How Guilt Can Be Counter-Productive Towards Your Weight-Loss Goals

So we've done it, we made weight-loss our New Year's resolution.    We've stated it to ourselves and advertised it to others hoping this will motivate us to stay on track.  Whether it is about eating healthier, joining a running class or spending more time with loved ones we from time to time struggle to meet our goals.  Guilt then pops its ugly head and shakes its finger at us expressing its disappointment in our actions (or lack of) making us hang our head in shame.

Guilt is actually a response from our subconscious which can be an important tool to life lessons, following code of behaviors, maintaining important relationships and keeping us out of jail.  But if your guilt has nothing to do with doing something illegal and immoral then it can become a self-afflicted and prosecuting emotion that causes anxiety, worry, on-going grief and low self-worth.  Guilt can be very unhealthy and paralyzing.

Guilt played a very significant role in my eating disorder and was always by my side.  It never stopped talking and always kept reminding me of what I should have and shouldn’t have done.  Guilt made me eat so I could dull its constant chattering and then guilt made me purge and on the cycle went. Guilt defined me.  It took a long time for me to recognize its power even though others could see it and would use it to manipulate me.  I used to be angry that my ex-husband used guilt to control me but as I matured in my thinking I realized guilt is what controlled me.

Guilt should not play the lead role in motivating you towards your goals especially weight-loss goals.  Guilt does not serve your best interests and can prevent you from moving forward.  If you have a gym membership that you haven’t used for a year and you keep paying on it, you need to cancel it.  Stop torturing yourself and wasting your money.  Accept and move on to find other means of physical activity that you may enjoy.

Life is about growth and change and not always about what we define as right and wrong.  We sometimes take two steps forward and one step back but we are still moving forward.  Also our intentions don’t always work out but we have the opportunity to learn from the situation and forgive ourselves.  Take the power away from guilt through forgiveness and empower yourself.

Treena Wynes, BSW, RSW

Author of Eating Ourselves Crazy

www.f4tw.com

Managing Negative Emotions

Human beings are the most privileged species on Earth.  Our minds are not only more advanced but we are able to feel emotions. Human beings are emotional beings.  This may make some men or even women cringe as some presume that emotions make us weak, irrational or even out of control.  All human beings have emotions whether they display them or not. Emotions are a very important part of who we are as people.  They make us unique and exciting.  Emotions are part of our human experience.

Emotions help us connect with one another and become a social society.  They also help us with a deeper learning, as when we have a strong emotion around a certain experience we will never forget it and that memory will help us make decisions in the future.  Our subconscious stores these memories, good or bad, and calls upon them when a similar situation stands before us.  Emotions play a significant role in how we respond to an experience or to one another.

There are negative and positive emotions and most of us would prefer to experience only positive emotions as they give us feelings of pleasure, satisfaction, joy, comfort and self confidence.  Negative emotions have their place in this world as it creates change, growth, progress and even self-confidence.  Most people try to avoid, deny or suppress negative emotions rather than acknowledge or "feel" them.  Much of our suffering is due to negative emotions not being dealt with called "emotional baggage". The trick is managing these emotions is to finding appropriate ways to release these intense emotions and then understanding the lessons behind them.  By accepting your anger, sadness and embarrassment as the human part of yourself, you can bring about a closer understanding of your true self. 

Negative thoughts have a tendency to distort our feelings.  There is a strong relationship between thoughts and feelings as thoughts drive our feelings.  Negative thoughts drain our emotional energy and motivation, therefore causing dissatisfaction in our lives.  An example would be unnecessarily worrying about a situation that will keep you up all night causing you to be exhausted the next day. The excessive worrying about unrealistic matter resulted in feeling crummy and tired putting us at risk of making poor choices.

Our behaviors are a direct result of our thoughts and feelings and if we want to change our behavior we need to change our way of thinking first.  We need to move from our regular thought patterns in order to develop new possibilities.  To accomplish new feelings and behaviors it is important to know what messages your subconscious is holding.  If they are not beneficial to your new goals, then you need to work hard at replacing them with practical and constructive ones.

Positive thinking is widely recognized and popular today as it is the key to a positive and fulfilling life.  Positive thinking promotes positive feelings that provide high energy and a bright outlook.  Fuelling good moods with ongoing positive thoughts encourages us to act how we feel.  Our actions and behaviors will bring forth our circumstances.  As in The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, the saying “thoughts become things” rings true.  We can manifest many things into our lives by how we think.  The objective is to manage your emotions by purging unproductive thinking and replacing them with intentional positive thoughts to bring forth a more rewarding life.


Treena Wynes, BSW, RSW
Author of Eating Ourselves Crazy
www.f4tw.com

Identifying the Emotional-Eating Cycle

We as Westerners are eating the most stressed out diet on the planet.  The foods we choose to soothe our fears, comfort our anxieties and relax our tensions actually exacerbate the stress we are feeling.  After an emotionally-taxing day we tend to reach for sugar or refined carbs to improve our moods. With our hormones continually adapting to all the events we encounter or the tasks demanded on us, the hormonal imbalance at the end of the day will lead us to the package of cookies in our cupboard as soon as we walk in the door.  “The psychological experience is as much involved as the biological experience” – (Why Women Need Chocolate, Debra Waterhouse, MPH, RD, 1995). 

Sugar boosts the good-mood hormone, serotonin.  Serotonin is the hormone that provides us with the feeling of joy, satisfaction and confidence.  When our serotonin levels are low, our brain does what it can to bring serotonin levels back to normal by sending out messages that we call cravings. The combination of fat and sugar is most desirable to women as fat lifts our endorphine level which is a pain-relieving hormone that is as powerful as morphine.  Majority of women report during their “monthly time” is when cravings are more intense.  We are unable to resist the strong messages from the brain as it trying to keep hormones at their appropriate levels. Therefore, as good-mood hormones dip we are left with uncontrollable sugar and fat cravings that are near impossible to resist.

The key to ensuring good-mood hormone levels is to maintain stable blood sugar levels.  If the brain is supplied with maximum energy throughout the day with “healthy” carbohydrates, proteins and good fats it will provide us with alertness, creative thinking and stable moods. Our resiliency to life’s demands depends on eating healthy meals that will sustain us.  If our blood sugar levels drop and we “starve” the brain, it will protest with headaches, irritability and fatigue.  When low energy and unclear thinking occurs, we lose our self-control and rationale around food putting us at risk of making some very poor choices to fulfill our needs.

Two top mood sabotagers that we continually use to lift our moods and restore our energy are sugar/sugar subsitutes and refined starches.  Both are usually found in refined processed snacks or sugary store-bought treats such as cookies, cakes, doughnuts, muffins, crackers, cereals and sweetened drinks and colas. As they provide no nutritional value and contain additives that are addicting they are not only toxic to our bodies but our moods. 

How this process works is that within a minute of consuming a diet cola and cookie your body becomes highly stressed trying to neutralize the destructive impact of these “foods”.  First your body sends out adrenaline, “the fight or flight” hormone as it senses your body is being attacked.  Then endorphine and serotonin levels go up making you feel good temporarily.  Insulin is called onto the scene to deal with the excessive high blood sugar and it also tells your body to store fat.  After insulin has completed its job your energy and mental stamina starts to plummet, this brings forward your stress hormone, cortisol, to release emergency sugar stores from the liver so you don’t pass out.  As cortisol doesn’t usually feel pleasant it motivates us to get rid of it by, you guessed it, reaching for a sugary snack again.  This process can happen two to four times a day putting great strain on our hormones, affecting our moods and increasing our chances of weight-gain.

This vicious emotional-eating cycle can be as rapid as the bad-mood foods we chose.  Our moods and our emotional dependency on certain foods drive us towards those quick fixes.  In order for an intervention to happen we need to recognize how our habits are contributing to the stress-eating cycle.  There are a variety of healthier choices that will provide our bodies and mind with the essential nutrients needed to optimally function. We can eliminate emotional-eating from taking over our lives and have the quality of life we are seeking by just feeding our brain and nourishing our body with the right foods.


Treena Wynes, BSW, RSW
Author of Eating Ourselves Crazy
www.f4tw.com