Honestly taking stock of your current eating patterns can help you you with your weight loss goals. Last Sunday I wrote about What You’re Up Against when you try to lose weight. Are you willing to admit to your present unhealthy eating habits? Are you willing to change?

Taking Stock

Journaling is a free and fun method of learning more about yourself and uncovering the underlying reasons why you do what you do. Think of it as peeling an onion—the deeper you go, the better the substance—and yes, there could be tears, but the good kind. The kind that signify you are getting at some core truths. Of course, your results will only be useful to the degree you are honest with yourself. Throughout this book you’ll find lots of suggestions for journaling topics, all designed to help you dig down to your true feelings about yourself, how you got to this weight, why you stay there, what will motivate you to change, your feelings about food and so on. I guarantee it will be a fascinating journey! If you are a visual person, consider buying a special blank book to use and colorful pens, etc. to make the process more fun. Some people find it helps to set aside regular times to journal—early in the morning or late at night often work well. Or how about during your lunch hour—instead of dessert?

Take a few minutes to get real with yourself and consider
these questions.
1. How many times in the last 30 days have you over-indulged during a restaurant meal or gulped junk food from a fast food joint?
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________
2. How many separate items of obviously unhealthy food currently lurk in your house, car, desk and anywhere else you’ve hidden it?
____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________

It’s important to honestly confront and admit your current eating patterns before you approach any process of change. Documenting your present reality will also be useful when you compare your progress in the months ahead.

One client, Christine reported back to me after doing this exercise. “Even though I had already started buying some healthier foods and thought I was doing okay, I was shocked at how many items of worthless nutritional value I had stashed in my cupboards. I had convinced myself that because I bought them in a health food store, my lemon cookies were healthful. And I even had treats stuffed into the glove compartment in my car. I guess I really do still eat a lot of crappy food!”

from Becoming Slender For Life,
second edition pages 14 – 15

How much crappy food do you have stuffed in your home, car and office? Are you willing to be honest with your self about your relationship with food? What other unhealthy behaviors do you engage in that result in unhealthy eating? Are you willing to take stock of your life? Change can be challenging, especially with weight loss. Be honest with yourself.

Read Weight Loss ~ What You’re Up Against

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

What You’re Up Against

Americans are among the fattest people on earth. Now, an estimated twenty-one million Americans over 60 are obese, a 43 percent jump from 2000. A whopping 64% of all adults in the U.S. are either overweight or obese, according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. “Americans need to understand that overweight and obesity are literally killing us,” warns Tommy Thompson, former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Left unchecked, almost all Americans would be overweight by the year 2050.

Around the world, westernized people no longer eat as their ancestors did, or even as their parents did. Meals used to be prepared at home primarily using fresh foods and without adding much fat, salt, or chemical preservatives.
Today, most of us are too busy to prepare foods from fresh ingredients, so we purchase foods that are partially or fully ready to serve—foods processed with much added fat, sugar, sodium, and chemical additives.

The percentage of meals eaten or prepared away from home (restaurants, take-out) has increased more than 50 percent since 1970. Meals prepared outside the home are much higher in fat and sodium and lower in vitamins and minerals than home-cooked meals.

The challenges to losing weight are great, and there are many. Let us not forget impediments created by the food industry. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found the following:

• In 1977 the average fast-food hamburger weighed 5.7 ounces; in 1996, the average hamburger was 7 ounces, with 100 extra calories. (Hamburgers at non-fast-food establishments are now often smaller than 7 ounces.)
• During the same time period, sodas went from an average serving of 13 ounces to about 20 ounces.
• As of this writing in 2010, McDonald’s medium fries have 380 calories and 20 grams of fat, and the large fries have 570 calories and 30 grams of fat. The McDonald’s Angus Bacon Burger is a whopping 790 calories – 350 of them FAT!
• Homemade portions of most foods also have increased in size, with the average American eating 50 to 100 more calories per serving of each food (or upward of 500 additional calories each day) in 1996 versus 1977.
• Candy bars and snack foods also have been super-sized, with even the smallest packages of some including more than one serving. Most consumers, however, equate one package with one serving.

Many restaurant meals are now super-sized. A serving of McDonald’s French fries ballooned from 200 calories in 1960 to 320 calories (late 1970s) to 450 calories (late 1990s) to the present 570 calories! What was once a 590-calorie McDonald’s meal is now a whopping 1,550 calories. ONE MEAL! And McDonald’s marketing goal is for every fast-food eater to consume a McDonald’s meal twenty times a month! McDonald’s is not alone in this. Plates in restaurants have grown from ten inches to twelve inches to fourteen inches. At a Mexican restaurant in Long Beach, California, I was served a portabella mushroom fajita on two 12-inch platters!

Between 1970 and 1994, the USDA reports, the amount of food available in the American food supply increased 15 percent— from 3,300 to 3,800 calories or by about 500 calories per person per day. During about the same period (1977–1995), average individual caloric intake increased by almost 200 calories, from 1,876 calories a day to 2,043 calories a day. No wonder 65 percent of the population is overweight!

And of course, there are the holidays, social nights out, eating in airports while traveling, family events and the list goes on. So this is our culture—this is the food trance in which we live. Choosing to be slender for life is abnormal in our culture. The norm is to eat and drink what you want, when you want and in the quantity you want.

At this point in time, it is abnormal to be at a healthy weight. It is abnormal to eat fruits, vegetables and grains and to stop eating when your body tells you it has enough fuel.

If you choose to let go of the excess pounds, you’ll likely have people around you who consciously or unconsciously try to sabotage you.

As reported in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, November 23, 2005, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the average adult male today weighs 191 pounds compared to 166 pounds in 1960, and is only half an inch taller. The average female weighs 164 pounds today, compared to 140 pounds in 1969 and is one inch taller.

The effects of this are all around us. Our cars have gotten bigger. Even the once 24-inch-wide coffin is being made wider and reinforced to hold more weight. Stretchers are being enlarged and reinforced. You can now buy extra wide reinforced lawn chairs. Airlines are reacting to the dramatic increase in the weight of their passengers. The average weight of a traveler has increased over ten pounds in the last decade. As a result, airfares have gone up to cover the increased amount of fuel needed. In 2000 the extra fuel cost was calculated at $275 million. Some airlines now require “customers of size” to buy two seats.

Obesity and the diseases associated with it were once relegated to kings and queens of Europe and the Alii of the South Pacific. Today, we are a nation of gluttons. As Dr. John McDougall, MD would say, every breakfast has become Easter, every lunch and dinner have become Thanksgiving.

from Becoming Slender For Life,
second edition pages 12 – 14

If achieving your goal weight and maintaining that healthy ideal weight through out your life seems impossible, find out how weight loss hypnosis can help you move through everything that you are up against. Make 2012 the year you achieve your goals. With self-hypnosis, you really can become Slender For Life™.

In 2012, I will devote my Sunday blog post to passages from Becoming Slender For Life. Next week, “Taking Stock”.

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I talked to someone today who said that they were on a diet but not losing weight. Sound familiar? I was reminded of a blog post I had back on March 19, 2008, called Dieting But Not Losing Weight which featured this NBC Today Show segment. In my Seattle weight loss and Bainbridge Island weight loss offices of Slender For Life™ I sometimes have clients that get stuck or start losing weight slowly. Often, it is because they are not following a healthy eating and exercise regime. Sometimes people are doing really well and think that if they eat less they will lose weight even faster – so they cut back and eat less. Their body goes into starvation mode and fat burning stops. Sometimes they are not exercising. Sometimes they exercise too much. Sometimes it’s a matter of eating too much healthy food. Hypnosis is an effective tool to use with any weight loss program. Self-hypnosis puts you in control of what you are eating, how much you are eating and ultimately your weight.

Becoming Slender For Life

In my book, Becoming Slender For Life, I write: In order to begin to release weight, most men and women need to consume less than 20 percent total fat calories. If you consumed 1200 calories in a day and if 20 percent of the calories were from fat, it would mean you consumed 240 fat calories. Since there are 9 calories in just one gram of fat, 240 divided by 9 equals 27 total grams of fat.

You may desire to release weight faster than this. If you reduce your fat consumption to 15 percent total fat calories, or 20 grams of fat per day at 1200 total calories, and you exercise, you may release about one to two pounds per week. At 5 to 10 percent total fat calories you will probably release about two to three pounds each week. Doing the math you can see that eating only 5 to 10 percent total fat calories is a much more motivating way to achieve results.

Purchase Becoming Slender For Life

Slender For Life™ clients learn self-hypnosis so that they can change their thoughts, emotions and behaviors so that they can lose weight and keep it off. If you are stuck in your diet, consider hypnosis so that you can be responsible, independent and live your life, Slender For Life™.

Check out Seattle weight loss and Bainbridge Island weight loss.
Call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

Becoming Slender For Life – a book review by Tim Brunson, DCH

This self-help manual quickly connects with the reader in a way that you know that he understands the frustration and pain of being overweight, losing weight, and keeping it off.

Although self-hypnosis is mentioned in the subtitle, this is not merely yet another self-hypnosis book. He extensively weaves the multi-faceted issues of diet, exercise, and subconscious management into one of the most comprehensive weight loss manuals on the market.

Other than my appreciation of his logically laid out program, I particularly appreciate how he integrates the use of self-hypnosis to put the reader into the right mental state for weight loss. He also recommends hypnosis as a way to eliminate long-standing barriers to proper dietary habits and exercise. This book more than adequately handles the mind aspect of weight loss in a very effective and elegant manner.

Read Becoming Slender For Life – a book review by Tim Brunson, DCH

If you are ready to become slender for the rest of your life, but still aren’t sure about another diet book, then I have a gift for you. Just click here and download free sample chapters of Becoming Slender For Life.  Then give me a call or send me an email and schedule your free, no-obligation weight loss consultation. Learn about hypnosis and how you can incorporate self-hypnosis into your life. If you live too far from my  Seattle weight loss and Bainbridge Island weight loss offices and have access to a phone and/or the internet, then together, you and I, can create a weight loss hypnosis program for you. Isn’t it time that you end the diet madness and become Slender For Life™?

Jack LaLanne said, “The food you eat today is walking and talking tomorrow.”

Order your Becoming Slender For Life hypnosis CD set now

Visit the Hypnosis Health Info Article Library for health and wellness articles from authors around the world.

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

Find Licensed Slender For Life™ Weight Loss Coaches in the following locations:

Cupertino, CA
Layfayette, LA
Olympia, WA
Seattle, WA
Bainbridge Island, WA
Forks, WA

Visit Slender For Life™

At Slender For Life™ we know that knowledge is power. As part of your hypnosis weight loss program you receive my book, Becoming Slender For Life and it’s weight loss hypnosis CD set, The McDougall DVD Total Health Solution and the Inner Diet Assessment which helps you identify your mental and emotional road blocks to taking weight off and keeping it off.

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

You can put a twilight on fat with the Slender For Life™ weight loss hypnosis program. I will be in the Twilight town of Forks, WA, March 10, 11 & 12, 2010. Discover hypnosis for weight loss and see what results you can achieve.

At Slender For Life™ I use the Inner Diet Assessment as one of the tools to support you with your weight loss and most importantly in Becoming Slender For Life. The Inner Diet Assessment is 40 questions that measures 6 roadblocks that can hold you back from weight loss success. These roadblocks include:

* Commitment ~ do you see this as a life long change in your relationship with yourself and your relationship with food – or is this just another diet?
* Discomfort ~ how uncomfortable is dieting and how do you use food for comfort. For me, food was my drug of choice.
* Inner Control ~ do you believe that you can be in control of what you eat and how much you eat?
* Perfectionism ~ do you try to diet perfectly? (give it up – it can’t be done).
* Secondary Gain ~ do you need to keep the weight on for physical, mental or emotional safety?
* Stress Eating ~ do you use food to numb out to the stress in your life?

We have used the Inner Diet Assessment at Slender For Life™ since 1990 and I believe today that it is still the best tool on the market. Check out the Inner Diet Assessment and send me your comments and letting me know how it has helped you with your weight loss.

If are ready to put a Twilight on fat, smoking or want hypnosis help for rheumatoid arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, recovery from cancer or other wellness challenges, give me a call and together let’s create a program to meet your needs.

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!