Louise Greally Coaching

I often hear from people that they’re trying hard to lose weight but it just doesn’t seem to be coming off. Nothing they do seems to work.
My response is always to ask them questions to figure out what they are doing with regards to their food and exercise.

The most common scenarios are:

Scenario 1: It seems that they are doing every ‘right’, exercising daily, eating healthily and cutting out junk and still not getting the results they want. This is obviously very disheartening for the person trying to lose weight and when their hard efforts return no results they often quit their new health/weight loss regime.

Scenario 2: It seems they have ‘tried’ for one or two weeks and did well but life got in the way and they stopped. They often feel like a failure and say things like ‘I really want to lose weight, I don’t know why I cant seem to stick to it.. I must be a loser and destined to stay this weight’.

From my personal experience and coaching weightloss clients, I find that most people are usually very close to their goal and that just a few tweaks will help them get the results they want.

Lets look some solutions..

In scenario 1, one or more of these things are usually happening:

1: The person is eating healthier and exercising however.. is actually not eating enough! Yes, this may sound crazy but often people change their diets and start to eat so little that their metabolism slows down so much that they stop losing weight.

Solution: Ensure you are eating enough everyday. 3 low GI meals and 2 low GI snacks are recommended with foods across all food groups. Sample foods and recipes can be found at www.LowGIWeightLoss.com/day4.html

2: Again, the person is eating healthier and exercising however.. is actually still eating too much and not accounting for all they eat. What do we mean?

Well, all the little extras throughout the day, a spoonful of yougart here, a handful of chips there, a few mouthfuls of the kids lunch/ leftovers.. the old ‘it doesn’t count if its on someone else’s plate’ scenario. Sound familiar?

Solution: The solution here is to stick to the 3 meals and 2 snacks and do not pick throughout the day.. Keep a food diary and bring it with you everywhere you go. Note EVERYTHING you eat, even the odd chip here and there, you’ll be surprised at what you’re eating.

3: The person is eating healthier and exercising however.. is still eating very large portions of food.

Solution: Look at the servings listed on the nutrition panel of what you’re eating. If it contains 4 servings and you’re eating half or even the whole package then you’re eating 2-4 times more than you need to. Most serving sizes shouldn’t be larger than your fist.
Some tips are:

* Fill up on vegetables and salad.

* A portion of meat should be around the size of a deck of cards.
* ½ cup of rice or pasta is the same as a tennis ball.
* Don’t eat straight from the package, if applicable.
* Eat from a smaller plate, studies show this can be a simple and effective way to reduce your portion sizes.

Lets look at scenario 2:

At a glance it would seem this personally is not really ‘motivated’ enough, when the truth is there is usually more to it than that. One of these things may be happening:

1: The persons weight loss is not a priority and bad habits are too easily fallen back into. This is often the case for busy mums & stressed workers.

Solution: A mindset change is needed.. for example make a healthy lifestyle your priority and see it as something that will help your life not add stress to it.
Realistically it is a lot less stressful to be healthy and happy with your weight than not!

Tips

* Buy only healthy, nutritious food each week so there’s no option for junk in the house.
* Premake lunch/ dinners during the week.. again some recipes at www.LowGIWeightLoss.com/day4.html take 15- 20 mins to prepare.
* Make extra servings to last 2 days if you forsee busy days ahead.
* Try good quality replacement meals or shakes, we always recommend Usana as these are certified low GI AND meal replacements.

Remember ‘I cant’ is a victim way of saying ‘I wont’

2: The person subconsciously doesn’t want to lose weight or feels that if they lose it that something bad will come of it.. Ok this sounds very ‘deep’ but in reality we’re all doing our best and underneath it all if we believe losing weight will not benefit us we wont lose it.

Solution: Ask yourself, what do I stand to lose if I become my desired weight?

We have heard people say..
I’ll have nothing to moan about anymore.
I’ll be attractive and will gain male attention again.. what if I stray?
I’ll have no excuse to say no to going out anymore.

If you think you need extra help in this area, talk to someone who can help you discuss whats really going on.

Do you see yourself in any of the scenarios above?
Put a solution in place, either one suggested here or something you know will help you.

Have a great week, be nice to yourself and remember its up to you to choose to have the health and body of your dreams!

Click Here for a Free 7 day email course designed to help you lose weight healthily using the Low GI system so that you can keep it off.

Health, weight maintenance

I am very passionate about eating healthy and tasty food.
At the request of some of you, I am posting some recipes here.
I will add more as times goes on

Noodle Stir Fry

Ingredients

200g Frozen or fresh stir fry veg

1 onion

1 Capsicum (pepper)

250g chicken/prawns/tofu

250g rice noodles

Sauce

2 cloves of garlic

Chilli, fresh or packaged (no preservatives)

½ lime

Sweet chilli sauce

1-teaspoon sesame seed oil (optional)

Heat wow or big frying pan with 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil.

Cook chicken for 5 mins (if prawns or tofu cook after the veg)

Add onion and pepper for 2 mins

Add remainder of veg

In the meantime pour the noodles into boiling water (hint boil water in kettle then add to a big bowl) Allow 2-5 mins to soften (depending on thickness)

Mix sauce ingredients together

When veg appear almost cooked add noodles and sauce.

To speed up use frozen veg and thinner noodles

Should take 15-30 mins max from preparation to serving

I’m not sure of the GI index of the meal, the rice noodles may be medium to high but coupled with the veg n meat the GI load will be fairly good.

Can also change the noodles for a low GI rice such as brown long grain or basmati.  Start to cook this before you start the stir-fry

Salmon, Sweet Potato & Capsicum Salad

Ingredients

1 small piece of salmon or any fish per person

½ Red or yellow Capsicum (pepper) per person

Handful of baby spinach leaves per person

Optional: avocado, red onion, courgette (zucchini)

Dressing

½ lemon squeezed

100ml of white wine vinegar

1 clove of garlic
Sprinkle of fresh or packaged (no preservatives) mint

1-2 tablespoons of honey

Preheat oven to 180C

Wrap fish in tin foil sprayed with olive oil, leaving enough of a gap to steam.  Cook for 20 mins

Chop up ½ sweet potato per person and steam/boil for 15 mins

Chop capsicum and cook in the oven beside the fish for 10 mins

Mix spinach and other veg into a bowl.

When fish is done, cut into large bite size pieces, mix with veg, capsicum, sweet potato and dressing into a large bowl.

Serve alone or with rye/wholemeal pittas

Very low gi!!

Beetroot, Sweet Potato and Feta Salad

Ingredients

200g Beetroot
1 large sweet potato
50g feta cheese
100g baby spinach/ mixed lettuce/ rocket

1/2 small red onion
½ avocado

** Add any salad you wish

Chop the sweet potato into bite size pieces and steam for 15-20 mins or until done

Chop the beetroot into bite size pieces

Chop the feta into bite size pieces

Chop the avocado into bite size pieces

Slice the onion

Add the above into a large bowl, stir and add dressing.

Dressing examples:

Some mayonnaise with added pesto.. my fav with this

Some mayonnaise with added lemon or

Some balsamic vinegar with olive/flaxseed oil

Some lemon, white wine vinegar and garlic- v low fat!

Health food, Health, low gi, recipes

Did you know that up to 80% of illnesses and accidents can be linked to our emotions?

Do you know that more people have heart attacks on a Monday morning than on any other day in the week and that newborn babies who don’t receive any love (or in medical terms kinaesthetic tactile stimulation) will die within a few days even if they are well nourished and healthy? Deepak Chopra mentions these facts in his audio Perfect Health.

The mind/body/emotional connection within disease, in particular the role the immune system plays is recognised within many health care systems.
Psychoneuroimmunology is the medical term for this connection between the mind, the immune system and the nervous system.

In her best seller “You Can Heal Your Life” by the acclaimed therapist and author Louise Hay, Louise states that all illness is caused by an imbalance of mind, body or soul.
There is a percentage of disease caused in the body due to outside influences such as our diet, our environment we live in, chemicals we ingest in our area, food and toiletries and all these have an affect in the body.  Importantly though so do our emotions.  There is more and more evidence linking emotions to health.  Stress being the most talked about and advertised example.

So if our emotions and emotional health is a huge contributing factor for good health.  Doesn’t it make sense that we look after emotional health in order to live an all round healthy life?

My friend and mentor Paul Blackburn, who is the co founder of Beyond Success tells a story of a client of his who had terminal cancer.  She came to Paul as her last hope.
During their time together Paul tried to discover the feelings around this client being overweight.  She seemed reluctant to talk about it and said she’d been overweight for years, had tried everything and nothing worked. However, as being overweight is usually a sign of trying to protect ourselves, Paul felt there were probably emotions not dealt with here that were linked to the terminal illness.  Eventually the client confessed she had been raped at age 13, hadn’t dealt with it and had been overweight since…
Paul guided his client through the healing process and helped her to deal with the anger and various intense emotions around this incident.   Months later she was disease free, was still alive at the time of writing his book (Beyond Success) and was finally at a healthy weight.  In fact she was on a new diet, she called the ‘eat whatever you like’ diet.. because she ate what she liked and still stayed slim.
The emotions were felt and faced, her disease disappeared as did her weight problems.

There are more and more cases like this being documented and its becoming undeniable that its an area we need to address in order to have both emotional and physical health.
“The immune system, like the central nervous system, has a memory and the capacity to learn. Thus, it could be said that intelligence is located in literally every cell of the body, and that the traditional separation of mind and body no longer applies.” http://www.alternativemedicine.com/A…rapyDetail.xsl.

Not convinced?  Neither was I initially, however if we analyse it in the following way we can come to the same conclusion.

Person A:
Emotionally healthy, would tend to look after themselves and have a lifestyle that leaned towards good health. For example would be less likely to have any addictions or habits like smoking/drinking/over-working that would impact their health.  Would be more likely to eat, exercise and sleep well.

Person B:
Emotionally unhealthy.  Would tend to look after themselves less.  Would be more prone to addictions, irregular sleep, unhealthy eating, little exercise.  All of these factors continuously impacting the body will most likely manifest a disease.

Conclusion:
There are many things that contribute to our health; emotions being a huge factor.
Whether you believe that illnesses can manifest from the mind and our emotions or even if you don’t believe that.. its undeniable that a person in a good state of emotional health will eat better, exercise, sleep better and do the things necessary to ensure they are healthy.
The solution for us all is to look after ourselves physically as well as emotionally.
There are many things we can do to improve our emotional health- self development, coaching, meditation, exercise and yoga are a few tools that can help improve your emotional health.

What steps can you take today?

Louise Hay lists conditions and the emotions around these diseases in You Can Heal Your Life.  Louise’s research states that these links are found in 80% of cases.  You can find the list here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/359921/Louise-L-Hay-Heal-Your-Body

Resources:
The Psychology of Winning. Dr Dennis Waitley.
Perfect Health. Audio. Dr Deepak Chopra.
You Can Heal Your Life. Louise Hay
Beyond Success. Paul Blackburn

Health, Personal development Deepak Chopra, Denis Waitley, emotions, Health, Louise Hay, Paul Blackburn, Personal development