The Best Recipes for Weight Loss has Three Main Ingredients

[caption id="attachment_52" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Measuring Weight Loss"][/caption]

As someone who loves food and cooking, I prefer to think about weight loss like a recipe. There's no shortage of weight loss recipes being promoted these days. Just take a look down the "diet" aisle of your bookstore and you'll see hundreds of books all promising to solve your weight loss woes, many of them with conflicting approaches. It's totally overwhelming.

After several decades of diet experimentation, I've discovered that with weight  loss, as with most things in life, it's best to keep it simple.  Isn't life complicated enough? How many rules and restrictions can we tolerate before we throw up our hands and give up? Then I realized that the best recipes for losing weight have just three main ingredients - food, fitness, and feeling good.

Food and eating is an important main ingredient in any weight loss plan since the kinds and amounts of food you eat, as well as how you eat, are directly related to weight. It's necessary to eat the foods that energize you in a nourishing way most of the time and make room for indulging in the foods that you love so you never feel deprived. Exactly what, when, how much and how often you eat is a matter of personal choice and experimentation to determine what works best for you.

Fitness is the second important main ingredient in a successful weight loss plan. Your body loves to move, even if your mind thinks otherwise. It was designed to move, so again, the key is to find ways to move that feel good to you. Keep it energizing and fun. Experiment until you find what leaves you feeling great. For me that means lots of brisk walks with my golden retriever and healthy doses of all kinds of yoga from gentle to vigorous. For you it may mean working out with an inspiring DVD, bicycling, swimming or turning up the music and dancing around the
house. 

The third important ingredient - feeling good- might just be the most important one for successful lasting weight loss. And it's the one most often ignored in traditional weight loss plans. It's the magical missing ingredient and once you discover its power your life and weight loss efforts will be so much easier and more enjoyable.

When you begin to focus on feeling good, having fun and adding pleasure to your life instead of dieting, deprivation, restrictions, food charts and working out, your mind and body begin to shift almost immediately.  Try it right now. Say to yourself, "I need to lose weight" and notice how you feel. (If you're like me you may feel stressed, depressed, frustrated, tired, sad, and/or overwhelmed - hardly the right emotions for trying to lose weight.) Now say, "I need to find a way to feel good and have some fun." Notice anything different? (When I say this, I feel like smiling as I sense warmth, happiness, excitement and interest. These are much better emotions
for making something positive - like weight loss - happen.)

When you think about it, it makes so much sense. Shifting your focus from losing weight to feeling good sets you up for success because you are in a happier, less stressful, calm, relaxed state, where weight loss can begin to happen in a way that seems almost effortless. When you feel good, you are much more likely to engage in behaviors that make you feel better - like eating better, getting enough sleep and moving your body in ways that feel good - that will all support your desire for weight  loss.

So, the next time you decide to lose weight, I hope you'll remember that the best recipes have just three ingredients - food, fitness and feeling good - and by focusing on ways to feel good about yourself, your body, your life, your career, and/or your relationships - you will be setting yourself up for success.

[caption id="attachment_49" align="alignleft" width="181" caption="Martha Mckinnon"][/caption]

 Martha McKinnon is a weight loss coach and yoga teacher who believes that eating great and losing weight can be simple and delicious when you take a body-mind-soul
approach. To learn more please visit her website,
"http://www.simple-nourished-living.com   

Simple Nourished Living.  While you are there you can pick up a FREE copy of her first e-cookbooklet of healthy homemade granola bar recipes.

5 Eating Triggers You Need to Know Before You Diet

Many people find weight loss a daunting challenge and struggle to shed pounds and return to a healthy lifestyle. From yo-yo dieting to unrealistic goals and deprivation, people who struggle to lose weight often face an uphill battle. By identifying the triggers that lead to overeating and overcoming them, you will be well on your way to successful weight loss.

1.) Stress

People have to deal with stressful situations every day. From hectic work schedules to strained family life and the pressures of the daily grind, stress can wear out even the strongest person. Some who struggle with weight loss use food as a way to ease the stresses in their life. This leads to weight gain, which leads to more stress, creating a vicious cycle that is difficult to break.

2.) Culture

One of the main obstacles to people trying to lose weight is pressure from family. It can be very difficult to eat healthy meals when the family members are snacking on high fat and diet busting high calorie foods. In some cultures, it is a badge of honor to be overweight. Family gatherings such as holidays and celebrations may also lead to the pressure to overeat.

3.) Time of Day

Does the clock dictate what goes on your plate? Many people eat not because they're hungry, but because they are accustomed to eating at a certain time every day. Others fail to listen to their body's cues and allow social pressures to dictate what they eat. Joining the co-workers for lunch is often an automatic behavior that has nothing to do with hunger.

4.) Place

Studies have shown that where you eat has a huge bearing on how much we eat. When you sit down at a table to eat a meal you tend to eat less than if you're sitting on the couch. Eating while doing other tasks such as working at a desk can lead to overeating and weight gain. When eating a meal or a snack, focus on eating only. Attempting to multi-task while eating can cause you to lose track of the amount you're eating and take in too many excess calories.

5.) Social Factors

It can be hard to turn down the invitation to go out to dinner with friends every weekend. Eating is a social activity, and for some, cutting out eating meals in restaurants can be a difficult step. There are ways to enjoy social meals without wrecking your diet. Invite friends to "eat in" at your home and provide healthy choices as a substitute.

According to the National Institutes of Health, meditation is an effective way to lose weight. Meditation can help to release the stressors that lead to overeating. Another effective way to fight the battle with fat is through the practice of yoga. Yoga teaches how to focus the body's energy inward to solve problems and refocus the mind.

Engaging in regular yoga and meditation can help you tune into your body's cues and recognize the signals that cause you to overeat.

PBS TV host of Functional Fitness, and President of Healthwise Exercise,

Suzanne Andrews lost 65 pounds

 using her powerful motivating techniques revealed in her guided meditation CD for stress release and weight loss included free in Beginners Dynamic Yoga DVD.