Take a Walk on the Bright Side!.

Well, the time came to get a new computer after having spent hours and a few too many dollars wrestling with detecting the problem, virus scanning and ultimately installing a new hard drive during the holiday at the end of 2009. Kept me out of the fridge though!

So here I am in February and the same things start showing up: slowing of the system, “not responding” messages and just plain freezing up! The truth reveals itself to me louder than ever: “Lisa, it’s time to stop spending time and money on fixing it and just buy a brand new computer!”

So I did and I am absolutely elated!

My curiosity is, why does it sometimes take getting hit over the head or another such profound awakening metaphor to make us move in the direction that is ultimately forward? Why are we so quick to fall back into complacency and futility?

Of course I am relating this to weight and health, you know that right?

I was talking with my wonderful partner of 10 years last night and we were pondering why it is so difficult for people to change their behaviours that no longer work for them and adopt new behaviors that are better suited for the current situation including their new dreams and desires for their life. In talking about it I realized that most people just want to stop one thing and begin another the next day. It just doesn’t happen that way!

I'm no good at this game! I can't even hit the ball! This game is no fun and frankly... I quit!

(more…)

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – President Barak Obama

I am so moved by this quote I had to share it with you.

There is no person or thing that will change your life for you in ways that you are so longing for other than you. You are the change you are looking for. You are the one.

I recently heard this metaphor about change that I also want to share with you: If you want milk, you can’t just go stand in a field and wait for a cow to come up to you… you have to seek it, find it and get it!

Hope you are inspired to take action on making that changes that you really really want in your life… starting NOW!

All my best to all of you!

“It doesn’t matter where I am today… because I am taking action to get me to where I want to be tomorrow.”

That quote is one that got me through my times of frustration, exhaustion and despair after I admitted to my self that Being Fat Sucks! and I wasn’t going to live another year of my life that way.

I had to change my way of thinking to change my life.

It worked!

There is nothing worse when it comes to keeping our lives in balance than the effects of stress!  The stress of the state of the world, the financial markets, the job markets… all of it can get us so anxious and stressed out.

Stress is a major contributor to weight gain.  The insane demands of our schedules theses days keeps our body in a state of fight or flight and that messes with our cortisol levels.

When our cortisol levels get out of whack, we struggle with  a slower metabolism, emotional eating and insatiable cravings for fats, sugars and fast food.  All this is absolutely the worst thing for your waistline and your self esteem.

The delicate balance of life is again disrupted and we are the ones who suffer the most.

How do you deal with the stress of life?

Does the nasty, blustery, cold, rainy weather make you just want to stay in your house by a warm fire and munch?  It does for me still.

I wish I could say that those old tendencies to soothe myself were a thing of the past and had left with the almost 50 pounds I let go of, but that just isn’t the case.  The thinking, the beliefs, the habitual tendencies to eat are still there and something I have to contend with every day and it’s still better than battling the self deprecating self talk that went along with being fat!

Now I have to work through the feelings and find more appropriate ways to satisfy my feelings and keep myself on the track of feeling good, looking good and enjoying my body.

Hope the sun is lifting your spirits today also!  Get out there and enjoy it.  It’ll do you worlds of good.

Have a fantastic day!

Well today is the day we change the leadership of our country and with that comes the hope of something better, more positive in our future.  That’s all we can do at this point is hope and watch to see what happens.  But it’s not all we can do if things don’t change in this country for the better.  We can participate in creating that change.

Participation requires more energy, time and commitment and it also realizes more results, benefits and appreciation.  It’s the same with your physical and mental well being.  You can sit back and hope your situation changes or you can get going and make it change.  That’s what it’s all about and it’s that simple.

Too many people are just sitting around wishing it would change.  Hoping for something better and not taking any action to make it better.

Read my book and you will be inspired to take action!

What are some of the things you do to get yourself to take action in any area of your life?

I have been thinking and reading a lot lately about changing my thoughts and how powerful that whole concept can be in making tremendous life changes.  Especially having to do with our relationship with food… but more about that in a minute.

The fact of the matter is, The Secret has taught us that what we think about can greatly contribute to what we create in our life.  Then we learned that you can not just think something into existence.  You must take action to make it happen.  That makes good sense.

So now let me through something new and exciting into the mix that will illustrate the concept even more.  Think about a radio.  At the lower end of the tuner are the stations like 88.1 FM and at the upper end are the stations like 106.5 or whatever.

Now here’s the idea… our feelings and thoughts can be placed on a scale similar to the tuner of a radio.  So when we feel down, depressed, beating ourselves up, etc… those feelings and thoughts would be in the lower range of frequency or vibration.  Then the happier, joyful, self confident thoughts and feelings would be where?  Of course, on the higher end of the tuner.

Then the real important part to believe is that wherever you are on that tuner or wherever your thoughts and feelings are at on a vibrational level, you will be mingling with other things on that same frequency.  So if you feel lousy and you keep running  in to things that keep you feeling lousy, could it be that at the level you are vibrating, that’s all you have access to.  If that is the case, then all you have to do is change your thoughts to a higher vibration and see what you start bumping into up there!

Ask yourself, what is the best feeling thought I have access to right now?, and change your thought to that.  You will automatically increase your frequency for the better!

It just makes such good sense to me.  I tried it today when I was out walking and the thought of something that has been really frustrating me lately came back into my mind.  I stopped, checked in and could feel that I was feeling worse than just a few moments ago, so I changed my thoughts and I felt better.

Now, think about the times when we reach for food because we are lonely, angry or bored?  What if we could proactively change the thought to something that felt better and made it much easier not to eat something that will ultimately make us feel worse about ourselves anyway?  Do you see the magic in this?  It will take practice and effort, but how much effort is it every day to fight the urges, bad thoughts about ourselves and inner conflict?  Doesn’t even compare when you put it like that hey?

What a great tool to keep joy in each and every moment possible!

Happy New Year to us all!

My sudden, but revealing, awareness of my feelings about my weight and my life has made me much more observant about the truth. I found that in order to make long lasting changes in my life, it’s vital that I am honest with myself—100%, brutally honest. It was time for an honest assessment of who I was and what I really wanted. But, there was just one thing in the way—was I capable of exercising that degree of honesty? And if I was, did I even know the answer to those questions anymore?

When we talk about the truth, the box we open is often much larger than we imagined. Are slight misrepresentations considered to be falsehoods? Does the truth only pertain to the things we say to others, or does it apply to the things we tell ourselves, as well? Does being truthful go so far that we must examine our beliefs and whether or not they still honestly represent the person we’ve become, not the person we used to be? Does the truth hurt, and if it really does, why? Finding out those answers can provide you with some insight that will explain a lot about yourself and how you deal with many issues in your life.

How long has it been since you did some soul searching to reveal what the truth really means to you? It didn’t come easy or quickly for me. As a matter of fact, it’s something that I’ve struggled with for a long time. As I explored my beliefs, issues with the truth traced back to my childhood. Even as a child, I yearned to impress other people. So, I often manufactured myself to be someone better than I really was. Because I had self esteem issues, I didn’t have a very good opinion of myself and never thought of myself as anything very special. To make up for that, I told “stories.” To me, they weren’t lies—just little misrepresentations made so others would have a reason to accept and like me. The stories I told weren’t about other people and were never meant to hurt anyone, so I convinced myself that there was no harm done in embellishing my life a bit.

Frankly, my stories weren’t made up entirely to impress other people. Their purpose was also to impress myself, making me feel better about the real me by creating a new, more exciting me. The stories I told myself and others served to protect me from the hurt I would surely face if I came face to face with the truth. That hurt was there, but by lying, I didn’t have to deal with it.

What stories to you tell yourself?