Motivational Letters

Many of our patients have days that feel chaotic. I often feel the same way. Unpredictable and unanticipated work, family issues, meetings; things or people or situations we seem to have no control over take over our time and attention. Much like clutter around the house, this leads to erratic and mindless eating. One way to cope with this is to have a morning routine. Below is a link to a podcast by Tim Ferriss who I’ve talked about before. He has written 4 books and is an accomplished athlete and entrepreneur. He, and so many of the accomplished people [...]

1. Lower your expectations on how quickly weight loss will occur. We are all different metabolically, socially, medically. It will be slow for some, faster for others. Be patient. 2. Motivation. None of us wake up motivated to eat better or exercise more. It’s an effort. Realize the effort is worth it. Start some sort of exercise. Don’t expect yourself to “want to do it”. Just do it, and you will feel better afterwards. 3. Be willing to change. No one ‘diet’ is necessarily going to work for everyone. You need to find out what works for you. Be willing [...]

Two things struck me this week; one was a picture posted on Facebook of a crowded beach in the early 1970’s. There were no, and I mean not one, overweight people on the beach. What has changed? Many things of course, from activity levels going down, to more stress and reduced quality of sleep, but the main thing is food availability. I remember beaches in the 70’s. There were no food stands and no fast food franchises close by. If we went to the beach we might take a small cooler with juice and fruit, but never considered taking much [...]

I was meeting with a patient a couple of days ago and I wanted to know her perspective on how she was eating, and the stresses in her life that were keeping her from paying attention to food quality and quantity. She remarked that I didn’t even look at her chart which showed her weight loss. I told her I was less interested in the number than learning about her behaviours and ability to continue to choose proper quantities and less processed food, despite the stress in her life. The important part here is, that we keep looking at the [...]

There are many things each of us should address on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis. The first of which are our goals. What are our short-term goals? What do we want to achieve in the next week? Not having snacks after 6 pm? Would you like to feel lighter, knowing your efforts have created results? In the next month would you like to be down one inch in your waist? In three months — have normal blood sugars? We need to be firmly aware, always, why we are going to change our habits of eating and exercise, otherwise we [...]

The quality of your life is directly related to the quality of your thoughts. So, it is important to have a daily habit of keeping your thoughts on track. If you believe it is difficult to lose weight, or to get beyond a plateau, then that becomes your reality. On the other hand, if you believe you will achieve weight loss and overcome any impasse, this too will become your reality. It has been said many times that ‘whatever you truly expect is what you will experience.' To keep your thoughts congruent with who you really are and with principles [...]

Based on the article: "The Psychology of Eating” by Kim Severson, National Post All of us fall "off-track” every so often. Many of us attribute this to stress, social situations, or other emotionally-driven circumstances. However, there could be other factors at play, according to a professor based out of Ithaca, New York. Professor Brian Wansink's experiments on ‘the psychology of eating' show marked associations between the amount of food people consume and the way the food is presented. He believes that one of the ways people become overweight is by not realizing how much they are eating. "We don't have [...]