Enjoy!

Running

I was running this morning [Ed. note: You have to realize that I have never in my life before uttered this phrase unless it was followed with "from the cops" in my younger and wilder days. I am now a person who runs (or jogs slowly but let's not mince words).]

Anyway, I was running this morning and half way through I caught myself thinking “If I ran faster, I’ll be done quicker.” I wanted to hurry up and finish the run so I could accomplish that task and be done. Then I realized there were a couple of flaws in this thinking. One, it was highly likely that if I sped up, I would not actually finish the run–I would crap out before my goal of three miles. Interesting. Two, what am I running for? To be done? No. I’m running because I enjoy the feeling of being able to run (believe me, I would *not* be doing it if that were not the case). I like how strong my body feels while I run and that it’s just me and the music. It’s an awesome feeling, I just got some good juju writing about it.

It’s great to have a goal and work toward it; running this morning helped me realize it’s even better to reach a goal when you’ve enjoyed the ride.

Random Bonus
Here’s my playlist from this morning:
American Boy — Estelle Feat. Kanye West
Benny and The Jets — Elton John
Calabria 2007 — Enur
Barracuda — Heart
Black Betty — Ram Jam
Black Dog — Led Zepplin (recommended!)
Carry On Wayward Son — Kansas
Crazy On You — Heart
Shambala — Three Dog Night
Sir Duke — Stevie Wonder