Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2010! I hope your holiday season was wonderful and that the year is off to a great start. I also hope you have been able to avoid the onslaught of weight loss resolution commercials that invade the airwaves, and now the internet this time of year. Hang in there, it's almost over. Soon the "hunger monster" from you-know-where will go back to his cave (Why is hunger a monster anyway? If you don't get hungry, how do you know when to eat?) and hopefully we will see less of Marie Osmond in the coming weeks. I'm so glad I have Tivo so I can quickly pass by all the annoying commercials.

This edition of the newsletter is the debut of my new, biweekly version of Stop the Weight! Based on your suggestions earlier last year, I am creating shorter newsletters that will come out twice instead of once a month. I'm really excited about this change as I will be able to get you the information you want on a more regular basis.

I've been working a lot behind the scenes in the last few months preparing some exciting changes for this year. The new look and scheduling of the newsletter is just the beginning. I have a new blog being created right now and several secret projects that will be announced throughout the year as they are completed. I'm also super-excited to have the privilege of taking some advanced training on Intuitive Eating with Evelyn Tribole, the co-author of Intuitive Eating! All of these projects and training will come together to help me realize my vision of reaching as many people as possible to help them find the peace they seek with food and their bodies and ultimately get their lives back and live fully.

If this is what you are looking for, I hope I can be of assistance along your journey. As always, I look forward to any feedback, comments or questions - don't ever hesitate to contact me.

Weight Loss Starts With Listening to Your Body

"I blew it this week, I'll start again Monday!" Sound familiar? After the binging, guilt and punishment pass, you plan your next diet, hoping for a different outcome. While the diet industry wants you to think you're a failure and just need a new diet or more "willpower", this isn't the truth.

Permanent weight loss and a healthy relationship with food come from learning how to eat intuitively. After time, your body will return to its natural weight and you can maintain it without dieting, deprivation or excessive exercise.

We were all actually born with this innate ability - so why are so many people disconnected from it? As a young child, you probably heard messages such as, "eat everything on your plate and you'll get dessert", or "you can't be hungry, it's not dinner time!" Maybe your grandmother was offended if you didn't eat seconds. And you were probably forced to eat things you didn't like in order to get a cookie or ice cream. As you got older, you learned about dieting from your friends at school and about how you should look from magazines and television. And you're still inundated with these messages. It's no wonder everyone is confused, feeling like failures!

There are four main reasons why we overeat:

• The first is "diet deprivation backlash" - every time you go on a diet, you have certain "bad"-listed foods. The more you can't have it, the more you crave it. For every diet you attempt, you can expect a binge to follow.
• Emotional eating is the second reason. Eating for emotional reasons is a learned behavior, usually from childhood. When you stuff down your feelings with food, you get to focus on feeling sick and beat yourself up for doing it, thereby avoiding the original emotion and situation.
• A third reason we overeat is a lack of truthful nutrition information. There is no shortage of experts telling you how, what and when to eat. With intuitive eating your body will let you know when it's hungry and what it wants. While high-protein diets are dangerous and the weight loss is not permanent, having a small amount of protein every time you eat is a great strategy. If you eat nothing but carbohydrates, you will probably be hungry in an hour. Protein helps buffer carbohydrate in the stomach, slowing down digestion and keeping you satisfied and your blood sugar stable.
• Finally, we overeat from getting too hungry. You forget to eat or keep putting it off until you are so hungry you are shaking, feeling dizzy, unable to concentrate and irritable. When you finally eat, you eat everything in sight, still shaking, thinking you are still hungry. This goes on until you finally feel the food in your stomach, and you are way beyond satisfied, probably feeling sick. Pay attention to your hunger and eat when you first feel it to prevent weight gain and the inevitable desire to go on yet another diet.

All these reasons lead us to overeat, keeping on the undesired weight. Weight is simply a symptom of overeating. When you address the cause of the overeating, instead of the symptom, the diet-binge-diet cycle stops. The next time you consider a diet, try listening to your body first. You may be surprised at the wisdom it is ready to share with you!

Take Intuitive Eating with you - on your iPhone!

I follow Evelyn Tribole, one of the authors of Intuitive Eating on Twitter and I received a really cool tweet recently: @Etribole: Latest iPhone app - Intuitive Eating! http://ow.ly/LMdO. If you're always reaching for your copy of Intuitive Eating like I am, now you can have it with you anytime, right on your iPhone! This is a great addition if you love your iPhone apps and Intuitive Eating.

How "Walkable" is your neighborhood?

The last place I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area was in a great apartment building in downtown San Mateo. One of the best things about where we lived was its central location. My husband managed the building we lived in so he worked where we lived and I coached from my home office, as I do now. Really the only time the car was used was for me to drive to a few personal training clients that were minutes away. Other than that, we could walk anywhere. The grocery store was a block away, the gym was 4 blocks away (a great way to get your warm-up done!), any type of food you could ever want was within walking distance, especially the best burritos ever and a salad bar that even vegetable haters would love!

As much as I love where we live now, living in a small town in the foothills is not exactly conducive to walking. We don't even have sidewalks! As a result, we drive everywhere and need to make a more conscious effort to get some activity in during the day. Not a big deal since we live in a beautiful place, but it has been quite a change.

I came across an interesting term a couple weeks ago, "walkability", which describes how easy it is to get around a neighborhood without having to use a car. The website Walkscore, http://www.walkscore.com/, tells you how your neighborhood scores in walkability. It's fun to put in your address and get your score. I see this as being really useful if you are traveling and want to check out a "walkable" place to stay or if you are planning on buying or renting in a new location.

Go check out your Walk Score! According to the site, it works for the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. I tried it out for an address in France and I got a score, so it may work for those of you in other countries. Check out the Walk Score blog as well, lots of interesting information.

So my score? My old address in San Mateo rated 85 out of 100, which is "Very Walkable". My current address up here in the forest - 25, "Car-Dependent". Good thing I have the elliptical machine in my office!

Winter Humor