If you have fifteen minutes, you can find motivation right now! 

Get introduced to the pillars of health, and why flexibility is the most important of them all. 

Meditations is great, but it doesn't always work out for all of us to sit down and do it. Instead try a walking mindfulness program by slipping on your favorite tennis shoes and listening to this podcast while you walk. 

It's fun, it's adventurous - Join me as I am also walking in the great outdoors and sharing my weight loss tips and motivation and perhaps encounter a wild animal! 

It's time to declutter some of the emotions and energy that we've all been carrying around for the past two years.

Let's be honest: We are living in a crazy time. 

I know you might have just made the new year's resolution to lose weight or exercise every day or stop eating sugar or whatever... and likely that's already been knocked down and maybe you are feeling kind of hopeless about it already. 

We need to be a bit gentle on ourselves. You aren't going to succeed by trying to do it all at once. If you are sensitive or empathetic at all, trying to do so is going to leave you more depleted than ever. 

​The secret to success lies in...well, listen to the podcast ;) 

*I promise I will never share your email address with anyone.

I'm all about being honest. In fact, I'm ruthlessly honest. Because when we are anything less than that, we will sabotage our dreams and hopes and goals. Listen to this episode if you are ready to learn how being dishonest about things is making it impossible to lose weight. And, of course, learn how to become ruthlessly honest yourself!

*I promise I will never share your email address with anyone.

Don't bother listening to this episode unless you are ready to let go of the old way of doing things. The old ways of losing weight don't work, in fact they cause more harm than good!

​Diets and deprivation will never work. You need to look for a new way to lose weight based on intuitive eating, trusting yourself, and simple healthy eating. If you ARE ready to let go of the old ideas you may not realize you have been attached to, then please listen right now for what to replace them with! 

*I promise I will never share your email address with anyone.

This episode goes hand in hand with the last one, except this time I'm talking about your Inner Athena. We need our inner Warrior, it's essential to be able to fight and go into battle mode when we need to.

​However, in modern twenty first century we are living in chronic stress, and our inner warriors are EXHAUSTED!!!

When this happens, we gain weight, not matter what we are trying to do to lose it! And, in fact, some of the things we try, like crash diets, actually push us more into battle mode, which is guaranteed to fail. Learn how to use your other inner Athena skill to find balance and lose weight in a way that lasts. 

*I promise I will never share your email address with anyone.

This is the podcast you do NOT want to miss!! I share some of the most amazing, transformative, and yet SIMPLE techniques to start get immediate results in your life!! Whether you are ready to lose weight, eat better, or simply be happier, listen to this episode now!!!

*I promise I will never share your email address with anyone.

Let's jump into some practical facts about weight loss. I don't like to spend too much time focused on numbers, but taking a big picture look at what the numbers say to us can help get oriented in the right direction. Let's take a look and then see how that can kickstart our own work!

*I promise I will never share your email address with anyone.

You are a leader. You are ambitious, and you are busy. The truth is, it's rewarding. It feels good to be successful!

However, when we begin to forget the other parts of who we are, your career can become unhealthy. What happens when you keep falling off the wagon when it comes to your health? When you make changes for a while, but just can't seem to sustain them?

It is hard to admit that the thing we prize most about our life - our successful career and the accolades that come with it - may be the exact thing that is disrupting our achievement and success in our health.

I know, as a fellow member of the Very Ambitious Person Society, that it can be really hard to think that I can't control or succeed at something that I am putting my mind toward. Really hard!

I want to let you know first and foremost - if you are not succeeding in health - it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH WILLPOWER!

There are a whole bunch of reasons why it has nothing to do with willpower... the primary reason is because willpower is finite and we use it up during the day so it will never work. Other reasons include circadian rhythms that make us lose our inhibitions when the sun goes down, which is why we always end up overeating at night (among other things we do without inhibition), and also because of hormones.

Hormones get their own paragraph. I'd give them their own article, but my business coach tells me they are too boring! Our hormones are in charge. It doesn't matter what we think or tell ourselves, in the end we do what our hormones tell us to do -- not what our brains are saying. Things that cause our hormones to hijack our actions: stress, emotional triggers (like a fight or a rough day), stress, age, stress, monthly changes, stress, sugar, stress, poor diet, stress, caffeine, and... did I mention stress?

If you are ready to take charge of your health a different way, then I have the answer. It all starts with aligning our actions with our values. If you really truly desire to reach and maintain your body's ideal natural weight, then it is time to prioritize it. This is the part where you pull that thread and see where it leads you. The actions you need to take are not the same as the ones I need to take or any of my other clients need to take.

Finding the middle ground seems elusive in the beginning, because we aren't used to taking it. Lots of my clients tell me they really don't know what the middle ground would be. That applies with clients who are looking to give up the dieting mindset (of deprivation as the only way to lose weight) as well as create sustainable exercise patterns (not going hard for 6 weeks... then quitting). No matter what your middle ground is, if you are used to going "all in" it can be hard to figure out how to do something else... something that may feel like "not enough" but in reality is exactly the answer that will allow you to succeed! We have to carve new neural pathways to do this. The steps are simple, though not always easy.

I always approach things by focusing on practical steps you can take right now - using smart scheduling (and, OK, a teeny tiny bit of willpower - just in the beginning!) I couple this logistical side, or "pre-planning" as I call it, with the emotional/spiritual/hormonal/stress detangling.

So as we figure out what your emotional/spiritual/hormonal/stress triggers are and eliminate them from the source, you sustain yourself with the pre-planning, and eventually these meet in the middle... Yes! That is the middle ground that we are looking for!

And it is from this middle ground that you really can achieve your ambitions in both career and health, without sacrificing one for the other, but truly having it all!
​

This is something I've been thinking about lately. 

Old & Sexy?

This is a subject that I've been grappling with. Ever since I had kids I've felt... well, old. I know I'm not really *that* old, but something has changed.  

A big part of what I realized was going on is that I am mourning my maidenhood... our culture, our society worships being thin... but it also worships youth. 

The truth is that I actually thought I was immune to the media messaging. I thought I was "above" worrying about how I looked. But the truth was that I was young, and I was on the lean side naturally. My struggles with weight were short lived, as I was forced to come to terms with my emotional eating a young age.  

The truth is that I was not immune AT ALL. In fact, a lot of the messaging was deeply ingrained, and as I near 40, I come face to face with my wrinkles, my squishy, jiggly body (not youthful and taut), and it's really difficult. 

What Women Are Feeling As They Reach 40

Sadly, I'm not alone. It feels very lonely to feel sad that you don't meet media's messaging about who you should be. But it's not lonely. In fact it's pretty damn highly populated over here. I speak to woman after woman who deals with these issues, whether it's weight or age or both. 

Personally, I have a really high level of awareness around these emotions and thoughts, and I manage them pretty well. And it's still a work in progress! It HAS to be - we are constantly exposed to bullshit in the media that tries to tell us what we need to look like! 

I work with some of the most amazing women. They are ambitious, manage a full and rich life, and I can tell you many of their amazing achievements... and I can also unfortunately tell you of how they struggle. 

Let me share what some of these awesome woman have told me... 

P.L. said: 
I’ve been struggling since my second child... I obsess about how my body looks... not necessarily with my weight...if I lose some weight, I think I’ll feel better... I need a positive outlook. I’m not skinny. I always had a belly... I never felt like I needed to lose weight, but always thought, "A few pounds less and I’d look better and feel better."

The good news is that P.L. also had an amazing sense of gratitude! This was a saving grace that we focused on as her personal strength! 

P.L. had a humorous approach to making sure her mindset was top notch: 
I don't know if it's feasible; I need mental acceptance, if I can see myself as attractive at size 14, I’ll take it! What's more feasible? Get more in my head and change my outlook... or lose the weight? 

With this in mind, she prioritized her goals of body movement and made sure she built up her confidence with daily movement alongside a personal affirmation practice! 

We Feel Invisible

Here's one that is so often repeated in nearly the exact same sentiment...
I’m invisible, nobody sees me anymore.

I think almost any woman approach 40 and definitely in her 50s or 60s or beyond has felt this. This is the result of a three fold situation!

1) Men from ages 15-75 pay attention to 25 year old women at disproportionate rates. Not much we can do about that, but they do notice women of all ages, I promise.

I had about a year when I was obsessed with my wrinkles!!! But after my experiment with botox, I was literally EXCITED to get my wrinkles back!!! Haha! 

My client P.L. said the same thing:

It's the youth obsession. I would never consider body enhancement... but now I see myself considering it!!!!! Thinking it!!!! 

Luckily she knew it was her environment talking and not her real self. She, like me and many of my clients, used mindset work to retrain her brain out of these self harming thoughts and think positive thoughts about earning her wrinkles instead! 

2) We stop going putting ourselves out into the world in a way that attracts attention. We aren't dressing the same, we aren't going to the same places, and most of all we aren't putting our energy out there in that way.  We're busy, and probably tired. The answer here is deep self care and some time being a bit naughty with fun girlfriends!

E.D. identified this issue for herself: 
I have a hard time to carve out time for myself. I don't have much me time... I’m always running out of time; food is the last thing I put on my schedule... water, coffee, toast, I used to eat smoothies in the morning... I don't have time to make it. I don't have time... I need to schedule ten minute to eat something healthy.

What was her answer? This is where my logistical approach to meal planning and preparation (sometimes I call them pre-decisions) was the way to save the day. She treated every day like a work day and was able to prepare her food in advance and start making these changes!

3) We lose our confidence. This is a result of f*cked up societal messaging, but we CAN overcome it, just like P.L. did!!! 

I have felt this, and so has A.Y. She said: 
I want validation with myself! I want to be happy. It's hard. How I feel strong at work, in my relationship, in my sex life... right now it's not happening...

She really called it out! When we feel bad about ourselves it affects EVERYTHING in our lives! And when we can boost ourselves up into a place of confidence, it also affects everything in our lives... in a good way! Even our problems become more manageable and we are able to act from a place of confidence in crisis. 

​How Our Inner Goddess Can Help Us

I like to look at our lives through the lens of the inner goddess. In many stories, there is one character (or sometimes several characters) who represent the arc of a woman's life: Baby, child, maiden, mother, grandmother, crone.  Most of our adult life happens as maiden, mother, and grandmother.

But unfortunately our media tells us that the only one of those worth celebrating is the maiden. So of course it's a bitter pill to swallow when we leave that phase of our life behind. And it's ok to mourn the loss of your maiden (which happens more with age than actual motherhood, though both can trigger it). But it's not ok to stay in mourning of this transition.

And the truth is that, just like the stories, we actually have all of those inside of us all of our life, it's just that we don't have access to them. But once you've lived the various parts, you can actually tap into them easier. I'll be honest, it's swimming upstream because of how the media portrays women. But it's time. 

It's time to embrace the mother and the grandmother. It's time to allow for love, sensuality, and yes even sexuality to belong to a woman at any age! It's time to celebrate our wisdom and our wrinkles as hard earned badges that we can and should be proud of! 

​Is old the new sexy? I don't know, but it definitely should be!

Do you want some personalized help to channel your inner goddess for balance and wellbeing? Sign up for Small Steps, Big Magic!
​

Thinking about getting botox? 
Yeah, I was, too.
And then I did.

This is what I learned. 

Why do you want botox?
First of all, make sure you consider the reasons you are seeking botox. This should not be something you are doing because you are worried about what other people think. You need to make sure you're coming from a healthy place. 

What are your expectations?
The botox might not give you the results you are hoping for. I got it 4 times and only once did I feel truly satisfied with it. And it wasn't the last time, or I'd probably be getting it again! haha!

How does your body react to things? 
Are you sensitive? I am. I'm honestly not that surprised that I got a headache from the treatment, despite that I didn't realize it for the first three times due to extenuating circumstances around my neck causing headaches in the time frame I got the first three rounds. So, if you are sensitive, you might have side effects that don't make it worth it. 

What's the bottom line?
Honestly, go for it if you want to. We are all vain in certain ways - our clothes, our makeup, our hair, our shoes, our purses... whatever. Maybe botox will help soften up some lines that bug you. Or maybe it won't. In the end, you only know what you'll get if you try it, and if you go into with the right attitude, you'll be able to confidently decide whether or not it's worth it to you. 

What about emotional eating? 
And, as always, what does this have to do with emotional eating???? EVERYTHING!

It's ALL connected, and we are all susceptible to vain thoughts.

If we live in fear of people finding out we are vain, or discovering we got botox, or not getting botox but wishing we had... we are shutting down our emotions and making ourselves susceptible to numbing by any means... whether overeating, over drinking, smoking, gambling, having too much sex, drugs, or whatever unhealthy behavior we use to forget our pain as being out of alignment and under stress.

​By addressing ourselves WHOLLY, even our vanity and other "weaknesses", embracing them, and accepting them for what they are, we can make choices that leave us feeling our best, no matter if we get the botox or not. 

What do you think? Have you thought about botox? Have you tried it?