Be Worthy of Who You Are and Lose Weight

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For you to permanently control your appetite, to be able to lose weight and keep it off, begin with an inner journey. That journey is to prepare yourself for the challenges of changing your lifestyle.

You already know that losing weight is not just a dietary problem. But why do you keep getting stuck? Why do so many of your efforts backfire, when they seem to work for others (at least they do in the ads)? What keeps happening that makes your weight loss efforts so difficult?

Here are some things you might want to think about.

1. Do you feel you have the POWER to handle life’s personal difficulties — to overcome the obstacles to permanent weight loss — to change what you are doing that led you to this place?

If you already feel powerless to change important things in your personal life, things you ardently feel need to be changed, you are drained of the energy, the confidence, the initiative to take the steps to make new weight loss efforts.

Even if you feel confident in some areas of your life, it is often difficult to have that confidence when it comes to your own self. So, here is a question: Aren't there things you would absolutely do to protect your kids? Let nothing stand in your way? But when it comes to doing things for yourself, deeply personal things, do you sometimes falter?

Start by believing you are worthy of having a different life, a better life. Not just that you want it, but that you deserve it. Beginning there, gather the power, the fierce strength you use to protect your children, to change yourself. And insist that others let you make that happen. That is the level of energy you must muster for yourself.

If you have spent a lifetime doing things for others, sacrificing your personal desires and needs year after year for your family, this may be very unfamiliar territory. It is difficult to turn all that energy you have focused on others for so long, and tell yourself you deserve to have it now focused on yourself.

But you must. Once you do, reach deep inside yourself and find the power to make it happen. That power is there. It always has been. It is what has made so much meaningful for your family and closest friends. You have the power. Use it for yourself.

2. Do you feel COMPETENT enough to make the right lifestyle changes, the right way, at the right time — do you believe you have the ability to do better and really make it happen?

If you've tried to lose weight several times before, and in the end you gained it all back each time (plus some), it is easy to lose confidence in your ability to discriminate in selecting what to do.

It is easy getting lost in the plethora of advice, and the constant stream of new and contradictory information in the media – TV, magazines, newspaper. Plus there is all that stuff you learned from mom, with friends and family eager to offer their opinions.

Sometimes, it just seems that you are swimming in so much information that its difficult to keep up. Let alone do anything different that is meaningful.

Then there are those nagging doubts... is this the right thing? Is this really going to make a difference? How do you know? How can you sort it all out?

Plus the biggest challenge of them all – when do you get the time, the alone, quiet time, to think it all out?

So, even when you get into change mode, you can lack confidence in your competence to do something effective.

3. Are you LIKABLE & WORTHY of this change? If you are not likable, if you are not worthy of this change in your lifestyle, you can never be happy. Why?

Happiness is founded on acceptance of yourself — you need self-acceptance to be happy. So, if you’re not going to be happy anyway, because you are not likable or worthy of it, what’s the point of making positive lifestyle changes designed to make you happy?

Your lifestyle changes may be well and good, but if you are still not likable or worthy, what’s the point of the effort, the inevitable pain, your changes will cause?

Besides, if you’re not worthy of it, you probably don’t deserve success, or happiness, or fulfillment – or to weigh less permanently — you don’t deserve the things you really want.

These three things significantly affect:
–Your ability to identify what you really want to do, that would truly make you happy.
–Your belief about whether or not you can change things, or can change them in a positive way, and
–Your motivation in making changes — is it going to be worth it?


If you are going to change your lifestyle, if you are really going to weigh less permanently, you have to look past the "diet" you are considering. You have to do some interior work – go on an inner journey. You have to decide, ultimately, if you are worth it.

Once you get that far, you will find a way to make it happen.

How do you control your appetite?
Conclusion: Be worthy of It


My Associations & Chicklets at the End of Each Post
VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com
Curb Your Appetite – Stop Your Cravings
©2010 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Don't Eat a "Balanced" Meal: Rule 21 to Control Your Appetite

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For as long as I can remember since coming to America I had been told to eat "balanced" meals. And to make sure I feed children "balanced" meals. Haven't you heard that advice too? Sort of motherhood and apple pie, right?

Since I have not always lived in this country, that repeated advice always made me wonder: What does a "balanced meal" mean? Where did it come from? Is it good advice? I remember hearing similar advice repeatedly in my youth, but in English, it just sounded oddly different.

Both my parents are physicians. My father is a pediatric surgeon (he still practices and teaches at a prestigious university). My mother was a pediatrician before she retired a few years ago, but spent most of her career as the chief medical administrator for a large province in my home country. So, nutritional admonitions were a constant part of my upbringing.

This was especially true because, as an infant I had an intestinal problem that required surgery to resolve, with two major consequences. The first is a large surgical scar that made a bikini not my first choice for beachwear – as I lived in Hawaii for 9 years, that was always a disappointment.

"Your body will not allow you to eat like other people"
Secondly, my father, while he railed about the importance of "proper nutrition" and the Russian equivalent of a "balanced meal" he always counseled me to not follow the latter advice. "Your body will not allow you to eat like other people," he told me. "You need to eat small meals, and just one kind of food at a time, or you will cause yourself digestive problems."

I followed his advice all my young years, and he was right. Whenever I tried to depart from his stern warnings, it was greeted with intense intestinal pain.

Not long after I came to this country, and eager to live the wonderful American lifestyle and indulge in its many wonderful culinary delights, I quit listening to the voice of my father in my head. I eventually paid for it with pain that exceeded anything I felt during childbirth (years later). After countless tests and ultrasounds, and x-rays, I underwent another difficult abdominal surgery.

This not only enlarged my bikini-defying scar, it made me go back to living Papa's advice.

I couldn't eat like American's did.

And for many years, that kept me lean (except for a problem pregnancy – which is a different story, for later).

Why study "balanced meals"?
So, I decided to track down the whole "balanced" meal idea. It seemed so wholesome, so correct, so ingrained in our practices and language, that everyone I talked to about it wondered what value could possibly come from even questioning it.

Yet, my double abdominal scar reminded me daily that there was a disconnect from the "eat a balanced meal" approach and my forced "one-food-at-a-time" meal choices. While I kept a youthful figure though my 30's, all my friends were steadily gaining weight. Something wasn't right, so I decided to check into it.

There was also this nagging thought in the back of my head: If, as Papa said, eating like other people was not good for my body, was it possible that it wasn't good for those other people either – it just took longer to show-up as a problem in their bodies?

Sometimes the things we do the most often, the things about which we seldom ever ask "why is that so?" turn out to be things that really matter.

This is my report to you on what I learned about "balanced meals."

What is a Balanced Meal?
Basically, it is the idea that every meal ought to include each of the major macronutrients, like carbs and proteins and fats and vegetables and fruits. It is where we get the idea to serve a baked potato with steak, with a small salad on the side. Or rice with our fish. Or a side of applesauce to accompany our pork-chops and mashed potatoes as an evening meal.

What could be wrong with any of that? Well, quite a lot, as it turns out. That advice is part of the weight gain problem and certainly stands in the way of losing weight.

Where did the idea of a "balanced meal" come from?
When scientists first discovered vitamins and minerals, and learned of their importance to our bodies, it became apparent that some foods were better for our health than others – some foods just had a lot of these vital elements, while others didn't. So our parents and grandparents were loaded-up on the importance of eating the "right foods" to make sure they got all the right nutrients.

But, then it became apparent that some foods had too much of bad things – like fat. So they were told NOT to eat butter (for example) because it was nothing but fat. Margarine was the "healthy" replacement for butter. Of course, now we know how that advice turned out. Margarine is full of cancer-causing, artery clogging, heart-destructive trans-fats, and butter has been rehabilitated. So, we sort of made a u-turn on that one.

Trouble is, we need to make a u-turn on a lot of other bad dietary advice. And the first to go, if we want to lose weight and keep it off, as it turns out, is to get quickly away from "eat a balanced meal". Papa's advice to me, to help me manage my abdominal struggles, was correct. Yet it ran counter to everything else he taught my older sister. And she and Mom, and Dad have increasingly struggled with their weight, and high blood pressure, their entire lives.

The Politics of "Balanced Meals"
Once you accept that it is important to get a lot of varied nutrients into your body, the question is "when?"

The answer as to "when" to eat nutrients turned out to be very political. Every industry wanted in on the act. The breakfast cereal companies wanted their meals to be paramount. The dinner guys wanted their meat or their potato or their asparagus to be included. Every food producer wanted to be a potential part of every meal.

The key point, politically, was not to set up a dietary guideline that keep key industry players out of any one meal. Thus, the politically correct idea was born: "balanced meals."

Everyone won. Every industry – cereals and grains, meats and poultry, vegetables and fruits, nuts and legumes. If the government told you to eat "balanced" in every meal, every food-player had a chance to have their food on your plate – for every meal. Perfect solution. Politically.

(The FDA even passed a regulation just a few years ago that breakfast cereals couldn't have 100% of all required nutrients added – except for those like Total® that were already doing it. The theory was that if you consumed all your required nutrients before noon, where would that leave the other food companies trying to push their nutrient-laden foods on you to eat later in the day?)

Trouble is, there was not a shred of scientific evidence to support the "balanced meal" concept. The idea that you had to get EVERY KEY VITAMIN AND MINERAL IN EVERY MEAL, was based on NO SCIENCE whatsoever. None.

In fact, the science said, (especially back 50 years when all this really took root), at worst, that as long as you got the nutrients in your body sometime during the day, you would be just fine. We now know that if you get some nutrients just 2-3-4 times a week, even some important life-enhancing nutrients (like omega-3), your body will still thrive.

The idea that you had to get every nutrient in every meal is bogus.

A "balanced meal" is a political statement, not good dietary advice.

So, is there a down-side to "balanced meals"?
The short answer is: YES.

There are times of day that your body can use certain nutrients better than other times a day – at night for example.

But the real problem to "balanced meals" is the weight-gain factor.

What is now known is that when you eat a starchy carbohydrate with a protein, (meat with potato, rice with fish) in the same meal, it can cause weight gain (it doubles the amount of insulin your body produces, and extra insulin is a fat generator).

When you eat fruits with other foods, same thing happens. (There are several other fat-making combinations, but these will suffice for now.)

The problem is not so much the food choices. It is the foods you eat together.

But it is literally "politically incorrect" to say that today. So we see Internet ads for "secret diets" that involve mixing up what you eat, and food combining, and scores of books on the subject going back to the 70's. These are just manifestations that the "balanced meal" advice we are getting is flawed, and companies are trying to fill the credibility-gap with there own half-solutions, and guru-led self-serving pseudo -science.

Now much of the data attacking the "balanced meal" concept has been around for a very long time (even some starting in the 1920's when insulin was first discovered). Over the last 30 years a ton of research has been done on this, and published in the medical journals (we have a full-time science researcher on our staff, and the primary author of ScaleDown For Life™, whose sole job is to keep track of all this science – so we track all the latest dietary research very closely).

But the science of "balanced meals" is still taking a back seat to politics. As recently as the beginning of the Bush (Jr.) presidency, the FDA had one food guide pyramid based on the science of food, and a much different one from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), based on the politics of food. Can you guess which won out? Mr. Bush fired the FDA commissioner (Kessler) and the USDA got its way. (By the way, have you seen the "new-improved" confusing food guide pyramid they produced? Neither has anyone else.)

You have to learn how to eat for health and weight loss
The point here is not government bashing. The point is, if you want to understand what to eat, to keep you healthy AND lose weight (or at least not gain weight) you are going to have to rely on something other than government publications and the food industry to tell you what you ought to be eating.

Papa was right. "Your body will not allow you to eat like other people," he had told me. "You need to eat small meals, and just one kind of food at a time, or you will cause yourself digestive problems." He forgot to add: "If you eat like me and mom, you will gain weight like us."

With Papa's excess weight and high blood pressure, and Mom's expanding girth, there is a lesson in how NOT to eat for all of us: Don't eat "balanced meals."

That is my report to you on what I learned about "balanced meals."

(And why I'm glad I have a double surgery scar to remind me every day that "eating healthy" is the opposite of eating a "balanced meal".)


PS: On the road to losing weight, you have to lose the "fat between your ears" if you want to keep the weight off permanently. You can't just diet, lose some pounds, then go back to what you were doing before. Isn't that the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?


How do you control your appetite?
Conclusion 21: Don't Eat a Balanced Meal


Next article...
How do you control your appetite:
Rule 22: Eat Grasshoppers with your Cereal






VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Cry: Rule 20 – How do you control your appetite?

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A few years ago we were filming a video for a French weight loss education company.

The film crew had settled into one of those great old French farm houses, which ooze charm and the history of having been lived in since before the French Revolution. The small windows, short doors, even the old iron stove was still there. Pictures of family and friends and vacations, even an odd politician or two, were everywhere scattered like odd-shaped jewels in places not obvious to an American.

The lady of the house was a true lady, imparting genuine charm, with an earnest gaze into your eyes as you spoke to her. She listened intensely, and spoke softly and slowly with barely a hint of an accent. Her gray hair was neatly tucked into one of those buns you seldom see anymore, but it gave her an air of casual regalness, if there were such a thing.

Morning light peered tentatively into the tiny breakfast nook, barely room for two, with a small, old hand-painted yellow table. Tea was seeping in one of those kettles with a padded fit-quilt covering it. More sunlight began to flood the room. Then one of the crew had an idea.

He ran out into the equipment truck and came back with a strange device that resembled one of those things beekeepers use to smoke beehives with. He told the cameraman to truck back into the living room (filled as it was with chairs and Ottomans and floor lamps and pictures, and an old cast iron two foot tall ashtray that no one used anymore), moving a camera and crew into there that wasn't an easy task.

They laid a curving camera track back into the living room so the camera could come slowly around the corner, as if it were quietly eavesdropping on a conversation at the painted yellow table. The set dresser moved the vase with the single white rose to one side, so as to not block the view of the teacup from the new angle.

They rehearsed the shoot and the moving of the camera. Checked the light off Sofie's face. Then pronounced themselves ready.

Sofie had a talk earlier with the director. She had used the French company's weight loss education program (which we had created for them) and was said to have a very lively testimonial. She did not want to rehearse her lines, she said, because she wanted it to flow directly from her heart.

They started the smoke machine, just enough to catch the morning light that was now streaming into the nook. The rays of light from the multiple small panes created beautiful patterns on the slow moving wisps of smoke that was so subtly present you couldn't guess it was man-made.

"As a child I was always active. I grew up here among the trees and vines and rows of carrots, and cabbage my dad insisted we grow from a variety he found in England (of all places)", Sophie began. "I have always lived here. I can't imagine any other place in the world I would want to be. René and I were married just out there," she gestured to the gnarled tree outside the nook window. "He was sooo sexy to me."

"I grew to love him here, in this house, and appreciate his wonderful ways with me. Like this house I couldn't imagine being with anyone else." To this last moment Sophie had been upbeat and radiant. But she was turning more serious. I looked at the director who privately made a motion with her two fingers like scissors – she was telling me they would have to cut some of this preamble, but Sophie was just getting started, and she didn't want to interrupt.

"I had my daughter Simone over there in that bedroom – the same room I was born in." This time she didn't point, she barely nodded in the direction that was directly in front of her, the view now blocked by the camera and crew and those big silver light-reflecting panels they use for filling-in the shadows.

She was more serious now. "René left me 10 years ago. We buried him next to my parents down by the Cathedral. He said he was sorry. He didn't want to go first, to not leave me alone. His last words, from my mother's old bed were, 'I'm sorry I have to leave you now, please forgive me Sophie.' With that he closed his eyes for one last time." Sophie was looking straight ahead, almost unblinking, but her gaze was entirely on her memories.

"I loved him more in that moment than in all the moments of my life put together, and he just slipped away, closing his eyes slowly and grasping my hand as tightly as he could. Then he was gone."

"I couldn't cry for a long time. I just sat there holding his hand and looking at his face that I had seen him shave a thousand times, the lips I never tired of kissing, the hands that had held mine so many times, in so many ways. And it had all slipped away, to be gone forever, and I just wanted to be with him – to be with him, to be..." she trailed into silence. Her eyes unblinking, her face frozen.

I looked at the crew. Everyone was crying, holding back involuntary sounds that escaped from deep in their chests. The cameraman kept rolling, silently motioning to the grip to roll him very slowly forward.

"I've missed René these ten years. Missed him so much. I couldn't garden any more. Never tended to Mom's roses. Never planted Dad's English cabbage. I was alone here for many years, with Simone in the South, visiting a couple of times a year. When René's small pension ran out, and I had to figure out how to pay the bills. I seldom used the electricity. (Grandpa installed that hanging light over there himself.) In the Winter I wore two old wool sweaters from my cousin's sheep."

"One day, after many years, I ventured back into the garden and started growing things again. Slowly life re-emerged into my hands, light was coming into my eyes, my legs didn't feel so heavy any more." For the first time during this long sequence Sophie looked around the room, as if she saw us all there for the first time.

"When I came out of my cocoon I noticed that I had gained a lot of weight. Somehow I don't recollect how or when it got there. It just did. I was kind of shocked. I had never had been overweight my entire life. I was always proud of that, and René would not have approved." With that last line she managed a small smile that barely turned up the corners of her mouth.

"Then I decided I had to lose it. I couldn't ask my pall bearers to carry me at that weight. It just wouldn't do." That was such a strange comment, I thought. I had never heard it before.

"So I tried dieting. I wasn't very good at it. I never payed much attention to others discussing such things, as I knew I never would need to know about it." She sipped tea for the first time from one of those floral tea cups you see in the old movies.

"Now, to me, dieting meant you had to stop eating. So I stopped eating. And for the first time in my life I got hungrier than I could imagine. Obviously that wasn't going to work. So, I decided to try to cut things out of my diet instead of not eating anything at all. While my weight fluctuated a bit, I never really lost anything. I didn't eat this or that or the other, but somehow I never lost anything substantial."

"With a limited budget anyway, I kept thinking about cutting out the most expensive foods. When I tried that idea, it failed to help. Bedsides, I got to the point that I didn't know what else to cut out any more."

"That Spring I had my old neighbor help me plant a big garden (he is about 8 years older than me, but since we grew up together, 8 years had always seemed like a LOT older. Now, with his help it was a grand garden like my grandmother used to plant. I grew a little of everything. I was ravenously hungry and as soon as the peas were ready, I ate them right off the vine. I couldn't wait for the tomatoes to ripen, or the melons to smell just right, or for the squash to be the right color and size. The strawberries, small and wonderful."

"By Fall I had lost a lot of weight. I was almost down to my original size. And I had spent so little money to do it, too. I was not cutting down, I was eating more, and enjoying it more."

Finally, Sophie inserted some kind words about our client's weight loss education program, how it helped her understand what to do from then on to keep her weight off. But by then, all of us in the crowded room just wanted to hear what she was going to say next. The commercial had been turned into a life story we all anxiously wanted to hear.

"About a year ago, René came to me in a dream. I don't remember dreaming much, except when I was a child. So, even though I was dreaming, I knew it was strange I was dreaming."

"I thought as René walked toward me in the dream that there never was a moment when I didn't remember our last moments together. Although I felt pain, unbearable crushing at that last moment, I have always been very thankful we could share those moments together. In the dream he said he could only visit for a short time, but he wanted me to know he had wandered a long time without me where he was now. He said he had never felt so alone."

"'Then one day," René said, "I saw you in your garden. I couldn't speak to you, but I came back every day to see you. I pushed all my love and admiration for you into those peas, and squash, and English cabbage. And I saw you blossom once again, eating the fruit of our love. You were just as beautiful as the minute I married you. Don't forget that I am with you in that garden for whatever time you have remaining. It will always feed you life. With it, I will always feed you love.'"

"He turned to go, in my dream, and I pleaded with him to stay. He turned around and I saw his wonderful old face one last time, the one I had seen him shave a thousand times, kissed countless kisses. He held up his hand and pointed to the tree outside the breakfast nook window as he began to turn away. 'I am always waiting for you there, every morning when you're having tea. Someday, but not too soon, we can meet there, and we can walk these gardens, together, hand-in-hand.'"

The smoke machine had stopped. No one noticed in the silence.


How do you control your appetite?
Conclusion 20: Cry

Next article...
How do you control your appetite:
Rule 21: Express your sensual self


VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Mom Was Big. Ideas to Eat Less – to Live More.

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"Mom was big."

You get excuses from your mother.

Your solutions are your own.

You are not a prisoner of your genetics. Unless you want to be.

Do you want your child to be shackled by the same excuse?

It is not an easy life, being overweight. Especially when there seems no upper limited to how high you can go.

And, whatever you may say to yourself about your own weight, you know you don't want the same thing for your children.

The "battle" for permanent weight loss
The difficulty is figuring out what to do – how to lose weight and keep it off permanently. There is a reason it is often referred to as a "battle with excess weight."

The first key point here is that while your genetics may work against you, because you may seem to be losing that "battle," it is not the fault of your character, nor your willpower, nor your restraint.

The second key point is that what you "know" is what is causing your on-again, off-again weight loss. "The "fat" is between your ears. Lose that, and you'll lose weight steadily.

How do you do that? Well, it may be as easy as doing the opposite of what you "know". While I don't advocate that, it certainly can't cause you more harm than has already been inflicted on you by the plethora of bad information you presently hold in your head.

No quick solutions to permanent weight loss
There are no quick solutions here – but there are real ones. Solutions grounded in science. Not some "secret" that has finally been revealed to the world by a self-styled guru, no matter how thin they may be now, nor how much they used to weigh.

The human body is an amazing miracle. The solution to permanent weight loss is to work with the body, not to try to trick it into short-term weight loss. The body will always respond to that by making you gain it back, plus some. Is that what you want?

If all you want is to drop a dress size or two for a special occasion, then there are certainly 101 ways to do that. The Internet is stuffed full of them.

If you want something more lasting, if you want to win the weight "battle" one last time, and then retire from the "war," you are going to have to be a lot more selective in how you choose to lose weight. No miracle herb, tea, food, or exercise is going to deliver what you want.

Nearly every commercial weight loss program is based on one scientific fallacy or another. Just because so many may sound similar doesn't make any of them correct.

The biggest weight loss fallacy – Low calorie diets
One glaring key fallacy: Low calorie diets.

Whether it is Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, NutriSystem, HCG, or African bush beans, nearly all are engineered to have you lower your calorie intake to very low levels. You will lose weight every time you do that – it doesn't really matter what program you chose. But, you will also pay the price with additional weight later. Low calories diets are ticking "weight bombs." Is it any wonder that these companies all thrive on repeat customers? Where is the "permanent" in "repeat"?

Which leads us back to you being a prisoner of your genetics. Unlike other wars, being confined within the prison of excess weight is a choice. You can choose to surrender and give up. Most of us, at one time or another, have felt that way... war-weary, perhaps you have felt that way for many years.

But you can break free of the prison bequeathed you in your genes. You can lay down the weapons of war, and walk away, free. Because that long-sought permanent solution is equally encoded into your genes. To take advantage of that, you will have to make a U-turn at the bottom of the hill. And that is the subject of my next article.

"Mom was big?"

You don't have to be.

Does saying your mother was big really make your day lighter?

VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Your tongue is hungry? Ideas to Eat Less – To Live More.

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The things your tongue is hungry for are the things, that if you eat them, will spike your blood sugar and make you hungry again.

In the long run, would not giving in to your tongue's hunger really make your day lighter?


Ideas to eat less – to live more.


VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Put a string on the floor. Ideas to Eat Less – To Live More.

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Try this experiment with a gathering of your friends, men and women. Get two colors of strings. Have everyone take the first colored string and lay it on the floor. Have them lay it out as a circle on the floor, to show the circumference of the size they "estimate" their body is at its widest place.

Now, take the different colored string, and have them put it around the widest place on their body. Tie a knot in it to mark the right place, to remember exactly how long the second "actual" measurement string is.

Finally, take the second "actual size " string and put it on the floor in a concentric circle with the first "estimate size" string.

Which circle is on the outside?

Who was more accurate, the men or the women?


Ideas to eat less – to live life more.


VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Food is about relationships. Ideas to Eat Less – To Live More.

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A nice dinner with wine. A movie with a good friend, sharing a tub of popcorn. Eating a hurried lunch across a desk at work with a co-worker. Preparing a nice family meal. Thanksgiving. Tasting someone else's ice cream cone. Bringing a treat to a small get-together. A dinner-date in a new place.

Eating alone sucks. Food, when you are alone, can possibly nourish your body, but what you crave is nourishment for your social-soul.

You eat together because it creates its own mood, its own pleasure beyond the food itself. Food is more than just eating.

So, how do you uncouple your need for human interaction with your need for food? You don't. You shouldn't.

What you need is to uncouple relationships from the pleasure of eating the wrong food.

Too often you eat too much, and you eat the wrong food when you are with someone else. The closer the relationship, the more likely you are to not follow the sensible rules you have made for yourself.

You get into one of those: "I won't follow my rules if you won't follow yours." "It's such a special occasion, I'm going off Weight Watchers for this meal, how about you?"

What we need is permission to say, "How can we both find great pleasure in this meal, and keep on the path of our weight recovery?"

Are there no pleasure foods that can keep you both going in the right direction?

Perhaps, at the end of the day, that is an important quest you and your friends can go on together: "Let's find a dozen GREAT PLEASURE FOODS and WONDERFUL MEALS we can really enjoy together."

If you don't, you will always be battling the results of the wrong foods and meals. If you don't, and, you "stay on the wagon" together, you will each have a sense of being deprived of the joys of great food with enjoyable people. Which leads to wrong food choices later. And will deepen any unhealthy relationship you may already have with food.

So, a key activity is to search for, experiment with, and enjoy new comfort and pleasure foods with your friends. Do it together. That kind of support you can each use.

When you do that you will have not only a new relationship with food, you will share new experiences with dear friends.

In the long run, wouldn't that make your day lighter?


Ideas to eat less – to live life more.


VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Hang your husband on a clothesline: Rule 18 – How do you control your appetite?

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OK. So you don't have a clothesline. But your mother did, so you know what I'm talking about.

Perhaps the man (or partner) in your life shouldn't really be hung on a clothesline. But let me explain the sentiment I hear so often.

"Men don't get it."

Men don't get it
I hear that repeatedly, in various forms and sizes, but it is a recurring theme. "Men don't get it."

Perhaps it’s not their fault. It is rooted in their genes. Men gain weight slower than women. They lose it faster. And when they do get overweight, who cares? He certainly doesn't.

Women, on the other hand, have a rocky time with their weight. It goes on too easily. Comes off very reluctantly. And when you get overweight, people notice. You notice. You care.

It is not a balanced equation. We all know that, of course, but the reality can often hide resentments, jealousies, passive competition, and even sabotage. Most of it coming from you.

We love our mates, we really do. And we know they love us. But when it comes to weight, things can get quietly difficult.

Men and women really do see things differently when it comes to excess weight, and it is rooted in more than biology. It is also driven by our still-dominant male culture. That makes it difficult for both men and women to steer towards a better way to handle weight control issues for women.

For women, losing a lot of weight can be an emotional and frustrating battle. Self esteem can be at stake. Not the kind of self esteem issues that boil on the surface of your everyday life. But, quiet, inner doubts that silently grow. In time, it affects your outlook on your dreams and desires for the future.

It can also have a sexual context to it, as you try to work out intimacy issues for yourself – trying to give more, even as you feel less able to receive.

Intimacy issues
None of this happens overnight, of course. None of it dawns on you all at once. These are hidden, accumulating things that build over the course of years. Even when weight loss becomes successful, the emotional load can stay very much alive, and linger in unexpected ways.

When you and your partner gain weight together over the years, it can get to the point when you both realize you need to do something about it – again together. In the most supportive of ways, you can be a team to find solutions. But, if you are like most couples, that kind of teamwork breaks down all too quickly.

Because of the genetics of men's bodies, they can lose weight faster than women (usually at the rate of 2:1). They seemingly can do less and still lose weight faster. They can "cheat" on your new diet, and it still doesn't seem to affect their weight loss as much as it would you.

A partnership to lose weight?
That is where your "partnership" can break down. Unless you are both fully aware of the differences in biology, your teamwork can falter. He may feel you are not doing as much as him. You feel it is an unfair accusation. He thinks you must not be dedicated. You feel it is not fair that somehow he is making better progress than you. You end up working at it harder than him.

He can start criticizing the things you eat. You can start feeling those judgmental looks. You start to eat differently than him – usually much less than him – to "catch-up" to his weight loss. He may not see the thousands of things you need to do daily to keep the family running and the house chores done, things that impinge on your time for the kind of exercise your body needs to get in shape. He has more freedom to exercise as he wants.

Things can be difficult if you try to lose weight together. Unless you are massively open to the differences your bodies require, it can drive a wedge between you.

Going it alone
But, if you are going it alone, the problems only multiply. There is no free ride if you are the only one dedicated to losing serious weight.

Years ago we owned a large suburban fitness center – the kind with lots of moms and kids, and where spandex and tights were not the stuff of club attire. We started the beginnings of what is now our ScaleDown Weight Loss Education Program. We had teamed up with Johnson & Johnson's Weight Management course with some custom exercise programs put together by our resident exercise physiologist, and threw in a health dash of consultation with a registered dietician. It was the perfect, well-rounded program. Or so we thought.

Several weeks into our first group's use of the program, they were making great progress, individually and as a group. Six weeks in, we had one of those "congratulations for your success" type of mini-celebrations. We wanted them to be recognized for all their hard work and success. And that marked the beginning of their problems. Problems we had not anticipated. By our tenth week, many of our best "weight losers" had dropped out.

Best "weight losers" give up on free trip to Las Vegas
We were exceptionally puzzled because our initial group had a special incentive to make it to completing 12 weeks. The "deal" we had made with them when they signed up was that if they made it to 12 weeks, no matter their progress, they would get three days and nights in Las Vegas. FREE. All they had to do was stick it out for 12 weeks.

The puzzle was why would our best "weight losers" drop out so near their goal? Give up on a much needed FREE vacation to Las Vegas?

Perplexed, we called the dropouts and asked them to come in. Our concerns turned to dismay.

It took some prodding. And careful questioning. Had we done something wrong? Was not the program working for them any more? What could we do to make things better for them?

The answers, we found out, were not about what was happening at the club. It was what was happening in their homes.

These women had taken to eating different food than what they were preparing for their families. An added cost.

They were spending less time at home... not a lot less time, but less time nonetheless.

These women were spending more time at the club, working out and going to our classes. Plus taking time after class to just chat with the other women in the program. They were in this together and had found common bond with their classmates. They were taking time to share life before going home.

These women were reading more at night, to learn more about what they needed to do. And to just catch-up on making a slice of time for themselves personally.

All this was taking its toll on their relationships. While they were losing weight, they were also losing inches. Their contours were just starting to resemble something closer to how they looked when they first got married. And that is where it had finally gotten them into trouble. Accusations.

Love daggers
"Are you out to get somebody else?" "Do you already have somebody else?" "Why are you so happy?" Then the cruelest dagger: "You act like you are in love, again."

Wow. We didn't see any of that coming. Nor did they.

Faced with this stark dilemma, they chose their family (once again) over their individual needs. They quit the program.

Separately, not knowing other women were facing the same contradictions, they dropped out. Alone. Confused. Hurt. They went back to the old food. The lack of exercise. Less time for themselves. And more weight.

Heartbroken. We cried together.

A few years later I ran into Stella at the supermarket. She was a bit smaller than when she had started the program, but not anything like the slimmed-down woman I had last seen at the club the evening we all talked.

"I had no choice," she said. "I still don't."

Men don't get it.

Hang your husband on a clothesline
It may not really be his fault. Genes and male-culture are on his side. But, some day you need a break from it all. You need some time-out. With love and compassion for the confusion he may experience, explain to him the new journey you are on. That you need his unlimited support. Tell him. Then hang him on the proverbial clothesline for a month or two or three or four (or more), as you re-calibrate who you are – who you are becoming – and how you want to refocus your life for the future.

There is more at stake here than weight. More at risk than a different dress size.

You – who you really believe you are – need to come out of the muddled mix of daily living. You – a fully realized woman – need to emerge with your hopes and dreams and aspirations intact. Because, in the end, successful weight control is about you being you. Radiantly you. And projecting that to all the world. Most importantly of all, experiencing it yourself.

Weight loss or not, isn't that what your life is about – about being how you were created and formed, for you to live all of your unique role in life? For us all. For him. For the kids. Especially – especially for you?


How do you control your appetite?
Conclusion 18: Hang your husband on a clothesline


Next article...
How do you control your appetite:
Rule 19: Make a U-Turn at the bottom of the hill


VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Tie a string around your waist. Ideas to Eat Less – To Live More.

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An experiment was conducted on hospital patients who remained ambulatory but in the hospital for long stays. The staff secretly removed the waist string on the hospital pants of half the patients, chosen at random. Those without the string gained 5 pounds more than those with the string.

Lesson? Don't upsize your clothes. Say to yourself, "This size and no further."

In the long run, would tying a string around your waist really make your day lighter?


Ideas to eat less – to live life more.


VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Lose the fat between your ears. Ideas to Eat Less – To Live More.

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Scientists have long known that 90-95 % of all fat accumulation is between your ears.

If you can lose the fat between your ears, your weight will come down steadily.

In all your efforts to lose weight, it is not what you don't know that is causing your weight gain, and inability to get it off.

What is sabotaging your weight loss is what you already know, that is wrong.

If you are thinking about going on a diet to lose weight, and you want to keep it off permanently, you need to go on a diet that loses the fat between your ears first. Otherwise you will just yo-yo your weight.


In the long run, would losing fat between your ears really make your day lighter?

Ideas to eat less – to live more.


VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Spend all your cash. Max out your credit cards: Rule 16 to Control Your Appetite.

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To eat less is not a strategy to lose weight for many among us. It is survival. It is saving the food you would eat so your children can eat. And, in addition to the reality that this type of weight loss leads to weight gain, it is also a tragedy that hunger is all too present among us.

A few years ago I was in Chicago on a blustery Spring day to meet top executives of America's Second Harvest. Now called Feeding America it is a premiere resource to feed the hungry in America. According to the latest data, in the majority of states one in six kids is "food insecure" – parents don't know where their child's next meal is coming from.

Feeding America, and Ramona
Feeding America is the largest network of food banks in the nation. Receiving donated food from major food manufacturers and grocery store chains, as well as supporting scores of food drives, it feeds those who would otherwise go hungry. For many on food stamps, it supplements an otherwise meager cupboard.

I got a chance to talk to Ramona when I was in Feeding America’s conference room. She was a bright and cheery woman in her mid-forty's. She now worked at Feeding America, but she used to be one of it's recipients. Her story touched me deeply.

Back then Ramona was a single mother with three children, two of them pre-school age. She worked two jobs in South Chicago to support her family. Despite her mother's advanced diabetes, she would take the bus over to watch the kids while Ramona worked. On days when mom was too sick to come over, Ramona either had to skip work at her minimum wage jobs, or her oldest daughter had to stay home from second grade to watch the other two.

She spoke of a day when mom had a doctors appointment and couldn’t come over until noon. Her oldest was already in school, but Ramona needed cash so badly that she couldn’t afford to take any time off work. So her neighbor across the hall said she would "look in on the little ones". With no credit and no cash, to feed her kids Ramona felt she had no other choice. After all these years that wrenching decision still haunted her.

Ramona also took night classes working on her college degree in social work. It took her almost 12 years to get it done.

Starving to feed her kids
During this time, when the kids were still quite young, Ramona started getting extra food from the America's Second Harvest (now Feeding America) food bank in her area. Many days, especially at the end of the month, before her next paycheck and after the food stamps were all gone, her supermarket “shopping” consisted of whatever was available at the food bank. Once a month it was the only food they had. When the food wouldn’t stretch, she didn’t eat.

All during this conversation with me Ramona was very mater-of-fact. Her dark eyes would peer into mine as she wanted me to understand the great pride she had that her kids were now doing so well at school.

Shopping for food at a food bank
Then she said something surprising. Knowing my background, and why I was there, she said,"You know, starving so your kids can eat is the surest way I know to gain weight."

She explained how frequently her food stamps would run out about three weeks into the month, so she would go to the food bank. Sometimes the only food on the shelves were starchy boxed foods, or sugary cereals, or foods with high fat content. Healthy eating wasn't an option. Eating what was available was a necessity.

Then, when finally the food stamps came, feeling deprived and hungry, they sometimes ate more then they should. Fresh produce, she said, was their treat.

Ramona gained about 80 extra pounds in those lean years. Her kids had become overweight too. Now only a couple of years off food stamps, she had lost some of her extra weight, and was intent on losing the rest. One thing she knew for sure, "Not eating is the best way I know to gain weight," she repeated.

With her college degree, she went to work for Feeding America (then America's Second Harvest), with a passion for helping others eat. Her story and countless others like hers finally got the food producers and grocery stores to find ways to bring more fresh produce to the shelves of America's food banks. There is never enough, but at least there is a bit more to go around.

Eating less and healthy weight loss
Hopefully, as you read this, with frequent articles on this blog advocating you eat less to lower your weight, you don’t need to eat less just to feed your children.

But, there is a lot of truth to what Ramona said. Your body undergoes a lot of changes when you don't eat enough consistently. The “eating less” talked about here is not the same thing as starving yourself. (See previous post: Don’t Not Eat: Rule 5 to Control Your Appetite).

Your body needs a rich assortment of nutrients from a wide variety of sources. And the fresher that food is, the less processed it is, the better it is for your body.

When I talk about eating less here, it is about lowering the number of calories you consume, but not drastically. If you are overweight and cut 200-300 calories out of your daily diet, you will lose weight. Going from 2200 calories a day to 1900 is not about starving yourself.

When you consistently over eat by just a little, you gain a little, steadily. When you eat less regularly, you lose weight, steadily.

Eating less means making wise food choices. It is about being aware of not only what you put in your mouth, but how much.

Losing weight is a mindful choice. A choice you make one bite at a time.

Without credit or cash, eating less like Ramona could force you to control your appetite. If your situation is a bit better than that, controlling your appetite, eating less (in the right way), is a sure path to healthy weight loss.


PS: Ramona's story touched me. There are tens of thousands of others like her’s. And more every day. If you would like to help feed a family or two through their challenging times, donate to your local food bank, or contact Feeding America. Put fresh produce on someone’s table tonight.


How do you control your appetite?
Conclusion 16: Spend all your cash. Max out your credit cards.

Next article...
How do you control your appetite?
Rule 17: Have Surgery

VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Don't be a fast learner. Ideas to Eat Less – To Live More.

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Sometimes when faced squarely with a problem you want to solve, you jump right into researching it and learn all you can. You're like a sponge. After a few long sessions with Google, you're googled out.

A few days later you remember the key points you think you've gleaned. But like most people, you can only hold so much new information in your brain at a time. It's sort of like a small scratch pad with just a few pages.

Actually, most of what you learned, or could have learned is rapidly forgotten or glossed over.

The key to learning fast is to learn slow. Learn in short bursts of energy. Then wait a few days. Not only will you remember more, and understand more, something magical happens.

When you go to sleep, when you "sleep on it," all that "new" information mixes with all your "old" information. And that's the secret to really learning. When new mixes with old, new connections occur. New ideas spring up. Contradictions between old and new appear. Insights occur.

Then, the next time you jump into learning even more "new" stuff, you have a different point of view to discover and understand the newest "new" things. Your next bout of research will go in different directions.

Most importantly, you comprehend the new information and YOU CAN MAKE BETTER USE OF IT.

And that is the secret to making a new lifestyle change stick.

Do you want to make your new lifestyle stick? Be a slow learner.

In the long run, would learning slower really make your day lighter?


Ideas to eat less – to live life more.


VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Eating is an "Ethical Statement"? Ideas to Eat Less – To Live More.

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An old friend dropped by the other day. She's changed a lot in the years. Led a very interesting life, with more than her share of challenges along the way.

She just got back from a trip to Asia and the Middle-East. Her last trip was to Africa.

As we gathered in the kitchen to prepare a light lunch together, and mixed up a bunch of our mutual old-time favorite snacks, she said,

"You know, the food we eat is an ethical statement. What we eat, or don't eat. How it is packaged. Where our food comes from. Who grows it. How it is grown and prepared. These are all ethical statements."

Now, days later, I've had some time to contemplate what she said. It really made me think:

"Food is an ethical statement."

Is it? What do you think?

In the long run, would "eating ethically" really make your day lighter?


Ideas to eat less – to live life more.


VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.

Remember the Alamo! Rule 14: How do you control your appetite?

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Defeat is an ugly word. No one wears it very well. When it happens to you, you put the best face you can on it, and move forward.

I remember having a lengthy conversation with a soon-to-be-retired Chairman of one of the oldest “meal-plan, weekly weigh-in” type of weight loss companies. I asked him what he was most proud of from his many years of financial success at the helm of this household name company.

He quickly replied, “Over 85% of our customers are repeat customers.” With that he pursed his lips together and savored his achievement, half-closing his eyes.

Repeat Customers of a Weight Loss Company

Contemplate that for a moment. Repeat customers – weight loss company. Hmmm.

Now, to the cynic in me “repeat customers in a weight loss company” is a symbol of failure, not a boastful success.

The more I thought about that remark – even now a long time later – makes me fume. What he was saying was that his company made a lot of money from the failure of whole lot of women to keep their weight off, for a whole bunch of years. And he was retiring in luxury from the paid-for misery of people that trusted his company.

What he was saying was that his weight loss company sold false hope.

What was between his lines was that his company could get you to successfully lose weight. But they knew you would gain it all back, plus some. So, since they were nice people, and you actually did lose some weight, since you are now even more overweight than you were last year, you pay these people more money to help you lose it again.

Now, the ire in me is really aroused. Perhaps they planned it all that way. I really want to believe that Weight Watchers, and Jenny Craig, and NutriSystem, and other companies of that ilk started out wanting to help people. But somewhere along the road, surely some executive saw the numbers and realized:
“Wow, we keep getting the same overweight people back. We even get a lot of our customers from the other weight loss companies. If we were really doing our jobs, if our programs really worked, wouldn’t we be seeing mostly NEW people, not repeats, retreads, and do-overs?”

Or did the executives say…?
“You know what, these people keep coming back because they don’t keep buying our expensive, special diet foods year round. If they just stayed on our meal plans, and unthawed them 2-3 times a day, they would not have to come back”.

Maybe it is simpler than that. Maybe the weight loss executives said:
“We need more repeat customers. It’s cheaper to get old ones to come back, than advertise for new ones. How can we tweak our program for short term weight loss and long term weight re-gain?”

Clenching defeat from the powerful jaws of victory

I’ve been to these programs. I’ve seen the happiness, the real sense of satisfaction and progress these women have when they are seeing success in their weekly weigh-ins.

I’ve also had countless conversations with women who, many months and lots of new pounds later, said they felt they were failures. They didn’t jump right up and proclaim that, but they felt defeated by the system they were trying – unable – to follow.

The worst part? They all blamed themselves. They all confessed that there was something wrong with their will, their strength of character, their metabolism, their financial ability to stay “on the program.”
Their _______. So they failed. They felt defeated.

And the next time they decided they really needed to lose weight, guess what? They went back to these same old companies. Or employed the same failed system. Same result. Same short term win. Same long term defeat.

Old joke my grandpa told me:
Lady walks into a doctor’s office. She is hitting herself in the head with a hammer. She says, “Doctor, it hurts when I hit myself in the head with a hammer. What should I do?” The doctor says, “Quit hitting yourself in the head with a hammer.”

We’ve all heard the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over, while expecting a different result.

First Truth:
There is nothing wrong with you. You are not a failure. You do not lack will power. Your character is just fine. Quit blaming yourself.

Second Truth:
It’s time to quit hitting yourself in the head with a hammer. It hurts.
Corollary: It’s not about calories, or weighing food. It’s not about exchanges or carbs. It’s not about fat grams or sugars or magic potions. The weight loss companies are wrong. Dead wrong. Get rid of that insanity.

Think about it. Is the only way to lose weight permanently to eat expensive packaged foods for the rest of your life? How bland, boring, and expensive is that? And what have you learned from them about how to eat to keep it off for life? Lots of repeat customers says, “not much.”

Is it possible that what you have learned from these companies is wrong? Even though it is churned over and re-cycled like some endlessly re-warmed left-over meat loaf by the popular media, does that make it correct?

Consider that if all they have been telling you is right, why does everyone, sooner or later fail at it?

“Repeat customers” is an admission of abject failure. Financial success for them. Weight failure for everyone else.

Third Truth:
If you are 30-50 pounds or more overweight, if you keep doing what the weight loss companies are telling you to do, it will kill you – slowly – but kill you nonetheless. It is not just the excess weight that causes health problems. It is the constant recycling of up, then down, then up weight re-gain that challenges your heart. As well as injuring your sense of will and self-respect. Both, in time, will kill you.

How can that be? If it’s not about fat grams and food exchanges and all that complicated stuff, what is it about?

What can it be? What is it that you don’t know? Is there some hidden secret to success, kept for thousands of years, buried under Ed McMahon’s mother’s front porch in a mayonnaise jar in the Oakridge mountains? No.

Fourth Truth:
It’s about you.

Fifth Truth:
You resist believing the fourth truth. As with all truths, the answer starts in your center and works its way out.

So, if you feel you have an injured center from years of hitting yourself in the head with a hammer. If you believe there is something wrong with you that prevents you from losing weight permanently. If you feel you need a helping hand to lead you where you can’t seem to get by yourself…

If you can’t grab hold of and focus on the beautiful light that illuminated your future… you have to start there.

It’s about unleashing the inner beauty of soul that was buried by kids, family, job, relationships, money problems, lack of sleep… so many things that got in the way of you being you for years on end.

It is not about you becoming anything… you already are

Everything you need you have already. You have the will, the strength of character. You don’t need a strong helping hand. Like the cowardly lion in Oz, all you need is the courage. To believe in yourself. And when you get that far, you can go the rest of the way to your success. You don’t need a wizard to do that for you.

Remember the Alamo

A long time ago, in what was then the distance reaches of the American frontier, a small band of men, some with wives and children, holed up in an old church mission, made the soft adobe walls as strong as they could, and waited for the army of Santa Ana to attack. Surrounded, outnumbered 10 to one, out-gunned, running out of water and food and ammunition, they held out. Then on the fateful day, after endless cannonade, they were attacked. The attackers were repulsed. Attacked again. Again repulsed. On the third wave, they were overwhelmed. Hand-to-hand, bayonet-to-knife, empty musket-to-shots-fired-at-close-range, they all perished.

The rag-tag Texas army, valiantly led but under-manned, arriving late to the rescue, retreated. Then the cry went forth. Remember the Alamo. Quietly spoken at first, it rose across the Texas plains. Remember the Alamo. Their numbers swelled. The Army grew. Remember the Alamo. The Army became an Army, as men flowed in from every point of the compass. They trained. More came. They drilled. They became strong. Confident. Remember the Alamo. They marched quickly to catch their enemy. Then they attacked. Their voices rose in unison as they passionately charged into battle – Remember the Alamo! Throats rising with the victorious assault, capturing Santa Ana himself, they cried, REMEMBER THE ALAMO!!!

Deep inside you, the Alamo plays out in silent drama. You may not know it, or sense it, but it is there. You have been holding out, surrounded by overwhelming forces that have smothered who you are, who you were once on the path to becoming. Remember the Alamo.

Assaulted by the realities and challenges and the multitude of sacrifices in life, you can be defeated. It is difficult to go on. More difficult to know what to change. Seemingly impossible to see how things can be any different. Remember the Alamo.

It can hurt sometimes. The sacrifices and difficulties can run deep. Leave scars. Surrounded by reasons for joy, it can be painful to smile… when you are alone with your thoughts and recollections, when the future can be dim and dark and foreboding. Remember the Alamo.

Defeat feels ugly on you

No one, including you, wears defeat well. When it happens to you, not only move forward, use it as a rallying cry that raises your courage to victory. Turn ugly into beauty. Remember the Alamo.

Quit hitting yourself in the head with a hammer. Quit believing all the failed-truths you’ve been told by the weight loss industry and the press. Everyone who follows it fails. Just look around you to see the truth of that. You have not failed, they have failed you – in a sense they failed to send you the resources, the truths, the reinforcements you need to succeed. Remember the Alamo.

Where is the wizard when you need him? Where are YOUR reinforcements. Where is YOUR rallying cry? Remember the Alamo.

Start there. Find a place in you that remains strong inside you. Fortify your soft adobe walls. Gather food and water and ammunition. Then find a place of peace inside your soul, and let it grow. You are strong enough to handle the inevitable attacks on your needs and independence . Despite the despair that can overcome you at times, all that you need, you have all ready, planted in you since birth. Remember the Alamo.

Is there a word, a phrase, a place of strong resonance that tells you who you are? Remember that. And hold it upfront in your daily conscious thought. Put it on your mirror. Place it on your wall. Carry it on the top of that picture in your wallet. Remember the Alamo.

Victory comes after your defeat

Victory comes from the heroic effort to gather all your resources in one place. To focus on your worthy goal. To overcome the opposition, no matter the cost – there is always a way – life finds a way. And you are life. Remember the Alamo.

Rally all the disconnected pieces of yourself. Concentrate your energies. Focus your resources. Attack the center of your enemy. And say to yourself, “Who I am matters. I deserve being happy. I have raised my expectations of myself and I will succeed. My butterfly wings will unfold. And I will soar. I will, from this day forth find, express, and be – me.”

When you have gotten that far, you will not have much further to go.

How do you control your appetite?
Conclusion 13: Remember the Alamo!

Next article...
How do you control your appetite?
Rule 14: Get a Volvo

VP Programs Development, ScaleDown for Life
VP Education, GoZonkers Inc.
Founder, CelebrateLifeNutrition.com – Satisfy Your Hunger
©2009 Laura Gontchar. All Rights Reserved.