If you’re like most people, you created a few New Year’s resolutions. And if you’re like most people, despite your good intentions those resolutions have fallen by the wayside. But I’ll bet you aren’t aware that self-talk, your inner dialogue, influences whether or not you achieve your goals. It’s true. Your words have power, even […]
Losing weight can be a long and difficult process. Not losing weight is even more difficult. It is frustrating because we feel like we’re giving it our “all” but not seeing the results! I know because I’ve been through it! So if you’re like me and feel like you’re doing everything right but still not […]
Home is our sanctuary. Or it should be. In the past I used to get home from the office and de-stress with food. Some folks replace stress eating with alcohol after bariatric surgery. But I love to come home now and know that I will relax and unwind naturally, without turning to food or alcohol. […]
Everyone knows consuming too much sugar is unhealthy. Sugar is linked to many obesity-related illnesses as well as accelerates skin aging and cellular aging. Sugar cravings also play a major role in weight gain, food addiction and binge eating. The body is able to process small amounts of sugar, a simple carbohydrate, and convert it into energy. […]
Are you looking to break a bad habit? Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for getting out of the mindset of need. That’s why to do this, you are going to need to come into it with the mindset of ‘this is what I want, I want to stop.’ It doesn’t matter how big or […]
Can you drink alcohol after bariatric surgery? Cheryl (aka My Bariatric Life) and I know about addiction. Cheryl is open about her many years of struggle with food addiction before her gastric bypass surgery. As for me, I am a retired Addictions Counselor having worked primarily with alcoholism. I am sure that many of you […]
Modern life is sedentary. In fact many people spend half their lives sitting all day. It’s a big part of the working day for most people and it could be doing serious damage to our health. You wouldn’t normally think of sitting down as a particularly dangerous activity but recent research shows that there is […]
Do you sometimes find yourself stuck in negative thinking? Or maybe your aren’t even aware of your subconscious programming — instead the people around you may comment on your negativity or self-deprecation. Sometimes, we are our own worst enemy. We don’t always need those other people to tell us that we aren’t good or clever […]
We’d all like to be able to get our work done faster, earn more money, and move up the career ladder. But it turns out that our diet can hamper progress. You’ve heard the expression, “you are what you eat.” And it turns out that there might be a degree of truth in that, not […]
Have you considered that maybe your work is what is keeping you from losing weight? For a lot of people, what happens during the working hours lives in a separate world to their personal goals. However, it’s time to fully explore the relationship between work and weight gain, and more importantly work and real weight […]
One of the main challenges that we face when it comes to quitting smoking is hunger and weight gain. This hunger proves more difficult to overcome when we don’t understand its causes or how to deal with it. So, here are a couple of different contributing factors that make us feel hungry after quitting smoking […]
We’re all guilty of unhealthy habits. Even if you steer clear of junk food or cigarettes, there might be small aspects of your lifestyle that are contributing to a poor standard of health. You need to think of all the small things like forgetting to floss every day or being sedentary for too long at […]
Weight and sleep have a direct relationship with one another. Worse still, it’s reciprocal. Being overweight can make it a lot harder to stay asleep at night, just as losing sleep can cause a hormonal imbalance that ruins your metabolism and causes you to gain weight faster depending on what you eat. However, sleep quality […]
Permanent weight loss is not a guarantee of bariatric surgery. You must do the work to not slip back into ingrained behaviors, habits, and ways of relating to food, as well as physical inactivity. In this 3-part interview with Lori Rosenthal, a bariatric dietician, we examine some of the healthy behaviors necessary and pitfalls to […]
Link Between Television and Obesity The link between television and obesity is irrefutable. Americans watch about four hours of television each day. Those who watch television for more than three hours each day are twice as likely to become obese as those who watch television less than one hour each day. The television is turned […]
Text messaging, e-mails, and video games have helped build our sedentary society. We sit while we text. We sit while we e-mail. We sit while we play video games. We stand for a moment then we sit some more. You are probably sitting right now as you read this. I am sitting while I write […]
Thoughts on self #forgiveness:
#MyBariatricLife #bariatrics #bariatric #inspiration
I feel the bad things we do, or have done, or the bad decisions we have taken, could not have been done differently by the person we were. Nobody takes a bad decision knowing the consequences will be very hard to live with. We do what we do mostly in self-defense and based on our own self-image. A thief is really saying to himself 'I steal because I am a thief'. An abuser is saying to himself 'I abuse because I am an abuser'. People with self-respect and self-love could not imagine stealing or abusing. It would be unimaginable to them. When we don't love ourselves, if we think of ourselves as a thief or an abuser, that is exactly how we will behave. Sadly, that cycle always starts when people are treated badly, or are shown a bad example, when they are very young. Through guilt we force ourselves to live and relive our past. Our past remains our present, and becomes our future. Self forgiveness is the only way of renewing our hearts and minds, giving us the self-respect that makes the idea of behaving badly unimaginable to us. And self- forgiveness is something that only we can give to ourselves. But once we have, we can respect and love the people around us, because our self-image of who we are, is changed. Once we respect ourselves, we are naturally respectful to the people around us. So the more we forgive ourselves, the better we become as people. How simple is that :-) So do something wonderful today and every day. Forgive yourself and become the wonderful person you are, that is, when you and only you realize it.
