We could learn a thing or two from the hippies of the early seventies.  You may argue that they were all off their faces on some great hallucinogenic drugs and that’s why nothing ever seemed to bother them, as well as the part about not having an awful lot of responsibility in their lives.  Or possibly they didn’t have a care in the world because of the feel-good rituals they practised.  For instance, a typical wind-down routine for many of my clients is this: rush home in congested traffic from your part-time job with kids fighting in the back seat, unload from the car a week’s worth of schooling, sporting and work activities and paraphernalia, dump several environmental green bags full of groceries upstairs and start cooking dinner while barking out orders about who’d better do which jobs around the house, now!  After the obligatory whinging and moaning, you decide you’d better do all the jobs because no one is moving off their ass to help and the house looks like a bomb hit it.  What was that about a wind-down ritual?  Oh yeah, that was it.  Stressed anyone?  Suddenly find yourself reaching for a litre of Sarah Lee extra creamy, chocolate fudge ice-cream and wondering why they make litre tubs so small these days?  You’re not alone here.  This scenario or something similar gets played out repeatedly in many homes of women with ‘emotional eating problems’.  Here’s the key -  if we don’t go out of our way to create healthy, feel-good rituals, we will naturally, (especially in times of stress) revert to unhealthy rituals.  So what does your feel-good ritual look like?  If you take a leaf (no, not a pot leaf) out of the hippie’s handbook to good times, you might come up with something like this:  relaxing cd on whilst driving through chaotic traffic, deep breathing while your kids are killing each other in the back seat, put your joggers on and view as opportunity for incidental exercise while you make like Wonder Woman carrying and sorting lots of stuff from the car to the house, go and sit in a relaxing environment away from the kitchen and the noise with your favourite glass of wine, light an aromatherapy candle and just sit and breathe in some calm and find something pretty to look at.  Do not move for at least 20 minutes except to pour more wine or water into your glass.  Deep breathing and closed eyes will lead you to your “happy place” and other assorted and thrilling visualisations in your imagination.  The rest of the world can wait.  This is called extreme self-nurturing or caring for the carer, that’s you.  We spend our lives caring and giving and providing for and nurturing others, but if we don’t give a little to ourselves first, everyday, that well of love is gonna run dry.  So what does your feel-good ritual look like?

In personal growth circles, anger has been acknowledged as “misunderstood pain”.  If you think about all the times over, say, the last month that you’ve been “angry” what number do you get?  In my previous life as a victim of endless emotional eating, I got angry, oh, a few times a day, every day.  Anger was the only feeling I was aware of, I was completely unaware that there could have been a little something else underneath all that anger and rage.  The more work I did on myself, the more feelings I became aware of.  It wasn’t pretty at the time but I got through it.  I know that when we start working on the real issues, things seem to get worse before they get better, that’s the basis of healing emotional pain, it’s part of the process of change.  Now I’m infinately aware of the many different causes, triggers and cycles of any anger I feel.  What you’ll learn too is that anger itself is not a feeling, just like ‘fat’ is not a feeling.  If you consider that your anger is your way of attempting to express the emotional pain you’re in, it makes the whole process a lot more understandable and a lot easier to work with.  So rather than recoil in horror as you reflect on yet another angry outburst, take a deep breath in and ask yourself: what could my misunderstood pain really be about?  When you ask yourself more evolved questions like this, you will receive more evolved answers from within.  There is nothing wrong with you, you do not need to be fixed and you are not a deficient human being.  All you’re trying to do here is take a step back from what’s on the surface (anger, usually manifesting in emotional eating, which manifests in the stored kilos of fat we lug around as baggage on the hip and thigh department).  Underneath the anger is your misunderstood pain.  Can you handle being vulnerable enough to go there with yourself and ask the question.  Your answer will come, you could try to be kind enough to yourself to receive it without skipping out the back with more emotional eating.

We may think our sole goal in life is to lose weight and even consciously give lots of lip service to this process with our claims “I can’t understand why I’m not losing weight, I hardly eat anything and even then it’s organic/macrobiotic/vegetarian, I’ve joined a gym, I’m doing boot camp, I’m seeing a personal trainer, I’ve cut down on alcohol” etc, etc.  Yes it all sounds like your run of the mill diet mentality on the surface.  But think about how you handle painful emotions like rejection, being ignored, not heard, dismissed, overlooked.  When those darker emotions hit, how do you deal with them?  Do you deny them?  Do you shove them straight back down from whence they came?  Do you rebel and unleash them with verbal attacks on the closest person to you (usually your other half or your kids)?  Or do you not even allow them any air space in the first place and try to numb them out with food?  Just blot it all out, it’s too painful, pain, pain go away.  Your own reactions during these difficult times can provide an enormous insight into the root cause of your ongoing “weight battle”.  We use our weight to say for us all the things we can’t say.  We’re either not aware of what we’re feeling or it’s not safe to share how we’re feeling or we think we’ll “hurt the other person’s feelings”.  Your reactions are your reactions, we can’t blame other people for them.  There must be a large degree of personal responsibility.  If you don’t have the skills yet to express how you’re feeling, you can learn them.  There will always be another opportunity to connect with yourself first, to understand yourself first.  Practise developing a nurturing and quality relationship with yourself first before you can expect to have a fulfilling relationship with anyone else on the planet.  It all starts at home.  But aren’t you worth the time and effort this takes?  And what would the cost be if you don’t?  What price to put on your own freedom?

Dont you just love the Biggest Loser?  Back on our screens with cheap thrills since the 1st of February.  I have to admit even I get swept up in all the romance and fantasy of the show, especially on the Sunday night weigh-in.  I’ll sit there and go “Wow, that’s incredible, she lost 6 kilos in one week!”  And then you hear AJ ask inane questions like “do you think you’ll ever find love again after this journey?”  Listen to the motivations people have for losing weight in the first place “I’m doing this so my husband/wife/kids is/are proud of me” and other such answers are scary.  Yes it sounds all lovey-dovey and like a noble sacrifice but I know many clients, myself included, that have lost dramatic amounts of weight in relatively short times for that specific reason.  They are doing it for someone other than themselves: someone else’s approval, someone else’s acknowledgement, someone else’s acceptance.  The problem is when that special someone else is not forthcoming with the acceptance, approval, respect, acknowledgement we so desperately needed.  Then we get resentful because we were doing the weight loss tour of duty: “it’s for you, honey’.   And what do we do with our knee-jerk response of resentment?  We get back at the person we lost weight for in the beginning!  That’s right, we gain all the weight back (subconsciously of course) because they didn’t give us the love we needed in the way that we needed to receive it.  Sinister isn’t it?  Please, please, change your motivation for losing weight and you may have a chance at keeping it off.  If it’s not 100% for yourself, you’re setting yourself up for a massive crash at the end.

Think about that invisible bubble that floats around you and influences all your daily decisions.  You’ll certainly know when you touch the edges of what feels uncomfortable, for you.  So why do we stay inside our comfort zones?  Sure they’re comfy, we know them inside out.  We honestly believe we’re safe inside.  So we rarely venture out because it feels … well, yukky.  The consequence of all this perceived “safety” is that we don’t have to take any risks.  We don’t have to get hurt.  We don’t have to be disappointed when real life happens.  But what’s really going on here?  Are we so blindly addicted to our ideas of neatly packaged perfection that we can’t even allow in the possibility of an ounce of personal growth occurring?  The words of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” I think makes a fantastic analogy for this process:  

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?

Our comfort zone is the cage.  Our ghosts, hot ashes, hot air and cold comfort all fit into the category of pretty delusions and convenient lies we tell ourselves to justify our time in the cage.  Who needs a comfort zone if it’s going to stunt your growth like that?  Break out of it today and take a risk.  You never know where it might lead!

We all know pain, some of us have a closer relationship with it than others. Emotional pain is the one I’m talking about.  It begins fairly innocently with mild frustration, irritability, sadness, disappointment and revs right up to just about take a strangle-hold on us with hurt, panic, rage - and lots of angry emotional eating as a result.  Instead of doing the usual self-loathing dance afterwards with “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just ate that!  What is wrong with me?   Why can’t I just eat like a normal person?  I’m such a pig!”  you could develop some empathy for yourself.  Understand that every time you self-sabotage, it’s really an attempt at self-help.  You know you feel distressed and as a logical response to that, food does calm us down, food does comfort us, food does soothe painful feelings, food can be an extremely pleasurable way to spend quality time.  The only problem is it doesn’t deal with the pain that triggered our overeating.  What we’re left with when we emotionally eat is two sets of problems: 1 - the inevitable weight gain from all the extra calories in and 2 - we still haven’t found an effective coping method to deal with our pain.   In life “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional” so said someone famous.  Try to accept your pain in all its forms, really get to know it, it’s part of what makes you unique.  But choose not to suffer with it.  The more accepting you can be of your pain, the more acceptance you create for all the parts of you (especially the parts you still find unacceptable).

A lot of my clients struggle with the idea that they have to LOVE their bodies to embrace body freedom.  They say “how can I possibly love THIS when I’m so disgustingly fat?”  And that is absolutely fair enough.  You do not have to LOVE your body.  You will grow to love parts of it, evolving eventually to loving all of it.  You must however find a place of acceptance inside yourself with the body you have today.  This in no way suggests that the body you have today (that you hate) will be the same body you have in six months time.  What ‘finding a place of acceptance inside yourself’ means is that when you ALLOW yourself to look in the mirror, without flinching, without pulling faces, without abusing yourself, start talking to yourself as if you are your own best friend.  Your best friend only wants the best for you, she will see beauty where you can’t.  She will remind you often of all your good qualities.  When you treat yourself as if you are beautiful already, sooner or later, you will start feeling as if you are beautiful.  Then later, with lots of conscious practise, the “as if” disappears and you are beautiful because you feel beautiful.  The way you treat yourself, dress yourself and feed yourself all stems from the way you feel about yourself.  So what are you waiting for?  Boot your inner bitch out today and start finding your inner best friend!  Your flow-on eating and weight changes will simply reflect all these new positive messages about that beautiful woman in the mirror.

Think about the amount of shame and guilt you have invested in your “weight problem”.  How many minutes a day in your life do you spend agonising over what you just ate, what you should have eaten and promises of what you had better eat from now on?  What about the time in the mirror playing the self-loathing game “oh my God, look at those cottage cheese thighs, that huge arse, massive muffin top and tuckshop lady arms!  I’ve got to do something about it!  I’ve got to lose weight!”  How comfortable are you with clothes shopping or does that usually trigger a full scale emotional eating session as soon as you get home?  It helps a lot to put a figure on the amount of time we do invest in this monumental waste of energy.  When you have come up with a figure on your time, energy or money spent in this pursuit, you can then use that as leverage to motivate you to leave Diet World.  Ask yourself one question, has any of this “worked” for you?  If not, then ask yourself what you would rather be doing with your time, money and emotional energy.  I’m sure you can think of a few things, spend a few minutes fantasizing about your dreams, goals and passions.  Why did you hide them away?  Bring them out again to play with.  Try applying the same level of obsessive thoughts and energy into achieving some of your goals.  I have no doubt you will succeed.  Look out world, there’s a new empowered woman in town!

Karen Carpenter died 25 years ago in 1983 from complications due to her long battle with Anorexia.  And what have we learnt since then?  I know I’ve learnt a lot, not just because she is my favourite female singer and I adore her but I’ve studied a lot about her story, her history.  She has become the public face for the word “anorexia” and hopefully is remembered more for her awesome talent.   What I know about all eating disorders and particularly Karen Carpenter is that they are a form of communication.  We use them to communicate what we feel we can’t with words.  When we can’t find the words or don’t possess the vocabulary or don’t feel safe in expressing our feelings, we use food and our bodies to do that for us, under the disguise of an “eating disorder”. It’s also a very effective way of diverting our attention from the real issues that we struggle to deal with.  They are an attempt at controlling the one thing in our lives we think we have control over - the food we put into our mouths and ultimately our ‘errant’ bodies.  As women living in our sick diet culture, we are given a barrage of messages constantly from lots of different sources that say “you are of no value unless you look good” and looking good always means looking thin.  When we’re thin enough, then we’ll be acceptable, approved of, respected and valued - or so says the toxic cultural message shoved down our throats.  If we ever want to embrace our freedom and our bodies and start using our talents to enjoy our own lives, we need to take a step back from this crippling and self-esteem destroying attitude.  Take a deep breath and decide not to buy into it.  You are worth more than that.  Start a revolution today, stop hating your body!

So says Kaz Cooke, Australian comedian.  What I say is that Cellulite is a fancy name for fat.  If you’re a healthy woman, you are going to have some fat on your body.  You can call it whatever you like: fat, cellulite, the silken layer, voluptuousness, rubbery skin, stored energy, jiggly bits, love handles, etc.  I studied Beauty therapy and the science behind it and I can tell you that if advertisers were honest, the most they could say about a treatment or product would be that it “improves the appearance of cellulite” and that’s only for the duration that you use their product or service.  These days the ads have gone incredibly high tech with claims like “uses ultrasound technology to target and isolate fat cells for a contoured physique”. And “a non-invasive form of liposculpture for women wanting to remove trouple spots”.   Sounds impressive doesn’t it?  Take it all with a grain of salt ladies, it is September after all, from September through till about April, we can expect to see millions of dollars spent in advertising, with the sole goal of convincing us that the answer to all our dreams lies in the promise of a thinner body.  Ahhhh it’s right up there with rainbows and fairies unicorns! 

The latest edition of NW magazine show us non-celebrity readers “how celebrities banish cellulite and lose fat fast”.  The victims this week are Denise Richards, Mischa Barton, Britney Spears, Scary Spice and Cindy Crawford.  Strangely, the ‘before’ shots are all in harsh, bright sunlight (with no discernable photoshopping) and the ‘after’ shots are all in much darker lighting, from a completely different angle and beautifully photoshopped to our idea of perfection.  At first glance, the human female mind will start on a familiar path: Wow, she looks good!  She looks 5 kilos lighter than the before shot, I need to lose weight too, I shouldn’t have eaten that last night, etc. etc.  We believe that what we are seeing is the effects of a rigorous exercise routine with a personal trainer plus hyper-vigilant food restriction under the supervision of the stars personal chef and maybe with some cosmetic surgery thrown in for good measure.  Reality check time:  Every image we see in a glossy magazine has been digitally altered or “digitally enhanced” as photoshop artists like to call it.  The images do not reflect reality.  It is a pointless waste of time and a colossal waste of our own talents and gifts comparing our bodies to that of celebrities.  The last quote must go to one of the original supermodels herself, Cindy Crawford: “Even I don’t look like Cindy Crawford!” 

I went to see Angelina Jolie’s latest movie “Wanted” on the weekend.  As we know, she’s one of the thinnest working actresses in Hollywood.  If actresses were any thinner, they probably wouldn’t be working, they’d be in a private hospital with a naso-gastric feeding tube stuck up their nose, trying to stay alive.  If newspaper stories are correct, she was so thin during the making of that movie, she fainted many times and yes, she looked scarily thin to me in the movie - all doe eyes and puffed up lips on her beautiful face, then further down beyond her puffed up breasts, it was all bones.  If I was that thin, I’m pretty sure I’d be passing out regularly too because to maintain that level of thinness, you don’t get to eat much.  I do know and I have been there and it’s not much fun feeling like you’re dying everyday.  So why is it that every second magazine I pick up has yet another feature on her - and more specifically, her body?  Her body - and female thinness in general is idolised, glamorised and highly sought after, all in the name of churning over big bucks in magazines by promoting an unattainable goal and encouraging women to feel inadequate.  If we turned our energy and attention to our own bodies, instead of wishing we too looked like Angelina Jolie, maybe we could celebrate our own individuality by focussing on just one thing we like about our bodies.  That one thing would then become two things, etc and snowball.  That way we’d be “feeding” our own self-esteem and growing it instead of feeding the media machine.  

Yeah, well, what’s normal anyway?  After any holiday - that’s work holidays, school holidays, weekends, easter, christmas, special birthdays, parties, trips away - in fact any kind of time off from the usual routine - will find me going through a familiar process.  After overdosing on way too much chocolate, cake, biscuits, ice cream and probably alcohol, I feel sluggish, ill and tired as well as fat.  I look down at my thighs, they don’t appear to have grown much in the last two weeks, but one can never be too sure.  I feel like my lower body has increased at least two dress sizes in these past school holidays.  I do what my body is telling me to, I take it easy, I go lightly, I breathe,  I’m desperate to feel good again and feel like I have some control over my eating.  I fill my plates with mountains of vegetables, salads and fruit.  With that, I serve up little kid-sized amounts of lean meats, low fat dairy and luscious grainy bread.  I flush out my system with what feels like half a swimming pool of water.  Within a few days I feel like I’m back on track, I feel much better about living in the body I have and voila, my sugar-addict cravings have subsided … well, until next weekend.  The point is, I allow myself to let go and live in the moment - every weekend - then I have a strategy that gets me feeling like I’m back on track and doing something ‘good’ for my body, that’s not a diet and there’s no deprivation involved.  I pretend I’m at an expensive health spa being pampered and indulged, without any expense!  Try it and see how it makes you feel.

I know it’s weird.  I know it’s hard to believe.  You’ll never get that smaller sized bum or thighs or tummy from trying to alter your food intake, trust me I’ve tried - thousands of times.  Instead of trying to change your bum from the outside - with diets, detoxes, restrictions, magical body treatments (external things that require lots of willpower and ca$h) the only thing I have found that has worked consistently is changing my bum from the inside out.  That is, by changing the eyes with which I see my bum.  By developing a conscious awareness about my negative thoughts that lead to my negative feelings that result in my “bad” eating, which effectively causes my larger sized bum.  When I became much more mind-full about all my limiting beliefs and distorted body-image perceptions, I challenged them and replaced them with empowering beliefs and open-ended goals that actually made me feel good when I thought about them, which led to me making better choices when it came to feeding myself, which led to my bum becoming much smaller over the long-term.  And that’s how it works, a do-it-yourself body image and self-esteem makeover.

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off” apparently these famous words were first uttered by Gloria Steinem.  And what an accurate statement it is, don’t you think?  I know when I’ve had stark realisations that I would rather not have, I do get very pissed off.  At who?  I’m not really sure, I try to steer clear of playing the blame game because it gets me nowhere.  My anger then turns inward and I find myself knee deep in assorted fun size chocolate bars and hot chocolates or eating nutella straight out of the jar with a teaspoon.  Why?  Because as most women know, chocolate makes you feel better.  No matter what you’re feeling - frustrated, overwhelmed, irritable, tired, overworked - chocolate will make you feel BETTER.  Next time you get hit with the truth, hit the chocolate.  Not only will you be on the receiving end of a big dose of feel-good hormones but hopefully you’ll eat too much and then feel ill.  Your ill-feeling in your stomach will bring you back to the present with a jolt instead of remaining stuck in the past or the future (in your head).  Just breathe into your gut (your feelings) and eat chocolate and everything will be better. 

There’s an easy time-honoured method of ripping yourself off with your eating experiences and it goes like this.  Say I get to the end of a long day of work and I arrive home and I’m really hanging out for something spicy and hot and filling, like Thai or Indian.  Instead of honouring my intuition and feelings about what I want, I decide in a split second I’m not worth the time, energy or money it would take to cook or even buy something like that, instead I begrudgingly rustle up a few dregs of last nights leftover bangers and mash and throw it together with the 3 day old limp salad that was the only green thing in my fridge at the time.  Am I going to feel satisfied and nurtured after eating this?  Do you think I’m likely to do some emotional eating after this ‘meal’?  Pretty likely!  Every time you rip yourself off with your eating experiences, you’ve probably already done it in other areas of your life.  Ripping yourself off is the same as trying to fake your satisfaction and the same as faking an orgasm.  If you’re inclined to do either one, ask yourself why.  Why aren’t you worth the time and effort it takes to ask for and seek out what you want to truly satisfy you.  What’s going on with your eating is usually a microcosym of what’s going on in your life.  It’s probably time to start seeking out ultimate satisfaction in all your experiences!

But I don’t eat that much!!  Before you blame your metabolism or yourself, read this.  “Mary Schreiner, 61, a recently retired weight management counsellor for the University of Colorado’s Health Science Centre, understands how this could happen.  Barely more than 5 feet tall and 160 pounds as a young woman, she tried counting calories and eliminating fattening food but the weight just wouldn’t come off.  The problem, she realised later was that while there were 75 calories in the cookie I was having, I didn’t know how many calories there were in the orange juice I was guzzling.  Many of her clients are just like her - drinking lots of lattes for example because ‘coffee has no calories, right?’  But they never registered the fact that each latte can have 200 calories.  Or those who said that sure, they walked 10000 steps a day, but when given pedometres, clocked in at only 1500 calories a day.   As for being ‘born with a slow metabolism’ Dr Steven Heymsfield and colleagues published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine using a sophisicated technique to monitor nine women and one man who weighed on average nearly 190 pounds, even though they insisted they ate only 1000 calories a day, the results were startling, especially to the subjects.  It turns out they were consuming about 2000 calories a day AND they thought they were active enough to burn about 1000 calories a day in exercise, in fact the number was closer to 770.  Overestimating exercise and underestimating calories in is very common and has been proven many times over in study after study that it’s human nature to do this.  Instead of being relieved to discover there was nothing medically wrong with them, the subjects in the study became angry towards the researchers.            taken and edited from Oprah magazine February 2007 “But I Don’t Eat That Much!”

In our super convenient lifestyles these days, we have to go out of our way to ensure we get of our big comfy butts and move.  One hundred years ago, people typically burned 1500 more calories a day than they do now, according to new research by Dr James A Levine a professor of Medicine in Rochester Minnesota.  Even those who would rather be relaxing, thank you, had to plow the fields or walk to town or take the laundry to the creek and slap it on the rocks.  But in our age, Levine believes our natural inert way of life is enough to explain the obesity epidemic.  To prove this Levine took 20 self-described couch-potatoes - 10 lean and 10 mildly obese and dressed them in high-tech underwear that recorded their bodily movements every half second for 10 days.  He discovered the leaner spuds burned about 350 more calories a day through NEAT “Non-exercise activity thermogenesis” or the equivalent of 33 pounds a year!  The ‘figiters’ won.  The good news is that if you’re not a natural figiter, you can consciously work at overriding your biology.  When Levine found his middle thickening, he installed a treadmill in his loungeroom and every night when the Simpsons came on, he watched the episode while walking.  Without any other changes to his diet or activity level, he lost 15 pounds in 9 months.  Small changes add up to big results over the long term.   Taken and edited from Oprah magazine February 2007 “But I Don’t Eat That Much!”

Before you go and fork out your hard earned cash on Tony Ferguson, or revisit Weight Watchers for the 37th time, maybe it’s time to turn your attention to why you overeat, rather than what you overeat.  You can go on diets for the rest of your life and lose weight every time you do… but those kilos have a nasty habit of returning with a gathering of extra friends - on your thighs, your butt and your stomach.  If you want to dig a bit deeper to understand the cause of your weight problem, you need to understand what’s going on in your head before you lose it with 7 slices of pizza, the over eating is just the side effect of unhelpful thinking.  It’s not the pizza that’s the problem, it’s the emotions you’re swallowing with the pizza that’s the issue.  If you’ve spent years doing lots of mind-less eating not being aware of why you’re eating when you’re not physically hungry, the remedy for this is learning how to mind-fully eat. 

Next time you’re tossing up between a carton of Tim Tams and a delectable bottle of spritzy white wine OR a wheelbarrow sized plate of green salad washed down with 7 litres of Diet Coke, practise this little gem on yourself, just for fun.   Breathe in deep, all the way down to the bottom of your belly and ask yourself   1.  How am I feeling right now?   2.  What do I feel like eating?   If you’re still feeling guilty about the Tim Tam choice, repeat this 50 times “I can have it if I want it, but do I really feel like it?”  Emphasis on how you FEEL.  It’s not a crime to go with your FEELings, even if you do actually FEEL like the carton of Tim Tams.   Honest.   Eating your scariest and forbiddenest foods is the quickest way I know to demystify them and break the magic spell they have over you. 

“Told to lose kilos, young Hollywood stars refuse to starve.  With skinny as the standard, these stars are bucking the bony trend”  Or so says the Aug 6 issue of Who magazine.  After being publicly critisized for carrying too much fat, Hilary dropped from 59kg down to 45kg by becoming “obsessed” with hard-core dieting and binge exercising.  Hilary has now eased up on herself, reportedly now 49 kilos and is once again being questioned publicly about the level of fat on her body.  “According to tabloids, you’re either too fat or too skinny, you’ll never make them happy” said Hilary. 

I agree Hilary, It’s true you’ll never make them happy, but too fat or too thin, they’ll be laughing all the way to the bank as they cash in on yet another female actresses insecurities about her weight.  And where did that insecurity come from?  The tabloids - are they answerable to anyone?

The star of a new romantic comedy movie “License to Wed”, Mandy Moore says before filming began she got the talk every actress dreads.  “Someone pulled me aside and said, “They want you to lose 10 pounds (4.5kg) Mandy recalls.  “I was mortified - my feelings were hurt”.  But instead of fad diets, she focussed on being healthy, working with a trainer and eating five small meals a day.  So did she lose weight?  “I don’t know, I never weigh myself.  To be honest, I don’t think I looked all that different.  I’m not that thin, I’m OK with representing a different type than the normal Hollywood beauty ideal.  This is who I am, I’m accepting of it and everyone else should follow suit”, Mandy says of her curvy frame. 

After learning of this process - probably one time too many, the last word goes to License to Wed producer, Ken Kwapis “We need to talk about how f**ked up the standard of beauty is”.       Source Who Magazine 6 Aug 2007.    Thank you Ken, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

If you watched the last season of “Australian Princess” on television, you would be familiar with the self-labelled Fat One, Zena.  Zena recalls she received a phone call from the producer congratulating her on becoming one of the final 14 out of 5000 applicants.  Zena says “I thought I would be the biggest girl of the group and I was.  I told the producers that I knew I was fat and I knew my role on the show would be to play the stereotypical fat Lebanese girl.  Whether they had that role in mind for me or not I don’t know, but I felt I had to point it out”.  Having lost 34 kilos recently, Zena is now grateful, she says to the judges and producers involved with Australian Princess.  “They gave me the shove I needed.  The judges were always pushing me, saying, “Zena, you need to lose weight.  Zena, you’re eating too much breakfast.”  Half the time it felt fake as if they were saying it for TV and the ratings but the other half hurt me.”    Unstoppable now, as she was before, Zena is competing in pageants - as in beauty pageants - with swimsuit sections!  Go Zena.    Source Slimming and Health magazine August 2007

My old faithful pedometer, my trusty never-failing companion on long, long walks has finally bitten the dust.  She has been lost twice and flushed down the toilet once (accidentally of course), then had new life breathed into her each time.  She was Good.  I know she was good, because she cost $30.  So I felt a bit naked going out on walks without her and a bit lost.  But never fear, I got over it.  I took a deep breath and got on with the job.  Focus.  The urge to rush out and replace her subsided.   Without the pedometer I was forced to put the focus on “feeling” how far I walked and how I felt about it.  This is a lot like when you give up using the scales to weigh yourself, you’re forced to focus on how you feel instead of needing that reassurance from checking on the numbers.  Focus on what’s going on internally versus what’s going on externally.

“We should learn to enjoy our imperfections.  I know if I jump up and down my bottom is still moving five minutes later.  But that’s life - enjoy the wobbling”  Carol Vorderman, US comedienne

“The way I see it, the men that I’m with, whoever they are, it’s like, look, you have to accept that I like ice cream, and I know it shows up on my hips but if you can’t accept that, then leave.  Go away, toodles.  It is non-negotiable”  Tori Amos, well-rounded rocker

“I went to the thirtieth reunion of my pre-school.  I didn’t want to go because I’ve put on, like a hundred pounds”  Wendy Liebman.

“I’m trying to get back to my original weight - eight pounds, three ounces”  Cheril Vendetti

“TV cameras seem to add ten pounds to me.  So I make it a policy never to eat TV cameras”  Kitty Carlisle.

When we first begin to make changes with our thinking habits, our eating habits and our exercise habits, most of us follow a predictable pattern.  The first few weeks we’re all gung-ho about it and feeling unstoppable, just like Lynda Carter in Wonder Woman, complete with gold lassoo - awesome!    But then something happens, I call it Life.  A series of unfortunate events leaves us feeling depleted, disappointed, no energy or enthusiasm and definately no magic.  How do we get back into our Wonder Woman costume feeling like this?  The secret lies in maintaining the changes you have already made, no matter what.  Remember how you challenged your old style of thinking just a few weeks ago, remember the process, remember the habits you ‘forced’ on yourself until they became second nature.  Remember too, the Stages of Change Model - going off track - or what I call learning experiences - are an expected part of the process of change, expect it, plan for it, then embrace this opportunity for what it is, another chance to discover what else works for you.   The more tools you have that work for you, the better.  Why would you want to settle for anything less? 

This point has been driven home to me a lot in the last few weeks with clients.  I’m well aware the most attractive feature of adopting a non-diet approach is the fact that for the majority, we’re all hanging out for the side-effect of long-term weight loss.  I would like to emphasis long term-that’s long-term as in long after the “after” photos would have faded with your previous very-short-term weight-loss-through-dieting efforts.  Becoming a Non-Dieter needs to be a way of life, once you’ve made the trek with your mind and crossed over into unchartered territory, you would never go back to life as a Dieter - the benefits are too great.   In my experience and the experience of many other women who’ve kept weight off permanently (more than 7 years qualifies as “permanent” apparently) is that a common trait we all share - we have no illusions that this is indeed a PROCESS, not an event.  As processes go, no one can say how long yours will take, processes are highly individual.  The best thing you can do is to respect yours and “feed” them with time, space and a whole lotta love (and the appropriate therapy when needed) to give them the best chance to grow.  

Here’s some facts you may like to chew over on morning tea with your danish pastry and latte with full cream milk.  The average Australian woman’s BMI (body mass index) is 28.1.  Between 20 and 25 is considered “ideal”, 28.1 is considered “overweight”.  Ms Average’s waist is 87.9cm, her hip measurement is 110cm and bra size is 14C.   41% of Aussie women wear a D cup or above.  Ms Average’s weight is 74 kilos and our average height is 1.63 metres.  Women aged 18-32 spent $414 million on weight loss diets in one year even though 95% regained everything they lost, plus more within 2 years.   Hmmmm, if only they’d known about a non-diet approach they could have saved themselves a bucket of misery.      Source Who Weekly 7 May 2007.

One of our favourite body image role models, the shapely-and-proud-of-it Jennifer Lopez has said that in Hollywood “I’ve always been seen as a big girl”.  Kind of ironic wouldn’t you say when Jennifer is an Australian size 10!  (US size 6)   She told UK Elle magazine she could never be a size zero and still be healthy “models are dropping dead on the catwalks because it’s all about being thin.  It’s insane”.  I agree, what next?  Nicole Ritchie is not thin enough?   Some people have a really distorted view of the world, growing up I was always being told I was a “big girl” and yet I’m a size 8.   Hey, no-one said it had to make sense!

Ok, so I gather many of you will have seen the British former model Louise Redknapp’s recent documentary on TV titled “The Truth About Size Zero”.  For your man’s info: In 2004 she was named FHM magazines “Sexiest Woman of the Decade”  And thank God for us women, she can also add “honest” to her CV.  Louise starved herself on 800 calories a day for 30 days as well as doing 1 hour of weight training and running 7 kilometres every day.  Louise says “it was horrendous, I just didn’t sleep, I was getting about 4 hours a night, I kept waking up hungry all the time”.  Louise works as a host of a fashion show and is Mum to a 2 year old boy.  She reported having a lot of trouble focussing at work and became very snappy to her husband and little boy, especially when she had to prepare their meals.  Louise didn’t edit out the emotional outbursts she had on the show either.   Louise dropped from a teeny beginning weight of 7 stone 10 pounds down to 6 stone 13 pounds and achieved the measurements of this elusive size zero, but at an enormous cost.  She mentioned that she was quite excited when her jeans felt loose, as she could see how easily it is to develop an obsession.  All of this came as no surprise to me and hopefully many of you watching, she was after all, on a diet - and this is what diets do to women!    Louise says the pressure to be a size zero isn’t coming from men, we are beating ourselves up.   Ladies, where is the sisterhood when we need it?

If you reach for M&M’s or Sara Lee when you’re tense, you may be onto a biochemical phenomenon.  Scientists at the University of Cincinnati restrained a group of rats, making them anxious, then measured their glucocorticoids - stress hormones that can impair immune function.  The rats that had consumed a sugary solution produced less of the hormone that those that downed an artificially sweetened liquid or water.  “Eating sweet snacks dampens the response to stress in rats,” says lead researcher Yvonne Ulrich-Lai, PdD.  “These results may have to do with how sugar’s taste and calories affect the enjoyment and reward centres of the brain.” Ulrich-Lai and her colleagues speculate.  Other researchers suggest other relaxation methods, like deep breathing.  You don’t want to form an unhealthy dependency on sweets (or elastic waistbands).

Reported in Oprah Magazine by Jennifer Nelson July, 2006

In a University of Missouri-Columbia study, obese, sedentary men and women were paired with dogs and instructed to walk them for ten minutes three times a week, eventually working up to 20 minutes five times a week.  After 50 weeks, participants lost an average 14 pounds (6.5 kilos) and that’s WITHOUT DIETING!  The participants were so worried about letting down their four-legged pals, according to the lead investigator, Rebecca Johnson, PhD, they happily stuck with the program.  “Nothing motivates like our need to be needed” she says.

Found in Oprah Magazine, July 2006 Reported by Carla Murphy 

If you’ve been following Kirstie Alley’s weighty transformation through various magazines, you could be forgiven for getting a bit confused.  Depending on which publication you read, you’ll be informed that Kirstie has lost a total of 60 pounds … or … 60 kilos.  Note to magazine editors: one kilogram (in Australian) equals approximately 2.2 pounds (in American).  So if Kirstie has lost 60 pounds, that equals about 27 kilograms.  I know, I know, 60 kilos sounded so much more dramatic!  Stay tuned because these are the early days in the lifecycle of a diet.  The real test is in the LONG-TERM, like in 10 or 15 YEARS time when all the endorsement money has run out.  Sorry, I can’t help being a little cynical - it’s my job.

On the days when you wear your snazzy new co-ordinated outfit (read tight-fitting) and your designer label shoes, have you noticed that you end up moving around a lot less?  You’re not imagining it.  A study has shown that women burn on average 8% less per day if they’re wearing uncomfortable and movement-restricting clothes.  So the suggestion is to wear stylish, yet practical shoes and clothes for work and play and you’ll not only move more easily, naturally burning more energy, but wear a happier face too!

Study results from Diane the Curves magazine Summer 2005

In my former life as a big spending consumer in the weight loss industry, I found there is No Limit to what one can spend in search for the Holy Grail - an eternally thin body.   For a 28 day supply of Reductil or Xenical (the Pharmist’s way) it will cost you around $130.  For those of you into more physical pursuits, Melbourne celebrity personal trainer Donna Aston charges $275 an hour.  Psychiatrists charge around $135 for a 45 minute chat, Psychologists around $90 - $100.  Life Coaches start at $80 an hour.  I find this whole game a lot like a joke from the 90’s:  Question: How many Psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?  Answer: One.  But the light bulb must want to change.  In my opinion, you can have the best treatment and experts in the world to help you change, but at the end of the day, there’s only one person that can ALLOW this process to occur.  You guessed it, it’s you.  And the only ingredient you need to facilitate this process is called Willingness.  The last time I checked, there was no copyright on this product.

Research confirming the human body is designed to strongly resist attempts to lose weight was presented at an international gathering of obesity experts in September.  QUT appetite regulation and energy balance researcher Dr Neal King from the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation said our bodies have strong mechanisms that defend attempts to lose weight but very weak mechanisms to prevent weight gain.  Dr King conducted two studies on weight loss following induced energy deficits in two different groups of overweight and obese people.  “The ‘plateau effect’ has been known for some time and weight management consultants recommend longer exercising times, higher intensity or cross training to combat it, but these studies show that a plateau in body weight occurs even in the face of a continued negative energy balance.”  Dr King said our energy balance system was programmed to cope with famine, “not the current obesogenic environment which enforces inactivity and a plentiful food supply”.

Reported by Niki Widdowson IQ QUT Newspaper Issue 267 September 18 2006

When everyday is a feast day, no wonder we are losing the battle of the bulge, writes Rebecca Huntley.  How did the age-old equation that poor equals thin and rich equals fat change so that now our working poor are huge and slow-moving and only the wealthy can afford the personal trainers, liposuction and extended spa treatments required, it seems, to be thin?  More education is often proffered as the solution to the fat crisis.  However, information about food, health and dieting is ubiquitous.  Shame doesn’t seem to be working either.  Recently we have seen a spate of reality TV shows such as The Biggest Loser and Honey We’re Killing The Kids, in which fat people are badgered, punished, chastised and treated with condescension by spandex-clad personal trainers or experts in white coats.  These shows are turning the humiliation of fat people into a spectator sport.  Our current obsession with obesity is therefore a new phenomenon because, as Dr Barbara Santich from University of Adelaide states “we haven’t been this fat before”.  According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 62% of men and 45% of women are now overweight or obese.  Dr Stanwich points out “we have never had this kind of food variety, where we can buy all kinds of cuisines and 10 different types of peanut butter if we choose.”

Reported in November 2006 Australian Vogue by Rebecca Huntley.

Is it just me … or have you noticed too, how many Brisbane breakfast radio announcers are suddenly raving about the newest franchised weight-loss chain from the US of A? 

I wonder how much free stuff the guinea pigs get for going public with their efforts.  (Let’s not even go into what happens in the long-term)  I obtained a quote the other day for radio advertising and was told they could start me up with ’something very basic for about $5000 - a month!’  Youch!  Which leads me to wonder what the radio station earns from the contract with The Big Company.

I had the pleasure of being in the audience of the wickedly funny Susan Maushart the other day.  Susan spoke at the Winning Women Inc. function on Saturday 7th October.  Susan regularly expresses herself in her column in the Weekend Australian. She has just released her latest book “What Women Want Next”. 

Says Susan, “We used to assume that what women wanted was what men had - with ovaries on the side.  A few decades on, those wishes have mostly been granted, at least in principle.  Women today are freer, fitter and more financial than ever before.  But the evidence suggests we are also more depressed, more stressed, more guilt-stricken and more mixed up about what really matters”.  Susan also admits she suffers from CBDD (Carol Brady Deficit Disorder).  She actually lives with six teenagers - and she still has a sense of humour.  I hear we only got the M rated version of her talks.  Pity,  I would have paid to sit in on the higher rated talk.  What a woman.

After reading up on “Jennifer Hawkins’ Body Rescue Plan” in the October issue of New Woman and prompty discarding all the diet and exercise advice.  (Please, give it a rest, the mere reading of a diet makes me hungry!)  I decided that I really like Jennifer.  Apart from the fact that she’s gorgeous and she appears refreshingly down to earth, for a model, she admits to loving her food, too!  Says Jen “At high school I was so skinny with no boobs that boys used to say I was anorexic.  All I wanted to do was put on weight, but now it’s the opposite.  When I’m working overseas, I often put on around three extra kilos.  I find it hard to keep healthy when there’s so much great food around so I really have to work to lose it when I get back”.    Thank you sincerely, Jennifer. 

A funny thing happens when I start opening my mouth about a ‘non-diet approach’…  After listening to my explanation of how a non-diet approach works with a major emphasis on the absolutely essential part of this process, losing the diet mentality, I get responses like “That sounds really interesting.  I’d like to give that a go, right after I lose 5 or 10 kilos.” 

It kind of makes me smile, because this statement alone is evidence that your diet mentality is still very much alive!  And we have lots of work to do to with re-conditioning.  But never fear, awareness is the first step in the process.

And if someone like myself, who had THE WORST case of diet mentality-itis of anyone I know can lose mine, then I firmly believe any woman can - with the right tools.  Trust me, I’ve been there… and I’m still alive to tell the tale - and show you how to use the tools!

When is a model too thin to strut the latest high fashion?  Fiona Hudson in London reports on the latest catwalk catfight.  Spanish officials were roused to action by the death of South American model Luisel Ramos, 22, who died from heart failure recently after stepping off a catwalk.  It is believed she had lived on a diet of vegetables and Diet Coke for weeks.  In London, model Petra Nemcova said such diets weren’t unusual.  “I know people who are ill and I have to admit I lose weight by simply eating a few vegetables a day, otherwise I wouldn’t get the work.”  About a third of all models booked to appear in Madrid were knocked off their heels by the official ban on girls with a very low body mass index (BMI).  “When you show clothes on a model they look best when the girl is the right size, and that is thin.  Most of the best girls are really thin” says London designer Manish Arora.  The scraps will continue when the prestigious Milan fashion week opens today.  Milan mayor Letizia Moratti has promised to follow Spain’s lead and wipe out “Sick-looking” models.  Dr Dee Dawson director of a British eating disorders clinic is alarmed at the number of patients who consider hyper-thin Victoria Beckham a role model and says “The fashion industry has completely warped what is considered a normal size and should be held accountable.”  As reported in The Courier Mail Saturday 23rd September, 2006

Spring has certainly sprung, which leads us to Summer, the wearing of much less clothing and the annual boom-time for weight loss centres.  This time of year, thousands of women in Brisbane will be hearing “Have you called Jenny, yet?” and “Are you L.A?” ringing in their ears while trying to avoid full length mirrors.   Many other thousands will be going down what they believe is a more enlightened path.  I meet new Detox Devotees almost every week, lately with the belief that ‘no one diets anymore, diets don’t work’.  Instead they’ll happily pay big bucks for regular detoxes - always with the intention of changing their body weight or shape.   I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but… if the intention is to manipulate your body weight or shape by any sort of food restriction, then this is a diet!  It doesn’t matter what fancy name we give the process.

Where does the pressure to be thinner than ever come from?  Reported in Who July 17, 2006:  “Perched in the stands in Nuremburg to support her husband, England soccer captain, David Beckham at a FIFA World Cup match, Victoria Beckham showed more than solid team spirit.  The former Spice Girl highlighted her figure - toothpick legs, gaunt shoulders and melon-like breasts - in an England Rocks singlet, long boots and boyond-skimpy shorts (estimated size 0).  “At the end of the day, Victoria wants to look slim,” says a family friend.  “She’s happy with how she looks”.  But to others, mother of three, Victoria looks less than healthy, and bizarre rather than beautiful.   “If her own family isn’t worried there really isn’t a problem, is there?” said the friend.

I was asked to comment yesterday on the new women’s clothing size 0 that has recently made its way to Australia.  You may have been following this story in the Sunday Mail over the last two weeks.  Size 0 is intended for “pre-teens and smaller women” said a spokeswoman from Supre, Marcella Orellana.  Supre stocks size 3xs which is equivalent to size zero.  Some Brisbane clothing stores have refused to stock the size.  Brisbane Kisses Boutique stocks only down to size 6.  Caitlin Lye, a buyer for Kisses says “We’ve never had the call for it before, but suddenly with people like Nicole Ritchie and Victoria Beckham, you realize why this size is coming out.”  Stay tuned, more to come…

“You have to stay in shape.  My grandmother started walking when she was 60.  She’s 92 now and we don’t know where the hell she is!”  Ellen De Generes.  US Comedian

“I decided to get into shape.  The shape I chose was round!”  Roseanne Barr  US Comedian

What a wonderful opening we had on Friday night, the 1st of September!  With many thanks to the fantastic group of people who came and make the night so special.  A particular mention of thanks must go to Lynette Palmen AM, the founder of the ever-growing and hugely successful Women’s Network Australia, not just for taking the time to come to officially open Life After Diets, but for her amazing work every day of the year, inspiring women in business.  Mother nature didn’t spare us, as we all had to brave the continual trickling of rain and huddle under the marquee.  The hostess forgot about the enormous mud cake until later in the evening.  What does one sing at a grand opening?   One of my kids solved that problem, you sing “Happy Opening” to the tune of happy birthday!   Of course.

Greetings!  The life after diets blog will be a tool that can be used by life after diets members.  That’s right, become a member and you will have access to getting your entries on the blog.  (For the technologically challenged, like myself that’s short for web log).  Post me an entry which may be like a journal entry, a profound personal discovery, a casual observation, a funny joke, an inspirational experience you’d like to share.  Anything relevant to weight issues, body image, etc is ideal.  Share it with your fellow ex-dieting Queensland women, couldn’t we all do with a lift and some humour?