Last Shift Before September--Spread the Word!
Sunday, June 12th
Information/Registration: www.ShiftWeightMastery.com
or call Rita @ 877-221-7251
Greetings Shifters!
Welcome to week three of the plateau buster series. Plateaus have a nasty reputation in the dieting world. In the dieting world a weight loss plateau is hated, feared and cursed because it represents a stopping of success, the glamorous loss on the scale. It means that your weight loss is stagnant and that you are unsuccessful. In the dieting world, plateaus often lead to us give up on our plan and gain the weight back. Sorry plateaus-- that’s a tough gig over there in the dieting world.
When we make the Shift and learn how to use our minds more effectively—to think, strategize and assess, as a weight release master, we can have a much more powerful relationship with a weight plateau—in fact, often plateaus are opportunities to learn more about ourselves and our relationships to ourselves; our thought processes, our eating patterns and our environments. When we Shift, we take back our power from just needing to see the loss on the scale and learn that long term permanent weight release is more about cultivating a powerful and lasting foundation within ourselves where the number on the scale is only one indicator of the progress we are making. When we Shift, we can see a plateau not as a scary force, but a natural part of a weight release journey—therefore we can Shift and create, not only on the scale, but in our relationship to ourselves.
Over this three week series we have explored the nature of weight loss plateaus. Week 1 focused on the mental game of mastering and busting a plateau—because once your mind can SHIFT around and through a plateau your body will follow. (read here) Last week I explored the physical part of mastering and busting a plateau. (read here) This last week I will focus on how our environment may be contributing to our weight plateau and I will ask your Inner Coach some leading questions that may help you to drill down and find some en”light”ening answers.
ARE YOU EATING UNDER THE RADAR?
Often, when we begin a weight release journey, we are focused and our vision is strong. We easily track our foods, tune into portions amounts and are very clear on what is going into our mouths. But over time, as we get further down our journey and further down the scale, it is easy to lose the focus that we had in the beginning. Sometimes not every calorie gets written down. Am I right?
Let’s face it--we often forget what we eat 15 minutes after eating it. There have been days when I have not been on top of my tracking and I will get to the end of my day and my calories seem a bit low and then I will realize that I had conveniently forgotten half a cookie or a drink that I had consumed. Sometimes, if I have not been on top of it, I could have consumed up to 300 calories more than what I had written down. I call this "under the radar eating" and this is often what is going on when someone is experiencing a plateau. Brian Wansink, in his book “Mindless Eating” discusses the fact that most overweight people underestimate the amount of food they eat by up to 100%. If you are not writing it down, chances are you are making yourself a victim of distorted, under the radar thinking.
“But I am not eating anything!” my client will say. But when I have them write down EVERY lick, bite and nibble the light bulb will go off, “Ooooohhh now I get it” and they see that those extra little “bits and bobs” can add up fast and fill in any sort of deficit hole that they may have thinking they were creating.
I recently had a new client who was eating only about 900 calories a day in “real food” and was baffled by why she had been gaining weight. However, she admitted to eating a little chocolate here and there over her work day. “How many calories are in the chocolate” I asked “I am not sure but it can’t be much”. She called me the next day having checked the chocolate wrapper and said she had been eating about 650 calories a day in chocolate!!! She was shocked and relieved at the same time—because now she had her answer. We had done her metacheck and given her low metabolism we discovered her “eating nothing” was actually taking her about 250 calories a day over her body’s needs. Mystery solved and plateau—broken!! She still eats chocolate every day BTW, but just a lot less!!
Question for your Inner Coach: Are you absolutely clear on the number of calories you think that you are eating per day??
WHEN YOU ASSUME YOUR ASS COULD GET BIGGER!!
Another environmental issue is that as we lose focus, we also start assuming calories on portions. This is fine—I don’t think you need to weigh and measure everything that goes in your mouth your whole life—that would be a little excessive. This point is, if you are experiencing a plateau you could be under assuming the calories in the portions you are serving yourself. Once a month I get out my Kitrics Scale and weightportions of chicken, vegetables and fruit—just to keep my eyes honest. I crack up at how, even though I have been maintaining my weight for fifteen years, my estimates of what 150 calories of chicken is grows to about 250 calories every month!!!
Question for your Inner Coach: Are you sure that the energy values of the foods you are putting in your mouth are really what you are assuming that they are??
ARE THERE FOODS IN YOUR ENVIRONMENT THAT SHOULD NOT BE THERE??
As I say again and again, and again and again, and even again—weight management is 80% stimulus control. Having helped thousands of people release weight and seen many weight release journeys, the main thing I hear over and over when trouble start brewing is—oh yeah that “thing” appeared on my plate or my desk or in my fridge and I just had to eat it. The other one is “well I thought I could have it in my house” or “I just bought it for the kids." If you are stuck on a weight release plateau, it is time to take charge of your environments and get rid of any foods that may lead you to taking those extra bites, licks and nibbles.
Restaurant eating is also a plateau creator because we are really not on top of the butter that the crazy ego maniac chef in the back wants to put on our food so that we will think it taste yummy and declare him a god. When eating out, we could assume that salad is 350 calories and it is really over 1000!! That is what happened to a client of mine who was stuck on a plateau for 2 months until she discovered his innocent salad at lunch was 850 calories—no wonder the spin classes weren’t allowing her to release weight! If you eat out a lot and are experiencing a plateau—the best thing to do is find out calories from the internet ahead of time or to order foods prepared simply so that you know how many calories are in them. This doesn’t have to be forever—just until you break through your plateau.
Question for Your Inner Coach: Are you allowing disempowering foods to enter your environment and sabotage your weight release efforts? Why? How can you Shift those foods out of your life for now?
If you are a Shifter who has been releasing weight and now are in a plateau, you may consider coming to the June 12th RE-Shift. Sometimes a 30 day focused and supported environment is just what you need to get the scale moving downward again. Many Shifters have used a Re-Shift to break through a weight plateau. If you are interested, please call or contact Rita to find out more about this affordable and motivational option.
I hope you have enjoyed this series on plateaus as much as I have. Here is the exercise we have been focusing on over the last few weeks. Now you can create a powerful vision using all of the mental, physical, and environmental components that we discussed in order to create an amazing breakthrough on the scale and with yourself.
EXERCISE FOR PLATEAU BUSTING
1) Create a vivid representation of the way you are right now in your plateau (your present state) with all of the challenges the plateau represents.
2) See yourself the way you would want to be when you get through all of the challenges. Be clear on the specifics—how you would be behaving, how much would you be eating and exercising, what do you look like, how do you feel??
3) Place one image in each of your hands outstretched in front of you with a space separating them. This space represents the unexplored territory and unspecified steps that lie between the plateau state and the plateau busted state.
4) Begin to make a series of images or movies of the logical steps from one state to another, adjusting each frame until each is a fully representational stage of the process of change.
5) When you have between 5-8 stages in front of you, begin slowly to close your hands, collapsing all of the stages into a single process.
6) Bring your clasped hands toward your body and pull the new state into your body, making a new feeling that represents action and success—PLATEAU BUSTING!
7) Spin that feeling faster and faster. Intensifying it and allowing it to spread throughout your body so that it saturated every muscle, every organ, every nerve, every cell. As you do this, look at what you need to do (or think) first. Then see yourself taking the second step and then the third etc. and keep spinning and intensifying that feeling until you feel excited and energized and ready to make the mental and/or physical adjustments and go bust that plateau!
Have a great breakthrough week!!
oxox Rita
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