Your Body Is A Chemistry Lab – Today’s Lesson: Methylation

Standing in the aisles of your local health food store or shopping on a any number of websites, it’s easy to be daunted by what supplements you should take. Next to fish oil, methylating nutrients make the top of my list for good health on many levels. But what the heck does it mean to be methylating?

Technically, methylation is the subtracting or adding of a “methyl group” (one carbon and three hydrogen atoms) to some other molecule – like a protein or DNA.  This process is going on all the time in your body and it’s crucial to you staying in optimal health. It’s often been said in functional medicine circles that “if you don’t methylate well, you aren’t well”.

Serotonin, for example needs to be methylated in order become active – without this process your serotonin will be low and you may feel depressed or have trouble sleeping. A compound called homocystine needs to be methylated in order to regenerate the important amino acid methionine – failure to do so is dangerous for cardiovascular health.  Adrenaline must be methylated in order to get out of your system so that you can “wind down” – lacking methylation here could leave you anxious or wide awake come bed time.  These are just a few of the scads of methylation reactions happening right now that are keeping inflammation down, detoxification running smoothly, hormone metabolism up to par and your mood on even keel. Know this: if you support methylation your entire body will benefit.

With nearly every system in your body affected by this chemical reaction, your mood, PMS, sleep quality and mood will all be better when it’s clipping along smoothly. Consider supporting this system with:  B vitamins (particularly B12, B6, and folic acid), trimethyl-glycine (also known as betaine) and SAMe.

Wondering how your metylation stacks up? You can see homocystine levels on a simple blood test or you can have various alternative testing done to see markers of methylation (see www.metametrix.com for more information or find a functional medicine practitioner).

B vitamin status is seen in a common CBC, aka a complete blood count, and more specifically B12 levels are checked with a test called methylmalonic acid. (Note: blood levels of folic acid or B12 are not accurate for B vitamin status, but rather reflect recent vitamin intake from food and supplements. Methylmalonic acid and homocysteine are not routinely run, so you’ll need to ask your doctor.)  There is also a genetic marker for methylation called the MTFR gene that can be tested for as well.

When looking for a supplement, I recommend using a combination product of several B vitamins and in light of recent damming evidence on synthetic folic acid, look for a product containing a particular form of folic acid: L-5-methyl tetrahydrofolate, to ensure efficacy and safety.

The Coffee Conundrum – Does Coffee Help You Burn Fat?

Keep your morning cup of coffee – it’s loaded with antioxidants and you’ll lose more weight when hopped up on caffeine. No wait – all that caffeine might cause diabetes and is bad for weight loss. What should you do? Opinions on both sides are strong – strong like a piping hot cup of French Roast, and there is research backing both sides of this argument. And it’s an argument indeed – take away a cup of Starbucks from a java junkie and you might not live to tell the tale.

When it comes to weight loss, popular advice based on interpretation of current research poses several problems. First, like any other plant ‘medicine” coffee seems to behave differently that caffeine alone – meaning that’s its other constituents and antioxidants play a role in how one responds (Translation: studies done on caffeine alone shouldn’t be directly applied to coffee and often times caffeine dosed in these studies is well in excess of what the average coffee drinker consumes). Next, studies pertaining to insulin sensitivity and diabetes are done on so called healthy subjects – ignoring the fact that there may be subtle derangements in their insulin function but they are not overtly diabetic or full blown insulin resistant.

Caffeine’s effect on insulin is where coffee plays into fat loss. Here’s what you need to know:

* Caffeine appears to acutely lower insulin sensitivity, but the effect is not chronic. Meaning that in the healthy, exercising individual, coffee drinking does not lead to diabetes . However, it does lower your insulin sensitivity in the short term so avoid drinking it with starches (optimal or allowable and for sure skip the muffin at your coffee break). If you have insulin resistance, diabetes or are not following a lower carb diet, caffeine can make insulin matters worse.

* Raising epinephrine is one mechanism by which caffeine perks you up, a preworkout coffee or tea will allow you to perform better, exercise harder and burn more fat at the gym. Avoid post workout caffeine to avoid thwarting the effects of your Recovery Shake. And  if you have anxiety, insomnia or are at all aggravated from caffeine it’s wise to avoid coffee and caffeinated beverages in general.

* The fat in cream or Half & Half will slow caffeine release into your system making it a better fat burner. But keep it light as to not pile on the calories and saturated fat. 1 tbsp or less is fine.

* Finally, caffeine appears to be less of a diuretic than once thought – meaning it isn’t as significant of a factor in dehydration.

Can You Sleep Your Way Slim?

Western society is characterized by high stress, lack of exercise, lack of sleep and overeating – but that’s not all of us. Some of us regularly hit the gym and try to eat well – but who isn’t guilty of getting too stressed out from time to time? How about missing a few hours of sleep when we’re having a week like this:  trying to work, get the kids to soccer, cook dinner and grocery shop for a big Thanksgiving meal?

Last week I discussed a study on how even small amounts of light in our sleep environment can pack on the pounds, and it turns out if we miss sleep several nights in a row – that’s not helping either.

A study in the Journal Of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism looked at 11 middle aged subjects (6 females and 5 males) who prior to the study averaged about 7.5 hours of sleep per night.  For 14 days they slept prescribed amounts (either 8.5 hours or 5.5 hours), didn’t exercise and had ample food available – in effort to mimic typical Western lifestyle of sitting at a desk, vending machine down the hall, and stress keeping us up at night.

Previous research has shown that you had to pull and all-nighter to see changes in insulin sensitivity, but this small study showed that repeated nights that were simply short on sleep also decreased insulin sensitivity.  Past data illustrates that those who sleep at least 7 hours per night are at decreased risk for developing metabolic diseases such as Metabolic Syndrome and Diabetes, and those that sleep less than 6 are at increased risk for these diseases. This more recent study, shows that only 2 weeks of not getting enough sleep shifts our metabolism towards a less insulin sensitive state.

What this means for your health is increased risk for heart and kidney disease as longer term complications of Diabetes. But what it means for your physique is more fat storage.  Insulin shuttles nutrients, including glucose, out of your blood and into your cells for use.  When your fuel stores are full or glucose simply can’t get in, which is the case with insulin resistance, that extra glucose goes to fat storage. 

This is why I tell my clients, that at each meal they have the opportunity to create a fat burning or a fat storing environment in their body by choosing the right foods. A high fiber, protein rich, managed starchy carb meal with some healthy fat encourages fat burning – whereas a high carb meal in the average person (athletes excluded of course, performance nutrition is very different from fat loss nutrition) promotes fat storage.

Turns out, missing just a few nights of shut-eye, also creates a fat storing environment. So do what you can to get at 7-9 hours of quality sleep each night.  Eat balanced meals of fiber, protein, healthy fat and a manageable carb load (see last week’s post for details).

Stress is the #1 reason I hear from my patients as to why they can’t sleep.  They lay in bed at night stressing over work, finances, etc. With Thanksgiving just a few days away, de-stress and sleep sounder by making a list before you hit the hay of 5 things you are grateful for. It will help assure you that no matter what you’re stressing over, there’s a lot in life to feel good about.

Is Your Alarm Clock Making You Fat?

Is there a digital clock on your nightstand? Do you fall asleep to the TV? How about the flashing light on a wireless modem? Or like me, is there the light from the City That Never Sleeps streaming through your window? New research shows that even if you can fall asleep with the lights or TV on, if you’re trying to lose weight – you probably shouldn’t. 

Researchers at Ohio State University looked at how light exposure during sleep affected  food intake, glucose tolerance (how well insulin clears glucose, getting it  into cells for use) and body mass increases in mice – and what they found might have us all reaching for the eye masks.

In the study, the mice were housed in one of three conditions: 24 hours of constant light, a standard light-dark cycle (16 hours of light and eight hours of darkness) or 16 hours of light and eight hours low light. The results showed that, compared with mice in the normal cycle of light-dark, those in the dim light had a significantly greater increase in body mass.

The researchers found that mice exposed to a dim light at night for eight weeks had a weight gain of 12g, which was about 50 percent more than mice that lived in a standard light and dark period. This dim light scenario is most like the seemingly negligible light in our bedrooms which may be thwarting our weight loss efforts.

Interestingly, even with no difference in activity or food consumption, the mice exposed to dim light ate more at night and gained more weight. This illuminates the notion that a big dinner or late night snacks is not ideal for leaning up.

The mice that were in exposed in constant bright light also gained more than the mice under normal light dark cycle, which shows us how metabolism is affected by abnormal sleep schedules like shift work, for example.

The link between sleep and body fat is slowly unraveling as we understand more about the body’s internal clock (known as circadian rhythm) and the actions of hormones like leptin and human growth hormone (both of which rise during sleep) and known light sensitive hormones like melatonin. 

While we learn more, note that light leaking into your sleep environment could be causing:

Increased appetite at night

Difficulty regulating meal timing during the day

Difficulty losing weight in general

Excessive cravings or overeating

Block out any light leaks and get leaner by:

Replacing  or covering up digital clocks

Turn off electric devices with lights such as computers, stereo systems, cell phones, etc

Consider black out shades, particularly if you have street light coming in your bedroom windows

Use an eye mask

Don’t sleep with the TV on

Try candlelight only during the evening, or at least 1 hour before bed turn off electric lights

And finally, unless your blood sugar dips too low during the night (causing you to wake frequently) then aim to have your last meal  2-3 hours before bedtime to allow leptin and growth hormone to rise.  Healthy hormone patterns and a good night sleep are essential to a healthy, fit body – so lights out!

Black and White, Meet Gray

This perhaps doesn’t  apply to us all….but it applies to nearly every woman that sits across the desk from me at my office. Black or white. On or off. All or nothing. I want results and I want them now.

Much of the time we are either turned on 110%, giving our all on a plan or we are feeling out of control and way off track. We go, go, go; restrict, restrict, restrict; exercise, exercise, exercise – this usually gives some quick results, which we love! But then….then we hit the wall, often landing head first in a pint of ice cream.

This radical on and off mentality sets us up for the dreaded – yet oh so popular – yo-yo dieting. We work our tails off – literally – and lose 10 pounds only to gain back 15.  By the time we come to and realize we’ve not only hit the wall, but bounced back off it farther than where we started in the first place, the guilt sets in, followed by a bit of panic.

We rush out to buy a new workout DVD, hire a new trainer, or end up at Barnes and Noble rifling through the heaped table of weight loss books – all promising the latest and greatest in fat loss. We’re feeling anxious, even a little desperate to get back on track – usually blaming the last regimen we tried, thinking it failed us.

Perhaps it’s not a flawed nutrition plan or an ineffective workout regimen, but maybe it’s our harsh black and white palette that’s messing us up. Rather than on and off like a light bulb, think of your health and fitness as being on a dimmer switch. A dimmer can be turned up or down depending on your goals and state of mind, and it doesn’t ever have to be ON or OFF.  This is the gray between black and white.

Some of you may have mastered the art of gray and know how to use your dimmer switch. You’ve found a middle ground that keeps you on track to your body comp goals over the long haul – for the rest of us, life is colored starkly in black or white and we swing abruptly between them.

When we are on, we are way on – but when we are off, we can get way off. We over exercise and end up injured or exhausted. We restrict our “treat foods” so much that we end up binging on them.  We view a single cookie as a sin, but end up eating the whole bag eventually. And then comes the guilt…which can bring on even more binges or just more bad feelings.

This black and white attitude is not only bad for us emotionally, it seriously wreaks havoc on our hormones. Strict dieting, especially followed by a binge, sends a very mixed message to hormones like leptin that regulate hunger, and hormones like insulin that regulate fat storage. And let’s not forget our sex hormones – progesterone often wanes during strict dieting causing our periods to get light or stop all together.

Cortisol is yet another hormone that gets perturbed when we strictly diet or over-exercise. A rising cortisol can cause us to stall or “hit a plateau”. If you’re already burnt out from stress or a past history of yo-yo dieting, a very restrictive phase can really affect blood sugar causing you to have serious carb cravings or it can give a wicked case of insomnia (Remember, cortisol breaks down stored fuel to raise blood sugar between meal and during the night. When your adrenals are sluggish your cortisol reserves can be low, meaning you have to rely on adrenaline to keep your blood sugar stable while you sleep. If you need a burst of adrenaline during the night guess what? You wake up and have a hard time going back to sleep.)  

Shades of Gray

Gray is a mix of black and white.  Gray means better hormonal balance, less anxiety, less feelings of restriction and less guilt from falling off the wagon –  what it doesn’t mean is no results.  When I first meet with a patient and we discuss their goals I often ask them how important this is to them, what their level of commitment is and how soon they want results.  They typically respond with: “It’s a 10 of 10 – or even a 12 or 10! I want all you’ve got – diet, exercise, supplements – everything and I want results NOW!”

How many times have we jumped on board with a new book or a new plan and did great for a few months? Seriously, how many times???? If it’s more than once then what you did wasn’t sustainable and didn’t  give you lasting results.  It’s not to say that that particular plan was full of poor advice or that it didn’t work – but perhaps you went into the plan 110% and “blacked out”, so to say, and next ended up all “white washed” and totally off the wagon and most likely back to many of your old habits.

You’re not alone. Even my youngest patients, even 20 year old women, have tried at least one diet in the past and yet here we all are again – looking for the next, best way to shed pounds.

Learn to Use Your Dimmer Switch

Don’t black out. Pick a plan and incorporate 1-3 habits per week. Master them and then move on – trying to do everything at once is usually too overwhelming. For example, start eating a protein based breakfast everyday or figure out how to order out a healthy lunch. Or even drink more water.

Don’t white wash. When you get off track it doesn’t have to be a total disaster! You are one meal away, one workout away, even one positive thought about your body away from being back on plan. So you ate the bagel, don’t have it with a side of guilt and self defeat – have it with some lox to balance out the insulin response and get right back on track.

Guilt is optional in the gray zone.  Life will happen, you won’t be perfect everyday – but self correcting and not letting the guilt set in will help keep a bad meal or even a bad day from turning to weeks or months off plan.

Sometimes your gray will be darker than other times, you’ll be move motivated and supported and find it easier to make progress. When it lightens up, don’t panic and don’t feel guilty – if you are ready to get back on track, go for it. If you aren’t, find the gray zone that feels maintainable for now rather than holding on so tight to the idea that you have to be perfectly on plan that you lose your grip and drift away.

Know when you have the stamina to turn up the heat.  When you are ready for a big push towards your goal, be sure you are feeling healthy, injury free and supported before you jump in.

If you struggle with stamina on a plan, know when it’s a good time to start. Maybe planning to lose 20 pounds between Halloween and Christmas isn’t feasible for you, but losing 10 pounds and having 12 new habits by the New Year might be. 

BETTER Body Thoughts:

Ugh! I ate ______ , I might as well just start again next week!

BETTER: Ok, I ate _____ and that was a temptation for me because _______.  One off plan food doesn’t make or break anything – a week of plan will so I’m recommitted as of RIGHT NOW.

I wasn’t perfect this week, I missed workouts and didn’t eat well; this will never work so why bother.

BETTER: I did do _______ and _______ this week and I’ll continue to do those and include ______ next week. Doing something for my health is better than nothing – good habits build upon themselves. 

For example: I did get 3 workouts (but aimed for 6) and I got plenty of sleep this week. Next week I will schedule my workouts in like appointments to be sure they happen and I will drink more water.

How Does It Feel To Be Called Fat?

Well it doesn’t feel good. I can attest to that.  

Recently on Amazon.com I got slammed for being too fat to have written an effective fat loss program in Ultimate You. It was upsetting of course, and I’ll admit, it was one of my biggest fears come true.   

I’m no athlete and I’m no model, so being part of the experts in the fitness community, at times I felt a little out of place. I’m a regular woman who eats well and workouts regularly….and I’ve had my share of body image issues. 

I’m only 5’3″ and have complained about my legs being too short. I’m curvy and have done my time hating my booty. And thanks to my Czech background, I’ve got a very round face and the cheeks to go with it. 

As I’ve grown from a girl into a woman, I’ve laid to rest most of my body image issues and reveled in the fact that I can lift weights with the boys, do a few pull-ups and have even come to appreciate the shape my curves give me. But I’ll admit, when I read “…the fat neck and cheeks of Dr. Kalanick…” – all those issues came flooding back. 

Now, maybe you’ve never had your issues called out on the World Wide Web, but most of us at one time or another has been the victim of someone’s nastiness – whether their words were true or not, it feels like crap.  
 
You can shrug it off and say “They are a jerk, so what”.  But let’s be honest, the biggest trash talk usually comes from our own heads.  Fat neck? Ha! What an amateur. I’ve probably done better than that in the last hour or so.  

So why can we look at what someone else says and see clearly that being nasty is…well, nasty, and not see our own thoughts so clearly? The nasty, negative chatter in our own minds is often so mean we wouldn’t utter it out loud to our worst enemy – and we really need to knock it off. 

But it’s on autoplay, it’s hard to stop and often when we get a handle on it and we’re feeling good something happens to trigger it all again. Our therapists will tell us, it’s been there for a long time – since childhood probably – and our adult relationships and experiences just add layer upon layer to our unhealthy and unhelpful beliefs about ourselves and our bodies. And let’s not forget the ever popular villain: the media. Most women feel they don’t or can’t measure up to images of the female body they see on TV and in magazines. But guess what ladies? I work with a number of these women and they have body issues too. 

Sowhat gives? Why are we all (or at least most of us) walking around most days hating this or that about our thighs or our bellies? Blame it on culture or the media or our mothers – but we’ve got a lot of hatin’ going on! 

The truth for me is that when Ultimate You was released I was in the best shape I’d ever been in, so to hear those comments about how I looked was very frustrating. But then I thought about it – was I feeling happy and completely satisfied with my body during that time? Well, yes I was happy with my body then but I’m not going to lie, I’d catch a glimpse of a trouble spot like the back of my thigh and think “ugh!”  And there would be days when those thoughts or the pressure I put on myself to look a certain way would get the best of me – and you know what? It’s BS. For most women our bodies are a work in progress, and that’s exactly what we do – we work on them. 

We work at the gym, we work to order a salad instead of a sandwich at a restaurant, we work when we pass up the dessert tray, we work not have another cocktail when we’ve gone out for just “a drink”. We work and we work – and most of the time it feels like just that: a lot of work.

How often do you order the salad with chicken instead of the slice of pizza for lunch and feel overwhelmed with contentment, satisfaction and joy (yeah, I’m using salad and joy in the same sentence)? With each bite you feel more and more satisfied knowing you’re eating something so good for you. Its fiber is filling up your tummy and aiding digestion, its nutrients reacting away in biochemical pathways, and the protein is balancing out your blood sugar so your cravings stay on an even keel. It’s sort of amazing actually – but how often do we feel it was easy and effortless to make the choice to feed ourselves very well?

How about at the gym – are you at the gym putting in your time, much like serving a jail sentence? Or are you there feeling powerful, strong, healthy and filled with self love when you catch a glimpse of your muscles in the mirror.

I am working on a new project called Nourishing Women (I’m working with some truly amazing women – these smart, strong ladies and their PhDs can bench more than some boys I know!). Since being asked to contribute, that word “nourish” has been stuck in my mind….nourish….hum…how often do any of us feel nourished by what we eat?

When we’re eating to lose weight or even to be healthy, we often feel confined or controlled by a plan – or there’s my favorite: “Dr Brooke is making me.”.  We’re usually not chewing on a mouthful of baked salmon thinking, “wow, I feel so nourished by this food.”.  Nourish is a good word, so is cherish.  How many of us cherish our bodies?  Cherish is defined as:  to treat with affection and tenderness; to hold dear.  How often do we act in ways that “hold ourselves dear?”

Eating healthfully, exercising regularly, committing to a weight loss goal – these are all wonderful things to do for ourselves, but if we are looking in the mirror, noticing every flaw and thinking critical thoughts everyday, well that’s not healthy – no matter what you weigh. 

So instead of just trudging it out at the gym or managing to somehow stomach some steamed veggies, try nourishing and cherishing yourself. While you’re doing that, I’ll be reminding myself that like most women, my body is a work in progress. Like yours, my journey to the perfect body goes on and on, and I can love myself on that journey, nourish myself, be healthy and not give in to nasty comments – including those in my own head – or dwell on the opinion of someone who clearly doesn’t cherish me. But you know what? That’s ok. It’s not their job to cherish me, it’s mine. 

And it’s yours – so while you’re working on creating your Ultimate You, love yourself a bit…it can’t hurt! 

Try these simple steps to start having more positive thoughts about your body: 

*List 3-5 things you love about your body, such as your smile, your skin, your feet, your biceps – anything. When you catch yourself having a negative thought about something you aren’t satisfied with yet, rattle of these things you like. You still had the nasty thought, but you can turn your attitude around with reminding yourself of the things you do like about you. 

*Stay focused on the process and appreciate the little goals.  If you can do a pushup now where you couldn’t before – that’s something to feel great about. If you’ve lost 2 pounds – well it may not be the 10 pounds you want to lose, but it is something and you did accomplish it.  Start each day listing all the things you’ve accomplished in your mind while you brush your teeth. 

*See yourself in your perfect body.  If you’ve been at your ideal weight and size, pull out a picture and place it on the fridge, bathroom mirror, car dashboard or somewhere else where you’ll see it every day.  If you have no idea what your perfect body looks like, just spend some time imaging it.  The more clearly you can see yourself in the body you want the more easily it will start to happen – thoughts do matter.  Thinking about your perfect body doesn’t make it appear overnight but it will help you feel better about yourself and your current body as you work your way towards it.  Spend at least 30 minutes a day (doesn’t have to be all in a row) seeing your fit, healthy, perfect body in your mind’s eye. And the sooner you can start to be the woman with that body, the sooner that body will show up. After all what does the woman with that perfect body do? She works out, she eats lots of veggies and protein and I’d venture to guess that she cherishes herself.

How’s That New Year’s Resolution Going?

Dr Brooke’s Best Tips for Being Successful This Year

New Year’s resolutions are ripe with the best intentions for losing pounds, dropping inches, getting back into those skinny jeans, or being able to see your toes. I believe that each of you who made a weight loss related goal had every intention of sticking to it. Most of you probably did great for the first two weeks of January….then life takes over. That same busy, hectic, stressful, stretched-to-thin life that got you out of your skinny jeans in the first place.

The good news is, you are only 5 weeks into the New Year and it’s time to remind yourself of that resolution, figure out how to make it happen, and ask yourself why you wanted to accomplish it in the first place.

Do something – anything, right now. Tackling getting in shape can feel completely overwhelming. There’s the grocery shopping, the cooking, the cardio, the weights, the eating every 3 hours, the supplements, the figuring out how to attend social events without blowing it, and on and on. Before you freak out, just do one thing – and do it right now.
Drink a glass of water, go to the gym this afternoon, get some good rest tonight – anything. Just begin. This one positive step gets you at least a little closer to your ultimate goal. You can get a trainer to help plan your workouts, get a nutrition plan developed, buy a new pair of sneakers, sort out childcare – all of that will get worked out and yes, it might take a week or two to make those plans, but don’t delay. Do something now.

Don’t try to do it all. If you ended last year completely out of whack and your resolution was to lose weight – don’t try and change it all at once. Pick 1-3 things to focus on for a month, master those and then keep building.
If diet and nutrition are the hardest for you – do that first. Pick 3 habits such as not missing meals, watching alcohol intake or eating more vegetables for the next 4 weeks and figure out how to make those happen.
You’ve got 30 days to make it a habit – that’s not so overwhelming. If you intend to exercise 6 times per week but it is usually 3 or 4, then next month find strategies to make sure you get those 6 times in.
There is so much for us to do to lose weight – or be in good health. Most of us try to do it all January first and end up overwhelmed and giving up by Valentine’s Day – but it doesn’t have to be that way. If it takes about 30 days to form a habit, and you do 3 new healthy habits per month, you’ll have 36 new healthy habits by 2011 (not to mention a better body!).

Flubber is contagious….well not the same way the flu is, but still. If your friends are more interested in cocktails and appetizers than staying on the wagon, be sure you are able to stay on tack in the midst of the fried calamari. If it’s hard for you to be around those friends as you get your feet under you, let them know they might see a little less of you for a month or so.
And be wary of the dream stealers. It’s often hard for certain friends to see you taking good care of yourself because it makes them feel guilty that they aren’t able to do it for themselves.  If you are comfortable talking about it with them – by all means do it. See if there’s opportunity for you both to support each other. If not, don’t let someone else’s “stuff” keep you from having what you want.
Find at least one healthy-minded friend to go out to dinner with or to do something physical – like try a new exercise class, take a walk or set some goals over a cup of tea and figure out how to support each other in getting there.

Give yourself an incentive…but not a cookie. Most of us use food as a reward – a late afternoon treat for surviving a grueling meeting or a glass of wine at the end of a long day. On occasion, that’s fine…but if you do it everyday, it can definitely thwart your weight loss efforts.  Taking rewards completely out of the picture isn’t the answer – finding some other rewards it.
Ladies, get a manicure or pedicure – not as maintenance but as a reward. And don’t fly in and out in flurry – enjoy it, relax, maybe even get a shoulder massage. Schedule a facial. Or enjoy your slimmer face by getting some new makeup (or better yet get a makeover at your favorite cosmetic counter).
Too girly for ya? Get fabulous seats for your favorite sporting event or to a play you’ve wanted to see. The point is that you need to reward yourself and if your typical treats are hindering your progress, it’s worth the time to find some other rewards and make the time to indulge them.

Answer the question – WHY? Why do you want to lose weight or get healthy? The answer needs to be important to you – it needs to create a strong emotional reaction when you think of it. The reason needs to be worth the hard work.
Did you decide to get in shape because your doctor said your cholesterol was too high? Did you see a picture of yourself that made your stomach turn? Did you try on your favorite pants to find they barely zip? Was it catching a glance of your reflection in a full length mirror and saying “yikes”?
There will be days when getting to the gym and eating well feel great – but there will be days when doing even one of those things seems impossible.  The answer to WHY will get you through those tough days.
Don’t take this question lightly, sit down and give it some thought. Again, getting healthy and losing weight has to mean something to you, not only because it gets you through the tough times but also it makes the end result much more satisfying.

Some of the best reasons I’ve heard are:
*I want to feel proud of my body everyday. I never want to feel ugly or fat or anything nasty when I look in the mirror.
*I want to be able to shop at my favorite stores, buy my favorite brands and know they look great on me.
*I want to be healthy and able to enjoy my children and grand children.
*I want to have a healthy, strong body to enjoy my life – really enjoy all that I’ve worked so hard for.
*I want to show myself I can do it.
*I want to know I did my best.

The only right answer is the one that matters to you – the one that helps you do the work that will get you to your goal.

Each day, do at least one thing that takes you closer to your goal. You won’t be perfect everyday, and you don’t need to be. You just need to be BETTER today than yesterday and before you know it you’ll be where you want to be.

Need help? Email me at drbrooke@betterbydrbrooke.com