Podcast

MYST 199: Holiday Survival Guide

When people are on a weight loss journey, the winter holiday season is often viewed as a gauntlet of slow death. Oh, the parties and food are wonderful, but the bathroom scale often reflects gains and as a result, feelings of self-recrimination, despair, guilt, and depression pollute the underlying mood of the season.

I have one piece of advice:

STOP IT!

Yes, you actually are in control of your emotions. You are letting a few days of the year wreck all the positive progress from earlier in the year, and set you off with a negative mindset as you enter the new year. That is a plan for disaster. (And you know I’m right, because you’ve done that in the past.)

Ignore those parties. Or rather, enjoy them! Spend time with your friends and family. Eat! Drink! (Don’t drink and drive.) And stop worrying about those few days. The reality is that you probably have between five and ten events between the US Thanksgiving and New Year’s where you are likely to exceed your calorie budget.

That’s it. Just five or ten meals. If you eat three meals a day, you eat 1,095 meals a year. Are you really going to let ten meals (mathematically, that is 0.9% of all the meals in a year) turn you into an emotional and dietary wreck?

I hope not. It’s not the smart option.

What you should do is to do as I always say: eat the foods you really love and try to eat controlled portions. If you exceed your budget, don’t sweat it. This is a lifelong journey. We need to be able to have fun while still making progress towards our goals.

Not my Christmas meal, but doesn’t that look appealing?

I hope you have a safe, happy and wonderful holiday season! And come back next week for episode 200!

You can enjoy this and still reach your weight loss goals!

Photos via Pixabay, but Wirdefalks (Chrismas Dinner), and Couleur (Champagne)

All photos published on Pixabay can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and non-commercial purposes.

_________________________

Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen.

MYST 198: I Feel Guilty

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In this holiday season, many of us tend to eat more than might be optimal. I posted on my LoseIt page about my upcoming Christmas Dinner and a friend named Gordon responded with “Enjoy….no guilt!”

And I thought, “I never feel guilty about what I choose to eat.” And why should we feel guilty? It is our choice to eat (or not eat.) No one else sets the rules about our dietary choices. We aren’t breaking any laws, other than the laws we impose upon ourselves.

If we choose to eat too many calories (or maybe the “wrong food”, although I disagree with that concept), we are making a choice. And with every choice comes consequences. If we choose to stick to our budget, we enhance weight loss. If we choose to exceed our calorie budget, we will slow our losses (but only temporarily, unless we never get back on track–which is another choice!)

Try to remove the guilt from our already-too-difficult-journey. Make sensible choices. Eat the food you love, but strive to eat the correct portions.

Enjoy life! Don’t put yourself into an emotional prison, with walls and bars constructed of your own guilt.

The choice is yours!

You are NOT guilty when you make a choice!
Don’t put yourself in a prison of your own making.

Photos via Pixabay, but TryJimmy (Prison Cell) and Geralt (Guilty)

All photos published on Pixabay can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and non-commercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible.

_________________________

Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen.

MYST 196 Trained Fleas

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We trap ourselves with our beliefs. We let our previous stumbles define our total capabilities. Weight loss is hard, and it never ends. We sometimes find ourselves stepping on the scale and seeing a number that our mind says “Nope! That’s it! We can’t lose more!”

And you don’t lose more.

You have reached your limit, based on your previous limits. You are now a trained flea.

I know I should have used a picture of a flea since that is the topic of this episode, but those are disgusting little blood-suckers!

Break that training. We need to redefine our goals and not stop until we get them, even if “not stopping” means we take purposeful pauses.

I don’t know how many pounds you want to lose, but let’s break past your previous training. Let’s stop being trained fleas. Reset your goal for 10 pounds, and the rate of 1 pound a week.  You should reach that goal in 8-12 weeks (unless you are only 10 pounds away from your ideal weight.)

When you hit that 10-pound “interval goal”, set your plan to your maintenance budget, and stay on maintenance for as long as it took you to lose those 10 pounds. Keep active and don’t eat your exercise calories (you probably won’t need to  because your budget will be 500 calories more than you are used to.)

 

Work it. Push through the challenges.

After that “rest period” reset your goal for the next 10 pounds at 1 pound a week. Keep doing that until you reach your ultimate goal.

You may need to lose 100 pounds and that is a lot of weight. And deep in the recesses of your mind, you might hear a voice saying, “You can’t lose 100 pounds!” That voice might be right.

But you know that you can lose 10 pounds. That is a simple goal. You’ve probably done it several times. So now you are going to just lose 10 pounds at a time, taking a break between each 10-pound segment. No stress. No worries.

You KNOW you can lose 10 pounds! Even a trained flea can lose 10 pounds!

Photos via Pixabay by DougandPeteGardening (Believe) and 5182824 (Push-ups)

All photos published on Pixabay can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and non-commercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible.

_________________________

Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen.

MYST 195 Good Enough

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Are you good enough?

How about your weight? Is it “good enough”? Are you quitting?

“Good enough” implies that you are complacent now and that any further progress is not worth the effort. And if that’s the case, then just say “I’m done”. To do anything else is to play word games with yourself. You are better than that!

Now it may be that you have reached a point where success eludes you and you truly are satisfied at your current point. Then just say “I’m done. For now. I may restart later.” Our words define how we think, and our thoughts define who we become.

So. Are you “good enough”?

Photo via Unsplash by HelloImNik

All images from LoseIt are mine, and cannot be used without permission.

All photos published on Unsplash can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and noncommercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible.

_________________________

Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen.

MYST 193 Sharp Spikes

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Winning a race and setting a record does not happen by accident. Without the proper preparation, planning and the ability to choose the environment–and reject unhealthy environments–success will not happen. And even then, usually success only occurs after at least one failure.

Roger Bannister set a new record in the one-mile race on May 6, 1954, but only because he failed two years earlier and then he used what he learned to get better.

Racing spike photo via Wikimedia. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Woman stretching is via Pixabay by Skeeze.

My food log from September 30, 2018

All images from LoseIt are mine, and cannot be used without permission.

_________________________

Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen.

MYST 192: GIGO

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In this show, I am not talking about just any food, but food kryptonites. Those are food that will trigger a binge. These are foods that you truly cannot “eat just one” because once you start it as though someone opened the floodgates of hunger and you won’t stop eating until it is all gone or you become physically ill. (In my case, I am talking about potato chips. Or “crisps” if you are in the UK.)

If you have food in your home that causes uncontrolled cravings and temptations, the remedy is simple. Throw it away. Really. Pitch it in the garbage and then don’t buy it again.

But you probably will not do it. I know that there are two basic objections:

  1. You paid money for it and don’t want to throw money away
  2. Other people live in your home and you don’t want to be selfish.

Since you’ve already paid for it, the money is gone whether you eat it or throw it away. You don’t get a refund for eating it. You will only get fatter. So why eat it and unravel any success you may have achieved just because you’ve already spent money on food that is causing your problems?

The second objection is more difficult, but not really. Again, I’m not talking about all the food in your house (I hope!) but rather one specific food. Let’s assume your trigger is ice cream. And you live with others–maybe your significant other, or children or parents. And they like ice cream, too, but don’t struggle with it as you do.

Throw it away.

Be selfish, in the good context. Take care of yourself. We are talking about a food that is not vital to life. And we are not saying that you go to your local supermarket and demand that all ice cream be removed. Just get it out of the house. If your family members really want ice cream, they can go buy some for dessert. (And if they are unwilling to make a separate trip to buy it, they really didn’t want it too badly, did they?)

But here is a comparison. It is not a great comparison, but it will suffice.

Let’s make an assumption that you discover someone in your home has a bad drinking problem. It’s affecting their health, their job, and everyone’s life. Would you dump al the beer, wine and liquor in the home to help them?

I’d guess that you would.

Well, in my earlier example, ice cream is having a similar (albeit much slower) effect on you as the alcohol on your family member. As we gain weight and get older, we will become more of a burden on everyone around us. Obesity makes other diseases worse, and can actually cause diseases (heart disease and diabetes to name two.) If you would willingly give up all alcohol to help a family member with a disease, can’t you ask them to give up ice cream?

It’s not like they can never have ice cream, just as you could still go out for a wine after work. They just can’t bring large containers of ice cream home.

Like I said, it is not a totally equivalent comparison, but I think you understand my point.

Photo via Pixabay by Avantrend (Potato Chips) DanaTentis (Woman with Ice Cream), Geralt (Woman with Liquor Bottles)

All images and videos on Pixabay are released under the Creative Commons CC0. Thus, they may be used freely for almost any purpose – even commercially and in printed format. Attribution is appreciated, but not required.

September 26, 2018

All images from LoseIt are mine, and cannot be used without permission.

_________________________

Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen.

MYST 190 Weekends

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A great time to plan your weekend!

Photo via Pixabay by rawpixel

All images and videos on Pixabay are released under the Creative Commons CC0. Thus, they may be used freely for almost any purpose – even commercially and in printed format. Attribution is appreciated, but not required.

 

All images from LoseIt are mine, and cannot be used without permission.

_________________________

Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen.

MYST 189 Next Step

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What are you going to do when your current plan falters? Yes, of course, you can keep doing what you have been doing, but when that fails what will you add?

In episode 187 I talked about FOCUS (Follow One Course Until Successful–or Stagnant) and I believe that is the most basic action. Find a course of action that you can follow–and still enjoy life–and then ride that horse to the finish line (yes, I mixed a metaphor there.)

And in episode 188 I talked about KISS (Keep It Slow and Simple) by not adding complexities that make adherence to those rule overly difficult. When you combine those two episodes, you discover my true belief. Find ONE simple action to make a slow but steady improvement and don’t stop until you reach your goal.

But what happens when something unexpected adds a new twist to the problem? You need to have something planned for your next step. Mine? I am looking for a good but used rowing machine. Why that? Because it takes me back to my childhood, and memories of fishing on the lake in the morning with my father. It is a simple activity and takes no training. I can do it in my basement while listening to podcasts, or to music or to nothing more than the rhythm of the machine.

What is YOUR next step?

Photos via Pixabay by geralt

All images and videos on Pixabay are released under the Creative Commons CC0. Thus, they may be used freely for almost any purpose – even commercially and in printed format. Attribution is appreciated, but not required.

My LoseIt Food Journal for Sept 15, 2018

Photos via Pixabay by ger

All images and videos on Pixabay are released under the Creative Commons CC0. Thus, they may be used freely for almost any purpose – even commercially and in printed format. Attribution is appreciated, but not required.

All images from LoseIt are mine, and cannot be used without permission.

_________________________

Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen.

MYST 188: K.I.S.S.

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A great image, but not the KISS I’m talking about.

KISS: Keep it Slow and Simple

Success requires changes in actions and attitudes, and not all changes are simple. When you choose a plan–for a weight loss goal or any other goal–if the plan is complex, it is more likely to break down. Compare a boiled egg with a basic souffle. Each recipe uses the same ingredients (eggs) but the souffle has very specific instructions that must be precisely followed for success. If you miss a single step, the end result will not be what you want.

Weight loss is similar. Weight loss is built on the idea that the person burns more calories than they eat (Calories In/Calories Out). That’s it. There is nothing else that forces excess fat to be burned.

But there are many methods to control CI/CO. You can change eating patterns. You can increase activity. Or you can do both. But if you make it too complex, it becomes more difficult to continue.

From September 13, 2018

Choose one simple change. Just one. You will make progress. Never quit!

This is what I’m talking about.

Photos via Pixabay by Skeeze (soldier) and CJ (tortoise)

All images and videos on Pixabay are released under the Creative Commons CC0. Thus, they may be used freely for almost any purpose – even commercially and in printed format. Attribution is appreciated, but not required.

All images from LoseIt are mine, and cannot be used without permission.

_________________________

Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a liste

MYST 187 F.O.C.U.S.

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This is not the focus I am talking about.
This isn’t the F.O.C.U.S. I mean, either.

Photos via Pixabay by Pexels (camera) and Skeeze (archery)

FOCUS: Follow one course until successful (or stagnant).

And in weight loss, “stagnant” does not mean “Oh, woe is me, I haven’t lost weight in two days”. It means no change in more than a month. (And “no change” is exactly that. If you’ve lost one pound over the past month, you may not have lost weight as fast as you want, but you are still making slow progress.)

Find a method you want to use. Stick with it. Don’t change after a few days simply because the weight is not magically disappearing as fast as you want. But if after a full month you have seen no progress, then it is time to make a change.

LoseIt Food Log from Sunday, Sept 9, 20918

I was about 80 calories OVER budget (ignoring Fitbit Adjustment) and yet, the next day I was one pound less. Why? My budget works, and I am shedding the excess water from the previous day.

All images from LoseIt are mine, and cannot be used without permission.

_________________________

Music composed and performed by Jason Shaw, courtesy of Audionautix.com

Voiceover courtesy of Matt Young. Matt is a professional voiceover artist. If you have any need of voice-over work, for your podcast, radio spot, or whatever, you can reach Matt by a variety of methods. He is on LinkedIn. On Twitter. And Google+. Follow his Facebook page to learn how to better use social media. Matt was also my guest on MYST 54. Give his story a listen!