journey

What’s the Least Expensive Diet?

March 21, 2014 By Featured Author

With more than a third of Americans being obese, the US diet industry is booming.

However, many of the diets out there are not only precarious in terms of ethics, they can also pack a financial punch. Fad diets have taken over and stuck expensive price tags all over an industry already full of mixed messages.

One diet in particular, which involves consuming large amounts of protein and fat, can cost several dollars per meal. However, with diets such as this being lorded as a positive step in the journey to weight loss and a ‘better you’, it’s difficult for those new to the weight loss industry to decipher what the most affordable diets may be for their budget.

Some diet regimes may seem cheap at only a couple of dollars per meal. However, added costs such as subscription fees are often forgotten and can get expensive if your weight loss stutters. This puts an already stressed dieter under yet more pressure, potentially resulting in failure.

Read the whole article here.

You Are Not Alone

March 17, 2014 By Scott "Q" Marcus

Note: We recently launched of a seminar series, “Five Things You Must Know To Make Your Life Better.” As part of that series, one of the things we went over were the “10 Commandments of Changing Habits.” This is one of those “commandments.”

Accept thy journey is not alone

People holding hands

You run your own life.

If you want to change it, you have to take responsibility for where you are and where you’re going.

However, realize that those most closely tied to you will have to adjust, and they might – or might not – want to.

Keep others informed.

[Read more…]

Do Something, Do Anything

May 19, 2011 By Featured Author

“We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.” ~ Frank Tibolt

“‘Excellence’ is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act ‘rightly’ because we are ‘excellent’, in fact we achieve ‘excellence’ by acting ‘rightly.'” ~ Plato

“Fake it ’til you make it.” ~ Attributed to Alcoholics Anonymous

This is probably the most important thing I’ll ever write.

When people ask me how I lost over 130 pounds, this is the answer.

I don’t know how I made the connection – it was one of those so-called ‘Aha! Moments’ that so many people talk about. I had a bona fide epiphany one day as I was sitting in my living room, crying and feeling sorry for myself. Here is the story, and I hope you find it meaningful to you.

Once I had lost about 90 pounds, and I was no longer in what I kindly refer to as “the 200 Club,” meaning I no longer weighed over 200 pounds, I hit the mother of all plateaus. I couldn’t seem to get out of the 190s no matter what I tried. Everything I had done to lose 90 pounds just wasn’t working for me any more – or so it seemed. And so, I did what any normal human being would – I had a break down. I was so angry, so frustrated, so desperate I just didn’t know what to do with myself. And suddenly, it became very apparent that I had reached a fork in the road on my journey. What should I do?

I had two clear choices:

1) I could quit or…
2) I could forge ahead.

Where would quitting get me?

Well, I could go back to my old habits and slowly but surely undo all of my hard work. “But,” I argued, “at least I wouldn’t have to think about eating healthy and making sure I had time to exercise everyday. In fact, I would never have to think about ‘dieting’ ever again.” It was a happy thought until I realized that it wasn’t true. Just as I had old eating and exercising habits, I had old thought habits too. I knew it wouldn’t be long before I started beating myself up for being fat and lazy (my apologies to myself, but this is the kind of self-talk I regularly engaged in before I decided to change it) and that I would start feeling miserable and guilty like I did when I weighed 287 pounds. Then I remembered how physically painful it was to carry around those extra 90 pounds. So, it didn’t take me long to decide that all quitting would buy me was a ticket right back to Square One.

So where exactly could I go if I forged ahead?

At the time, it seemed all I could do was spin my wheels and go no where. “I’m really trying here, and I’m not making any progress!” I angrily told myself. But, I suddenly thought that perhaps there was something I was missing. I asked myself, “How do thin people live?” And I honestly didn’t know the answer. The only time I was ever thin was in college, and I wasn’t a healthy person then. I could go days without eating a bite. It’s very easy to be thin when you’re starving yourself. I never had a healthy relationship with food or my own self-image. How could I know how “normal” people behaved? There was no way for me to know. [Read more…]

Giving Thanks for Wherever You Are On the Journey

March 31, 2011 By Featured Author

Give thanks for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow. ~Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros

Give thanks for what you are now. That’s not easy when you’re not happy with what you are now. But, you’ve got to start somewhere, so why not start with exactly who you are today? That was the first step on my journey towards better health and happiness in my life – getting honest about who I really was, and accepting that as my starting place. That’s something you can do right now

Here’s how I got honest. I was 287 pounds, in physical and emotional pain and I knew I needed to change things. I didn’t know where to begin, so I asked my doctor. My doctor had been telling me for years that I needed to drop some weight, and I got angry and resentful every, single time. It took a lot of nerve for me to walk into his office and say, “Okay, let’s say you’re right, I do need to lose some weight. Where do I start?”

He referred me to a nutritionist. After my first meeting with her, she asked me to start a ‘Food Journal.’ In it, I was to write down everything I ate for a week. She asked me not to edit my food choices yet. “Just eat what you’d normally eat, and write it down after you’re finished,” she said. I bought myself a new notebook on the way home from the appointment, and I was very excited about starting the next day. Then came the morning, and suddenly I was angry. I don’t know where it came from – this defiance, this rebellion. Suddenly I was thinking, “I’ll show her what I eat everyday!” And I went off to the doughnut shop and bought six of my favorites and ate them all, with a quart of milk, for breakfast. And I wrote it all down. Then for lunch, I was feeling guilty, so I made myself a salad. It was a large salad, loaded with cheese, beans, and plenty of dressing, but I felt less guilty about that than I did about the doughnuts. Again, I recorded it all in my journal – this time with measurements. I had two snacks that afternoon – 18 vanilla wafers and two pudding cups, and “a bag of trail mix.” I’m quoting from the journal here. For dinner, I fixed spaghetti. I wrote that I ate a “full plate of spaghetti,” which was a lot.

The week continued on like this. Looking back now, even though I seemed to be eating with a vengeance, I don’t recall feeling as though I ate more in this particular week than I did most of the time. Eating a half-dozen doughnuts was nearly a weekly ritual. I’d just never made note of it before. Two snacks in the afternoon – pretty common for me. I didn’t feel fuller than usual, and I didn’t get a stomach ache from eating like this, so the guilt and shame I felt when showing my journal to the nutritionist at our next appointment wasn’t as much about what I was eating, as how I was living.
[Read more…]