Blog | Weight Loss & Health Coaching | Austin Health Coaching

Health Coaching: Bring the twinkies and beer?

September 16, 2011 • 1 Comment

I recently attended a Health Fair—a phenomenal way to interact with people looking to get information and inspiration to make positive health related changes. As part of their mission, the company that sponsored the Fair has a commitment to Wellness broadly defined—kudos to them!—and includes “financial health. “ So one of the participants in the Fair was a financial planner.

He was a fun and easy going guy, and walks into the room where we were assigned. He sees me—a professional health & wellness coach—and the others: a personal trainer with a national gym, a woman who teaches “boot camp” fitness classes and sells nutritional supplements, and the owner of a local boutique gym in town. He says, “wow, I should have brought the twinkies and beer to balance things out!”

A joke of course, but as a friend once said to me, “much of the truth is contained in a joke.” What I got from this was all of the focus on health was in the absence of fun. Right, the “fun” choice was alcohol and sweets and the “healthy” choice was, uh, broccoli?

It’s a common stereotype that I bump up against—that “fun” and “health” are on opposite ends of the experience continuum. And the truth is, for many people it is. It was for me for a many years, when I wasn’t living a thriving life. Back then, “health” seemed like a chore, and I wanted any excuse for “fun,” making “healthy” weight loss choices most of the time but still taking that time off for “fun.” Of course many of us can make the “fun” choice without negative consequence—I remember eating a pint of ice cream for dinner when I was a graduate student. Then I wasn’t eating for fun; I was eating for comfort and stress relief, but I was in my 20’s and suffered no short term ill repercussions. If I did that now, such a choice would taste good for the 15 minutes it took for me to eat the ice cream and leave me sick for two days—not fun.

It reminds me of something a client said last year, “uh, can’t I follow the fat burning weight loss program protocol for 6 days a week and then take the 7^th day off as a ‘cheat’ day?” This goes along with the “everything in moderation” rule of thumb that many people use along with the “oh every once in a while is fine; it won’t kill you. Just don’t over do it.”

If these rules of thumb produce the results you want—by all means continue to use them!

My rule of thumb is very different: is this choice taking me closer to where I want to be or farther away?

I broke my old habit of turning to comfort food in times of stress because I have learned that the few minutes it takes for me to eat something doesn’t provide me true stress relief. It simply distracts me for a few minutes.

I don’t generally eat food that is calorie dense but nutritionally barren because I don’t feel good when I eat it. And I have arranged my life so that I feel good (just about) all of the time. I make healthy choices because that’s what serves me best to feel good—happy, energetic, thriving.

Did I mention that the financial planner was significantly overweight?

Perhaps he too feels happy, energetic, and thriving. More on this possibility in the next blog post. For now, I suggest that you try this experiment: think about your choices a bit differently. Rather than thinking about each choice independently, imagine that each choice is taking you somewhere. Where is the choice taking you? Is that where you want to go?

How Incorrect Weight Loss Approaches have caused “Incalculable Harm”

August 26, 2011 • Leave a Comment

Last week, I introduced you to Gary Taubes, who wrote Good Calories, Bad Calories. His review of the science of weight loss is a game changer. I’ll be sharing more insights from Taubes in future blog posts. Until then, you can learn more by going to his website. For those wishing for an easier read than GC, BC, Taubes has written Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It.

As Dr. Michael Eades quotes Taube’s WWGF

Of all the dangerous ideas that health officials could have embraced while trying to understand why we get fat, they would have been hard-pressed to find one ultimately more damaging than calories-in/calories-out. That it reinforces what appears to be so obvious—obesity as the penalty for gluttony and sloth—is what makes it so alluring. But it’s misleading and misconceived on so many levels that it’s hard to imagine how it survived unscathed and virtually unchallenged for the last fifty years.

It has done incalculable harm. Not only is this thinking at least partly responsible for the ever-growing numbers of obese and overweight in the world—while directing attention away from the real reasons we get fat—but it has served to reinforce the perception that those who are fat have no one to blame but themselves. That eating less invariably fails as a cure for obesity is rarely perceived as the single most important reason to make us question our assumptions, as Hilde Bruch suggested half a century ago. Rather, it is taken as still more evidence that the overweight and obese are incapable of following a diet and eating in moderation. And it puts the blame for their physical condition squarely on their behavior, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Wow.

Here I want to focus on this idea of the “Incalculable Harm” caused by our well intentioned but incorrect collective wisdom.

How many people have struggled to take control of their health, lose weight, and “do all of the right things” but nonetheless fail to achieve weight loss and any improvement in health? The countless calorie counting to no avail…the chronic state of hunger…and then resignation…and then the attitude from others and maybe even yourself that you are lazy, lack willpower, etc.

And how about the flip side? I recently met with a woman who has maintained her healthy weight throughout her lifetime – she is in her mid 50’s. However, she was recently diagnosed with osteoporosis and some other health conditions so has started taking medications, something she prefers not do but wants to protect her health.

Talking more with her, I learned that she doesn’t like to cook and usually relies on convenience foods, those commercial brands that are in the refrigerated section of the grocery stores. They are low fat and low calories, she reasoned, and she kept her weight down. The more we visited, the more I learned that her focus was on calories, pretty much exclusively.

For example, once a week she treats herself to dinner at the local frozen yogurt place. It ends up being about 300 or so calories, so she says that’s fine.

Is it?

I looked at the nutrient breakdown of the yogurt choices. Most of the selections are non-fat; a few are low-fat. There is a scarce amount of protein.

This means that she’s eating straight sugar for dinner.

As Gary Taubes writes, sugar isn’t simply “empty calories.” It has a direct effect on our insulin levels and is implicated in most chronic illnesses.

I couldn’t help but wonderful if a lifetime of focus on calories, regardless of whether those calories provided any nutrition, helped her keep her weight down to the detriment of her long term health.

Instead, we can turn our focus to feeding our bodies nourishment. We can nourish our way into a fat burning state that allows us to reach our healthy weight, and then nourish ourselves forward into living a longer, healthier life, one overflowing with health and wellness on all levels.

It all starts with nourishment: a decision to nourish yourself, accurate information about how to nourish yourself, and loving yourself forward.

As Promised, the New Way to Permanent Weight Loss

August 19, 2011 • Leave a Comment

Most people think that the way to lose weight is to eat less and move more. That it’s all about “calories in/calories out and increasing your exercise.”

It isn’t.

This belief makes sense, of course, in that it’s been what we’ve all been told forever. Okay, truthfully it is not forever. It only became conventional wisdom a few decades ago, but unless you know that you think it’s been forever.

Before then, another view was held: that excess carbohydrates caused excessive fat. Why? Because what makes us fat is what makes our fat cells fat and that’s our hormone regulation, specifically insulin.

Looking back, I can see that the only two times I had some moderate success in weight loss during the 8 ½ years I wanted to lose weight was when I was – unknowingly – managing my insulin levels through what I ate and stress reduction.

When I was able to release the 15 pounds that had been the chronic “baggage” I had carried around plus an additional 17 pounds to return me to my high school healthy weight – and thus completely releasing 32 pound in 9 weeks – I was astounded.

Why was this weight loss plan so easy when everything else was so hard and ineffective? I have been on a quest for 3 years to answer that question.

I needed the answers. Due to my background as an experimental social scientist, I wanted to review the evidence, not only the anecdotal evidence but the scientific evidence. And due to my tenacity, intellectual arrogance, and skepticism, I could not take anything at face value. (I had a colleague once say that I was like a dog with a bone).

I needed an exhaustive review of the science. Having published many scholarly articles, I know the ins and outs of how science is done – at least in my field and believe there are similarities in other fields – and I needed to see for myself.

Thankfully, I found this exhaustive review in Gary Taubes Good Calories, Bad Calories. I’ll be sharing more insights from Taubes in future blog posts. Until then, you can learn more by going to his website. For those wishing for an easier read than GC, BC, Taubes has written “Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It.”

As Dr. Michael Eades quotes Taube’s article :

« Of all the dangerous ideas that health officials could have embraced while trying to understand why we get fat, they would have been hard-pressed to find one ultimately more damaging than calories-in/calories-out. That it reinforces what appears to be so obvious—obesity as the penalty for gluttony and sloth—is what makes it so alluring. But it’s misleading and misconceived on so many levels that it’s hard to imagine how it survived unscathed and virtually unchallenged for the last fifty years.”

Is Weight Loss Making You Crazy

August 12, 2011 • Leave a Comment

I feel like someone who knows the earth is round when everyone I meet keeps insisting that the earth is so obviously flat. Right now, it’s crazy making.

What brought me to this crazy place? First the background, next the crazy making.

Background

I am nearly 4 years into my own life transformation journey. It started when I made a decision to finally commit to a weight loss program and easily lose weight once and for all.

When I made that decision, I also recognized my insanity of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting something different. I stopped thinking that all of my efforts over the prior 8½ years were just not good enough and that I simply needed to try harder. Really? After a decade of trying really hard, maybe I needed a new approach.

I found it. It came in two parts.

The first part of my new approach was to be kind and gentle to myself. I had been so hard on my self—full of harsh criticism and judgment. Remember, my decision was to reach my goal in an easy way. When I made that decision, I had no way of knowing what that easy way might be or whether it actually existed. But the only thing that I was more tired of than thinking “oh I really need to lose weight” each time I passed a mirror was how mean I had been to myself.

So, even though I made a decision, I waited until after the holiday season was over to start. In fact, I waited until mid-January so that I could gift myself with an extend time of gentleness.

The other thing I did was to do something different. In the time period between making my decision and acting on it, I visited with my mentor Karen whom I hadn’t seen in months. She was radiant, and she had just released 20 pounds on a Program. She said it was simple, easy, and fast. That’s all it took for me. I didn’t know what she had done, but if it worked for her I would do it to.

It took me 9 weeks to release 32 pounds. It was simple, easy, fast, and sustainable. I have been at my healthy weight for 3 ½ years.

When I think about how long weight loss escaped me and how easy it was once I found out how, it is a little unreal. I want to share this with the world, with a megaphone.

The Crazy Making Part

A megaphone is not the best strategy, as it turns out, to communicate that the earth is round when so many think it’s flat.

Whether it’s in person or online, I meet so many people who sound just like I did. Trying over and over again, not getting results, blaming themselves, and yet not yet open to doing something different.

Dearest Gentle Reader, if you are ready to release weight and have not had the results you want – please take heart! It is not your fault! It may very well be that the methods you are using simply do not work. You don’t need to try harder. You need a new way!

Please stay tuned for the next blog where I talk about this new way.

The Science involved in Health Coaching

November 5, 2010 • Leave a Comment

Health became my hobby about 15 years ago when I read Spontaneous Healing by Andrew Weil, which was my first exposure to alternative approaches to health and healing. I became very curious and interested in all things “health.” The hallmark of a good scientist is to be open-minded and skeptical, and since then I’ve explored many different ways to create health on all levels—mind, body, and spirit.

Yesterday things swung full circle, when I was referred to a chiropractor. I was curious about his methods and, well, the consultation was complimentary. I experienced a detoxifying footbath, ionically charged water, a nutriceutical with sea algae, and saw other patients on 3 different therapeutic machines. All this before I saw the chiropractor, who turned out to be very nice.

Afterward, like a good scientist, I searched Google for information about some of these therapies and approaches, looking for good, that is, conducted with the best scientific rigor possible, evidence that any of these interventions were shown to produce positive health outcomes.

I found the opposite. No evidence, poor evidence, or evidence indicating no therapeutic value.

The gold standard of evidence might not exist because it is time, energy, labor, and financially consuming to run good quality research. Some therapies might be beneficial but no one is funding the research so evidence is scanty, inconsistent, or nonexistent. Some “therapies” are not therapeutic and can be harmful on the body, the mind, and/or the wallet.

And in the meanwhile, we are trying to live our lives and feel good, happy, in balance, or at least have our suffering removed or alleviated.

So where science is lacking, I trust my intuition. And refer to my bank account. As long as the therapy or approach seems unlikely to cause harm, sometimes exploring therapies falls under the “fun and entertainment category” not the “health category.”

Under the “health” category and after so many years of searching, I’ve settled on an approach that works very well for me. I’ve built the foundation of my health on scientifically verified principles.

Achieve my weight loss goals
Eat high quality nourishing tasty foods
Integrate exercise into my life in a way that feels good
Evolve my outlook from a fearful pessimist to a joyous optimist as I grow my spiritual practice
Sleep well and rest well

After 15 years of searching and experimentation, these healthy behaviors seem so simple, to the point of being trite. Don’t we all “know” this? If so, why is it so hard to achieve and live? Hint: answer coming in a future blog, but as a preview…

In my experience, mental anguish had a far more negative effect on my body, my psyche, and my soul than anything I did or didn’t do. Indeed, mental anguish is what disrupted me from being able to choose and live healthy behaviors in a consistent way.

My point is: my psychology affected my biology. Creating the healthy foundation of my life required me to clear out my head stuff more than anything.

Do you have head stuff holding you back?

What Getting Healthy Looks Like, Part 3

November 3, 2010 • Leave a Comment

Most people dream bigger when they believe that their dreams are possible. Will power is irrelevant. Losing weight and getting healthy is about:

1) Making a commitment

2) Some basic knowledge about how our bodies metabolize food

3) Correcting a few common but wrong ideas about how to lose weight, and

4) A structured approach that produces results fast enough so that you know the changes you are making are worthwhile.

Making a Commitment

Creating Optimal Health won’t happen by chance but illness sure can. Optimal Health is created by design. This design requires intention, or what we at Austin Health Coaching call a “handpicked choice.” Many of our choices aren’t handpicked. In fact, calling these behaviors “choices” is not accurate as they are more likely reactions or responses to something else. Here are a few examples from my life and from my clients’ lives:

Office birthdays are celebrated monthly with the staff taking a break to share a big cake—usually it looks great but the primary ingredients are refined flour, high fructose corn syrup, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Nothing “healthy” here!
Doughnuts brought to office meetings. Ditto on the ingredients.
Long commutes make it challenging to shop for groceries and cook at home, so we rely on take out and restaurants
Too exhausted to cook
Stress at work makes us crave comfort food
Stress from home makes us crave comfort food
Food in the refrigerator rots before we can eat it
Too busy to eat breakfast since we are always running out the door
It’s vacation, time to indulge!
It’s a celebration, let’s party!
It’s Friday, let’s go out!
It’s been a hard week, let’s cheer ourselves up!
The news is depressing, let’s shift our mood.

The list continues…

The point is that our food habits are often automatic reactions to situations, events, and stressors that have nothing to do with enhancing the nourishment we give ourselves. The result is feeling sluggish, gaining fat, and decreasing health indicators.

The good news is that we can harness the power of habits to create the outcomes we want: feeling vibrant, nourished, enthusiastic, and quick weight loss.

The trick is that transition period. We recognize that our current habits don’t serve us and we have a glimmer of a new reality where our life is better, our desires our fulfilled, and it’s easy because our new habits do serve us.

I think of the transition period a “cocoon.” We need protection and support as we shed the old and grow into the new. That’s why a structured proven program and the guidance and love of a trusted support person or support team makes all the difference between emerging into the new reality you are wanting to create and staying stuck in old patterns that produce the same old/same old mediocre existence.

As you move into your new reality, who is on your side?

What Getting Healthy Looks Like, Part 2

October 28, 2010 • Leave a Comment

Chances are that your current behaviors are pretty rewarding at least in some ways or else you wouldn’t be doing them.

You arrive at a point of equilibrium. Your current food and drink choices feel good enough—that is, are sufficiently rewarding—so you keep on doing them. However, you have other goals, like maybe losing weight or improving your health, that aren’t being served by your current choices. So maybe you decide to eat more salad, or go jogging before work. But salad doesn’t taste as good as queso dip and after 4 days of jogging at 5am you feel pretty proud of yourself so you sleep in on Friday.

What’s happened here? Is this a lack of willpower? I don’t think so.

I think it’s a fundamental misunderstanding as to the best way to create something new in your life. Please don’t feel bad about this misunderstanding. From what I’ve seen, most of us make it, including me!

No, from what I’ve seen, true and lasting weight loss and creating health isn’t about will power.

This is important. Let’s repeat it:

true and lasting weight loss and creating health isn’t about will power

What is it about?

It’s about intentionally creating something new; it’s a handpicked choice.

If you truly desire something lick quick weight loss, and you know that you can achieve it, you will move heaven and earth to make it happen. Please take a moment to reflect on this.

Please remember something that you decided that you wanted and you made it happen. You didn’t need to force yourself. You didn’t need to push yourself. It was your desire and your dream that pulled you forward.

And this is how it works with Optimal Health. This is the Magical Something Else we mentioned in the last blog post.

It is your Vision

Your desire and your dream of Optimal Health—of being at your ideal weight, feeling energized and enthusiastic, growing and evolving each day—that pulls you into your new reality.

It’s a magnetic attraction into the life you’ve envisioned.

My commitment to Optimal Health results from it being the foundation of a Beautiful Life. I create Optimal Health for myself and support others to create Optimal Health for themselves because it is an essential piece for each of us to thrive as individuals and allow our gifts to be brought into the world.

Once you know that Optimal Health is possible for you, and you decide you desire it, we can create it as your reality through our proven systematic approach. How cool is that?

Check out our next blog post for the details.

Haven of Health: First Meeting October 6th

October 2, 2010 • Leave a Comment

Austin Health Coaching is pleased to invite you to our:

Haven of Health

Weekly Community Meetings

Dear Clients and Friends,

Is your weight loss occurring smoothly and easily? Is it happening at all?? Are you stalled?

Or, are you maintaining your ideal weight and continuing on the path to Optimal Health?

Are you where you desire to be in terms of your health and vitality?

Are you feeling energized and enthusiastic with your life?

Would you like to join a thriving supportive community of like minded folks who are committed to Optimal Health and living each day fully and with joy?

We’d love to have you join our Haven of Health!

In our world of distractions and stressors, it’s easy to get knocked off course. We are bombarded with high calorie low nutrient food and drink and thousands of reasons to eat it—time pressure, social events, the call of something easy and comforting that doesn’t really feed our souls much less our bodies.

Maybe what you need is a taste of sanctuary: a Haven of Health. Come join our Oasis of Joy, our Place of Possibility as we practice that habits that get and keep us healthy and allow ourselves to thrive.

Each week we meet to create a Cocoon of Comfort where we celebrate and encourage each other with our successes and support each other through everything else.

Each week we discuss and practice a tool, a strategy, or a reward that supports us on the road to Optimal Health.

We promise you will be inspired!

Our first meeting will be on October 6^th at 5:30. Please let me know if you will be attending.

The topic for the first meeting is:

“What does it TRULY take to achieve your ideal weight AND maintain it AND never have your weight be an issue for you again? The answer will surprise and delight you!”

Our fall meeting schedule is the 1^st and 3^rd Wednesday of each month at 5:30 to 6:30, and the 2^nd and 4^th Thursday of each month from 1 to 2. We will be meeting in the Clubroom at 5350 Burnet Road, 78756. Our meetings last approximately 1 hour. We also have time after the meeting for individual coaching and support.

Here is the full fall meeting schedule:

Wednesday, October 6^th at 5:30

Thursday, October 14^th at 1pm

Wednesday, October 20^th at 5:30

Thursday, October 28^th at 1pm

Wednesday, November 3^rd at 5:30pm

Thursday, November 11^th at 1pm

Wednesday, November 17^th at 5:30pm

No meeting on November 25^th for Thanksgiving

Wednesday, December 1^st at 5:30 pm

Thursday, December 9^th at 1pm

Wednesday, December 15^th at 5:30

Please call, text, or email me with any questions. Hope to see you on the 6^th if not before!

In health and love,

Diane

Diane Kobrynowicz, Ph.D.

diane@austinhealthcoaching.com

512-773-2779

What Getting Healthy Looks Like, Part 1

September 30, 2010 • Leave a Comment

“Most people don’t want to get healthy.”

This was a rather surprising statement to hear from a health care professional, though I understood why he would say that. Patients came to see him to get better but wouldn’t follow the treatment protocol or weight loss program for too long or even at all or would continue to do the things that got them unhealthy in the first place.

Still, I had a hard time agreeing with him. I do believe people want to be healthy and would choose health for themselves if they knew how to create it.

What do you think? Would you? Please ask yourself…

Would you choose Optimal Health for yourself if you knew that you could create it in a way that was simple, got quick weight loss results, and was sustainable in your lifestyle?

I’d love to know: please email me at diane@austinhealthcoaching.com and share your thoughts with me on this question.

So much of our experience of health depends on the food choices we make. The fastest way to change our physical experience of well-being is to change what we eat. I know that healthy meals can be delicious and extremely satisfying. In fact, now that I have been explicitly practicing healthy habits for nearly 3 years—compared to the occasional practice of healthy habits for the prior 12 years—it’s very easy for me to choose high quality foods that taste good and are nutritious. It’s become my automatic default habit.

Here’s how I made the switch: when I was practicing healthy habits haphazardly or “intuitively,” I physically felt fine, I guess. Good enough. Great? Sometimes, maybe, not sure. I didn’t have a good comparison point.

Please think about this: Right now, how do you feel? Okay? Pretty good? Wonderful? Would you even know if you could feel a lot better with a few simple changes? Unless you made a concerted effort to alter your food choices for at least a few days, how could you possible know?

This is the key: any changes you make have to produce a quick enough effect for you to feel that life is better when you choose this new behavior than when you continue with the old behavior. In other words, the new behavior has to be rewarding or else we return to the old behavior.

And here’s the magic: the changes you choose need to flow from Something Else.

How do you know if your changes/choices/current behaviors really are the best for you? What is this Magical Something Else? Stay tuned for the next blog post…

If your problem involves an interest in weight loss…IMAGINE…

September 27, 2010 • Leave a Comment

If your problem involves an interest in weight loss…IMAGINE…reaching your goal for weight loss and what that will feel like…please give yourself this gift and just think for a moment how lovely it will feel to solve your weight loss problem simply, quickly, and permanently.

Go ahead, right now, please take a few seconds, and close your eyes. Imagine yourself at your goal weight:

you have full confidence that you have learned the healthy habits so that you never regain your weight.
imagine how good you feel…how much energy you have…how much pride you feel
you have reached your goals and you take care of your health
you are on the path to Optimal Health and you feel better with each passing day.

…imagine…

you inspire those you love…
they see it can be done and they are encouraged by you…
they are now taking care of themselves because of your example.

…think about…

how great it feels to toss out all of your “fat clothes”…you take your old clothes out of storage and buy new clothes…
every time you get dressed you feel amazing…you never again dress to minimize those parts of your body that you don’t like or think are too fat—you are the perfect size and each body part is just fine…nothing to cover up!

…imagine…

how much of your life you now have back…
your weight is not a problem
you’ve developed lifestyle habits that keep you healthy and you actually enjoy,
you spend your life energy focused on the things that matter most to you…

It’s a lovely vision, isn’t it?

It’s also exactly the visualization I did when I finally committed myself to a weight loss program, get healthy, and never have weight be a problem again.

I lost 32 pounds in 9 weeks, after nearly 9 years of wanting to lose weight and trying over 20 different ways. I even tried “giving up” and just “accepting” that it’s normal to be fatter in middle age or that you can be healthy and overweight. I’m thankful every day that I didn’t give up and accept “good enough” or “mediocre” for myself. I set my sights higher, on what I truly desired for myself and for my life.

This is the same commitment and inspiration we at Austin Health Coaching bring to all our clients.

“Good enough” isn’t. Life is grand. Shouldn’t that be your experience as well?

call us at: