“He who fails to plan, plans to fail” This quote is so true to me!

I try to plan and set up routines and try to be as efficient as can be. I have found that I need to schedule my routines so I don’t just brush them off and not think that they are important.

A good example of this is my laundry. I need to do laundry very regularly, but it is not necessary critical that I do it every day. Yet I do know that when my kids are looking for clean socks and clothing that it is getting to that critical point and I need to reset my priorities.

The same thing can be said for scheduling in my exercise. I have to admit that I have not weight trained for about a month. I have also started  taking walks instead of running. I have to admit that I have lost my drive to be fit. It is not critical of me to workout everyday but after a while of not doing it I do miss the positive things that weight training does for me. It is crucial that I resume my fitness goals.

So with this kind of funk that I am in, I am more and more convinced that the key to reaching your fitness goals is through the mind. I did have routines set up, but they got derailed. To set them up again I have to be in the correct mind frame to do it.

To do so I need to take baby steps. I used to be a flybaby at Flylady.net. It is a free website that helps you make routines on how to organize your house, create home cooked meals and other helpful tips to become more efficient. I stopped being part of their yahoo group due to the number of emails that they sent out. But I learned the value of routines and starting with baby steps.

I have to remind myself that my day starts with the evening before. I need to go to bed early. I have so much more energy when I am well rested. My first baby step needs to be with getting to bed early. I have a lot of trouble with this. Having more energy plays a significant role in my mindsets. I am more positive, I smile and laugh more. I am much more cheery and fun.

I struggle going to bed early. There are many issues to it, but mostly because I don’t have a routine set up for it.

To set up routine and carry it through with self discipline is to do it in babysteps. Tonight I will be in bed by 10:30. Tomorrow will be another day and another babystep. I need to plan this and write it down.
My routines need to be written down and scheduled in. Without my routines I fail.

Initially I was going to do a 30 day period were I would set up my routines and then adjust them to suit my schedule better. However 30 days is still a big chunk of time and I get a bit frightened of massive undertakings so to do this I will have to break it down day by day.

A great tool that I have discovered is Google Calendar. It allows me to organize my time. I can write down my routines and my daily agenda. I then can take my daily routine and adjust it to a weekly schedule. With that weekly schedule I then take it one week at a time and do my routines for a full thirty days.

With this kind of organization I take any kind of thinking and feeling and get rid of it. Instead I take one day at a time and just do it. I don’t think about tomorrow or the next thirty days. I just concentrate on today and adhering to my google calendar for today.

I can schedule in my workout. I can schedule in my sleep. It may sound ridiculous to do so. But when I let feelings like “I don’t feel like it” control my thoughts, then nothing gets done.

“He who fails to plan, plans to fail”

Become Unstoppable with your Fat Loss Goals.

Tweet This Post

It turns out that in some parts of Canada and the US there are some students that are being put on the pay roll by their schools to get them motivated to get good grades. This is because there is such a huge dropout rate for these schools and teachers have run out of options and have stooped so low as to bribe students for A’s and B’s. There are millions of dollars being poured out into these student pay checks. This money could definitely be spent in a better way.

What is wrong with education that kids don’t want to be there? It should be interesting and inspiring. My science teacher throughout high school was a wacky scientist who burned holes through his pants with chemicals and made balloon rockets. The kid’s had fun and came to class to learn. It was interesting and exciting and made me pursue environmental science in College. He was such a fantastic teacher that I still think of him often 15 years after graduating.

The teacher is one of the greatest influences on the student performance. If the student fails then the teacher has failed to teach them.

The kids miss out at being motivated by excelling at projects and being excited for the education. Motivation and Self Discipline for learning should come within us. Not from being bribed. Kids get bored; they will lose interest in the money and external motivators and they will want more and more…

This is so wrong on so many levels. I talk about the motivation vs.
self discipline in this post. For anyone looking for a fantastic
parenting book that addresses bribery, rewards and self discipline, I
highly recommend Secrets of Discipline – 12 Keys For Raising
Responsible Children By Ron G. Morrish.

There was a girl in my high school class that I so wanted to be like and emulate. She was popular, smart, great at music and art, she was on the student council and played numerous sports and she was brilliantly smart. She was my role model and everything that I wanted to become. She was also an inspiration to me to always be better and do my best.

So this got me thinking about health and fitness. Why are people so unhealthy? Why are they not motivated from within to be as healthy as they can be? Why will people settle for obesity, sickness and disease?

I had read a fitness motivational tip that you should pay yourself three dollars every time you exercise and then at the end of the month you can buy yourself a reward with the accumulated monies. Now that kind of sounds like bribery! Or what about buying skinny clothes just so that you can motivate yourself to exercise and lose those extra pounds? Bribery, Bribery, Bribery!

Those are all external motivators and may work briefly. But after a while you will lose interest in them.
So the inspiration for health and wellness comes from within.

I have found a great fitness teacher, someone that I want to emulate… His name is Scott Tousignant and creator of the Unstoppable Fat Loss program. He reminds me very much of my wacky science teacher that inspired me so much.

The teacher is the one that helps inspire the students intrinsically. Do you have a great teacher that has touched and inspired you?

Setting routines through self discipline has also been the backbone for me keeping up with daily exercise. Sure I need a motivational boost sometimes (and it normally comes when my routines have been thrown out the window). But it is rare that I totally fall of my exercise “bandwagon”. But I come back to it because it is that desire in me to be healthy and be my best.

Vibrant, Energetic, Happy, Brilliant, Lively, Full of Life, Dazzling and Glowing are all words that I want to describe me. The only way that I can get there is if I exercise, sleep and eat right. I have a great teacher and don’t need bribery to motivate me.

To your health and wellness,

Tweet This Post

I do it and I hate it! Emotional eating is a way I comfort myself. But at the end of the day the situation that caused me to eat junk food has not gone away and I am stuck with the physical discomfort and guilt.

How do I stop this? It is not an issue of self esteem, but rather of handling stress. I am lucky that I live far away from a grocery/convenience store and am not able to raid it at my leisure and when the mood strikes me.

Low Carb eating does help tremendously with the amount of junk food binging I have done in the last ten months, but life is life and stressful situations come up and at the end of the day when I am left alone I am still able to empty my cupboards.

What is the cause of this? I know in my head that what I am doing is emotional eating. I know that I will feel horrible and I do it anyways.

I am the only one in my family that eats Low Carb. I do all the groceries. But there are foods that my husband would not go without so I buy them. I don’t buy crackers for the kids anymore – they are my favourite junk food and I could eat a whole box in one sitting. There is a minimal amount of junk food in my house.

When I do have an emotional eating episode I try to eat foods with lots of fat. With pretzels I would dip them in butter, crackers I would dip in butter, I will eat white bread with lots of butter and cheese. (I think I see a pattern here… white flour and butter???) This in no way is great food combination if you are Somersizing but at least I don’t end up eating the whole night and I get full very quickly.

Emotional eating occurs in me when I have feelings like “I just don’t care, I am going to do it anyways” even though it hurts me. It is not related to boredom. I used to eat like that when I was a teenager and early twenties before I had kids. Now I just don’t have time to get bored.

I eat when I feel like crap! Eating junk food is immediate gratification for that. I savour every moment of it. This normally happens in the evening and I go to bed feeling yucky but I feel better in the morning.

Is there a cure for feeling crappy? I don’t think so. But there are things I can do to make the situation better. Unstoppable Fat Loss is great for some instant motivation and can get me put me on track when I have lost my way.

There is no easy way to stay strong. It has to be constantly refreshed in our minds. There are folks that meditate daily, do yoga, practice affirmations and visualizations. These are done on a regular basis to stay on track.

It has to be worked on and does not magically happen.

There are no easy answers for emotional eating.

To your health and wellness,

Tweet This Post

I started to follow the Low Carb diet when I read an article that recommended the Atkins diet for Candida Yeast. My initial reaction was rejection but the more I learned and saw positive results in other people the more I warmed up to actually trying the diet. The first week of eating low carb was great. Digestion and bloating improved and I lost weight. Hunger and cravings disappeared and so on. The Candida Yeast symptoms gradually reduced and I did experience a yeast die off. And the best thing was is that I got to eat yummy food.

My main reason for sticking to the Low Carb diet is to get rid of yeast. It is not the weight loss or the other benefits that I described above. It is a physical discomfort and a constant reminder when I cheat. The foods that I am cheating with are small amounts of fruit and mostly berries. Fruit like berries, grapefruit, lemons, limes and cantaloupe are allowed while low carbing. But they still cause a Candida reaction in me. They may not cause my eating to get out of control but they are still sugar and my body is telling me that it does not like it. The reason I allow myself to eat these foods is because they are allowed even though it is not good for me.

Our minds desire things that create pleasure for us and stay away from things that cause us pain. Candida causes me pain so I stick to the diet. I don’t want Candida anymore. I will have to get my mind around the fact that even low sugar fruit causes me pain.

The immediate pleasure that we get from eating junk food is often much more powerful than the pain that we feel after we eat it. But if the food makes us physically sick after we eat it we are more likely to stay away from it.

Remorse, guilt, bloating, just overall bad feelings are not enough to stop us from raiding the cupboards. There has to be something more. On the weight loss show “The Bulging Bride” and “The Last Ten Pounds” they have the personal trainers come early in the morning and whip the poor participants out of bed and give them an extra gruelling workout to ensure that they will feel the pain for days to come. And this workout also involves the participant’s friends that allowed them to cheat. They also utilize the pleasure principle: at the end of the show they get to fit into their gorgeous wedding dress or in the case of The Last Ten Pounds they get to fit into a snazzy new outfit.

I am also creating more pain by setting exercise fitness goals for April 25. If I fail, then I fail publicly. I will have to find a nice new outfit that I can hang on my bedroom door to motivate me every morning when I get up.

Is there a way that you can implement these principles in your life?

What can you use for your pain and pain motivators?

To your health and wellness,

Tweet This Post

I am going to share with you a video that has touched my heart. This is a powerful story of a hero in the German concentration camps. This story touched me because my father is a holocaust survivor. At the time he was only a teenager and was enslaved by the Nazi German Army. I visited Germany after college with my dad. He gave me a tour of the village where he was held captive.

The tour involved the places where my father had worked as coal carrier. This coal was carried on his back day after day. He had to walk the town delivering coal wearing “homemade shoes” made out of scraps. He showed me the homes that would sneak food to him, the butcher who would hide meat for him in the alley (who was later beaten), the rail road tracks that seemed like an escape to freedom that brought more prisoners and more coal, the barn were he slept with the horses, and the view he had when the bombs went off and where my father had lost his hearing.

Growing up hearing these war time stories and reliving it with my dad some fifty years later I still can only imagine the pain and suffering.

The Nazi concentration camp prisoners were understandably miserable and some on the brink of suicide. They were stripped of everything that they had – their families, homes, possessions, clothes. They were left with nothing and became slaves. There was one hero – Victor Frankl – among them that was able to bring the prisoners from suicide with only one question.

You can change your state of mind with one question!

Find that question and write it down and read it when you get up, before bed and whenever necessary.

What does life still have to expect from you?

To your health and wellness,

Tweet This Post

Frustration is a hard emotion to live with.  I have dealt with it on many levels.  Losing the post-partum belly has been extremely difficult.  At one point after the birth of my second daughter, I ran into a friend that I had not seen for a long time and she asked me the dreaded question – Are you pregnant again? Well I was not pregnant but my belly looked as if I was 4 months pregnant.  What an embarrassment!  My self esteem just nose- dived past my feet and sunk into the great depths of the earth.  That comment hurt me. I was feeling self conscious about my weight and ashamed of it. To have my friend tell me this brought me to tears.

That comment stayed with me that whole day and it still is with me today. 

I know the frustration.

Since then, I have tried many workout programs to get fit but failed most of them.  When you plant a seed you expect it to grow and flourish. Same with an exercise program – when you start it you expect to grow and flourish and see results.   Well let’s just say that with many programs that I started my seed had trouble growing and just withered and died.

I had set strong powerful goals that I expected to strive towards to succeed. I went after those goals. And I failed. I was extremely disappointed when I could not reach them.

I had knowledge, I had the action, I had the motivation, I just lacked the persistence.

I finally found what worked.  I have found my “tool” for Fat Loss Success.

Albert Einstein once said that Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Are you feeling the insanity???

A good weight loss program should be one that addresses the number one reason for failure. We fail because of our mindsets and excuses.

But what if you don’t do anything? 

You will be in the same position as you where yesterday.  Or worse – the seed you may be sowing may be a weed.  Your condition will then get worse just like weeds in a garden. The weeds will rob your garden of all the vital nutrients. They will multiply and soon choke out any other seed you want to plant.

Get the best tools for success. You need a map to follow so you don’t get lost on the way. Follow the 21 Day Unstoppable Fat Loss Challenge. 

A good Fat Loss Program will be one that you will stick with. Don’t let your Fat Loss goals get choked with weeds.

To your Health and Wellness,

Catherine Osthaus

P.S. What kind of life are we living if we do not want a better tomorrow? How do we achieve that better tomorrow? – With an Unstoppable mindset.

Tweet This Post

There are many things in life to be desired for – whether you are striving to lose a few pounds, stick to a diet, to get a pay raise or to quite smoking. So what do you think will get you there? Will it be self discipline or motivation?  I actually have found the answer to this question in a parenting book!

I have been reading this book called the Secrets of Discipline-12 Keys for Raising Responsible Children by Ron G. Morrish. The word discipline sounds harsh and punitive but the true meaning of it is to train and it comes from the word disciple which means student.

So lately I have been finding myself bargaining with my children to get them to do what I ask. There are many examples of this throughout the day like “get dressed and then you can have some breakfast” or “clean up and then we can …” or “eat your salad and then you can have a dessert”. This is called bribery and it is exhausting and frustrating. This way of parenting establishes a “what’s in it for me” attitude. And if the reward is not good enough then soon the kids will lose interest in what needs to be done.

The alternative to bribing children to do what you ask them to do is to set expectations and routines for them. “No” and “Failure” are not acceptable. The only other option is to succeed.

———
An example of this would be getting a child to clean up their room. If your child is young you can set a time limit of 15 minutes so the task does not seem overwhelming. And then stop when the time is up even if the room is not totally cleaned up.

Mom says: Let’s go and clean up your room. (Notice there is no choice in this statement)
Child says: No!

Mom brings the child to the room.

Mom says: ok honey, pick up the books and put them on the bookshelf.
Child says: No!

Mom takes the child’s hand and gets the child to pick up the books and put it away on the shelf.

Mom says: ok, let’s pick up the Lego. I hold the box and you pick up the pieces.
Child says: ok!

———-

This is an example out of the Secrets of Discipline and it is what happened to me when I implemented it. My daughter had no choice but to clean up her room. I stood by and directed her movement. I told her what to pick up and where to put it away. This is what training is all about. There is no room for failure. The only other option is success – you do it until you get it!

Practice makes perfect

Once a behavior is established you need to practice it to perfect it. If you have ever been on a sports team you know how important practice is before a game. Also before you get a drivers license you need to practice how to drive before you take the driving test.

*Without practice, failure is very likely.*

Do you practice during a game or test? No, you practice before.

So with any behavior that you want changed you need to practice it until it you do it without thinking about it!

Creating Self-Discipline

Cleaning up is often horrible chore. But the more we think about how horrible it is the less likely we are to do it. So we get rid of choice and just clean up without thinking about it. The cleaning up just got less painful and with practice it will become a routine. This is self-discipline. We train ourselves to do things that seem painful until it becomes habitual.

Motivation

Motivation is defined as a psychological reason for an action. Motivation is great for short term. You can get pumped to do something but if you stop being motivated then failure is likely to happen. So what happens if you get off track? Well negative thoughts will start to beat down those motivating thoughts and soon giving up and failure are likely. Motivation is only a short term solution.

Conclusion

For true success we need to build concrete routines and practice those routines until we don’t need to think about them and just do them!

To your health and wellness,

Catherine Osthaus

Ps. Check out Scott Tousignant’s Unstoppable Fatloss program. It’s like having a personal trainer in your home. A trainer to tell you exactly what to do and how to lose that unwanted fat. There is no more choice to fail. It is not an option. Practice a routine and do it!

Tweet This Post