Thursday, January 25, 2024

Creating a Self Care Plan: Allow Your Body to Automatically Manage Weight

Creating a Self-Care Plan: Allow Your Body to Automatically Balance Weight

If you've read my diet books, you know that I struggled with weight my whole life. Eventually, after years of restricting calories, relentlessly exercising, and trying every diet I could find, I washed up on the shore of exhaustion, depletion, and a completely tanked metabolism.

It took learning the truth about deep self care to heal my metabolism, calm my appetite, and restore my health. Once did so, not only did I lose weight, but my body composition changed dramatically.

But it seems that the medical industry has given up thinking critically about the causes of weight gain, and also of the solutions. More often, they are prescribing surgery and drugs. Even to children.

But you can take control of your weight and feel better by improving self-care.

I read yesterday in the New York Times, that Ozempic, and other drugs now being used to "fight the obesity crisis" are teaching us that appetite and weight gain are not moral failings.

It shocks me to think that any educated person, especially doctors, think that, or have ever thought that obesity was caused by loose morals. There are plenty of immoral skinny people. And so many people who struggle with their weight know full well the advice that gets shouted constantly, "just cut out the garbage!" "Eat Less" "Exercise More"! We all know this, and those of us who are struggling aren't not doing it on purpose. The truth is we can't.

Obesity is caused by exhaustion, calorie or nutrient restriction or depletion, and deep stress. These three factors create an insatiable appetite and a lack of energy. They create a deep craving for high calorie, easily digestible foods, and they also create a non-stop "food chatter" in the mind so that we are always thinking about food, always wondering what and when we can eat next.

The only way to change this is to make sure that we have plenty of nutrition and plenty of rest, and we reduce the stress in our lives as much as possible. Anything we can do to address these three factors will allow our bodies to slow down our appetite and speed up our metabolism.

As I researched for my book, The Short Guide to Ordered Eating, the one thing that stood out to me when I poured through piles of research, was that obesity is caused by a lack of consistent and high-quality self-care.

What are those self-care habits that help your body naturally balance weight?

They are all simple, free, and accessible to most of us.

1. Improve our nutrient status by eating high-nutrient food at mealtime, three times a day.

2. Improving our sleep by implementing good, regular sleep habits.

3. Reducing our stress

In my books, I go over the habits that impact these three factors. Really, the only way to start though is to pick a few changes that we know we can commit to over the next month, and implement those. Once we are consistently doing them, we can add more.

These deeply impactful habits can be organized into three categories: Food, Fitness, and Self-Care (Stress reduction). If we pick one thing in each of those categories that seems doable and implement it for a month, we'd be quite surprised to see how much progress can be made in a short time.

If you are just getting started, here are some basic habits you can choose from, pick one from each section and take it from there.

Food:

1. Add protein to each meal: the brain will not shut off appetite until it has had enough protein. Add protein to each meal.

2. Eat MORE earlier in the day.

3. Limit eating to meal times, and do not eat between dinner and breakfast.

Fitness:

1. Walk for 5-10 minutes every day. Even if you just walk out the front door and down the hall or to the end of the walkway or driveway, get up and walk for a few minutes each day.

2. If walking is too hard, or mobility is an issue, do some kind of movement to music or while watching TV for 5-10 minutes each day.

3. Do 5-7 minutes of body weight exercises each day (YouTube has great videos, and the 7-minute workout app has beginner workouts.

4. Commit to not sitting as long each day. Stand more, even if it's just by the sink to do dishes, or to pick up around the house.

Note: Some of us have become extremely depleted and exhausted. If you are extremely intolerant to exercise, or any of these habits are too hard, skip habits in this section until you are feeling better. Chances are, once you have addressed your nutrient status and level of stress and exhaustion, you will find yourself naturally wanting to move more. It's okay to wait for now)

Self Care:

1. Sleep: sleep deeply impacts our stress levels, our appetites, and our metabolism. Improve sleep hygiene and sleep habits. Get up in the morning, eliminate napping, and get to bed 7-8 hours before wake-up time.

2. Create a nighttime routine that supports sleep: before bed, take care of personal hygiene, take a warm bath or shower, read in bed, or listen to relaxing music.

3. Make time to do something you love to do each day, even if it's for five minutes: draw, paint, sing, fix something, knit, listen to music, write, read, cook, look for stars in the night sky, watch the sunrise or sunset, dance, bike, play a game, etc.

4. Three daily check-ins: Three times a day, take a deep breath, scan your body and release any tension, and tune in to how you are feeling. Ask yourself what you need, and see if you can do something about that: maybe a drink of water, a walk around the block or up and down the hall, a sweater if your cold, maybe you didn't realize you've been holding your breath or have to use the bathroom. Just take note of how you are feeling, and if you need anything, and see if you can let go of any unnecessary muscle tension.

These basic self-care habits will start to impact your appetite, your metabolism, and also your feelings about food. Go slow, remember to start small, and build from there. If you have a lot of weight to lose, are physically challenged, or just haven't exercised in a long time, be extra gentle with yourself. It's okay to start even smaller, pick one thing to change and work on that!

If you already have some of these habits in place and are ready for more, my book, The Daily Hearth will teach you how to take your self-care routine to the next level, so that you can impact the factors that are preventing you from being at your best weight.

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https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B09WFWTF63&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_4W0V03MPRRZ911F7H62P

Friday, January 12, 2024

The Short Guide To Ordered Eating

Available on Amazon

Search: Tina M. Grasso, The Short Guide to Ordered Eating

Build a program that allows you to naturally balance your weight without exhausting yourself, starving, or going into starvation mode. Give up disordered eating and discover that your body knows

what to do with food!

We all have heard of disordered eating. We know that eating disorders include not eating enough to keep ourselves healthy, or eating so much food that we sicken ourselves. But, what is ordered eating? Why has no one described what the opposite of eating disorders might be?
And why, despite so much diet advice, do we all seem to continue, in general, to gain weight?

This book delves into these topics and explains why the diet experts are all right, but also all wrong. Every diet works until it doesn't. The key is not to starve ourselves or to find the one kind of food we can eat without gaining. It's also not to punish our diet transgressions with excessive exercise. The key is to rediscover ordered eating. Our bodies know what to do with food. We just have to eat in a way that supports our appetites, and our metabolisms, and removes food from our brains as a key source of motivation and pleasure.

https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B09WFWTF63&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_HDHWBTKVN4PGAHD9AR3S

Monday, January 8, 2024

Reaching Your Goals Automatically with a Daily Routine

Is your daily routine taking you where you want to go?

When we set a goal, we have every intention of doing just that; when we set a goal, we are making a statement about something we want. But, then... life gets in the way. So many things shout, ping, and call to us, and we get pulled off track. Setting a goal is just that: stating a desired outcome. But many of us expect to meet those goals with no map on how to get there, and no idea about how to change or adjust our daily behavior to achieve long-term goals.

To meet our goals, we have to figure out the steps that we will need to take to get there, and then make a plan about what we will do differently each and every day to take those steps. We have to decide what we are going to do, and when and how we are going to do it.

The truth is that decision-making is exhausting. It's very difficult to constantly make decisions about when to do things, what to do, and how much to do them. When we have to decide, after a long day at work, whether or not to go to the gym, it can get really easy to talk ourselves out of it. Then, we feel a little relief about not going. That feeling of relief gives us a little hit of feeling good. So, our brain guides our behavior there: subconsciously, we KNOW we will feel great if we stay home and rest, because that is our most recent experience. The reward from working out is uncertain, so, we end up sabotaging ourselves because avoiding the reward that is harder to get (the reward from working out) becomes our default behavior.

We reach our goals when we make the steps required to get to those goals part of our daily routine. We set a schedule and stick to it, and, eventually the steps to our goal become automatic. When we create a daily schedule that incorporates the steps to our goals, we automatically end up achieving more than we ever thought we could.

When we make the steps a habit, we get to where we want to go automatically.

This is why I wrote the book, The Daily Hearth. The book teaches us how to take the new research around weight loss and weight management and make those ideas into daily habits.

The book teaches us to pick habits from the three categories that drive our body weight and physical health: 1. Food, 2. Fitness and 3. Self-Care. By picking one habit from each of the three categories, and working those into our daily schedule until they become automatic habits, like brushing our teeth or getting our coffee, we set ourselves up to meet our goals seemingly without effort. Slowly, we add habits from each category as we are able, and we end up with a plan that gets us to where we want to be and keeps us there.

Check out the book. If you have any questions, never hesitate to contact me or reach out.

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Tina M Grasso M.Ed

The Daily Hearth: Simple Habits that Powerfully Control and Balance Weight A Companion to The Short Guide to Ordered Eating Paperback – June 29, 2023

by Tina M Grasso M.Ed (Author)

See all formats and editions

Your body knows what to do with food. Obesity doesn't happen simply because people have somehow missed the advice that moving more and eating less might help. The problem is that very often, those things do not help. Or, for many of us, those things are impossible to maintain.
The truth is that obesity develops when our appetite, our metabolism, and our sense of motivation towards and reward from food have all become dysregulated. When we are dysregulated in this way, we can eat well beyond fullness and still want to eat. We can eat less than others and still gain weight. We can become preoccupied with food so that we are most motivated by the food associated with holidays and events than anything else.
How does this happen? It happens when our brains and bodies get the signals that it might be in our best interest to store fat. Stress, trauma, exhaustion, low-calorie intake or dieting, over-exertion or over-exercising, lack of sleep, and low-nutrient status are some of the factors that send our brains and bodies the signals that it's time to store food, slow down, and focus on making sure we get more food whenever it is available.
We can learn to send the opposite signals. By adjusting our behavior and our environment, we can start to send signals that it is okay to burn fat. In my book, The Short Guide to Ordered Eating, I describe the factors that help to regulate appetite, improve metabolism, and encourage motivation and a sense of reward around things that are not food. This book can work as a companion to The Short Guide to Ordered Eating. But it can also work on its own.
When they systems that control our food intake and our fat storage become dysregulated, it is because our eating is somehow disordered. By learning not ordered eating, but also other habits that improve self care, reduce stress, and allow our bodies to burn fat, seek out rewards that are not food, and also regulate our appetite so that we feel satiated with our meals, our bodies can balance our weight, and we can find not only improved health, but an improved quality of life. We can find happiness and motivation as we find our way to ordered eating as we learn to adopt these habits into our daily lives.

https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B0C9RH72PS&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_ZMYBW88SH579FSJM4NT1