Food For Thought

Body Wisdom 101

/ intrepidjane

guruThere are so many weight loss  “experts” out there that it can all get very confusing . And there is so much conflicting information out there too that it can set our heads in a spin! We find ourselves questioning which expert (or piece of research) is actually “right”.

 I’m not suggesting that we ignore the research and ignore the opinions of “experts”. What I’m suggesting is that all that “stuff” out there can undermine our confidence in our own ability to make the right choices for ourselves.

The thing is ~ you know a great deal more about your body, your appetite and your emotions than you think you do . All the wisdom you need for achieving and maintaining a healthy body-weight and a healthy life- style is right at your finger tips . In fact, it’s IN your finger tips . All you have to do is learn to listen to your body and to your emotions.

Developing confidence in your body’s innate wisdom provides a robust foundation for assessing the validity of all that “outside” information. This confidence helps you to make choices that support your own unique journey to health.

So maybe it’s time to turn to the “inside” information, so that a deeper wisdom can emerge ~ a wisdom that can be synthesised with the “outside” information in a way that serves you . And maybe it’s also worth remembering, that just like the “outside” information , the “inside” information is changing all the time ~ there’s no better time for you to keep your finger on the pulse 🙂

If you want to know who the perfect weight loss guru is for you ~ just take a look in the nearest mirror!

© Jane Talbot 2013

How To Stay Upright On The Wobble~Board Of Life!

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THBC Blog Wobbleboard

Anyone who has been to a fitness class in the last decade or so has heard the term “core  stability” thrown about as frequently as the ubiquitous kettle~bell 🙂 You may have heard fitness professionals talking about which exercises are particularly good for your physical core – and why core strength is important for sports performance, for long-term health ~ and for the way our bodies look. And I’m not arguing with the validity of all that. It makes perfect sense.

But why stop there? For me, health and well~being goes beyond the physical. The principles of core training can be usefully applied in both the psychological and emotional realms of our lives too.

When life throws a curveball at us, it’s good to know that our physical body can support us. And it’s also good to know that we can rely on our core psychological and emotional stability too. The ability to maintain equilibrium whilst honouring challenging emotions ; the ability to maintain an attitide of loving kindness and compassion towards ourselves and others in difficult times; the ability to maintain hope, to stand up and be who we really are, to hold supportive beliefs about ourselves and the world around us; the ability to engage with life as it really is, rather than as we crave it to be ~ this is true core stability.

True core stability is what keeps us upright on the wobble~board of life! And when you have developed the ability for this kind of stability, you’ll no longer need to rely on food (or any other kind of crutch) to keep you upright ~ you’ll be too busy enjoying the wobbly nature of full-on living 🙂

© Jane Talbot 2013

Feel It To Heal It!

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Feel it to heal it!

As “emotional eaters”, we can spend an incredible amount of energy trying to avoid our feelings. Eating is not only a way of numbing our feelings but it also denies us the opportunity of learning from, and accommodating the life-affirming validity of, our feelings. Whilst we cling on to the hope that eating will “make it all better”, it won’t. We all know that.

In fact, eating increases our suffering – it’s an act of “resistance” that prevents us from experiencing life as it is. Our eating behaviour is an attempt to bridge the gap between how things really are and how we’d like them to be. It just doesn’t work.

However, we may reach a point where we find the courage and capacity in ourselves to generate sufficient equilibrium to take bold steps. We can step towards acknowledging our feelings; towards offering ourselves and our emotions compassion; towards meeting the deep unmet needs our emotions are expressing in healthy ways ; towards actually feeling our feelings. Yes, actually feeling feelings 🙂 !!

By being in our body  and present to our emotions, by learning to give welcoming refuge to all parts of ourselves, by offering compassion to our own wounds, we begin to heal. It is through such tender, active feeling that we achieve the deepest, most joyful healing. It is through such feeling that we learn to experience the joy of life AS IT ACTUALLY IS.

Feeling leads to healing 🙂 Oh – and in case you are wondering – as we learn to be with our emotions and with the glorious messy nature of life in this way, most of us experience the added bonus of a naturally emerging, healthy body. As we stop resisting, the weight stops persisting.

Keeping it real,

© Jane Talbot 2013

Be The Terminator!

/ intrepidjane
Are you ready to celebrate how far you've already come?

Are you ready to celebrate how far you’ve already come?

Today’s post is all about exploring the process of change and celebrating how far you’ve already come :).

You may not have found it easy to change your eating or exercise habits  in the past. You may not have found it easy to love and appreciate your body.You may have been on or off diets several times in your life. You may even have bought all the kit to exercise, gone to one class and then not continued. You may not even believe it’s  possible for you to change completely and have the body you want with a healthy lifestyle to go with it. If any of this rings true for you, here’s the good news : in terms of your moving towards a healthy relationship with food and your body, you may be much further along the road of change than you think!

Where Are You In The Process Of Change? Prochaska and Di Clemente (1983) describe a model of change comprising 7 key phases :

  1. Pre-Contemplation.
  2. Contemplation.
  3. Preparation.
  4. Action.
  5. Maintenance.
  6. Relapse.
  7. Termination

Pre-Contemplation In this phase, people are not seriously considering the possibility of change. An example of a person in this stage could be someone who is overweight but does not have any real desire to lose weight, eat healthily, get fit, process their emotions in a healthy way or tackle their inner “Cookie Monster” (actually mine was a Pringles Monster but that’s another story!). You might hear someone in this phase say “So, I’m overweight. That’s just the way I am and I’m kinda used to it. There’s more to life than exercise and mung beans.”

Contemplation During this phase, people become aware , or acknowledge the existence, of a problem. They are seriously considering the possibility of change but need to weigh up whether to take any action or not. In terms of weight loss, many people remain in this stage of contemplation for years! (Sound familiar?!) You might hear someone in this phase saying something like “I know I need to do something but I just don’t know where to start. I’m not sure whether I have the time or whether I’ve left it too late. I’m not sure about paying for a gym membership but I do know that if I don’t do something now, it could have consequences for my life in the future. Can I really change what I eat? Do I really want to eat differently? Is this change really important for me? Is it important enough? Why do I really need to change my relationship with food and my body? Can I go on like this for much longer? What will happen if I don’t change?”

Are you preparing for a change?

Are you preparing for a change?

Preparation As soon as you get to the Preparation phase, things start to look good! Procheska and Di Clemente suggest that if you find yourself at this stage, it’s very likely that you will make a change within the next 3 months. During this key phase, you might find yourself collecting information about what is required to start the change process. You might be Googling about the best way to lose weight, you might be finding out about the cost of membership at a local gym, you might be on Amazon checking out all the diet books, you may be asking about local therapists and weight loss coaches. If you’ve asked for more information about my live Thigh High Boot Camp events or my coaching packages, then you are already at this stage in the change process! (Even reading this blog means that it’s likely that you’re at this stage :))

Action This is the stage when people actually start to make changes. If you have signed up to my upcoming weight loss boot camps or to my coaching programme, then you are at this advanced stage already! If you’ve joined a gym and booked your induction, you’ve arrived at this stage. If you’ve started to read about an approach to weight loss which may work for you – and you’re implementing the recommendations –Woo-Hoo! Go you, Action Adventurer! If you’ve started attending a local weight loss support group, full-on Action Alerts all around!

So you can congratulate yourself already for getting this far – did you realise how far you had already come? As you engage fully with the process of taking action -and start to make sustainable psychological, emotional, spiritual, dietary, exercise and life-style changes- you will move further into this stage.

Maintenance This Maintenance phase is all about your sustaining the progress made during the action phase. For you, this stage might represent the period directly after completing one of my weight loss events or coaching programmes. It could be the stage when the novelty of going to an exercise class or a weight loss support group has worn off and it’s beginning to feel like a regular part of life. It might be the phase where the eating approach you have selected is definitely getting you results and all you need to do is just keep following the approach.

Some people will stay at this stage for a matter of weeks – others for a considerable period of time. During this stage you may not be totally confident about your ability to avoid relapsing into old habits. After the initial “success highs” have worn off, you may become increasingly aware of old unhelpful patterns which may require resolution. This is all good news : it means you are gaining more insight into who you are and how you work. It’s all part of the process of learning to “stay on track naturally” in a way which works for you

Relapse This is the stage when people are not able to keep and maintain new psychological, behavioural and emotional patterns or don’t stick to their plan of action. This can happen for any number of reasons – but if relapses occur, there is still hope! Just because you don’t “stay on the wagon” (and it really is worth challenging what this phrase actually means!) doesn’t mean you can’t get back on! Actually, it might hearten you to know that it is recognised that relapses are vital to any successful change process. Although it is helpful to avoid relapsing into old behaviours, it should be emphasised that you can learn a great deal about how to change your behaviour (on a permanent basis) from your relapses. (It was only when I relapsed that I learned that the emotion driving my eating behaviour was anxiety. That was a really useful insight for me and helped me to shift my focus to resolving my own anxiety so that my hunger was driven by genuine physiological appetite rather than an emotion).

If you become aware of your “triggers” for relapse, you have a much better chance of resolving the trigger-response relationship once and for all!

Be the Terminator!

Be the Terminator!

Termination (doesn’t sound great but it’s the best bit!) At this stage the old psychological, emotional or behavioural response is gone for good – it is the stage we all dream of! When you reach this stage,  your new psychological, emotional ad behavioural responses will happen automatically, unconsciously and naturally. (Termination sounds pretty cool, right?)

Something For You To Chew Over! Even though you might be busy “being good” right now and avoiding popping to the local “Take-Away” restaurant, here’s a healthy “Take Away” for you. Wherever you’re at in this process, you’re in it! Whether you know it consciously or not, you’re on the road to change 🙂  Congratulations!

Useful Resources If you’ve enjoyed this post and would like to learn more about my take on “staying on track” and “relapse”(I call this phase “wiggling”), please check out my 12 Days of Christmas series of posts. These 2 posts will be of particular interest :

https://thighhighbootcamp.com/2012/12/18/welcome-to-the-12-days-of-christmas-project/

https://thighhighbootcamp.com/2013/01/02/act-in-a-response-able-way/

You can also find out more about my live weight loss boot camps (in Northern Ireland, Scotland and England) and my 1-1 and group coaching programmes here http://www.thighhighbootcamp.com

I’ll be back – and, until then, gotta run 🙂 !

JT

© Jane Talbot 2013

Terrier-ist Brokers Peace Deal!

/ intrepidjane

So – back to my Jack Russell Terrier, Sparky 🙂  (Did I mention how much I love my dog?) As I said in my last post, I’m pretty green when it comes to dog ownership and I’m learning new stuff everyday. I’m learning stuff that’s not just about dogs either. I’m learning more and more about me (and my relationship with myself) as a result of building a relationship with him.

I'm a terrier-ist : I'm loaded with love and I know how to use it!

I’m a terrier-ist : I’m loaded with love and I know how to use it!

Before picking Sparky up from the rescue kennels, I did quite a bit of research about JRTs and how to handle them. The first thing I learned was that this breed is a working dog and is really good at sniffing things out and then “dealing” with them (if you know what I mean :)). It is for this very reason that JRTs rarely spend time off their leads outdoors because, if they catch a scent, their whole focus is to get to the end of that trail and then “deal” with whatever they find. No amount of calling or treat-offering will deter them. They are .. um .. like a terrier 🙂   They will not rest until the job is done.

3 months into my relationship with Sparky (did I mention that he’s also very handsome? :)), I realise that he is good at sniffing out all sorts of things – and very skilful at dealing with what he finds at the end of the trail.

What I am learning is that my dog can “smell” an emotion a mile off. If any one of us is not feeling so great, Sparky jumps up for a cuddle and stays until the emotion subsides. It’s incredible how he does it! He seems to use his presence to heal : he exudes love!

As I observed consistent patterns in his behaviour as he constantly monitored the family’s emotions (and attended to them where necessary), I thought I had just about got the hang of his “top skill”. I thought he had shown me his best cards.

No. The best cards so far were laid on the table about a month ago. My partner and I were having a row behind closed doors early in the morning. Not a regular row, of course : it was one of those advanced Clint-Eastward-in-a-poncho versus Lee-Van-Cleef-with-a-steely-glint-in-the-eye rows. A deafeningly silent tumbleweed row. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly music playing in our heads. Hands on holsters. Roll-ups hanging from the corner of our mouths.

That morning there was little time for a shoot-out as there was work to be done and Sparky needed his walk too. Sparky knows the routine by now and as soon as the bedroom door is opened, he wags his tail and turns in circles because he knows he is getting to go for a walk.

But not on this morning. As I stood all wrapped up and ready to go, Sparky refused to get out of his basket. I lifted him out and he climbed straight back in. He was going nowhere.

Sometumes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!

Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!

My partner then emerged, dressed and ready to go out to sort his van out for a day at the farm. As my partner approached the front door, I deciphered the thought bubble above Sparky’s head as he leapt in front of the door to prevent my partner from leaving. “You ain’t going NOWHERE. Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” He definitely had that whole John Wayne thing going on 🙂

Sparky herded us both into the front room and sat between us. First looking at one and then the other. Head on one lap and then the other, until we started to speak (at which point, Sparky left the room to let us get on with making peace.)

All of this taught me that Sparky is not only able to sniff out emotions, he is also present to them (no matter how uncomfortable those feelings may be) and knows how to “deal with”, or attend to, them (he lends his love and he encourages healing for individual members of the family and for relationships within the family).

So,here’s your food for thought. If you want to resolve your emotional relationship with food, if you want to stop swallowing your emotions and start processing them in a healthy way, I wonder if you could consider the following questions within the context of your relationship with your body and with food?

When you experience hunger, are you able to “sniff out” the difference between an emotional signal and a genuine physiological hunger signal? How prepared are you to follow the scent to find what’s really at the end of the trail? As you consider following the “trail”, which (if any) emotions come up? How ready are you to be present to the emotions and associated structures (such as unhelpful beliefs, attitudes, values and identity “labels”) you may discover? How prepared are you to “deal with” what you might find at the end of the trail? How prepared are you to offer love to yourself to encourage healing? How ready are you to re-build your relationship with yourself,with your body, with those around you and with life?

If you can learn to identify an emotion, sit with it (no matter how uncomfortable) and process it in a healthy and respectful way, whilst continuing to hold your full self in unconditional positive regard (Phil Collins would recognise this to be a particularly “groovy kind of love” :)), then you’re well on your way to healing your relationship with both food and your body. And sooner or later, you’ll be doing all this naturally ~ and unconsciously. Just like Sparky.*

(* If this posts resonates with you, and you’re ready to follow the trail, you might really enjoy my 12 Days of Christmas series of blog posts. You can find more out here https://thighhighbootcamp.com/2012/12/18/welcome-to-the-12-days-of-christmas-project/ It’s okay to dip in and out : engage with the parts of the process which draw your attention! Or you may even enjoy coming along to a live weight loss bootcamp event or experiencing 1-1 weight loss coaching. You can find more out here http://www.thighhighbootcamp.com )

Gotta run :)! #DogWithABone #BeATerrier-ist!

JT

© Jane Talbot 2013

Tails Of The Unexpected!

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What kind of rhythm are you settling into?

What kind of rhythm are you settling into?

Yo! (That word is probably sooo “yesterday” but I do LOVE the energy of it :))  And have you noticed how the energy is shifting now as the January rhythm begins to assert itself? As things begin to settle back down after the holidays, I thought it would be good for me to settle into a healthy blogging rhythm myself!

So here’s how I’m going to work it. In addition to some of my “endurance” posts, I’m also going to be writing some “sprint” posts. These will be shorter posts : quotes, quick tips and thought-provoking nudges. All “sprints” will be posted in the “Food For Thought” category to help you to find them easily 🙂

So here comes your first thought-provoking nudge 🙂

Sparky!

Sparky!

I’ve never really been that keen on dogs. In fact, up until 3 months ago, I just couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. That was until our eyes met across a crowded rescue kennel. I looked at Sparky (a Jack Russell Terrier) and he looked at me (he even did a light bit of that man-showing-off thing which mostly involved a demonstration of all his best tricks, a LOT of “hey- look- at-me!” barking and the occasional wee in the wrong place). And KERPOW!! That was it : love at first sight!

I decided there and then that I wanted to give Sparky a home but I was a little bit worried about my ability to look after an animal (given that my pet ownership curriculum vitae reads : 1 escaped tortoise and a small collection of very short- lived goldfish).

As all the paperwork was being signed, I nervously asked the kennel owners about caring for Sparky. “Oh, it’s absolutely easy. A dog just needs 4 things : plenty of exercise , the right food , regular worming and, most importantly of all, love. That’s it. That’s all he needs to keep his tail wagging.”

And your food for thought today  is : as you consider your body right now, are you caring for it in the best way for you? Are you exercising it in a way that supports your physical and emotional health? Are you feeding it in a way that supports a health-full way of living? Are you ensuring that the thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and emotions that are getting in the way of your healthy life are being handled in an effective and supportive way (hey – if only there were worming tablets for this kind of stuff!) ? Oh yeah – and that final question. The big one. Do you love it? Do you know how to love your body?

Gotta run 🙂 ! #LoveThatDog #WagThatTail

JT

© Jane Talbot 2013