One aspect of weight loss and healthy weight maintenance is finding out what our triggers are so we can take control over them vs allowing them to have their wicked ways with us.
How to do that? Well, I’m not an expert in emotional eating but I’m having a call with someone who is.
My colleague Melissa McCreery PhD has agreed to spend an hour with us discussing emotional eating. (we will also have open Q & A)
Melissa has been working with busy, overwhelmed women since 1989 to get at the root of their frustrations surrounding emotional eating.
We start each day with the best of intentions to eat well and eat just enough to feel satisfied. The pressures of the work day, our money situations, clients—you name it, the every day stresses of life have the power to knock us off course. Add to this the hormonal fluctuations of midlife and and without some awareness of what’s going on we are bound to wake up in the middle of a pig out wondering how we got there at some point.
But why does it happen? If you think it would be powerful to know what drives us to power through a bag of chips or nuts or cookies, giving away our power to do what’s more supportive of our intentions, then sign up for the call. In combination Melissa and I are going to inform and answer questions on the things both emotional and physical that cause us to lose control around food to soothe ourselves.
There is no charge for this call and if you can’t be on the call live but want the information, sign up for the recording. Either way you can ask a question at the sign up page.
I look forward to sharing another hour with you and hope you’ll be with us on the call.
Hormones rule, did you know that? I’m not talking just sex hormones though in teenaged boys and middle aged women they are certainly at the top of the pecking order most days.
Everything we eat has a hormonal consequence, some helpful, some down right harmful over the long term.
Insulin is a hormone and is responsible for getting blood sugar somewhere it can be used or stored. Grehlin and leptin are the push me-pull yous of the hunger and satiety dance. These three food related hormones are in direct communication with our other messengers such as glucagon–the fat-burning hormone. Called into action when food is scarce, glucagon converts stored fat into sugar and uses it for energy. These 4 hormones worked in perfect harmony before the introduction of grains and industrial food production when all hormonal hell broke loss. It’s been a steep slide towards disease and women on the verge ever since.
So what can be done? Keep an eye on this blog cause it’s one of missions to let women know about how to eat for hormonal balance, and grab this book if you want some science and some recipes.
Dr. Michael Aziz is an internist with a practice in Manhattan; Midtown Integrative Medicine. Frustrated early on in his medical career that so many young people were coming in with cancers, diabtetes, and allergies that he couldn’t heal as well as all ages of people who had weight issues, he went in search of some answers. What he found was this connection between key hormones and the foods we eat. The main culprits?
Sugar, grains, processed fake foods like margarine, and the endocrine disruptors found in the chemicals used to increase shelf life, texture, color, etc. One of his findings goes along with mine of late–low fat diets are partially at fault in the rise of diabetes, obesity, and hormonal chaos. “The results of the research is clear, eating fat does not make you fat. Rather it’s the lack of natural fats in your diet that makes you gain weight” writes Aziz. He continues, “Natural fats are essential for your cells to work properly. Fats slow down the absorption of food, stabilize blood sugar levels, decrease, cravings, and make you feel full.”
And blood sugar levels will make or break our health over the long haul. I’ve included a link to a 2.5 minute video of Dr. Aziz live, he explains his philosophy and his book a bit more. His solution is an easy, delicious way of eating, protein, fat and fresh fruits, veggies, beans and legumes pretty much.
It’s becoming harder and harder to hide from the latest message on food as medicine–eat what’s natural, eat foods you can recognize as such, don’t fear the fat, and eat organic (meats and dairy) and grass fed (meats) when you can. In case you don’t remember how delicious a dollop of half and half is in your coffee or whole egg poached or fried–it’s The Yumm Factor to the 10s. You may have to let go of some long held beliefs to take on these new ideas but if you find hormonal heaven vs a daily roller coaster from hell, wouldn’t it be worth it?
Dr. Michael Aziz
Arianna Huffington and one of the eds of Glamour magazine, Cindi Leive, have teamed up to bring awareness to the lack of sleep most American women are suffering from. Brava girls, this is a serious issue and one I’ve been harping on for like, ever. (Said in my best Valley Girl tone)
They even brought one of my fave sleep experts, Dr. Michael Breus, into the conversation for some recommendations. “Women are significantly more sleep-deprived than men,” confirmed Dr. Breus who is the author of Beauty Sleep: Look Younger, Lose Weight, and Feel Great Through Better Sleep. “They have so many commitments, and sleep starts to get low on the totem pole. They may know that sleep should be a priority, but then, you know, they’ve just got to get that last thing done. And that’s when it starts to get bad.”
Bad in Arianna’s case was that she passed out from exhaustion, broke her cheekbone and got 5 stitches above her eye. While most of us will not have that severe a “wake up call” sorry for the pun I couldn’t help myself, sleep deprivation shows up in subtle ways. Over time it adds up and can limit our career and personal success. Without the proper amount of sleep the brain gets foggy, we are not as quick with our decision making skills, greater stress and more.
One of the things in the “more” category which will interest many midlife women is the relationship between not enough sleep and weight gain. It’s proven that shorting yourself on zzzzs will cause you to store fat right where we don’t want it–in the belly. The reasons are many and have to do with hormones for the most part. In short, stress hormones are released or continue to circulate when we don’t get enough sleep. More cortisol means a rise in blood sugar, which means more fat storage among other things. And we make poorer food choices when we are tired in an effort to boost serotonin-the feel good hormone. And we don’t usually feel like exercise, our mood is generally low and so we might comfort ourselves with something sweet and or carbie. And so it goes.
By the way, if you think you are somehow a lazy cow if you sleep a full 8 hours, think again. The HuffPost goes on to say that many women feel they must be workaholics to be taken seriously by the old boys network. In some circles that may be true but in the long run it’s counterproductive if working all the time cuts in to your beauty sleep. I’d suggest reading post #1, and #2 which continues the discussion. In this post the women discuss their successes and challenges in sticking to their commitments to get more sleep for 30 days. Arianna and Cindi have done a smart job at pointing out the limits we are putting on our success as women by continuing this crazy lifestyle habit.
Let me know where you are on the “full night’s sleep” challenge in the comments section. Do you feel better when you sleep more or less? And if you want more tips on losing weight at midlife, why not go take a gander at my new site, Easy Midlife Weight Loss.
A while back the associate producer sent me an invite to watch this all-things-boomer show. I’ve never had the change as it plays locally way past my bedtime. But I continue to get the emails and the topics were fascinating enough that I had to click through to their blog site for a preview now and again.
Good news, I don’t have to stay up late–and miss my literal beauty and health sleep–you can watch all the episodes that have played, right on their site!
Last week’s was about how it feels to age–literally. A professor up in Nova Scotia created something called The Empathy Suit to give his students an experience of how it feels to move about your day in an elderly person’s body. Made me want to go to the gym. Check it out.
The half hour also covered whether or not replacement surgery should be the default for pain and quality of life and, you won’t believe this, Martha Stewart. What’s she got to do with aging? Come on, she’s as adept at extending her brand as anyone out there and she’s opened The Martha Stewart Center for Living at Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC. As the host, Robert Lipsyte says,”From the cradle to the grave with Martha.” She smiled that “It’s good to be Martha” smile of hers.
I had to laugh when she said about her book in progress, “I’ve written the book on how to take care of your home I should be the person to write a book on caring for yourself and your loved ones.” Really.
The show has covered topics like, plastic surgery, dating at midlife, spirituality and aging, Alzheimer’s, and lots more. It’s never the same old stuff and the guests are a mix of experts, medical people, authors, actors and so on.
I’ll leave you with a clip from the show when Robert Interviews Faye Wattleton, former president of Planned Parenthood turned actress, speaker, news commentator, on their plastic surgery episode.
