Archives for August 2015

A lot of you have been calling and emailing me saying that they want to “eat clean” but feel so overwhelmed with all the information out there. And I totally know where you’re coming from. I have my own success story for switching to a cleaner way of eating, but I did it as an experiment and had a point where the more I researched, the more confused I became. So I went my own way, had some trial and error but ultimately ended up cutting out meat, frozen pre-made dinners, dairy milk, soda, energy drinks and felt like a new person!

Eating clean has a number of positive side effects like better sleep, more energy, no longer feeling bloated, brighter glowing skin, shinier hair, and losing weight. Who doesn’t want that?!

I start clients and friends with the easiest way to transition to clean eating: to simply “Eat Low.” What I mean by that is eat lower on the food chain, become more of an herbivore. By substituting whole grains, produce, seeds, nuts and legumes for meat you will improve your health (BONUS: you’ll also help the environment). Even eating lower three times a week can make a drastic difference! Food journalist Mark Bittman tried this concept and within 3-4 months reported losing 35 pounds, having normal blood sugar, normal cholesterol levels, and getting rid of his sleep apnea. He decided to eat lower on the food chain before 6pm (aka was vegan before 6). The best part? He hasn’t eliminated anything completely from his diet. It can be that easy!

Regardless of what you want to change about your health, eating lower on the food chain is one of the easiest ways to start this transformation. Studies from around the world confirm that the lower on the food chain a human eats, the greater the protection against heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. There are a number of reasons for this: animal products 1) are a major source of saturated fat and cholesterol, 2) accumulate chemicals in higher concentrations, and 3) can contain large amounts of antibiotics and growth hormones.

But what about…

Worried about protein? Try quinoa + legumes for a complete protein.

Where will I get my calcium? Eat dark leafy greens like kale, mustard and dandelion greens.

What about iron? Beans, nuts, seeds, seaweeds, and whole grains are high in iron.

And zinc? Opt for nuts, seeds, beans, and whole grains.

 

So make it simple. Eat Clean. Eat Low.

 

If you’re the type who needs more specific tools on how to choose foods lower on the food chain OR want help in making the switch to a healthier lifestyle, I can help. I’m here to support you on your journey to health, and help avoid some of the pitfalls and trial and error that I went through. Your health allows you to do what you want in life, and isn’t it about time you go for what you want?! The answer is yes 🙂

 

Live your WHOLE life,

Shannon

 

 

Statistics and quotes sourced from National Geographic’s True Food.

“I don’t want to win the lottery, and frankly I don’t want you to either” – Yuri Elkaim. That’s a quote from an amazing and really powerful blog I read this week. The idea doesn’t quite make sense at first; it seems selfish or even crazy…who wouldn’t want an extra $10 million to live out their dreams? Well let’s see:

According to the National Endowment for Financial Education, research estimates that 70% of people who unexpectedly come into large sums of money will lose it within seven years.

Winning the lottery is not the only way to live out your life’s dreams. In fact, based on that statistic, it may even hurt your ability to live out those dreams. It can take away your drive, dedication and work ethic. It may cause you to develop habits of laziness that you don’t currently have!

So I’m not here to give financial advice, but there are similarities between immediate gratification in finances and health, especially losing excess weight. There are some pretty powerful statistics recorded for this:

Only 5 percent of people who lose weight on a crash diet will keep the weight off.

This means that 95% of people who lose weight on an extreme and short-term weight-loss plan (crash diet, juicing fast, or magic fat melting pills) gain it ALL back (and usually then some). If you receive results fast and easy, you don’t know how to maintain and handle these newfound winnings (weight-loss, money, etc.). If you did know how to make money/lose weight and keep it off, you most likely would have been at a better starting point…

As humans, our instincts want things to be easy. Our instincts would be happy to take the path of least resistance, or in other words, take the easy route. Our rational brain allows us to see past this though, and we can retrain our brain to look for the longer term, permanent payoffs and stop chasing immediate gratification. When you want long-term changes you need to grow, and when things fall into your lap you have no incentive to grow, change and sustain. So much of our daily struggles have to do with our mindset, with our psychology, with our HABITS.

We need the process. We benefit from the journey; it allows us to change, to build, to grow. Relying on a quick fix will bring you down as quickly as it brought you up. The real game-changer is being able to count on YOU to produce results.

We will all encounter numerous challenges throughout the rest of our life, but hopefully each one will be the kind that we learn from. We learn to overcome them and move on. Trusting yourself and your ability to overcome whatever life throws at you is a product of being successful in the past, while on your journey.

In order to fully appreciate reaching your destination (or your goal) you need to develop the right mindset and habits during the journey. Afraid of struggle? We will all struggle, but don’t you want the struggle to be worth the result? Especially when you adapt and learn how to struggle once and enjoy the results for a lifetime!

I’m saying this because I’ve learned the hard way, and it was painful. I spent most of my life (and those awkward formative years) obsessed with my weight, deciding I will not be happy with anything less than the perfect body, and missing out on a LOT of life in the process. I learned from the struggle. I’m in a much better place now, and I have confidence in my ability to continue, because I experienced the journey.

I trust myself.

Now my good habits are no longer grueling to maintain, and I can enjoy my healthy body and clear mind (free of self-judgment and criticism about every piece of food I put into my mouth).

Learn It. Live It. Enjoy It!

I’d like to help anyone and everyone avoid this pain, the pain from chasing a quick fix and then dealing with countless disappointments. If you’re DONE with the disappointment, I can help. If you are ready to get the life you want, by first getting the body you are proud of, let me know! If you can’t wait and you want to start the journey now, tell me “I’m Ready.”

Remember, you have the power to design the life you want!

 

Live your WHOLE life,

Shannon

 

 

[1] http://yurielkaim.com/3241/why-i-dont-want-to-win-the-lottery/

[2] www.livestrong.com

That’s a picture of the fiancé and I at Sequoia National Park; those smiles summarizing the amazing weekend we had! It started with a BBQ/pool party Friday night where we got to reconnect with old friends and meet some new ones, followed by a (somewhat) impromptu trip to see the giant Sequoias and ended with a productive and relaxing Sunday where we bought groceries, prepped 3 meals for the week, and still had time to relax and snuggle up to an episode of Astronaut Wives.

I had big expectations for my week, coming off a weekend like that!

Then Monday happened. Swamped with work calls, the internet decided to go MIA, and the dishwasher broke (see past blogs about how much I LOATHE doing dishes). After a 3-day weekend of bliss, all it took was a couple minor things to go wrong and there I was back in the kitchen, aimlessly snacking while I tried to figure out what to do next. With every handful of granola I piled into my mouth, I knew it wasn’t helping, in fact it was just bringing me deeper into the “ugh” feeling of the day.

So just like that, all the enjoyment and relaxation from the weekend disappeared. I was stubbornly dwelling on the issues that Monday morning presented. Ever felt that way? Like your spiraling downward and just can’t stop, even though you know you should? Well this is obviously self-destructive behavior, and for me it shows up with a crappy mindset accompanied by my overindulgence of even the healthiest snacks (too much granola isn’t good for anyone).

As tough as that it to admit, I’m sharing this story because there’s a happy ending. I didn’t spend the next 3 days down and out. I was able to recognize that my behavior wasn’t serving anyone and definitely wasn’t fixing the issues. Instead of giving up all together though, I mustered the strength to change it up. I left the broken dishwasher, unanswered emails, and internet issues, went on a run and called a friend who was a pro at helping me stay in the present moment. I came back with a new mindset, was out of my funk, and carried on!

A couple years ago, without the awareness and mental grit to get past the small issues, I would have let that rut (and self-destructive behavior) continue for days, pushing me farther and farther away from my goal of being productive and happy and healthy.

Do you feel stuck in a cycle that’s not serving you? Are you finding it hard to bounce back after getting off the plan you’ve set for yourself? Stop taking one step forward and 3 steps back with a cycle of a weekend of success followed by a week of stress and failure! Set up a time to chat with me and we’ll talk about ways to keep you moving forward, consistently…making sure you are closer to your end goal each week!

Whether your goal is healthier eating, losing some weight, or developing that mental commitment to get past the small stuff, I can help. Here’s a link for a free 30-minute call, because it always helps to have someone in your corner! It isn’t easy but it’s worth it!

 

Live your WHOLE  life,

Shannon

 

We’re excited to have Miranda Adani of Fabulous Weight Loss as our guest blogger today. We love that Miranda is a true believer in making small and sustainable changes and we’re excited to share her blog on what can sometimes be a daunting topic – portion control.

Whether you’re looking lose weight or just crowd out some of the “junk” these are 6 tips that anyone can benefit from. Even if you’ve seen these tips before, it always helpful to have reminders to let them really sink in.

Enjoy and be sure to tell us what you think!

Much Love,

Meg + Shannon Sullivan

Reducing or limiting the amount of food that you eat is essential to creating sustained weight loss, especially if you are accustomed to overeating.

You don’t need to measure your portions or count calories to maintain control over the amount of food that you eat.

Below are 6 simple ways to reduce your food intake without feeling hungry or deprived.

1. Eat slowly

By eating slowly and chewing your food thoroughly, you allow your stomach the time to signal your brain when it is full and that takes about 20 minutes. If you rush through your meal and gulp down your food, you override your body’s natural satiety mechanism and eat more food than you need, which will cause you to gain weight.

Eating quickly is an unconscious habit, which you can only break by bringing it to your conscious awareness.

The best way that I have found to do this is to sit quietly before you eat a meal, close your eyes if possible and take 5-8 deep breaths and then start eating. This will provide the optimum environment for you to properly digest your food, eat less and eventually lose weight.

2. Eat only when you are hungry

Eating only when you are hungry naturally limits the amount of food that you eat and puts you in touch with your body’s true need for food.

If you eat a lot of processed junk food with empty calories, you will continually be hungry and overeat as these foods do not satisfy your hunger and actually make you crave more food.

The same is true for diet sodas or any product with artificial sweeteners. These have been marketed as “diet” foods, which will help you lose weight, but they have been scientifically proven to increase your hunger and make you gain weight.

Reducing the amount of processed and sugary foods is the # 1 way to lose weight and allow you to get back in touch with your true hunger.

If you are eating when you are not hungry for emotional reasons, start to become aware of what situations and emotions cause you to reach for comfort food, by keeping a journal and noting what thoughts and emotions preceded your urge to overeat.

When a trigger thought or emotion occurs again, stop, take a few deep breaths and ask yourself, “Am I hungry?” Or ” Do I truly need to eat this food?”

Substitute an activity which will take your mind off eating the tempting food, such as simple deep breathing, turning on some music and dancing for a few minutes, calling a friend or taking a short walk.

3. Stop when you are full

From the time we are children, we are trained to eat everything on our plate, but as adults we can train ourselves to stop when we are full or even a bit before we are completely full and leave the food on our plate.

This is a very effective way to reduce the amount of food that you eat. You can save the food for later as I often do and eat it if you are truly hungry or just throw it out. It’s better than eating beyond your satiety point, which will cause you to weight gain. This takes practice until it becomes a habit.

4. Put a moderate amount of food on a small plate.

Take moderate portions of food and put it on a small plate. This “smaller plate” trick does work. It looks like your have more food than you really do and this naturally limits your portion size without strict measuring. Fill the plate to the limit if you want to but don’t eat more than that.

5. Don’t eat out of a bag or a box

This is a great way to prevent yourself from overeating. If you sit with an open bag or box of anything – healthy or not – especially if it is tasty, you will keep eating it until half or the whole bag is gone – believe me, I have done it. I realized that this is a very dangerous thing to do.

I love blue corn chips and cashew nuts and these are healthy foods, but they have a lot of calories and I don’t want to eat too much of them at a time.

If I have the bag in front of me, I will keep eating them and can’t stop, so I decided to put a reasonable amount in a small container or on a plate, close the bag and only eat that amount.

That is natural portion control and it works.

6. Eat a greater portion of cooked vegetables and salad and smaller portions of high fat meat, cheese, simple carbohydrates like bread and white pasta and processed foods and sweets.

This increases the amount of healthy and non-fattening food that you eat and limits the amount of unhealthy and weight producing food that you eat.

It’s not just the amount of calories you consume that cause you to gain weight, it’s the type of food that you eat.

I eat a lot of vegetables both cooked and raw, healthy grains like quinoa and brown rice, low fat meat, turkey, ham, chicken, fish and low fat dairy, nuts and seeds, nut butters, soy and almond cheese, gluten free bread, beans, olive and coconut oil and though some of these foods have a lot of calories and fat, I don’t gain weight; in fact I lost 50 pounds by just eating healthy food.

What I don’t eat is any processed white sugar, white flour junk food with processed oils or high-fat meat and dairy, all of which will put weight on you immediately. It’s these foods that are causing the epidemic of obesity in our society and around the world.

 

 

 

 

Miranda Adani is a weight loss and healthy eating coach specializing in working with women over 50. Inspired by her own weight loss and healthy eating journey, she created the program Fabulous Weight Loss for women over 50. Miranda belives that women over 50 have a second life ahead of them and that they should go into looking, feeling, and being fit and fabulous without having to wait to lose the weight. For more information on Miranda and her work as well as a free gift, check out www.fab-weightloss.com.