You are the boss of your inner critic - not vice versa.

Don't you just HATE it?  That nasty voice inside us that tells us we're fat, stupid, ugly, old, moronic, a waste of space, worthless and a complete failure and loser.  I'm sure there are some insults I've forgotten.  This critical voice is supposed to spur us on to be better and yet it does pretty much exactly the opposite.  If you have too many Tim Tams - it'll tell you you've ruined your healthy eating program and you'll never lose weight and you'll die lonely and alone with 27 cats gnawing at your remains (no really this kind of vitriol does exist inside people's heads).

Its time we took charge again and not allow this nasty voice to be in charge.

Natural Therapy for All (great blog!)  have published a four step plan to help you manage that voice that calls us such terrible names and sabotages our successes and dreams.  Have a read

Deny it or not – sometimes, we are our worst critics.  When making decisions, pursuing a new career, or taking risks, we often struggle with the inner critic inside us, someone who always reminds us that disappointment, frustration and failure are just around the corner – ready to conquer us. It is the voice that only ourselves can hear, but is so powerful that it can prevent us from reaching our goals and living life to the fullest.

The sad truth is that we have no power to shut down our inner critic. It is part of who we are. Actually, it is a necessary part. Imagine this. You have to cross the street. Without your inner critic warning you of possible dangers, you might cross without paying attention to the speedy cars passing by, as well as the road signs or stop lights. Yes, our inner critic helps us stay away from danger, and in other cases, from being hurt, failing, and so on.

But in life, there are decisions and risks that we have to push through in order to reach our goals. Like for instance, in getting to know a potential mate. Your inner critic might tell you not to entertain that person in your life as you may just get hurt, betrayed, or dumped later. But what if it’s the other way around? What if that person is the one who is going to complete you, to make you happy, and to make you a better person? You’ll never know until you try. This applies to all other aspects of life – career, health, family, etc.

The good news is that you have the power to take control of your inner critic and use it to your advantage. The question is how? The key to managing your inner critic is to develop a balanced relationship with it. You can do this by following these steps:

1)      Understand what your inner voice is trying to tell you. The negative voice inside you is not your enemy. It is just trying to help you (although many times it ends up ruining your plans and decisions). It may have useful points as well. You just have to listen. Assess if what your inner critic saying is true, logical and important and try to consider it if yes. But remember that at the end of the day, it is your logical, smart and optimistic self who will decide.

2)      Recognise the events or situations that often trigger your inner critic. It might be there whenever you are asked to speak in front of many people, when you are assigned to handle a big project, and so on. Often, our inner critic arises from the failures we have experienced in the past. Maybe you just need to work on these areas so the next time you encounter them, you are more confident.

3)      Develop optimism. You inner critic is more powerful when you are pessimistic. Instead of getting carried away with those criticisms, tell your critic self that you understand that he or she is just trying to protect you, but you have to push through with something to reach your goals.

4)      Act in spite of your inner critic. Keep your inner critic close by, but not too close that it’s already able to dictate you of what to do. As soon as your inner critic starts ranting, ask yourself – Is it helping me or hurting me?  This critical person is just a small part of you. You are much wiser than your inner critic to understand his or her real motives. The moment you identify that your inner critic is just overreacting, go and pursue with your plans.

Whilst your inner critic can be helpful at times, never allow it to rule your life and be bullied by it. Again, it is just a part of you, not a whole. Don’t let it get in the way and stop you from developing and becoming the person you want to be.

©Copyright 2013 by http://www.naturaltherapyforall.com 

Gratitude is the right attitude

I have a major gratitude: I'm alive.  That's a really good "status" to focus on rather than on the fact that we ate too many pieces of chocolate last night or that we're 20, 50 or 100 kg overweight.  We so often focus on what we don't have rather than what we do.

But studies show that happiness is linked to an "attitude of gratitude".  If we write down at least three things each day that we are grateful for, we will be more happy.

This works for life in general, but why not apply it to eating, weight and emotions?

What three things can you be grateful for each day?

How about:

1.  I could have eaten a whole packet of Tim Tams but I stopped at five.  I'm grateful I stopped and thought about what I was doing.

2.  I said "no" to that second slice of cake at the office birthday celebration. I'm grateful that I was kind to myself and my health in that situation

3.  I was nice to myself when I looked in the mirror this morning - I didn't call myself fatso. I was just grateful that my legs and arms worked.

I'm sure you can find some things you can be grateful for each day in this area.  And who knows - perhaps gratitude leads to an improved attitude.  And perhaps an improved attitude leads to improved self care.  And perhaps improved self-care leads to increased health and well-being.  Why not take that journey and find out for yourself??

Natural Therapy for All have written about how important gratitude is in our lives.  Check out their link below.

http://blog.naturaltherapyforall.com/2013/09/23/what-gratitude-does-to-your-health/

And I hope you enjoy the cartoon.  I think it says a lot.

When we "supersize" in the fast food place, that's exactly what happens. (think about it)

We love to get a bargain don't we?  But what sort of bargain is it to buy food that we don't need, then consume it because we don't want to waste the money.  This is perceived value, and has nothing to do with need.  Its a marketing ploy from a food industry that wants you to become addicted to their food and they employ sophisticated psychological and scientific techniques to lure you in.

That combination of fat, salt and sugar that hits the dopamine receptors in the brain (or the "bliss point" as the food industry calls it) is done on purpose.  That's why there's sugar in hamburger buns - so that the industry can get the "holy trinity" in the so-called "Happy" Meal.

But is that meal really making you happy? For longer than five minutes?  Or is it just making you more miserable with your increasing weight and what you perceive as your lack of control?

Step away from the Unhappy Meal and be kinder to yourself.  More is not necessarily better.  Think quality not quantity. Don't let a corporation dictate your health and well-being to you. Take back the responsibility that you ceded to "big food" out of ignorance, convenience or whatever reason.  A corporation does not have its customers' interests as a priority - the shareholders come first.  

Fat Shaming Week - can you believe it!?

Such a great idea (not) and women are responding to it with both wit and anger.

http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/10/12/womens-rights-fat-shaming-week?cmpid=tpnews-eml-2013-10-18-FatShaming


Here's what Naomi Wolf has to say:

What do you have to say?

Weight Stigma Awareness Week II

Check out the Binge Eating Disorder Association website http://bedaonline.com/ and look at all the cool stuff they have going on this week.

Enjoy!

National Weight Stigma Awareness Week - 23-27 September

Apologies for not blogging sooner.  Lets just say that breaking your ankle and sitting in a wheelchair for six weeks is just the first part of a lengthy process.  I've just come back from hydrotherapy and know that the rest of the day will be pretty achy and sore.  But enough about me.

As you'll see by the title - next week is devoted to awareness and the challenging of weight stigma.  Society as a whole judges people by their appearance.  People with excess weight are labelled as lazy, stupid and lacking self control.  And, sadly, people with excess weight label themselves as lazy, stupid and lacking self control.

STOP RIGHT NOW!

You cannot rate the value or worth of a person by their weight.  Overeating is a behaviour (albeit an unhelpful one), not a character flaw or personality defect.  We all have coping strategies - some strategies just have more obvious outcomes (you can't see the damaged liver of an emotional drinker).  The use of food to control mood is short term gain (because it works - briefly) for long term pain.  

So take the time in the next week (or right now if you feel like it!) and think about what prejudices you carry about either your own or someone else's excess adipose tissue.  Becoming aware of them is the first step in the process of change.

When you see that 200kg person in the street wolfing down a bacon double cheeseburger, don't think "what the hell are they eating?!"

think

"what the hell is eating them?"  

These are words of kindness and compassion to ourselves and/or those overweight people out there - because we are all worth it (thanks L'Oreal!).

Weight Loss - Five Big Lies

A kindred spirit in the world of eating, weight and emotions is Dr Rick Kausman.  His ground-breaking work has been going on for 25 years and he is very much qualified to call himself an expert in the field. 

In this article below from The Age by Kasey Edwards he lists the top five falsehoods that keep overweight people  miserable and the weight loss industry rich. 

What do you think about what's written below?  Are you ready to apply less willpower and more self-compassion around eating, weight and emotions?

"Dr Rick Kausman has been running a weight management and eating behaviour clinic for 25 years. He’s a director of the Butterfly Foundation, a fellow of the Australian Society for Psychological Medicine, and the author of If Not Dieting, Then What? 

1. Weight loss is a simple matter of willpower

We’ve all heard that weight loss is easy. People just need some good old-fashioned will power. This myth is so ingrained in our culture that it’s assumed that a person with a fat body is lazy and undisciplined which can lead to discrimination in employment opportunities and by health care professionals.

"Most people try to use willpower and determination to lose weight. Weight loss is the wrong goal to have (we’ll get to that in a moment) but, nonetheless, willpower is not the right skill to use to achieve that goal," says Dr Kausman.

"Willpower is a terrific skill to have but it’s a short-term skill. You use willpower for things like studying for exams. But you wouldn’t have enough willpower to force yourself to study for exams every day for the rest of your life."

"Weight loss and healthy eating is the same. People just run out of willpower, they run out of the ability to deprive themselves. Willpower is not the right skill to use to try to achieve long-term sustainable change."

2. You can shame yourself (or other people) thin

We raise our eyebrows when we see an overweight person eating carbs and wonder if we should say something to our fat friends and family ‘for their own good’. We think humiliating fat people in shows like Biggest Loser is ‘tough love’ and we ask our friends to police our eating and weight loss and hate ourselves when we inevitably fail.

"A much better skill to use to be the healthiest we can be is self-compassion," says Dr Kausman.

"We should work on being kinder to ourselves. The research shows that if we can be kinder to ourselves then we tend to look after ourselves better. We will do things that will help us look after ourselves better rather than punish ourselves or set ourselves targets that are impossible to achieve."

3. Doctors and health professionals are experts in weight management**

"Weight management and the psychology of eating is a relatively new area of health," says Dr Kausman.

Doctors, dietitian and psychologists are experts in many areas, but according to Dr Kausman weight management and the psychology of eating is very often not one of them.

"In a short period of time we have seen weight gain for a significant number of people, as well as a thin ideal that is almost impossible to achieve" says Dr Kausman. "The education and training for health professionals has not caught up to deal with this problem."

"On the whole, GPs, dietitians and psychologists are very poorly equipped to support somebody who might come in and say that they feel they are above their most healthy weight and looking for advice on what they should do about that."

4. The weight loss industry are weight loss experts

"The weight loss industry just has to die," says Dr Kausman.

"All weight loss organisations are businesses that do a brilliant job of masquerading as health providers. They are not health providers. They are geared to what is going to make the most money and not what is most helpful for their clients, so they are never going to be helpful."

"The mere idea of weight loss companies offering a life membership is a joke. The whole premise is ridiculous because it’s the opposite of what you want to be doing. They should be aiming to free people from the distress and disempowerment of counting, measuring and weighing."

"I don’t want my patients to be a member of my practice. I want to work with them to make this issue really quiet in their life. Whereas the weight loss industry wants to hang on to you, disempower you to keep you as members," says Dr Kausman.

Kausman is not alone is suggesting that weight loss companies do more harm than good. A 2007 article in American Psychologist which reviewed 31 weight  loss  studies reported that, ‘One study found that both men and women who participated in formal weight-loss programs gained significantly more weight over a two-year period than those who had not participated in a weight-loss program’.

"The evidence is really crystal clear that dieting doesn’t work and that it can lead to eating disorders. Yet these weight loss organisations have managed to stay one step ahead of the general public’s, but also health professionals’, awareness about these issues. But they are being wound in as we speak," Dr Kausman says.

5. Diets lead to weight loss

"What we know — and we now have the science to prove it — is that dieting doesn’t work, certainly in the medium to long term but often in the short-term as well," says Dr Kausman. "We also know that, for most people dieting causes weight gain. And that the most common path to an eating disorder is weight-loss dieting."

"We need to shift the focus away from weight as the goal and onto looking after ourselves. We need to stop focusing on the end point and start valuing the process."

"Weight is a terrible measure for healthy, anyway," says Kausman."

Kasey Edwards is the best-selling author of 4 books 30-Something and Over It, 30-Something and The Clock is Ticking, OMG! That's Not My Husband, and OMG! That's Not My Child. www.kaseyedwards.com

**I certainly agree with Kausman on this point.  Most psychologists list weight management as part of their area of expertise, but very few specialise in it or have a specific methodology that addresses the use of food to control mood.