Do you feel like you 'try so hard to eat healthy all day only to then ruin it in the evening'?
This would have to be one of the most common statements I hear so I want to shed some light on this. There is one massively hidden weight loss secret. It’s about fear. About our need for protection.
I talk about this a lot. A lot of my writing on here is about the mind set of people who believe they are overweight. And it's because it breaks my heart. This diet world we live in is being run by a billion dollar industry that makes its money from peoples insecurities. It has been estimated our subconscious mind is being directly targeted over a thousand times a day with messages reminding us we are not good enough through media, through advertising, through social media – everywhere we look. This phenomenally wealthy industry is leading us all to believe we must pay ridiculous amounts of money to ‘fix’ ourselves and to be better, because we are not okay as we are. Now, here is why this breaks my heart. All this invasive belief programming from society teaching us to never be okay with our body’s, especially if we are overweight, is creating a mind-consuming fear deep inside us that we are not good enough and need to improve. The very moment you harbour fear within yourself, and before you even consciously realise it, you are setting your body up for protection. Even a small amount of fear, the moment that becomes sensed inside you, you release stress hormones to deal with the threat. These hormones, adrenalin and cortisol, are your protection. Logically it makes sense: when we are afraid, we need protection. We are wired so precisely perfect that unfortunately in this modern world it has become a flaw. When our body is releasing cortisol – a stress response hormone – we cannot release body fat. We cannot burn it, it cannot use it for energy, it physiologically cannot come out of our fat stores. On top of that, cortisol is telling your body to slow down body mechanisms to encourage fat storage. You are literally training yourself to become a perfectly designed fat-storer. So this brings me to fear and protection. If you are being run daily on the fear you are not good enough, the only response to take place is your body needing protection – and it does that through fat storage. If you are working so incredibly hard to be better, look better or lose weight, but can’t budge any body fat…ask yourself what you are afraid of. Ask yourself why you want to lose weight. When you stop the fear, you stop the need for protection, and you no longer need to store body fat. Look inside yourself for the truth and stop your mind being programmed by these companies that need you to hate yourself to make money. You are worth so much more than being run by fear. Watching people try to out run fear is a hard thing to see. You can never out run fear. Fear will never, ever let you win. And I promise you this because I tried out running it for a very long time. You don’t ever beat it, you cant. You keep running and the fear keeps growing. The more fear you harbour, the more protection you need, so the more body fat you store. So please stop running aware from yourself. The moment you stop and look inside yourself to figure out who you really are, that is when you can truly start to fall in love with yourself. And love cancels out fear. You’ve got this, even when you don’t believe you have. Here’s to loving away the fear! Kerri van de Loo x The last article I posted explained about how weight loss is always the by-product to something else, something within our body that isn’t healthy, happy or just quite right. I want to further that, take it to the next step, because there’s another piece in the puzzle to weight loss that so many people ultimately are left feeling like a failure through. Once you have analysed your lifestyle, your health, your body and your emotional wellbeing to see what may be the ‘products’ that are causing the ‘by-product’ of weight gain, then the way you choose to go about changing these is so important, in fact more important than the actual changes themselves. The human mind is of such a vast complexity that it’s impossible to ever really understand everything about what it is capable of. This said, it has been proven beyond doubt that what we focus on is what we create. Our mind will analyse, want and crave what our thoughts are made up of. This little insignificant piece of science is what needs to create our path for achieving anything we want in life. Focus on something, bring it into the forefront of your mind, keep it there and that’s the direction you will take in life, for as long as those thoughts are your focus – be it career, fitness, sport, family or lifestyle. On top of this, we are driven by reward, and make one of two subconscious decisions – to gain pleasure or avoid pain. In decision making we are always drawn to the option that will give us pleasure or avoid us pain. If we apply this to weight loss, why then do we make the decision to lose weight by focusing on cutting out sugar, reducing saturated fats, halving our portion sizes, banning all takeaways and desserts, and all in the attempt to perfect our eating plan so we can lose weight? Through the way I have just explained the human mind, firstly we are drawn to what we focus on, and secondly we want to gain pleasure or avoid pain – all through rewards. Let’s say you make a choice to remove all refined and unnecessary sugar from your diet, which is a great idea for optimum health yes, but if every time you prepare food you are focusing on having no sugar in that meal, then your cravings and desire to have sugar are going to continually build until it becomes impossible to avoid. On top of this, where is the reward? You have removed the part from your diet that you associated as the reward and haven’t replaced it with anything. Remember we are driven by rewards and pleasure, if there is no reward or no pleasure gained then it makes it incredibly tough to stick with it, and no matter how strong your willpower is you will eventually at some point not be able to maintain that strict plan for long. This will lead to you consuming an excessive amount of sugar laden foods and then leave you with feelings of being a failure and not being good enough. What do I recommend? Create the changes so you focus on what you WANT, make sure it gains you PLEASURE, it AVOIDS pain, and is driven by a REWARD. It really is simple. Work with the human mind and you will always succeed. Work against the human mind and your will power to succeed will be pushed beyond its limits. It is impossible for me write here what these changes are you need to make for weight loss, because everybody is on a different journey in life, everybody has different factors that are making them gain weight or stopping them losing weight. There is no one box fits all. There never is, there never has been and there never will be. It is impossible for me to go into much more detail without making this article a novel. In my online nutrition and exercise programme I do take you through steps of changing your eating patterns and making your lifestyle healthy by working on the principals I have outlined – I never ask you to ban foods, I simple show you how to increase the goodness in your diet. Fill your body with healthy foods and fuel your body in a healthy way, rather than remove the unhealthy foods. Focusing on health and goodness gains you pleasure, avoids you pain and rewards your body. You will be surprised at how much difference this makes to you. That’s all from me today, all I want from writing this is to know I may have directed someone on to a healthier and happier path to achieving their goals. If that is you, than I thank you for reading this! If you want some more direction and guidance on how to go about a healthy eating plan in a positive way then feel free to check out my 6 week programme. You can download it through my website www.bodyessence.co.nz/6-week-programme Take care, live life and love lots! Kerri x I was explaining eating for specifically losing weight to a client the other day and felt as though what I was explaining to her in fact is something not many people actually understand. If you are on a personal journey to ‘weight loss’ then please remember this when you are choosing the methods, plans, diets, and decisions that will form your weight loss journey.
The most important fact to remember is that being ‘overweight’, ‘fat’ or whichever description you choose to use,... is that your body carrying extra body fat is only the by-product. It is never just carrying too much body fat for no reason. The reason ALWAYS lies within your health and wellbeing. For true, healthy and successful weight loss (my definition of successful weight loss is long term maintenance of your new weight) you must always put your focus on health. Always. Why? Because excessive fat is a by-product, never the cause. It is a by-product of an unhealthy body. It is a by-product of a body that isn’t happy. It is a by-product of a body that may be consuming foods it doesn’t want, may have hormonal imbalances, may be producing too much adrenalin and cortisol from stress, may not be getting enough sleep, may have emotional distress, may be insulin or leptin resistant. It could be the by-product of a body not active enough. Carrying too much body fat is always a by-product of something else going on in your health, your body or your lifestyle. To lose this excess body fat you need to focus on sorting out the health, wellbeing or lifestyle issues that are causing your body to be carrying extra body fat. Sort out the ‘product’ that is creating the ‘by-product’ of excessive body fat. Diets that cut out foods, tell you to eat in a strict unmaintainable fashion, take pills or drinks, or ask you to follow an unnatural eating approach – they are all focused on ‘weight loss’ not the reason behind the weight. This unfortunately will take your body through a vicious and unhealthy cycle time and time again. The diet will succeed in you losing the kilos perhaps, but unless you cure the underlying cause of why you were overweight in the first place, that weight will inevitably come back. First step for weight loss? Forget about losing weight. Focus all your attention on getting a healthy and happy body. Once this is achieved, the by-product will no longer be that your body wants to carry excess body fat. This is the direct link to why so many people try and try again with unsuccessful attempts at weight loss. Remember successful weight loss is long term maintenance of your new body weight. Losing weight for a few weeks or months only is not success. So quit the diets and start making a healthy body on the inside and out! Have a great day. Kerri x On the surface of weight loss, the generalised idea is that if your energy in is less than your energy out, you lose weight – simply meaning, move more and eat less. For a small percentage of people this is true – in the case of those who may have gained the odd extra kilo here and there by not exercising a great deal, and perhaps a few too many high calorie meals each week. But to lump everyone in the same box and make the assumption that because a person is overweight it means they eat too much and are lazy, is a narrow-minded and very false accusation. In my 9 years as a Personal Trainer I can assure you that hardly any of the overweight people I have worked with are ‘lazy’, they also make a far greater effort on the whole with food preparation than a lot of the slim people I have seen, and I will vouch my life on the fact that not a single one of those people love being overweight. They did not make a conscious decision to overeat and under-exercise to gain unhealthy amounts of body fat. There are such a vast number of factors that can contribute to someone gaining weight, or struggling to lose weight, and it hardly ever is directly down to eating less and moving more. I will explain the link between several hormones and weight gain in this article, but this is only the beginning of a large number of reasons for obesity.
If you are a person who judges someone for being overweight, here is a message to you: Please, I ask you that next time you judge someone for being ‘fat’ in anyway, you reconsider your harsh judgement. Until you have walked in their shoes and gone through their life journey you have absolutely no right to make even the slightest judgement on what they should or shouldn’t be doing, what they should or shouldn’t be eating. What you deem as a simple passing comment, can be utterly soul-crushing for someone who battles with weight challenges every minute of their life. They know they are overweight. Believe it or not, but they actually do know it. They DO NOT need you to tell them. How can hormones make weight loss tough? The first thing to note is that your weight is regulated and there is a lot of evidence in support of weight being physiologically defended. In simple terms, this means your body fights fiercely to maintain the weight it is at, whether you are too heavy or not. This is often referred to as the ‘settling point theory’. There are a lot of mechanisms and processes in your brain and body that all work together to try and maintain your weight. The biggest processes that work against you losing weight are hormonal, and there is a lot at play when it comes to your hormones and body weight. However the two biggest hormonal influencers are: Ghrelin: a hormone made in the stomach that tells your brains to eat when you are hungry. Following weight loss your body will actually produce more ghrelin, meaning more signals are sent to your brain saying you are hungry and need to eat more. This makes it hard for a period of time after weight loss as your body is fighting to gain the weight back that you have lost. This is part of the reason ‘quick-fix’ diets often won’t succeed long term. Leptin: this hormone is produced in your fat cells and plays a large role in regulating food intake and energy expenditure. The level of Leptin your body produces is directly proportional to your fat cells meaning your body produces more when it notices weight gain which sends signals to the brain to stop eating so much and start moving more, and you produce less after weight loss meaning your brain thinks you need to eat more and move less. Again, like with ghrelin, your body wants to fight to get the weight back you have lost. Another reason ‘quick-fix’ diets often won’t succeed long term. How does insulin affect weight loss? Insulin’s main role is to move glucose from your blood into your cells, and plays a major role in the ability of fat leaving your fat cells (adipocytes). After you consume a meal (especially one high in carbohydrates) your insulin levels are at their highest, and before a meal they are at their lowest. When insulin levels are low (prior to a meal), your body needs your secondary source of fuel, fat (carbohydrates are our primary source, and fat is our secondary source). Fat can only be released from your adipocytes when your insulin levels are low. When your insulin levels are high after you have eaten, especially a large amount of carbohydrates, you are unable to release fat from your adipocytes. Sugar does not turn to fat, unless an incredibly large amount is consumed in one meal and it becomes physiologically impossible for your body to handle such an amount, it will go through a process called Denovo-lipogenesis. This is extremely inefficient for your body as it takes 25% of the energy ingested to actually convert and store carbohydrates as fats, therefore it will only occur in extreme binge eating cases. Other than in this case, sugar turning to fat is a myth and carbohydrates won’t make you fat. However, if too many are consumed, especially simple sugars which are high in calories, they won’t make you thin either, as your insulin levels never get low enough to allow fat to exit your fat cells. To lose weight you need to allow the fat in your adipocytes to be used for energy. Keeping your simple sugar intake lower, making most of your carbohydrate intake come from complex carbohydrates, allowing 2.5-3 hours between each meal and snack, and doing lots of activity which demands a high energy requirement, your insulin levels will get low enough to allow fat to exit your fat cells and be used for energy – the result fat burning! Two considerations that can make it hard to lose weight Insulin resistance: When your body continually has high levels of insulin present from over eating regularly, especially sugars and processed carbohydrates, your body will become resistant to this hormone. It can’t handle the high quantities of insulin constantly being released into your body so it down-regulates – it de-sensitises itself to insulin. When this happens, you will actually produce more insulin, therefore meaning your insulin levels never get low enough to allow fat to exit from our adipocytes, meaning essentially you can’t burn your stored body fat. At this stage, it becomes incredibly tough to reduce body fat, and to do so, special diet requirements will need to be put in place. Leptin resistance: In a similar way to insulin resistance, often obese people can be resistant to Leptin too. Although Leptin is the hormone that controls how much we eat, obese people can be desensitised to it, meaning there satiety (feeling of fullness) levels aren’t adequately functioning. In these cases, you would literally never feel full. A continual hunger triggered by signals sent to the brain saying that you need to eat more will make losing weight a very tough journey. Conclusion These points have only just touched on the many factors needing to be considered for weight loss, but I do hope you have a better understanding of why there is so much more to it than what you eat and how you move. Hormonal influences are one of the biggest points to consider for weight gain/loss and are also one of the hardest to change. They take time and long term commitment to make any progress on how your hormones function. Quick-fix diets should never be an option, but even more so if you suspect your hormones are at play with your weight gain. If they are, then any diet that results in fast and dramatic changes to your body will only further enhance the problems your hormones are creating, meaning long term you will have an even harder weight journey. Take care, love your body's, eat well and move lots! More from me again soon. Kerri van de Loo Personal Trainer and Nutrition Coach x Time and time again I have people say to me “No matter what I do, I just can’t lose weight!” They then go on to tell me that they have tried nearly every diet available, they have tried cutting out potatoes and bread, they have taken bottles and bottles of every imaginable vitamin or supplement there is, they have eaten nothing but fruit and vegetables for a week, they’ve gone ‘gluten-free’, they have tried 2 hours of exercise each day and after 2 weeks nothing had happened, they have paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for fancy pre-made ‘diet-food’, they’ve weighed foods, they’ve counted calories…however they always end in saying “but nothing works”. They seem to believe that for some reason their body will just never lose weight. It’s there pre-destined bad luck that they got stuck with a body that just must want to be ‘fat’.
If you are a person who can relate to this, then I am here to tell you that none of this is true. Nobody has been given a body that ‘just can’t lose weight’. The issue isn’t your body – your body is merely a reflection, or a by-product, of what you are making it do. If you are over-weight, then you are over-weight for a reason. That reason, 9 out of 10 times, comes down to not treating your body how it wants to be treated. Not letting it work and function in a way that it is designed to work and function. Not letting it know what is happening from day to day, week to week, and for the rest of your life. Basically, not treating your mind, body and soul with the pride and respect it deserves. Whether you are a person who just has poor and unhealthy food habits, or you are a person who desperately jumps from diet to diet to constantly be let down, you will only have long term success at weight loss if you start listening to your body and treating it how it is designed to work. One of the biggest factors in weight loss, eating and activity habits aside, is to do with how our hormones work. There are many hormones at play in our body when it comes to weight loss. Unfortunately the way a lot of people choose to ‘diet’ will create signals in our body that makes these hormones work against weight loss. There is a lot of evidence suggesting that our body weight is physiologically defended, meaning simply that our body will fight incredibly hard to maintain the weight it’s at - whether it’s overweight or not is irrelevant. An example of this is a hormone made in our stomach called Ghrelin. Ghrelin is responsible for sending signals to our brain telling us to eat when we are hungry. Following weight loss, our body actually produces more Ghrelin, meaning our brain is receiving more signals telling us to eat. So while you may be excited you have lost weight, you are constantly battling the increased hunger signals. Another example is Leptin, a hormone produced in our fat cells. Leptin controls and regulates food intake and energy expenditure, and the amount our body produces is directly proportional to our fat cells. So when it detects weight gain it produces more meaning our brain receives more signals telling us to move more and eat less, and after weight loss it sends less signals therefore we think we need to eat more an move less. These are only two of the many bodily processes that are at work when our body is in a state of ‘dieting’, so it’s no wonder that such a huge percentage of the adult population can admit that they have tried numerous ‘diets’ with little or no long term success. As a qualified Health, Fitness and Nutrition Professional my passion and love is to teach people how their body’s actually work, how they will actually succeed at long term weight loss, and to help people realise that it is actually very simple and achievable. All you have to do is eat like your body is designed to eat, move like your body is designed to move, and above all else learn to love who you are and the body you are in! The trick to get your body on side with losing weight is to not allow your body to know you are on a ‘diet’, or better still, don’t diet! I would love to show you step-by-step how to get you to your goal weight and, even more importantly, get you feeling great, loving your body and teach you a new way of life – a happy, healthy and sustainable life! To start your journey to your goal weight today, go to our website to purchase your Body Essence Weight Loss Programme workbook. It truly is such a small investment for living the rest of your life happy, healthy and in love with the new you! Warmest regards, Kerri van de Loo Health, Fitness and Nutrition Professional Why is it so important for weight loss success that we get to a point where we can be happy with ourselves on the inside?
There are many reasons for this, with the biggest two coming down to emotional eating and very simply, you are what you believe you are. The effect low self-esteem has on your eating habits for many can be huge - it is one of the biggest causes of eating for comfort, or ‘emotional eating’. If you can improve how you feel about yourself then your need for emotional comfort is lessened, and if you are a person who turns to food for comfort then the occurrence of this happening is a lot less. There is a saying ‘You are what you believe you are’. I entirely agree with this, and have seen first-hand how improving your feelings of yourself can greatly improve your image and the way you are portrayed to yourself and to others. If you love who you are then you walk with your head held high, you want people to see you, like you are proud of yourself. If you dislike yourself then you try to hide away and don’t want people to notice you. It is a fantastic effort to do lots of exercise and eat healthy foods, but unless you can get to a point where you are happy with who you are, be honest with yourself, love the way you look and love yourself inside and out, you are going to have struggles throughout your whole life being able to maintain a steady and healthy weight – no matter what you do or don’t do. Don’t underestimate the effect your emotions, beliefs and subconscious thoughts have on who you are and who you become. It really is quite simple the way our mind works – you simply are what you believe you are! If you think you are overweight, you will be overweight. If you think you have the perfect figure, you will fulfil that image, and your weight will adjust to meet your mind set, and you will truly start to realise you do have the perfect figure. If you think you are ugly, you will be ugly. If you believe you look amazing, then life will work to meet your mind set and all of a sudden you will be looking amazing. How? Without realising it you might start eating healthy foods, so your skin starts to glow. You might lose weight so you walk prouder. You might start wearing more colourful clothing which makes you look vibrant and lively. And because of these simple things, people might start commenting on how great you look, which in turn boosts your self-esteem, creating a desire in you to want to be the best you can. Life just happens and changes constantly to meet your mind set and your beliefs. To learn simple and effective strategies on how to feel good about yourself on the inside and outside, get your copy of The Body Essence Weight Loss Programme today. I will teach you the full package to weight loss…how to get your inside and outside the best they can be. You truly can love who you are! Just remember you are amazing and perfect the way you are! Warmest regards, Kerri van de Loo Health, Fitness and Nutrition Professional |
Kerri van de Loo - Mindfulness coach, Personal Trainer, Nutrition Coach & SELF-LOVE COACH:Join our Online Wellness Club here: https://www.bodyessence.co.nz/wellness-club.html Categories
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