Okay, a lot of my friends have questioned me for "talking about sugar" despite crazy things going on in the world.
You know... Facebook is exploding with petitions, rallies, and all kinds of mayhem...and here I am posting about how to eat less sugar, or how not to worry when you do eat sugar. Or, there are violent mobs and floods, and...here I am posting about how to lose weight by learning to manage your stress. So why do I keep posting about weight loss, sugar, stress, and emotional eating when there are so many other, more timely things to be posting about???? The truth is this: I think shit got crazy in 2016. When I woke up to a future President Trump I had to have a little come to Jesus talk with myself. Trump as president? That's not normal. And I realized that if more people stood up for the things they cared about, the world would be...different. So I looked back at my bet that helping busy, ambitious women lose weight while eating all the food they love, and most importantly helping them FEEL their BEST and truly love what they eat. And I BELIEVE in that. So I doubled down. And I also believe this to be true: People need help to eat well, without guilt or restriction, NOW more than ever. Shit is going down in our country right now. A white house run by reality TV star? Advisors leaving left and right? Violent uprisings from the white supremacists? Floods on the gulf coast? Yeah, we're kinda stressed. And in the midst of all this chaos, we need to nourish ourselves now more than ever. We need to take care of ourselves, so we can keep fighting for what we believe in. So we can speak our truth. And my work HELPS women do that. And I BELIEVE in my work. So I'll just be over here, talking about sugar, stress, food, and loving ourselves through it all.
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I just want to say this: YOU ARE STRESSED OUT!
Stress is THE most common thing I see that drives people to feel like crap. WE don’t even re alize we are stressed. Because it begins with the new job. Then that feels manageable… and then our whoever does whatever. Okay, well that’s under control. Then someone starts asking us favors. Then our car has issues. And this is how stress creeps up on us, one step at a time, in a culture where it’s really no “OKAY” to relax, take a break, slow down, and if you are a woman, to say no. And the stress hormones make it impossible for us to make good decisions. It actually shuts down that part of your brain. SO our stress makes us eat bad. And our stress makes it feel impossible to meal plan. And our stress make us think we can never change anything, much less change everything we want to. So we get stuck. We rely on the old habits more. We get more take out. If we want to make change ,we beat ourselves up for not doing it… or for trying and failing. It’s a painful place to live, stressed out, eating junk, and beating ourselves up over it all. The beautiful thing is that we don’t have to “add one more thing” onto our busy lives to change things. We don’t have to go to the gym every day, or eat some special protein bar, or give up all the foods we love. In fact we need MORE of what we love. What we REALLY love. Because we don’t get enough of that. When we choose what we LOVE, and allow ourselves to enjoy it, we actually make more space to start making healthier choices that make us feel our best. And slowly, over a few weeks or months, we can eliminate the things that feel bad, and add the things that feel good. And we will lose weight, and enjoy what we are eating! And we can do it FOREVER. I specialize in helping women overcome emotional eating and sugar addiction, and I overcame that battle myself. Stress leads us to choose junk and sweets, then sweets make us eat more sweets. You have to get off the hormone roller coaster that is driving your brain right now. And to do that you have to start with stress management. Then you add a dose of forgiveness, And you focus on counting joy (not calories). What would this would like in your life? There are many ways to overcome sugar addiction. However, they can be broken into two categories: Physical and Mental. (Or maybe Logistical and Emotional.) 1. Physical/Logistical - These are easier changes to make. Remove hidden sugars from your diet. Check sauces, breads, all breakfast items, all snacks, pretty much all prepared foods. Compare ingredients across multiple options, and choose the one with the least sugar, but MORE IMPORTANTLY, a short ingredient list. If you simple check the grams of sugar you will almost for sure be buying something with worse ingredients. Look for ways to replace, reduce, or remove things that are intentionally sweet. Do you put sugar in your coffee? Cut it in half, then cut it in half, then cut it in half, until it is not very sweet, or, if you still like the taste, not sweet at all. Do you like something sweet after dinner? Find out if you can have some slices of fruit instead of ice cream. Or, like the coffee, start with a plate that is half fruit and half ice cream, then reduce the ice cream further, then substitute sweetened yogurt, then move to unsweetened yogurt. 2. Mental/Emotional - These are all the things that make it seem impossible to do the changes I've described above. These are the days you feel so stressed out and overwhelmed you pull out the whole tub of ice cream and eat it straight from the carton. These are the moments when you sit in front of the TV after a long day and suddenly the entire box of Chinese take out has disappeared. These are the afternoons when you just can't make it without a giant latte or chocolate bar; this is what gets you through the day. This is the part of the equation when you tell yourself you're going to change... and you don't. This is the struggle of deciding to stop, and then you can only think about the thing you are stopping. And when you finally "give in" you eat three times as much. Some people can just decide to do the physical changes and they are done. For other of us, including me, the mental changes MUST be addressed to lay the foundation for the physical changes to succeed. The mental changes are addressing the problem behind the sugar. The problem behind the sugar may or may not be known to you. The problem behind the sugar may or may not be clear when you think about it. You can begin by looking backward over the past week and thinking about what PRECEDED the sugar binge or failure to stick to your resolution. Bad day? Fight with the spouse? Kids going crazy? Horrible boss? Lonely? Bored? Angry? Tired? Annoyed? If you don't know, or you do know, but still can't seem to make headway, then you should seek support - read, ask a friend, find a professional, whatever it is that helps you find a clear path and system to address the problem behind the sugar. I’ve had two bad days in a row. I dropped from a place of feeling fantastic, focused, and energetic, and suddenly I was confused, crabby, and sullen.
What the heck was going on? Well, first, I was about to get my period. I just felt crappy. Alright, I can acknowledge that. I took some ibuprofen to help with that. Doesn’t make it go away, but helps. But there was something else. I had hit a business next step that was TOTALLY FREAKING ME OUT. I know for my work I need to get technical. Ugh. I need to deal with pixels, funnels, webinars, automation, and probably learn at least two new tools. I do not thrive on learning new tools. Some people do. I don’t. It always stresses me out. So to be facing this new territory was a MAJOR point of stress for me. Not was… IS! I still need to take care of all these items. I took that awareness of my stress, and I wrote down on my to do list “Make a to do list for funnel.” Then I stared at it. I SERIOUSLY wanted to write the funnel to dos. But I knew I couldn’t do it at 10 o’clock at night. I had to shut my notebook and know that I’d take care of it the next day. And I tell you, I really wanted to eat sugar as I went through this process. I wanted to AVOID facing the problem by eating sugar. I wanted to DISTRACT myself from the problem by eating sugar. I wanted to FEEL BETTER than I did when I was facing the problem. But I didn’t really do it because I was totally AWARE of it. That is because of the system I’ve gone through, the basis of my program, Love Every Bite, created from my own experience and my interactions with clients. I did eat some dried cherries. It was just enough to give me that sweet experience, and with awareness I could actually talk to myself “Alegra, you are stressed. You will actually feel bad if you eat a bar of chocolate. What you really need to do is go to bed and get more information about this source of stress tomorrow.” And if YOU want that awareness and ability to apply your own self-control in a rational, not-at-all-stressful way, my program is for you. Are you unsure if a program like this will actually help you? Book a complimentary clarity call. These calls are designed to help you work through your situation and get CLARITY on the obstacles. Then, if I know I can help you, we can talk further about what that might look like. Alegra.acuityscheduling.com |
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