Holiday Eating Season Arrives.......

It's back. That season when everyone is tempting you to destroy your careful eating plan with cookies and stuffing and other goodies that show up in mass quantities this time of year.

Remember that your eating plan is for YOU, not your friends and relatives. You do not owe it to anyone to overeat or consume things that are bad for you. "Polite" does NOT mean consuming things you would not otherwise eat so you can tell your host how much you like it. It also does not mean overeating so your host can feel successful. It does mean being appreciative of the things you can eat comfortably and enjoying your meal.

On the flip side, there is temptation. Some part of you really wants that pumpkin pie or that stuffing, even after you are beginning to feel as stuffed as the turkey. It can be difficult to remember how bad it will feel later when you have eaten a plateful of things you are not accustomed to in quantities you rarely consume. Do treat your inner child to a taste of whatever you love. Don't feel obligated to overdo it--don't eat a whole slice of pie or a whole serving of stuffing. If you pace yourself and taste everything that really tempts you, you can enjoy your healthy holiday and feel good about having limited your indulgence.

The Myth of Mental Illness and the Late, Great Thomas Szasz

For those who know me, you know that I dislike diagnoses. My clients have to specially request a diagnostic code to put in the little box their insurance demands in order to reimburse them. I treat people, not diseases. I treat people, not disorders. I treat people, not symptoms. I work at treating them with respect--respect for the ultimate fact they while I guide a healing process, it is the client who cures herself. Or to use words Dr. Szasz might use, it is the client who solves her own "problem in living".

People come to me with vexing life problems. They have chronic pain that has mystified a handful of competent physicians. They have had anxiety since grade school, and it has now blossomed into panic attacks. They feel depressed and unmotivated. They have failed to lose weight despite having tried a score of conventional means. My job is to look at the individual in front of me, and learn what ails her and how it may have come to be so. I apply a kind of scientific method where I form hypotheses with the help of the individual in my office, and we challenge the hypothesis with a treatment plan--if it works, it was likely true, or at least close enough to true to solve the problem.

Dr. Szasz and I have had our differences on some delicate points--can some of this material I help to discover and interrelate be hidden in the unconscious, and my client not know about it? Can historical events cause strange symptoms today that the client has not chosen as a solution, but rather that seem to have chosen her? Can my client essentially develop symptoms that solve a problem in an unfortunate way that she is consciously, directly, unable to alter? Is there a scientific way to apply psychotherapy? Dr. Szasz was quite clear that the answer to all of these questions was no. I, on the other hand, am clear that the answer is yes.

Those minor differences aside, the legacy of Dr. Thomas Szasz is immeasurable. He championed the human mind. He fought the psychiatric state--the ability of the government to control individuals by means of their mental state. He fought the medicalization of psychology, thus attempting to empower the individual to change himself rather then being at the mercy of a physician. Dr. Szasz did not believe in "helpful coercion" --a phrase that chills the blood. For me, reestablishing or maintaining the power of my client to change is the essence of good therapy.

Center for Conscious Living.......a name with a meaning. I see my task as helping you, the client, my employer, to improve the quality of your life by guiding you to discover and use your personal power to change. Yes, I guide and you do the rest of the work. Sorry, but there is no magic pill. What there is is power--the power you discover to help yourself! The joy of my work comes from seeing clients find and utilize their power and--um--get me off the payroll (not that I would mind if they gratefully paid me forever.....). Stop therapy because you are better, not because you are bored! Contact Dr. Low at the Center via e-mail: drlow@pobox.com, or phone. 630-249-1983. I look forward to hearing from you!

Fats vs Carbs--The Fat Loss Eating Dilemma

So, you want to lose weight.  Or, more specifically, you want to lose some excess fat, as do so many of us!  And you read and ask friends and professionals and get as many opinions and ideas as sources.  What's a normal person to do?
First, think.  Second, eat food.  I know you THINK you EAT FOOD, but it is likely that a good deal of what you and many others among us consume consists of manufactured products with very little resemblance to actual food as provided by nature--plants and/or animals.

This does not imply that you must become a farmer nor live on roots and berries.  It means that you must think about what a body actually needs to thrive, and move your diet as close to that ideal as you comfortably can.  It is likely that the closer you get, the more weight you will lose, and the healthier you will become.

In terms of both health and fat loss, there is a difference between a processed, "pink slime," burger, and one made from grass-fed beef.  There is a difference between processed eggs/egg whites and whole, pastured chicken eggs.  There is a difference between fresh fruit and canned fruit.  There is a difference between iceberg lettuce and dark, leafy, mixed green salad. The further from its natural state a food is, the less good for you it is.  The more ingredients a label has, the less foodlike the substance inside of it is will be.

A subset of packaged and processed foods are all the basically empty calories we love to eat--cakes, pies, candies, cookies, chips, etc.  The body wants nutrition, and these items do not contain much in the way of nutrients.  They do contain calories.  This leads to a craving for FOOD despite too many calories having been consumed already.  We know what that leads to..........obesity.  The answer, however, is not a low-fat diet, but a low carb diet, with focus on the healthy fats and lots of varied vegetables and natural sources of protein.  When we eat too many carbohydrates (sugars and flours) and hydrogenated/trans fats, which most of our nutritionally empty, yummy treats represent, we put ourselves into a fat-storing mode of operation.

End the Dieting YoYo: Holistic Weight Loss

Allow me to begin by reminding my readers that "diet" is a four letter word. Not as in, "My diet is normally healthy," but as in "I am on a diet."

When you seek to lose weight, it is important to think of the long term. You might be losing weight for a special event, but the idea is to maintain your new shape, not bounce back to the old one the very next week. If you go on some sort of special "diet" in which you deprive your body of nutrients to lose pounds fast, you may indeed succeed at losing those pounds, but as soon as you return to eating adequately, you will likely put them back on.

The same, of course, applies to exercise. If you exercise fanatically to lose some weight, adding increased calorie burn to your reduced caloric intake, you are likely to lose weight. ...and likely to put it back on when you return to a more sustainable lifestyle.

Ideally, to lose weight and keep it off, we need to eat enough to sustain a slightly reduced body size. We need to exercise more, both to increase the metabolism and build muscle, not just to burn calories. Burning calories makes you hungry and less likely to continue your fat loss program. We have all been there, surrendering to starvation before we reach our goal and, feeling defeated, giving up the whole project in disgust.

So how do we do this? Create a diet plan for life--learn to eat for your body's needs: eat adequately to sustain your body and watch those nutrients--we tend to be hungry when we are not getting enough nutrition even if we ARE getting adequate calories! Which is why we seem to be able to consume enormous quantities of non-nutritive treats, but rather less of life-sustaining foods. It is harder to overeat steak than chips. It is also the case that a starving body craves fat, sugar, and salt--the nutrients that are scarce in nature. If your body feels starved, you will find yourself drawn to exactly the things you ought to avoid to lose weight! It turns out this is not a failure of will, but a built-in mechanism to avoid starvation in times of famine. Thus, consuming a nourishing diet is the first key to long-term fat loss.

Is late-night eating your nemesis? It is probable that you are starved for nutrients and your body is driving you to distraction when your sales-resistance is lowest. And late at night, what do we seek? Fast foods that are full of sugar, salt, and fat, of course. Eat right all day and you can win the fight against late-night eating.

Here is another fact: Modern humans exist in the first time in history when people can be malnourished and obese simultaneously. This is because we consume manufactured treats that reverse the trend of the natural scarcity of sugar, salt, and fat. These items, while inexpensive, are not nourishing, and lead to overconsuming and obesity. Even so-called "diet" products with artificial fats and sweeteners fail to help us trim down because they are non-nutritive and thus continue the tendency of the body to crave the real thing. The food industry knows what your body craves and generously manufactures a wide variety of such items to capitalize on your natural scarcity eating tendencies. Think before you consume.

In your new diet plan, arrange to eat FOR your day, not after. As with a machine, the human body works most efficiently when it is fed FOR what is has to do, not as you are winding down for the night. Research demonstrates that consuming the same number of calories per day late in the day versus early leads to weight gain. This means your mother was right--you need a good breakfast to start your day. It also means that eating a large, late dinner makes it tougher to lose weight and easier to gain. Additionally, breakfast cereals are better for livestock than humans. Humans do not do well on very high-carbohydrate starters. We need to train our bodies to use protein for sustained energy rather than carbs for high, short bursts of energy. Remember that high-carb consumption, after that nice burst of energy, leads to high insulin output and fat storage as well as the tendency to stress the pancreas and develop diabetes as we age.

When you begin to plan your exercise program, think about exercising both to raise your metabolism and to build muscle, a higher-calorie burning tissue than fat. This means do both aerobic and resistance exercises. See a trainer is you need help planning this program. Remember that exercise must be consistent to work--choose a program that you can sustain for the long haul, not one that you will become bored of after a week. And particularly not one that you hate! It is not a failure of will when you stop doing something you hate. You will stop exercising at some point unless you find a way to have fun at it.

Now you have some ideas of how to create a sustainable weight-control lifestyle. If you need a boost to get you started or to get you past a plateau or just to help you stay on track, clinical hypnosis might be the key. Clinical hypnosis has been shown to help individuals break bad eating habits, learn to control portion size, and maintain the motivation to change. Many of us who know what we should be doing to lose weight need some support and guidance to stay on track. Clinical hypnosis offers a self-empowering way to help you break through those barriers and lose that extra fat once and for all. When you come in for hypnosis, you are learning to tap into inner resources to find your own motivation and make long-lasting changes.

Veggie Fest 2010 Aug 7-8.

For local readers, it is almost Veggie Fest time. Veggie Fest is an event designed to promote healthy vegetarian eating (not the only sort of healthy eating, to be sure, but an option). Please check out their website and drop by for food samples, demos, and more.