The Miracle of Balancing Your Body Chemistry

Okay, I admit - sometimes I indulge in a few of life's guilty pleasures, and reality tv is one of them. Just the other night, after a long, mildy stressful day, I decided to sit down and watch tv for about an hour before going to bed. I didn't want to watch anything too heavy, so I decided on a show called "Kendra." Yep, you guessed it, from "The Girls Next Door" with Hef himself...

Kendra is a quirky girl who doesn't seem to take herself too seriously, and I love that about her. She seems very relatable regardless of her celebrity status. At the beginning of this particular episode, her agent called to inform her that she only had about 10 days to get in shape for a photo shoot that she agreed to do after she had her baby, who was born a few months back. She immediately panicked because she was far from being bikini-body ready (in her mind), and the first thing she did was throw open her pantry door and pull out all the boxed, processed food and toss it in the trash.

Kudos for that. She accurately recognized that bagged popcorn and packaged cookies were unhealthy. But then she did what most people do and went into restriction mode. She started to deny herself the very foods she craved the most, which continued throughout the rest of the episode. And that's where the trouble began.

From there, she proceeded to try to grab a can of cake frosting back from her husband and inconspicuously snatched bread off the table when she was out with friends. The sad part was that the underlying feeling I sensed from her was guilt, not one of pleasure or relief. Oh, and a little shame mixed in to top it off and give her that extra jolt of low self-esteem. After all, she went from posing in Playboy to becoming a mother, which unfortunately didn't leave her body in post-model shape, so she should feel like crap about herself, right?

Wrong. How unfair. I like Kendra. She cracks me up. She has a childlike view of the world, so I expect she will live a long time. Yet coming from a Health Coaching perspective, it broke my heart that she thought she could no longer enjoy food in order to release excess weight, which is a common misconception. It became obvious to me though that she not only liked those foods, but that she was addicted to them as well. They were her drugs and she needed a fix - literally. Just how the food manufacturers want it.

Her next step was to hit the gym. Ah, alas, the holy grail of physical fitness. Blah. I'll pass. How boring is that? I found a better way.

The first thing I did to restore my natural shape was to change my diet. Now, I didn't have a baby but I did have a corporate job, which caused so much stress in my life that I sustained myself on the Standard American Diet (SAD). I didn't go to the nearest Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers either. I'd rather poke my eye out with an ice pick than eat that "food." Instead, I switched to real food. Whole, organic food, straight from the earth like nature intended. Things like kale, broccoli, fish, and nuts became my side kicks. And as much raw food as possible, but some cooked, because what's better than a nicely broiled salmon filet with brussel sprouts and a baked sweet potato with REAL butter? Raw is best when it comes to eating food because the nutrients and enzymes are left intact, but you can't eat raw fish, other than sushi. Plus it's just not entirely sustainable 100% of the time, unless you live in a jungle.

My other favorite food is raw chocolate though, which I eat as often as I want. In fact, I make sure I eat it at least once a day, so there's no deprivation here! The most amazing thing that happened when I changed my diet was that my taste buds came ALIVE! My body began craving healthy stuff.

My next move was to start walking. I decided intense workouts at the gym just weren't my style. I never liked the gym but forced myself to go, thinking it was the only way I could truly burn calories and fat. This time, I let myself relax into doing what my body truly wanted to do, and it didn't involve punishment. I chose a softer, gentler route to physical activity that included belly dancing too!

And the most important thing I did, even before anything else, was to identify the root cause of the problem. In my case, it turned out to be adrenal exhaustion. This condition, which effects as much as 80% of the American population, is wreaking havoc in our lives. It's seemingly impossible to avoid considering the amount of stress we are under today too. It threw my thyroid and hormones off, led to a wicked Candida infection, and made my life miserable in general. Unless I fixed it first, I could have eaten celery sticks and exercised all day and I never would've dropped any weight, at least not permamently. Thank God I realized it first off, or I would've just been spinning my wheels.

In the process of healing my adrenal glands, weight just slipped off (with barely any effort), my skin cleared up, my energy soared, and my sugar cravings disappeared. I had finally discovered the "secret" I had been looking for all my life.

The best part is that it's a piece of cake to maintain, pun intended ;) Because I still eat cake! And cookies. And pies. And pastries. And a bunch of other "bad" foods. And I teach my clients how they can too, without restriction or denial.

These days, I enjoy more time for myself, and no guilt or shame about what I eat, plus I easily fit into my skinny jeans every day of the week. I no longer throw my money away on diet plans that don't work, and instead invest it in food that does.

I find it makes more sense, don't you?

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