The Most Important Thing You Can Do To Lose Weight

When it comes to losing weight, it’s been estimated that as high as 95% of all diets fail and that even for those who do lose weight on them, it is often gained back within a year.  Clearly for those wanting to lose weight the odds are stacked against you.  It’s no secret that losing weight is hard work, if it were easy and required little effort and commitment, we would all have our dream bodies! But the truth is that like anything worthwhile in life, to lose weight you are going to have to put in hard work, effort, and make sacrifices to reach your goals.  So what is the most important thing you can do to lose weight and avoid failure? You must shift your perspective from the “diet” mentality to having a mindset of being on a lifelong health journey.  Diets are built for failure. They involve strict rules, restrict certain foods, place limitations on calories, etc.  An ideal standard is created for eating and as a result, an “all or nothing” mindset is maintained by those following the diet. So when we mess up and eat a “forbidden” food or go on a binge at a celebration we often give up and quit the diet at that point. The diet mentality is founded on perfection and guess what my friends? None of us are perfect!  There’s going to be parties, holidays, bad days, and stress and those delicious foods are going to be there waiting for us!  If we buy into the diet lie of needing to be perfect all the time, we will never get far.

I’ve shared with readers numerous times that prior to shifting my perspective from the “diet mentality” to the “journey mentality” that I had tried just about every awful diet out there.  I would begin a diet all fired up, make a hundred changes to my diet at one time and follow whatever crazy strict rules were required of me.  I would lose weight, feel better and continue following the prescribed rules….but then life would happen and I would mess up and “cheat” on the diet which would then lead to feelings of guilt, shame, regret, and unworthiness.  These emotions would then create a downward spiral of quitting the diet, eating like a pig again, regaining whatever weight I had lost and ultimately being heavier than when I initially began the diet. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “yo-yo dieter”, I could have been the textbook example of one.  I was an all-star failure of diets for over 10 years of my life! Let me save you some heartache my friend, the sooner you breakdown the walls of perfection that diets require of you and shift to the perspective of being on a lifelong journey to health, the sooner you will be on your way to reaching your goals.  Let’s be honest- you will have bad days, hell, you may have bad months and you are going to mess up but you must develop self-grace and be able to forgive yourself when you mess up and then continue on your journey.  Forgiving yourself is necessary to prevent those lies of guilt, shame, and unworthiness from taking root in your life and enslaving you.  You can’t allow mess ups result in you giving up completely. It’s not about perfection my friends, it’s about persistence! You must continue on your journey and persist despite whatever oppositions you may face or how hard you may fall. When you fall, get right back up again and press on.  Be relentless in your pursuit and remove the option of quitting off the table completely! It’s impossible to fail if failure is not an option! In the end, perfection doesn’t matter, the times you fell will not be counted but what will matter is that you persevered through all of the obstacles and reached your goals!  If you are ready to receive new results, it’s time to break free from the old mindsets that have been imprisoning you to the vicious cycle of yo-yo dieting and step out with the new mindset that will lead you to success!

The Importance of Detoxing and Some Simple and Inexpensive Ways to do it Naturally

Are you feeling sluggish and fatigued, lacking energy? Are you struggling to lose weight despite the fact that you’re eating healthy and exercising? Is your breath kicking? Is your skin breaking out so much you feel like your reliving your teenage years?   If you are experiencing such symptoms, there is a good chance your body is full of toxins and you are in need of a detox!  Despite every effort you may make to eat healthy and avoid obvious toxins, every day you come in contact with and ingest toxins. These little suckers are everywhere- the food you eat, the air you breathe, the water you drink, the skin products you use, the cleaning products you use, the clothing you wear, ….honestly, the list goes on and on.  The truth of the matter is, no matter how hard you try, you can’t completely avoid toxins because we live in a toxic world.  Our bodies are designed to naturally filter out toxins on their own.  The problem is that with the crazy amount of toxins we come in contact with daily, sometimes our systems are unable to keep up with the demand.  When toxins start building up in our systems, we then start experiencing some of the symptoms listed above.  The good news is there are ways you can naturally “assist” your body’s built in detoxifying systems to work quicker and more efficiently at removing the harmful toxins from your system.  There are many great benefits to detoxing your body periodically, such as more energy, eliminating waste, weight loss, a stronger immune system, better skin and hair, better breath, a clearer mind, and overall you will feel much better!  While some people turn to some really drastic measures to detoxify their bodies, such methods are not needed to reap the benefits that detoxing brings.  Here are some simple, inexpensive and natural ways to help detox your body and be on your way to feeling amazing!

1. Water-Drinking water is one of the easiest ways to help your body transport the toxins out of your system. Water is used by all of your body’s “built in” detoxifying systems such as your colon, liver, and kidneys to remove waste from your body.  Consuming enough water daily ensures that these organs function properly and successfully do their job of removing toxins.  Aim at drinking half of your body weight in ounces of water each day to keep your body working efficiently.
2. Lemon water- Lemon water is known to help aid in digestion and also balance the ph levels within your body.  There are many benefits to drinking lemon water every day, especially first thing in the morning, because of its abilities to help eliminate toxins from the body quicker. Dr. Axe, who specializes in using food as medicine, has outlined many of the great benefits of including lemon water in your daily routine in his article, "Benefits of Lemon Water".
3.  Focus on real food- It’s no secret that fruits and vegetables are healthy for you! They are full of vitamins and antioxidants that are vital for a healthy body. Our bodies weren’t designed to run on toxic processed foods and when you eat junk food, your body has to work overtime to filter it out!  By eliminating processed foods and focusing on God made foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, lean proteins and healthy fats, you won’t be “clogging” your body’s filtration systems with extra toxins and they will be able to do their jobs without added stress. 
4. Sweating- One of the ways your body naturally removes toxins is through the process of sweating.  One of the easiest ways to help remove toxins from your system is to exercise and “sweat it out”. In addition to removing toxins, sweating has many other amazing benefits including clearer skin and boosting your immune system.

Don’t Overlook Emotional Toxins!

Just like you don’t want to let a bunch of environmental toxins build up and hang out in your body, it’s equally important to take some time to evaluate and address the emotional toxins that you may also have built up in your system. Maintaining harmful emotions such as unforgiveness, anger, guilt, shame, and regret that have come as a response to the wounds inflicted by others or by life's disappointments, are incredibly toxic to your health. Letting such harmful emotions build up inside over the months or years without dealing with them is similar to trash piling up in a garbage can, if you don’t take out the trash, it’s eventually going to overflow.  The same is true of your emotional trash, if you don’t deal with it and take it out, it’s going to spill out into and effect your life.  Toxic emotions bring about things like depression, anxiety, hatred, bitterness and ultimately the absence of peace in your life. When peace is gone from our lives, we are quick to self-medicate- we turn to turn to things like alcohol, drugs, prescription pills, sex, and for many…. food.  While all these self-medications may temporarily make us feel better and provide some peace, they are all incredibly addicting, meaning, we have to partake in these things more and more and in greater quantities in order to achieve the temporary fix that they bring us. Eventually, after the “high” wears off, we are still left with the toxic emotions in our system that we wanted to escape initially.  A vast majority of the population claim to be “emotional eaters” and turn to unhealthy “comfort foods” to feel better.  Could the fact that you’ve not emptied your emotional garbage lately be the very thing that is hindering you achieving your weight loss goals?  Detoxing toxic emotions is often times an incredibly painful process, but a necessity in order to live a healthy life.  Forgive those who have wronged you, even if they don't deserve it!  Holding that grudge is only hurting you, not them! Let go of the guilt, shame and regrets of your past.  Shake off those emotional chains that have been enslaving you to your past and breakout into your future! Eliminate those toxic emotions you've been holding onto today and become the beautiful and healthy individual you were made to be!