Category: health

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Alternative health hypnosis self-help

Insomnia and How to Beat It

Difficulty getting a restful, rejuvenating, night’s sleep – or insomnia, is  a surprisingly common problem. It affects over 60 million Americans, and almost one-third of the UK adult population. We all suffer the odd night when we have difficulty sleeping because of a worry, or excitement, or a minor illness. That’s not insomnia. Insomnia is when it happens night after night after night and you wake feeling almost as tired as you when you went to bed and often feel as if you haven’t slept at all.

Some people feel they aren’t getting any sleep night after night, but the good news is that you do actually get some sleep, simply because after several days without any sleep, you start to experience micro-sleeps (lasting half a second to half a minute) outside of your awareness, and you may also begin to experience hallucinations. Physical health also starts to suffer with prolonged sleep deprivation eventually leading to death. What tends to be experienced is long periods of being awake and getting frustrated at the lack of ability to fall asleep – interspersed with short periods of sleep, which tend to be forgotten.

Others have difficulty falling asleep, but when they eventually do, they have a decent sleep.

Yet others have no problem falling asleep, but awaken after a couple of hours and then can’t get back to sleep.

The patterns are quite varied so here’s a little help:

If you

  • have difficulty drifting off to sleep
  • experience patchy sleep, waking frequently
  • Go to bed and can’t drift off
  • Have a short sleep but awaken too early
  • Don’t feel refreshed after sleep
  • Have trouble concentrating because of tiredness

Then you have insomnia.

The amount of sleep each person needs is different, but generally speaking an adult requires around 7-9 hours. If you think you’re sleeping but feel permanently tired then you probably have insomnia.

It doesn’t matter how long it’s been going on for you, insomnia isn’t normal, and, unless there is some underlying physical problem, you can be helped.

There are some easy fixes and some less easy fixes. Sort out the comfort of the room if it’s too hot or too cold. It may be that your bed is not as comfortable as it could be. Stop taking non-prescription drugs. Use earplugs if noise is a problem, and eye-shades if the room is too light – this can be a particular problem in higher latitudes. Where I live (UK) in summer it starts getting light at about 3:30am and on a clear morning is almost fully daylight by 4:00am.

Less easy to fix is sleep deprivation caused by stress, anxiety, or even depression. If you suffer from any of these problems I highly recommend that you have a read of my book Change Your Life with Self Hypnosis. It is full of tips and helpful techniques to use to reduce stress and anxiety as well as helping you to move toward lifting your depression.

Most insomnia, whether or not you realise it, is down to the establishment of poor sleeping habits, and one thing hypnosis is very good at is breaking bad habits. With that end I have created this Insomnia recording available for instant download. It is not designed for listening at bed time, so listen at least a couple of hours before you go to sleep. Listen daily until you have established better sleeping patterns.

As well as this you can help by introducing a regular bedtime routine. Stop doing anything mentally stimulating about an hour before you sleep. If there is anything on your mind write it down and pick it up again in the morning. Have a warm milky drink – chocolate is good. Get into a warm bath with lots of bubbles and just soak and maybe listen to some soft music. Read rather than watch TV and most definitely turn off the computer/phone/tablet at least an hour beforehand. Relaxing music is good even if you’re not in the bath.

Once you are in bed do not read, do not watch TV, do not listen to music, just settle down as comfortably as you can and give yourself permission to have a good and restful nights sleep. If you download the recording you will discover that there is just one more thing that you can do that will assist you in drifting off for a deep and satisfying sleep until the alarm goes off in the morning.

Categories
Alternative health

Do Vaccines Damage Your Immune System?

The news recently reported an outbreak of mumps at Fordham University in New York. On the day of the report there were 13 cases of mumps confirmed. One interesting factor is that one of the entry requirements for Fordham is proof of vaccination against, amongst other diseases, mumps.

So we have an outbreak of mumps in a University full of students who have all been vaccinated against the disease. The university immediately shifts into panic mode and requires infected students to remain at home and institutes all sorts of hygiene regulations.

All this over a minor, uncomfortable illness that I experienced for a week or so as a child.

The world has gone mad.

Either that or there is just too much money to be made out of compulsory vaccination.

But it got me to thinking, because this news synchronistically showed up after I had written yesterday’s post about needing disease to stay healthy. I looked back at my childhood and the list of diseases that I experienced – measles, chicken pox, mumps, tonsillitis, whooping cough, and I may have had others when I was too young to remember. All most of these meant to me was a couple of weeks off school and a little discomfort in the early stages.

Putting those two things together – getting sick and the necessity of it – reminded me of something I’ve thought for quite a few years now. In fact ever since I’ve been involved and interested in the world of alternative health it has appeared to me that our immune system needs training. That training takes place when we are young and before our bodies become flabby and unfit. The training, just like a work out at the gym to strengthen your muscles, involves fighting invading organisms.

I believe experiencing these diseases when we are young is essential to the health of our immune systems.

Mumps is something you need to experience pre-puberty otherwise it can get very uncomfortable and even cause sterility. What the vaccination programme has clearly done is to push the mumps experience out of its correct place in the body’s developmental cycle and push it to where it likely will cause you some problems. I mean Fordham are making a lot of fuss about this outbreak.

Anyway I figured, that makes sense to me, and my experience tells me that what makes sense to me is frequently true even though no one else believes it. But I was curious to see if any research had been conducted that provided evidence that vaccination weakens the immune system, because otherwise all I had was a theory.

There is a study published in Clinical Pediatrics (sic) in 1988. They looked at the incidence of acute illness in children for the 30 days before and the 30 days after being vaccinated against diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus (DTP).

“A total of 82 healthy infants received DTP, and their symptoms were reported by parents and observed by a pediatrician at weekly intervals. Those babies experienced a dramatic increase in fever, diarrhea, and cough in the month following DTP vaccine compared to their health before the shot.”

This study excluded the three days after vaccination when a fever is a common reaction to the vaccine.

1988!!! That’s 26 years ago.

“An uninformed patient is compliant” says Dr Martin Smith. This is typical of the medical attitude to negative evidence about what they routinely do. It seems to me that the medical attitude is one of if we ignore it, it will go away.

Another study demonstrated that the measles vaccine produced a long-term immune suppression.

Yet another that annual flu vaccination depletes T-cells. T-cells are an important part of a healthy immune system.

A study of dogs at the Purdue Veterinary School showed that vaccinated dogs developed antibodies to many of their own bio-chemicals. This meant that the vaccinated dogs “were attacking their own fibronectin, which is involved in tissue repair, cell multiplication and growth, and differentiation between tissues and organs in a living organism.”

The unvaccinated dogs were perfectly normal.

These studies clearly demonstrated that the dogs developed auto-antibodies to their own DNA.

How did the medical world respond?

‘We need more studies’ anything to continue with things the way they are.

You are going to get bored if I continue quoting research, but there is loads of it out there. Vaccination damages our immune system. The medical world isn’t interested, they believe they are doing good.

As for Big Pharma ineffective vaccines are a huge cash cow – especially when Governments are persuaded to buy them by the shipload. Vaccines are just a licence to print money. The only tests to get FDA approval need to show that they increase the presence of the appropriate antibodies. Other damage isn’t looked for and no long term research on this is conducted by the vaccine manufacturers.

The Big Fear that Big Pharma promotes and encourages is that we will all die horribly and our children will all be crippled and deformed if we don’t pump them full of these chemical concoctions. But all we do is damage our children’s ability to be healthy, whole human beings with a natural ability to ward off disease organisms and enjoy good health and rapid recovery from minor infections.

My thanks to:

Dr. Randal Neustaedter at http://www.healthychild.com/do-vaccines-disable-the-immune-system/

http://gaia-health.com/gaia-blog/2011-12-01/flu-vaccine-damages-childrens-immune-system-is-the-risk-of-cancer-increased/

http://www.dogsadversereactions.com/scienceVaccineDamage.html

Categories
Alternative health weight control

Goal Weights: What Are They and Why Do I Need One?

Your goal weight is the target you are aiming at. It is also, for about half of dieters, a place that is forever in the future. For those who keep up the struggle and achieve their goal weight, it is the point at which celebration takes place, and a return to normal eating, which very quickly puts that goal weight back in the past.

The goal weight is important. It lets you know where you are aiming and when you get there. These are good things. Using arrival at this goal as a signal to return to normal eating; that’s a bad thing.

The goal weight needs to be attainable and maintainable.

It also needs to be thought about, rather than a number you just pick out of the air.

I have had many clients sitting in my consulting room, carrying anything up to 7st (100lbs ish) excess weight, deciding that their goal weight is what they weighed at 16 when they were sylph-like and hadn’t yet discovered the joy of over-eating to solve a whole stack of emotional problems.

The goal weight needs to be realistic.

Targets that are attainable with just a little effort, create huge internal rewards. There is nothing like success at something that was at least a little challenging to make you feel really good about yourself. It also sets you up with an increased chance of success with the next target. So if you need to lose 7st (100lbs) then do it in 1st (14lb) steps. Or even 7lb steps.

The goal weight does not need to be your final weight.

The goal weight is really just a tool – something to help you get where you want to go. One of the big problems, if you are very overweight, is that the job of returning to a normal weight is really difficult. There is no other way of looking at it. It is no use kidding yourself it will be easy. You can’t undo years of food abuse in a couple of weeks. There isn’t a pill you can take that will let you off the personal responsibility hook.

Acknowledge that the weight is there because you eat too much and exercise too little.

It’s no big deal. But taking responsibility means you can own the results and the successes that will come your way. So think sensibly about the weight you are aiming for. Bear in mind also that this is just a number you are picking influenced by the weight of all the people around you who are a healthy weight. They are not you. It does not matter what other people weigh. What you probably want is to be a specific shape, or clothes size, (again influenced by the opinions of others) and are guessing the weight that matches that vision of the future you. That’s ok as long as you understand what you are doing.

But bear in mind that fat and muscle have different densities and you can be shapely with lots of muscle or blobby with lots of fat and be exactly the same weight. So choose your goal weight wisely.

If you need to lose a lot of weight then set an easily reached goal initially like 1st or maybe 10lbs to give yourself a taste of success. Learn to maintain that lighter weight for a couple of months before moving on to the next step of losing a little more. The key to successful weight loss is not losing the weight – it’s keeping it off.

If  you want to know a little more about how easy it is to keep that weight off once you have lost it then check out my book How to Lose Weight Easily and Free Yourself form Diets Forever.

Inspired by:

http://www.3fatchicks.com/how-to-pick-a-goal-weight/

Categories
health self-help

Is ADHD Really Just A Problem With Food?

 

When my oldest daughter was around 5, we noticed that every now and again she would go totally crazy. I think the current term is hyper, I suspect that schizo is now politically incorrect. It was distressing to watch because she was totally out of control, over-excited, tons of energy, reason went out of the window, and it was impossible to control her. It would last an hour or two, then she would calm down and be perfectly normal.

Our first thought wasn’t “oh she’s sick better get her to the doctor”, it was more like “what can be causing this.”

I suspect, nowadays, a trip to the doctor’s would have resulted in a Ritalin prescription and the diagnosis of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyper-Activity Disorder) without a great deal of investigation.

Still we cared about what was happening to our daughter and so we watched and made connections and eventually realised that it was the green food colouring found in sweets and cakes that was causing the problem. No green food colouring, no problem. Eat something green and out-of-control.

I treated one 14 year old young man who had been diagnosed with ADHD and was taking medication – but it wasn’t enough. He was a very intelligent young man and I suspect this is quite often a factor in ADHD – boredom in school. His home life meant his parents had little time to give him the attention and love he craved, so he acted out because that brought him the attention and excitement he needed in his young life.

Peter Breggin MD writes about abandoning responsibility for our children in his book Toxic Psychiatry where he suggests that medication for ADHD is simply a substitute for the love and attention our children need.

A recent New York Times article suggests that around 1 in 10 school age children suffers from ADHD, and that 1 in 5 of 14-18 year old boys will also receive that diagnosis.

Just looking at the numbers, anyone with any sense would realise that this is not a mental health problem – it’s affecting just too many people. It must either be an environmental problem or misdiagnosis.

A Netherlands study reports that around 2 out of every 3 diagnosed cases of ADHD is actually food hypersensitivity – as it was in my daughter’s case.

The three main problem food areas are Dairy, Wheat, and Colourings/Additives.

So if your child is going a little crazy from time to time, do a little investigation yourself by eliminating food types from their diet and see if that makes any difference. If it doesn’t then spend a little more fun time with them and enjoy their presence in your life, rather than treat them as a nuisance getting in the way of what you would rather be doing. Once you get them started on medication they will probably be hooked for life. The side effects of these drugs long-term are an unknown and I suspect we will have a major epidemic of mental illness – because of drugs like Ritalin – in 20 or 30 years time.

Dangers associated with food dyes

Categories
Alternative health

You Can Heal Your Life

This is the title of a book written by Louise L Hay. Louise Hay is also the founder of Hay House; publisher of many famous self help authors like Wayne Dyer, Don Miguel Ruiz, Esther Hicks, and  Marianne Williamson.

Hay House is certainly the place to go for high quality Mind, Body, Spirit books. But I wanted to write a little about You Can Heal Your Life to follow on from yesterday’s blog post If the Mind Creates Illness, How Can We Use it to Create Wellness? This book has been around since 1984, but it is still completely relevant. It was written when the exploration of the Mind-Body connection was in its infancy and pioneered by just a few – people like Caroline Myss. My copy of You Can Heal Your Life is a beautifully illustrated gift edition full of colour and wonderful illustrations that provide a real lift to the spirit. It is cheering just to leaf through the pages.

At the beginning of the book Louise Hay lists several statements about her philosophy.

Two of special note are:

We create every so-called illness in our body.

Releasing resentment will dissolve even cancer.

One of my favourite parts of the book is the quick reference guide which consists of several pages of health problems and their likely causes. I find these disturbingly accurate and very helpful.

If you are interested in self-healing, and there is no suggestion here that you should do this instead of seeking medical advice, then this book is a must for your bookshelf. Louise Hay even healed herself from cancer using what she teaches in this book. She states ‘dis-ease can be healed, if we are willing to change the way we think and believe and act.’

This book is much more than just a list of physical problems and their possible causes it is a way to live. It is split into four parts. Part 1 is about Louise Hay’s beliefs about life and living. Part 2 is about how problems arise, how we resist change and what we need to do on a daily basis to ensure healthy living. Part 3 looks at those main areas of life that we pretty much all need to be working well in order to live happily: relationships, work, success, prosperity, and the body. It also includes that list of problems and solutions I mentioned earlier. Part 4 winds things up and Louise Hay writes about her own encounter with cancer and what she did to heal it.

If you know nothing, or very little, about self-healing then this book is the best place to start. It is easy to understand, well-written, and will leave you feeling as though you are back in control again.

It is also the start of a journey, a journey where you will never look back.

Categories
Alternative health self-help

If the Mind Creates Illness, How Can We Use It To Create Wellness?

Let us assume, just for now, that the Body is the expression of the Mind. What I mean by this is that you need to pretend that your body reflects back to you what is going on in your mind. So, if there is an ache in your body then we must assume there is an ache in your mind. If there is a pain in your body then there is a pain in your mind. If there is irritation on your skin then there is irritation in your mind.

You get the idea.

Of course, you will be way ahead of me by now, looking within your own BodyMInd for those connections past and present to discover if what I say is true – but remember I said to pretend, just for now.

Naturally in your thoughts about this it will be obvious that serious disease processes in the body cannot escape from this allusion. So you would also have to pretend that problems like cancer, diabetes, asthma… all fall into this category. And then we step into that minefield of babies who are born sick, or develop life-threatening or debilitating diseases while they are very young. Then what about genetic problems like cystic fibrosis?

It gets very complicated very quickly.

Then there is another aspect too.

If your body’s ill-health is a reflection of your state of mind, then surely that means that all disease is self-inflicted?

Well that would be a yes too.

But there is a world of difference between deliberately causing something to be, with full awareness of the consequences, and innocently causing something to happen because you had no awareness of  the negative consequences 20 years later. No one in the process of dying from lung cancer would ever have lit up a cigarette 40 years earlier had they been fully aware of the anguish and agony they and their loved ones would eventually have to endure.

So yes, there are problems with this assumption, but let’s just keep it simple for now and pretend the assumption is true for minor illnesses and that it isn’t true for children at all.

Give yourself a quick body scan.

Is there any discomfort, irritation, ache, pain, anywhere in your body? If there isn’t then do this when there is.

Get a good sense of that area of your body. Feel into the discomfort fully. Move your mind, as best you can, into the space the discomfort occupies. Feel its boundaries and limitations. Then allow your mind to wander and feel your way to what these sensations remind you of. Say, for example, you have an itch – a skin irritation – who or what in your world causes you to prickle inside? Who do you want to scratch when you interact with them? Who makes you see red.

If you have a painful knee, then think about what it prevents you from doing that you don’t like.

Look for the connections between your discomfort and your world. See the similarities.

Remember we are pretending. This is just a game of the imagination to see if you can see connections and similarities. Don’t forget also to let your mind drift back into the past. Sometimes these things take a while to germinate. Have fun with this and don’t take it too seriously.

See what you come up with, maybe keep a notebook on you. One of the interesting things that happens with this game is that you may not be aware of a connection while you are deliberately looking for one, but that connection can pop into your mind at any time. A notebook is a handy way to make sure you don’t forget those fleeting connections.

Just collect the connections – no matter how crazy they may seem. Once you have a dozen or so, ponder on your records and see if you think this was just an interesting game or a new reality you have just entered.

If you would like to get a little deeper into this exploration and learn some techniques to actually change your body’s responses then check out my book Change Your Life with Self Hypnosis. In these pages I go into much more detail on this subject. In fact a large section of this book is dedicated to exploring the possibilities for using the Mind to Heal the Body.

Categories
Happiness health self-help

Are We Killing Our Kids?

I was watching the TV news last night. I think it must be at least 3 years since the last time I watched a news programme. I was interested in learning about the flooding that is taking place in the southern parts of the UK. That in itself was quite fascinating, but even more fascinating was the political response. Unsurprisingly it seemed to be let’s find someone to point the finger at. It would have been nice if the attitude had been a bit more what help do you need?

At some point I also found myself watching a reporter talking to a barista working for Pret a Manger. He was a graduate who left University with a £20,000 debt and was living at home. His sister was at the same University doing the same degree. She was anticipating finishing the course with a £40,000 debt, still living with their parents, and no job prospects.

This morning I came across an article about some research that suggests more than a quarter of US students experience extreme stress during the school year. A few weeks ago I was reading about the introduction of tests for 4 and 5 year olds before they even start school. This immediately puts pressure on parents to teach children the stuff the schools are designed to teach children. I mean how can you pass a test unless you already have some skills?

It’s like we hate our kids.

Now, I know not every child has a happy home life and some parents do have a tough time and some children have a tough time too. Do we really need to add to it?

But, given that that’s the way it is, what can we do about it?

What we can do is to teach children healthy ways to deal with stress.

Play is an amazing stress reliever. By play, I don’t mean sitting in front of a TV with a video game controller. By play, I mean physical play. Getting up, kicking a ball, running around, playing imaginatively with friends. Leaving the mobile phones at home so there are no distractions from the wonderful fantasy world that children find so easy to create and live in.

Teenagers of course don’t want to play imaginatively. They want to be grown up already. But grown up these days means living with chronic stress and anxiety. Mind you society is crumbling now as the politicians have finally lost their grip on reality, so it’s probably a good idea to teach yourself and your children about simple techniques that can reduce stress levels and allow you to enjoy your life in whatever way feels right for you, despite what’s going on around you. This is one of the reasons it’s been 3 years or more since I watched any news. News is always bad. I protect my mind from exposure to bad, consequently I live more peacefully. Am I out of touch? Yes. Does it matter? Not even a little.

If you are interested in taking back some control over your own life, your world, and the destiny of you and your children then I outline some simple techniques to achieve this – using nothing more than your imagination – in my book Change Your Life with Self Hypnosis. While it’s not aimed at teenagers, the techniques for stress reduction are easy to learn and youngsters will benefit greatly because their imaginative abilities have not yet been stifled. The better your imagination, the quicker you will achieve powerful results.

 

Inspired by:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/11/stress-teens-psychological/5266739/

Categories
health

The Vitamin D Revolution by Soram Khalsa, M.D.

Categories
Happiness health self-help weight control

Biggest Loser Wins, Or Do They Really Lose After All

Biggest Loser, is a TV show where you need to be obese to get on the show. The winner is the person who loses the biggest percentage of weight relative to their initial weight. The premise behind the show is that you will be entertained by watching people who are seriously overweight struggling with their emotions, serious food rationing, and an exercise regime that belongs in a barracks.

The latest US series winner, Rachel Frederickson, lost 155lbs, around 60% of her starting body weight. The last 45lbs disappeared in just 2 months. That’s around 5lbs a week.

Interestingly she says that her weight gain was the result of a relationship break up.

The big question is did she lose too much too fast?

I’m also curious about whether or not it will stay off.

You see the prize for this feat of body sculpting is $250,000. Money is a powerful motivator. One quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money, clearly Rachel was more motivated than the other contestants.

I wonder, now that the money is in the bank, whether she has the will to maintain her current pattern of eating and exercise. I suspect that, if she plays her cards right, she can monetise her momentary celebrity and prolong her moment in the sun. There is a rich world out there for celebrity exercise videos, telling her story, endless chat shows while the star still shines, and so on.

My issue is not with Rachel, she worked very hard and received a well-deserved reward. My issue lies with the encouraging and lauding of rapid weight loss. Rapid weight loss is bad for your health. Rachel’s BMI is now significantly below normal – in other words she is under-weight. Still, that’s just Hollywood isn’t it? Every female working in CelebrityLand pretty much has to be underweight. Normal body weight just looks, well, fat compared to the majority of female celebrities.  It seems to be a lifestyle choice. Still the financial rewards provide the motivation to maintain the situation.

But take away the money and what is left to drive the starving yourself every single day for the rest of your life?

My work with weight loss focuses on easy and sustainable lifestyle changes; changes that are small shifts in eating behaviour over a long period of time. This works. Weight is lost gently. There is no fight with food. There is no battle with denial. Eat what you like; just eat what you need and no more. It works. There is no gruelling regime to follow. Of course my recommended rate of 2lbs a week is far too slow for most people, despite the fact that those 2lbs stay off for ever rather than creep back on, and Rachel would not look much different now if she followed my weight loss plan. She would also be considerably poorer.

However, because the change is assimilated slowly it is effortless to maintain. It is based around changing attitudes to food. There is no reason to treat your body as an enemy that must be brutally punished for having the audacity to look fat and unattractive.

Good luck to you Rachel, I sincerely hope it all works out for you.

 

…and if you want to know about a gentler, permanent way to reduce your weight then check out my book How to Lose Weight Easily and Free Yourself from Diets Forever.

Categories
health weight control

That Cream Cake Might Kill You After All

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years working with smokers and helping them to break their habit. You might expect that fear of lung cancer is what drives smokers to seek help to quit, but that isn’t always the case. In fact concerns about ill-health only drive smokers who are already experiencing health problems to quit. The majority don’t like the anti-social aspects of being a smoker or the smells.

Part of the problem is that people only seek to take action to maintain good health when their health is already beginning to fail. While individuals have no adverse symptoms there is nothing to drive the motivation for change. This is why the graphic anti-smoking advertising campaigns have little effect on smoking numbers.

Because of this belief in immortality and permanent good health, individuals tend to continue to do what they do. So if you live a healthy lifestyle with lots of nourishing food and exercise then you will continue. But if you live an unhealthy lifestyle with an unhealthy diet then you will also continue. The reason for this is that although, when we worry, we worry about the past and the future. When we eat or exercise we do it now. So unless you have developed the habit of exercise in the same way that smokers develop the habit of smoking, you will choose to eat rather than to walk, run, jog, or cycle.

That is why change is so difficult for most of us. We did what we did yesterday and nothing bad happened so we can probably do it again today and nothing bad will happen – and that’s good – right?

When the bad is small, we do not notice it. But when the small bad happens every day, then one morning we wake up and we’ve got a big bad that seems to have appeared out of nowhere.

I was reading today about how obesity is now being linked to several cancers:

Breast – 33,000 cases a year caused by obesity.

Endometrial – 13,900 cases.

Kidney – 13,900.

Colorectal – 13,200.

Pancreas – 11,900

Oesophagus – 5,800.

Gallbladder – 2,000.

These are US figures for incidence of cancers directly related to obesity.

With breast cancer the problem is increased oestrogen in the bloodstream after the menopause. The oestrogen levels are directly linked to excess fat. The slimmer you are the less oestrogen you produce and the less likely you are to have to suffer the radical treatment offered for breast cancer.

“To lower your risk for cancer: Lose weight, increase physical activity and eat healthier”, says Anne McTiernan, director of the Prevention Center at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

The trouble is we worry about things that we think are definitely going to happen, like an interview next week, or a dental appointment next month; and we worry about things that we convince ourselves will happen, even though they don’t – like the plane crashing, or that person we like rejecting us. What we don’t worry about are the things our body might experience until it is.

The problem is motivation. We do anything – even eating less and exercising more – if we are sufficiently motivated. But when we are physically comfortable in our armchair watching mind-numbing dross on TV and enjoying our snacks the world seems a cosy place where nothing bad will happen if we stay just where we are. It’s not true, but we believe the illusion we have created and continue to do nothing to love and cherish our bodies by moving them and using them and caring about what we put inside them.

It’s up to you.

 

If you want some help check out my book How to Lose Weight and Free Yourself from Diets Forever.

 

Inspired by:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/04/weight-loss-breast-cancer/5201621/

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/weightloss/2009-11-05-obesity_N.htm