Ok, as you know, my guided journal launched over Thanksgiving and hit #1 in it's ebook category twice over the holiday weekend. I was obviously riding high!
So, it's been a month now and I'm not obsessively checking the page anymore :) But, because of the past obsessive watching, I went to amazon just to buy something the other day, and it auto-populated the website address to my journal's direct page... and my heart did a jump. Because I had a one star review :( So, in all honesty, here is how things went down. My first reaction: Ego/anger. "Who wrote this? Do I KNOW this person??" I looked at her amazon page (only three reviews, two x one star, one x five star), no other information. I had no idea who she was. My second reaction: Stuff down the emotions. "Okay, Alegra, this is going to happen. You can't only have 5 star reviews. Get over it and just move on." This is tricky because it actually feels helpful. It's true that getting agro and wanting to figure out if I can identify who wrote this is not serving me... but moving on and forgetting about actually isn't serving me either. My third reaction: Sit with it. So, I had to sit with it. I had to take it to bed with me and let it percolate. I had to let my ego do its thing, so I could go deeper to the stuff behind the stuff. It didn't exactly keep me up, but it was definitely on my mind as I fell asleep and again when I woke up. (Feels a little crazy to say that. Feels like I "should" be tougher than that. Feels like I "should not" be so affected. But yet... I am. This is me. I want everyone to think my journal is 5 stars and it upsets me that someone thinks it is 1 star.) My fourth reaction: Inspired acceptance. As I lay with these feelings... it did start to seem like less of a threat. I realized, as I wrote and re-wrote a million possible comments to her review on amazon (in my head, of course), that what she said was in some ways irrelevant and in some ways a helpful critique. She actually didn't realize it was a journal. With blank pages. To be written upon. So she was surprised at the lack of "information." That's useful - I want other people to know what they are buying. And at the same time, she wasn't really reviewing the content; she hadn't done the journal. So it is what it is. I came up with a way to acknowledge the fact that I appreciated her pointing out that yes, it is a journal, and yes, it has blank space. And I also asked her to share her new perspective if she chose to answer the prompts. How this applies to the rest of life... And guess what... ALL of this process applies to emotional eating, too! Initial reactions rarely serve. The stuffing it down is usually where we get stuck - literally stuffing the food down in order to stuff the feelings down. The sitting with it is SO SCARY! And yet, only when we sit and actually feel it (whatever "it" is) can we get to inspired acceptance or action. That is the EXACT reason why I created a JOURNAL and not a book of information. People have enough information. In fact, we have TOO MUCH information. What we don't have is the time and space to reflect on what the hell is happening in our lives that is making us eat the food we don't want to eat and/or obsess over the one star reviewers in our life. But the truth is... there is always going to be someone who thinks I'm one star. And there is always going to be BS in our life that makes us want to eat that pint of Ben and Jerry's. So what we all need is a plan and a path to process the feelings and reactions we have, in order to make sure we are taking inspired action. You can start by blaming the 1-star factor in your life. Take my quiz to find out who or what it is!
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You don’t have to berate yourself for eating whatever it is that you like to eat. You don't even have to berate yourself when you eat so much of it that you feel sick, or guilty, or sick and guilty.
I've done all of these things. I've eaten myself sick on candy, and I've eaten myself sick on "healthy" things like prunes and pineapple. And when you repeatedly feel like crap from overeating, it doesn't matter if it's junky or "healthy" - it's not healthy. And even if you aren't binging or feeling like crap from overeating... if you are feeling bad about your self because... You used to run, but you just can't seem to make the time anymore... The candy bowl at work always seems like the perfect stress relief, even though you don't even like the candy that much... You know you are not being healthy, but you just don't feel like there is anything you can do about it... Well stop right there! You’re a smart, ambitious, successful woman. You know what it takes to get it done. You are in charge of so many things!!! You know so much!! So you know the thing to do THIS time is to hire someone who... (a) has been through the same thing and come out thriving (b) has compressed the system for results and success (c) is almost 6 feet tall and loves drinking tea Yes, that's right! I'm talking about myself! Hire ME! The best way to do that is to start with your clarity call.
The secret to simple healthy food is this: grains and veggies.
I explained a bit about grains one week ago. Today, let's chat vegetables. If you really don't know how to make sure you make this happen, then grab yourself a coffee chat with me so we can chat and I can tell you about the ways I can help you commit to it. I have SEVERAL ways! I can teach you to Eat Twice as Healthy in Half the Time. I can schedule you a Pantry Makeover. I can help you go deep in Love Every Bite. Let me share with you how I tout the advantages of vegetables in my forth coming book: Vegetables: Adding a salad or steamed vegetables to a meal is quick and easy way to round the meal out. Cooking soup is an easy way to create a meal featuring the bounty of the farmer’s market. Vegetables should be plenty and abundant in your diet. They are filling and delicious; they are high in fiber and low in fat; most are low in sugar; they are full of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. They really add so much to a diet and you can eat so much without ever worrying about whether or not they are healthy. Vegetables are the one part of any diet that you never have to measure, weigh, or be concerned about over eating. And I didn't even go into the health benefits! Vegetables are the staple of most healthy "diets." Anytime or place in the history of the world, they ate vegetables. Except, of course, for modern day industrialized nations. Like ours. Where we suffer from a disastrous array of preventable health ailments... Ahem. Alright, so how can eat more of them??? Just like grains. We have to commit. We have to change our mindset from "it's too hard" to "hell yeah I wanna live forever!" (You know, not really. But I do wanna feel great and look my best and be as healthy as I can as long as I can!!! And veggies help with all of that!!!) Okay, Alegra. HOW???? Well, if you are familiar with "Eat Twice as Healthy in Half the Time" - the first step is chop veggies. It's really three steps: Buy them and chop them and use them. Still. I know you can do that. So go ahead and hop back on Pinterest and find one recipe with veggies. Easy! And then chop TWICE as many veggies as what it calls for, and use up the leftovers in an other meal the next day!! You've just doubled your veggies consumption. Okay, I just had a chat with my mastermind sister (my friend who just gets me and reflects me and helps me be my best self and grow my business, too!) yesterday.
We talked about how we - us specifically, but humans in general - do the same thing over and over, even as we wish we would change it. We observe it, we notice it, we realize it's not benefitting us, and yet it's HARD to change things!! I suppose humans really are creatures of habit. She was talking about business. She has these amazing ideas (she's brilliant), and then she does NOT implement them. Then she has the brilliant idea AGAIN, and tells me about it, and I'm like "Yeah, you said to me before." Which surprises her. I guess she's so brilliant she can't even keep up with herself! And I shared with her how often I write in my journal that the day would have been better if I had gone to bed earlier and gotten more sleep. I'm not talking hours, I'm talking half an hour, an hour. And yet, that little bit is so hard. So she brainstormed an idea for her to get her ideas onto paper. And I agreed I'd talk to my coach about my schedule and my desire for getting 10% more sleep. And then after this conversation... I thought my my OLD journals. Over and over I write things like this: Yesterday was horrible eating day. (And the day before). Stuffed myself on pizza. Felt sick. All day bad bad eating. Feel sick. Ate so much I feel I will bust my seams. One day sugar free. Eating eating eating. And I know that at the time I was not using my journals purposefully. I was not moving forward with them, I was really just recording. So as interesting as it is now, I wasn't really putting them to work back then. And that's the thing. We can KNOW what we need to do, and still now know HOW to do it? So here are my questions to you, Do you know what you need to do? Do you have a plan on how you will do it? Ask me if you have any questions. I'd love to give you some feedback if you are looking for it.
When we are living out of alignment with our own values, it is WAY to easy to be susceptible to people’s criticism.
Haters are hating to trigger us…and unfortunately we all too often get triggered by their BS. But that is a mistake. And we make that mistake usually because we have our own hater living inside of us. That is because our society programs us, especially women, to critique ourselves. We look at our bodies or even our faces, and we find everything wrong. It’s sad to see how the media we are exposed to trains us in this way. All the ads, even the entertainment, are designed to make us compare ourselves to perfect, airbrushed bodies that don’t even exist in the real world. SO of course when we hear people commenting : “it must be nice to go to the gym...or it must be nice that your clothes are loose… or it must be nice to be able to afford healthy food…or it must be nice to have a health coach” it is all too easy to fall into that negative thinking. Some people don’t want you to succeed… but they are deep in the trap of being stuck with a bad lot. That does not mean you have to listen to them or let them trigger your inner critic. The truth is that more often than not it’s how you prioritize things. I think it's because they try to cover up the fact that they don't do anything about becoming healthier. Or maybe they just need a little motivation, but they aren't at the point of wanting to commit that deeply When people see that it actually CAN BE DONE they are left with the hard cold truth that their excuses of not seeing results are just that... EXCUSES! It hurts to hear these messages from the outside, but it hurts more to hear them from the inside. When we can learn to love ourselves from the inside out…when we can break free from the media that trains us to deprecate ourselves…when we can shake off the haters… then we feel like: I don't let it get to me because nobody is gonna stop me from becoming healthy! You don't have to go hungry or kill yourself working out to lose weight. You can't please everyone…but you can grow big ones! I'm doing this for me! So how do you get to this point? Well, when you approach your diet changes as a lifestyle approach you have to address the BIG PICTURE of your life. You look at all the pieces of the puzzle that got you where you are (wanting to change), and break them down one by one to make changes that last! 1. Give up dieting mentality – it keeps you fighting yourself. 2. Listen to your body – honor what you need. 3. Be prepared – make sure you are ready for your busy days! What can you learn from the haters in your life?
Ever had any of these thoughts…
I'm not feeling pretty. I'm feeling fat and ugly. I have so many wrinkles. My boobs are saggy. Look at your double chin. Look at your belly. It's your fault you got this fat. You only have yourself to blame. If you have ever had any thoughts like these… and lets be honest, who hasn’t? Yeah, some of those are mine…some are other people’s they’ve shared with me. Then I want to chime in here... that is your bitch brain talking. We ALL have one (men and women both), but women are definitely "trained" to listen to that bitch more than men, though both can fall into it. It actually really pisses me off how society subtly but pervasively makes this kind of thinking epidemic, not matter who you are, where you live, what you look like, or anything else. And that bitch brain is probably getting louder EXACTLY because you are making positive healthy choices. I'm not a psychologist, I can't tell you *why* that happens... but I do work with women to help them overcome sugar addiction and emotional eating and I can tell you with certainty that if the bitch brain was one of the reasons why you were turning to sugar in the first place (almost always), then when you begin to take better care of yourself that bitch brain gets LOUDER! The moment you begin to make changes, you begin to think worse thoughts!! It’s very unfair. But think of it as a sign that you’re actually doing something right. Now you have to deal with it so it doesn’t tear you down. So, how can you turn that off? Well, it's multi step process and will likely take time, just like any lifestyle change. 1. Retrain your brain. Practice affirmations, but you have to FEEL them. It's not just words... it's FEELING the words and MEANING the words and going just beyond where you are now to where you can BELIEVE the words that describe the next step where you are certain to be in a few days or a week. 2. Journal. You are likely carrying around old baggage. We all are, really, but you have to get to the bottom of it and understand why stopping eating sugar (or exercising or making a healthy choice at a restaurant, or whatever) is making your own brain into a hater. You must understand how you got to where you are at in order to effectively change it. 3. You have to turn your bitch brain into a friend. Instead of accepting the comments as truth... ask her questions. Yes I'm telling you to talk to yourself It works! Ask yourself why you are thinking those things. As you progress your relationship you can start to challenge her. But like the affirmations, if you challenge too early she will fight back. First understand where she is coming from. Over time you will learn to recognize these thoughts as normal self doubt that does not have to be critical or self sabotaging. Finally, link these new habits to old ones. This works with any kind of new habit - positive thoughts, healthy eating, exercise, etc. You have to find a time... like when you brush your teeth look in the mirror and say 3 nice things about yourself. Since you are already brushing your teeth it will be easier to get this new affirmative habit to "stick" to an old habit than to create a new one from our of thin air. If you are ready to apply these simple yet profoundly life changing steps in your life… If you are ready to reverse your relationship with food and your body and start to feel great about yourself... Are you ready to say goodbye to…
- sugar - junk food - donuts/cakes/candy - ice cream - chips I admire if ANY of these or on your to do list, and I want to help you make sure you don’t fall into the trap of ending up back in your old habits! Do you have a plan and system to make sure you can sustain those changes? Sometimes a huge lifestyle change works, but often it can feel overwhelming. Because if you have a long list of “give up” foods it may mean you have been eating more of them than you'd like. And perhaps you’ve been doing this longer than you’d like as well. And it’s all too common to give them up… keep it up for while…then fall back into old habits. Which is frustrating, even depressing. I'd suggest taking some time to look at how each of these habits will be worked in. A few ways to consider this: 1. Do you have a time each day blocked off to make sure you are preparing healthy food? 2. Are you going to meal plan and/or prep to have healthy foods readily available to yourself? 3. Also, perhaps most importantly, have you asked yourself how your habits got out of alignment with your values? Did you get stressed? Did you get busy? Did you get bored? Did you get lazy? Was it the way you always ate and you are ready to change it? This is an essential step I see people overlooking, but it really helps you move forward without falling back into old habits! I'm so honored to welcome the third in a series of guests posts from the awesome Boss Mom community! Thank you to Amy Napoli for this week's post! Stress! We hear about it on the news, in magazines, and from our doctors. We know we should minimize its impact on ourselves and families. Our bodies are wired to manage stress. However, we live in an age of where it’s occurring continuously, throughout most of our day. The body is set up to respond with various hormones and physical responses when it feels stress, but it’s unable to discern between stress of work and being chased by a lion. It just knows it’s being stressed. So. what’s the big deal? How is it effecting our health? Uncontrolled stress can lead to health issues such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity. Physically, we can feel symptoms of headaches, fatigue, stomach issues, and change in sex drive, to name a few. Stress can also affect our mood, focus at work, and relationships with other’s. 5 areas to help manage your stress: Sleep: Lack of sleep or deep sleep affects stress levels and in return, stress can cause insomnia. Implement healthy sleep habits – wake and rise at the same time, minimize exposure to blue light in the evening (turn off those electronics), and limit alcohol and caffeine. Make sleep a priority in your schedule so your body has time to rest and repair. Nutrition: Improper nutrition can cause us to be foggy headed, irritable and cranky due to sugar spikes and drops, and decrease our immune health. Look to fuel your body well with a balanced diet of whole foods (think lean protein, veggies, and whole grains). Minimize cravings and mood swings by avoiding highly processed, sugar foods. So often, when we are stressed out we will reach for comfort foods or unhealthy options. Ask yourself HALT (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) and be aware of why you are choosing the foods you are picking. Exercise: Get up and move! Exercise is known to help lower stress levels by producing endorphins in our bodies, promoting better sleep, and stabilizing moods. Pick the exercise you enjoy and schedule it into your daily agenda. Take mini-breaks throughout the day to walk around the block or stretch. Prep & Plan: Help control daily stressors by having a plan for the day. Some of the biggest added layers of stress come from our hectic daily schedules and meal times. Once a week sit down and look at where everyone in your house needs to be. Schedule into the calendar and look for potential pitfalls before they occur. Have a plan to ask for help so you are not double booked and running in two different directions. Plan dinners for the week and take time over the weekend to begin prep to make meal time smoother. Cut veggies and cook meals that are nutritious and can be reheated easily. Always have a plan B! Even the best prepped plans can derail with unexpected changes. It will be so much easier to change focus when you know you have a plan in place. Self-Care: This is the most overlooked area of managing stress. First, it’s not selfish, it’s essential. We have plans to take care of everyone else, but in the end our own batteries are depleted. Ultimately, we have nothing left to give those who need us most. A day at the spa or a fabulous vacation could be the cure, but not reality for most of us. Try to incorporate daily moments of self-care that are simple and require minimal time. Sit for 5 minutes with your eyes closed and breathe deeply, meditate, or read a book. Small moments will add up to a calmer day. There will always be stress in our lives, but our ability to handle or minimize it greatly influence its impact on our health. Set yourself up for success and begin to incorporate the above techniques. Habits take time to become part of our routine, so continue to focus on fitting them in daily. You are so worth the effort! Keep in touch with Amy on Facebook! I'm super excited to welcome my first guest post! I went to a the Boss Mom Retreat in January (like a conference but so much better), and was uplifted by the amazing community of women that came together there. One of the most exciting things was finding other women with messages that I loved, and that I knew you would love, too! Thanks to Rochelle Bohannon for this great insight on the importance of self care!
SELF-CARE FOR THE SOUL As women (and especially as moms) we tend to do all the things. We spend much of our time caring, planning and implementing for others. We’re inherently good at multitasking, so it only makes sense to embrace this. But often times, we lose sight of something very important in the process: the ability to care deeply and intentionally for ourselves. Many of us are conditioned to believe that anything related to the “self” is, in fact, a selfish act. We are taught that selfishness is a bad thing. It often carries a stigma of greed and narcissism. But this is so far from the truth. Self-care is an act that allows for us to maintain the integrity of our lives. Without it, we aren’t able to feel happy, productive or fulfilled. If we neglect it, we might feel anxious, empty and overwhelmed. Self care helps is to feel grounded and balanced, even when life is not. I think of it like this: You need to put on your oxygen mask before you can put on someone else’s. If you aren’t breathing, there’s no way that you can help anyone else do anything. You are the leader of your life, and you need to exist as the best, well-fed version of yourself. Life is demanding and oftentimes, throwing us many balls from many directions. In order to avoid burn out, we must look inward to think about what it is that we need from ourselves and from the world. There are many facets of self-care: Emotional
Physical
Spiritual
Mental
Social
Practical
Many of these things, like sleep, exercise, affirmations, meditation and chores will be things that you might need to do on a daily basis in order to stay sane. But there are other areas that might only need your attention less often. There are an infinite number of ways to incorporate self-care into your daily life. My favorite method is to think of it this way: What is one thing that you can do today to take care of yourself? Since there are six aspects of self-care, I find it easiest to try and address one area specifically each day of the week, with a “freebie” day thrown in as well. For example: Sunday - Spiritual (church, yoga, a walk in nature, etc.) Monday - Emotional (affirmations for the week) Tuesday - Mental (wake up early to read or journal) Wednesday - Practical (do laundry, get organized) Thursday - Social (coffee date or dinner with friends) Friday - Physical (face mask or a massage) Saturday - Whatever area of your life that needs a little extra love this week! Keep in mind, this is a loose guideline of how it might look. Each week might be different for you, depending on what you have going on. There will be times that life might not allow you as much self-care as you hope for, but that’s okay. Remember that it’s not about being perfect; it’s about being intentional and simply recognizing that you need that extra love. That’s the first step to being able to implement self-care. Ultimately, your personal definition of self-care is what matters. Regardless of what it looks like for you, self-care should involve two things: tuning in (to yourself and your needs) and tuning out (of the outside demands from life and others). Ultimately, by caring for yourself, you are allowing yourself to live authentically, stay engaged and feel productive. So cheers to you, your health and your self! Find Rochelle Bohannon on Facebook. I'm all about having good intentions. I think it's really important. And yet at the same time intention does no good without action. I have to admit I have these insights as I laid awake worrying about the election results. Whoever you voted for is unimportant. But did you know that 46% of all registered voters did not vote? So I wonder who they wanted to win. Because they might have had a desire or intention but they didn't take action. And I especially wonder who would have won if they had. Now to share with you a little bit about my mind (and my crazy) I have to tell you that while I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about either candidate I have a weird deep-seated fear Donald Trump will get us involved in a war. This is probably not rational. And I've actually seen people say that they were glad Hillary wasn't elected because she would have taken us into World War 3. So obviously people on either side have irrational fears about the opposite candidate. None the less I woke up knowing he had won and felt like instead of working on my business I should move to the woods and become a doomsday prepper. That's not rational. I realize that. And the way that the intention plays in with this is that I'm in a phase in my business where I'm setting up a foundation for further growth. I have my one-on-one clients, but I want to keep growing. I want to add more clients and I want to offer more opportunities to help people change their relationship with food. My next two steps are online group classes and a book. Those are my intentions. And yet as I lay there freaking out thinking I shouldn't work on my business at all, I realized it didn't really make sense. My business is my intention. And instead of getting worried about something un-founded in reality, I need to take action to serve my intention. And this IN TURN, led me to realize that I have certain habits and paths in my day-to-day life that I've set up... and that are NOT serving my intention. Those day to day actions are not in alignment with my intention. Despite that fact that I've actually been WORRIED about my day to day habits... I hadn't actually changed them. Thinking about those people who did not vote and the fact that they probably had an opinion made it really clear to me all of my action needs to be in alignment with my intention. So... I cancelled my gym membership which isn't that close to my house. I printed out a coupon to the gym that is close to my house. I transferred my youngest son from the farther away preschool to the closer preschool. I called that preschool and asked if siblings have priority. (Yes! They said that they would do that for my older son.) This is where all of my actions are now aligning for the intention that I have. Instead of just worrying about how far I"m driving or worrying about which school my kids should be in... I did what I could to start changing things. In one day I did everything in my power to stop myself from driving all around town and to give myself the opportunity to be focused so that my actions can be in alignment with my intention. Can I control everything? No. I still have to wait for my son's name to get called up on the wait list. But I did what I could to ensure that he'll get called on the wait list. My actions are in alignment with my intention. How does this relate to health? It all goes back to this: should have could have would have. Saying that you should lose weight or saying that you should stop eating sugar is an intention. But it's not action. Reading a book about health? That's action. Calling a friend to set a goal to go to the gym together? That's action. Giving yourself an honest assessment of what you actually need to achieve your goals? That's action. And that's really the first step. So often I see people believing the excuses they tell themselves, and believing the stories that justify their current behavior. And that will never align your actions with your intentions. Just like I had to actually CHANGE my gym membership and CHANGE my son's preschool, despite the stories I was telling myself about what I "should" do... you have to CHANGE patterns to CHANGE there results. I could have just focused on the preschool and not changed my gym membership because "I like my friends at the gym." But I still would have been driving all over town and I wouldn't have been achieving my goal. I have to get honest with myself about what would really serve me best in order to achieve my intention. What's your intention? What action will you take to make it reality? |
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