Endless Summer Creations

Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned athlete, you'll benefit from what BDS has to say about the importance of selecting an exercise plan as a component of successful weight loss.  Even if we have a well-established exercise routine, it can be easy to forget *why* we need it.  Just some of the benefits of exercise include: A solidified commitment to your healthier lifestyle; Despite what many people believe, exercise can actually reduce cravings; Elevated moods and reduced stress; Preservation of muscle tissue so that we lose fat while staying toned; Boosted confidence and feeling better about ourselves; and Protection against disease. In keeping with yesterday’s step, we probably already have exercise scheduled into our day.  But there’s another type of exercise which BDS calls for and that even seasoned athletes may forget: spontaneous exercise.  Opportunities to be more active constantly arise in everyday life, some expected, some not. ...

To be successful in losing weight, we have to make time for it.  Subsumed within this objective come many necessary tasks, such as planning meals, working out, cooking, journaling, and so forth.  Today BDS has us take an inventory of our typical days and break them down into our specific activities.  On a calendar, list all your activities for a typical week and weekend day – the next step is to prioritize them.  There are three categories: essential activities, highly desirable, and desirable.  For example: Essential Activities Parental responsibilities Work Exercise Preparing meals Paying household bills Highly Desirable Long phone conversations with family or friends Watching some TV Relaxing in the bath Desirable Surfing the Internet Volunteer work Additional house chores or projects After we’ve made an inventory of our typical activities, BDS tells us to cut back on the desirable or non-essential activities to make time for weig...

If your environment is not in line with your goals, then you need to change it. Environment is everything. As Joel Osteen said, you can't soar with the eagles if you're pecking around with the chickens. So too is it with dieting.  If, in your environment, you're surrounded by junk food, temptations, a lack of organization and putting everybody else's needs ahead of yours, you are not soaring with the eagles yet. Set yourself up for dieting success.  Throw out the junk food and any trigger foods.  If you have other people in your house who eat that food, ask them if they would be willing to eat that food outside of the home, or at least put in a place that is out of sight.  If those other people are children, you might want to make that decision for them. Maybe you have small children and mealtimes can be hectic, where you feel like you have to rush through your food just to attend to them.  You could consider having two separate courses or mealtimes, having ...

Well I'm still up late tonight doing laundry.  So I thought I would blog for today's task: Getting a diet coach. Beck explains that having a diet coach, or someone to help hold us accountable, is another key component of successful, lasting weight loss. Dr. Beck tells how many of her clients confessed that the only reason they didn't overeat is that they would have to tell her about it. While neither Dr. Beck nor a good diet coach would ever berate or put you down for temporarily falling off the wagon, they still hold you accountable.  And they give you necessary support on your weight loss journey. Diet coaches can also help you brainstorm solutions to problems you might encounter on your weight loss journey.  If you fall off the wagon, your coach can constructively help you look at what went wrong, and how the pitfall could be avoided next time.  They can also celebrate your successes with you and keep you feeling inspired and excited about your goals.

A very challenging task for me personally.  But so important for success on the Beck program and beyond.  After years of struggling to make this habit, I happened on this helpful book on Amazon, which puts a fun spin on the slow eating challenge by turning it into fun games you can play with your kids, or anybody for that matter! Once again, we can come up with plenty of excuses as to why we eat fast: I don't have time to eat slowly. I like to eat fast. I don't want to think about that stuff when I'm eating - it just stresses me out! I have to eat fast so I can get back to taking care of the kids/spouse/dogs/fish...in other words, everybody but me! How would you answer these excuses back with Helpful Responses? Eating slowly is another element of the mindful eating we are striving for in Beck, and for the rest of our life.  We want to enjoy our food, be satisfied by it, be nourished by it, celebrate living with it!  The next time you're eating, take...

This is one of my favorite Beck days.  Learning to give myself credit did feel a bit weird to me at first.  But once I got into it I started to really enjoy it! 1. It Feels Good to Brag and Celebrate Your Accomplishments Guess what - you deserve  credit for everything you do that brings you closer to your goals, no matter how insignificant it seems.  I don't think it even has to be food related!  Yes, give yourself credit for buying healthy foods, sticking to your plan, doing your workout.  But don't hesitate to give yourself credit for every accomplishment as well!  Did you finish that work report on time?  Did you manage to save a bit more money this week?  Did you make your bed?  Hug your family and tell them you love them?  Yes, give yourself credit for all of that! Beck suggests a number of ways you can keep track of your credits.  My favorite way is to keep a daily list of everything I'm proud of.  Here's an exa...

And the Real Beck Dieters too! The task of the day?   Sit down to eat!   A simple enough concept, but sometimes hard to put into practice, especially if you're in the habit of standing up to eat.  Eating while standing up might be the product of such unhelpful, sabotaging thoughts as these: I don't have time to eat while sitting down. It doesn't matter if I just have a few bites on the go. I'll sit down to eat next time, cross my heart! I like the freedom to just graze - I don't want to be restricted. Food eaten while standing up contains no calories. It doesn't matter if I just ate some celery or carrots while standing up - my diet allows me to eat as much of them as I want. Using the Beck method, we contradict these Sabotaging Thoughts right back - here's a few examples, you can customize your own: I make time for doctor's visits, picking up prescriptions, taking medicines, and doing treatments, don't I?  This is no less important...

 Today is the day to choose 2 diets - one is your first choice, and the second is the backup in case you're finding that the first one doesn't work for you.  There are all kinds of eating plans - and what works for one person won't necessarily work for another.  Beck advises that you choose a healthy plan because extreme diets are firstly, bad for you and secondly, not sustainable.  Beck also notes that most reasonable diet plans call for about 1400-1500 calories daily, and that most plans fall under two categories: 1) counting calories or 2) avoiding certain foods/beverages altogether. I have learned from experience that I don't deal well with diets that cut out entire food groups - like Atkins or the Fast Metabolism Diet.  Eating high amounts of fatty meat and cheeses, with very few carbs leaves me feeling awful and very irritable.  The Fast Metabolism Diet is very restrictive also - it may allow more "good" carbs but disallows coffee, dairy, soy, s...

So today was all about identifying my "whys" for losing weight.  I'm pretty excited about my refreshed reasons.  Some of them are private which I won't post here, but a few of them are: I deserve to look the way I want to look. I'm not going to let the past hold me back. A core concept of Beck is to identify your Sabotaging Thoughts and to contradict them with Helpful Responses.  Here's an example: Sabotaging Thought: Well I've always been fat and it's no use trying to lose weight because I'm just going to regain it again. Helpful Response: In the past I might have regained weight because I didn't have all the tools I needed to lose weight and keep it off, or I didn't practice and sharpen those tools.  But this time is different.  I know I cannot kid myself and must face reality.  And the reality is that I must always practice what I've learned, or I will give myself permission to forget it.  And as long as I keep pract...

On July 2, 2012 I made one of the best decisions of my life.  These three pictures say it all: In May I blogged about defying those betting on you to regain the weight.  Well, the struggle is real.  I have slipped back into old habits lately.  But it's time to go back to what works: The Beck Diet Solution. I made the mistake of kidding myself that I didn't always have to stay vigilant.  If you manage to lose weight, keeping that weight off is to be a lifelong job.  As author Judith Beck says, that's not fair, but you have to learn to say "oh well."  We're conditioned to demand fairness and justice in this country especially.  But one of the genius points that cognitive behavioral therapy makes is that fairness is a myth.  Expecting things to always be fair in life is to set ourselves up for failure.  And what may be justice to one person may be an injustice to another - like when your Aunt Ida beats my Aunt Betty Sue in the coun...

Last year I read an article by the New York Times  about former Biggest Loser contestants who gained back most, if not all of the weight they had lost on the popular show.  The article paints a pretty dismal picture for those of us who want to lose weight and keep it off.  To me, the upshot of the article is that overweight people will always gain it back on account of their defective metabolisms. That conclusion is unacceptable to me, however.  And I have my work cut out for me as a result.  At my heaviest I ballooned to 212 pounds.  I had gone through some very traumatic times and I dealt with it by eating.  I didn't think I deserved the good things I used to have.  Not even running.  I didn't even think I deserved to run another marathon. It wasn't until I began the process of truly forgiving myself that I was able to believe I deserved those good things again, and in turn begin to lose weight.  Losing weight was ...