Diets will work in helping you lose weight but...

Last night, I had a dear friend over for dinner who asked me my opinion about another diet she was going to try. She struggles with weight gain mainly because she eats unconsciously and snacks and nibbles too much when her life gets busy. Portion control has always been a struggle as well. Like all of us, she struggles with an addictive behaviour that kicks in at different times in her life. Her response has traditionally been to tighten up the ropes on her wagon in an effort to regain a sense of control. She says she does well when she doesn't have to think about what she eats but instead follows a very structured plan.

What I told her about what I thought of her new diet was this:

"Every diet will help you lose weight. The very act of restricting food groups or portion sizes and following a rigid eating plan will always help people lose weight but it won't address how you got to this point again. Plus most people have taken the grazing idea of eating way too far. We still have to wait to eat until we feel hunger. We have to feel what our body needs and let ourselves feel what hunger is and what being satisfied is. We have to become more conscious in our bodies to know what our bodies need on any given day."

What I believe helps people get to a healthy body weight in the long run is healing the underlying cause of why we behave in ways that make us feel crummy about ourselves. It's the only way most of us can change our coping mechanisms. Working towards becoming more conscious in our mind, body and soul is the only path to true healing in my opinion and my personal experience.

But a woman I respect says it way better than me. Dr. Marcia Sirota at the Ruthless Compassion Institute and author of Emotional Over=eating: Know the Triggers, Heal Your Mind and Never Diet Again, tells it like it is:

"Diets don't work because they create unbearable feelings of deprivation as well as physiological withdrawal. In a recent study, diets were shown to provide short-term weight loss, but everyone eventually put the weight back on & up to 2/3 of dieters were heavier at follow-up than before they started the diet. The way to deal with compulsive overeating is not to put yourself on a diet. It's to deal with the emotional issues driving you to overeat & hold on to the weight, & to let go of your charged relationship with food and weight. It's to pursue the things that bring meaning & true fulfillment in your life. When you've dealt with the real issues driving overeating, & have found real sources of meaning, purpose, connection & fulfillment, the pounds will melt away."

I've lost clients because I won't train people when they come in dizzy or depleted because they are on very restrictive diets like say Dr. Bernstein (700 calories a day!)or carb free diets meant to put people in ketosis. I don't hide my opinions about the harm something like that can do to their bodies and minds. At the very least, my job is to do no harm to my clients!

Also, I don't want to become a part of another failed attempt for someone to truly transform their health and fitness by condoning something that will ultimately reinforce a negative self image. Because diets do work in helping people lose weight but they also normally lead to someone gaining more weight back afterwards leaving that person with a reinforced sense of personal failure. Diets just solidify a cycle that has existed for quite some time, the on again and off again of the proverbial wagon syndrome. There is no wagon at all in my mind. Ditch diets and the wagon at the same time and take it one meal, one choice at a time.

Get off the hamster wheel already

Most people in our society are in a constant state of tension, wanting to move forward in some way. Even our rounded forward posture and common structural imbalances reflect this constant forward motion in the way we move through the world.

What we aren't so good at is sitting still. But when we sit still we actually can hear ourselves, our thoughts, our hopes, our fears and our true selves. The wisdom that we miss out on in this constant hamster wheel phenomenon not to mention the way this constant go go go mentality affects us physically, emotionally and spiritually cannot be underestimated.

What many people in the fitness industry do only exacerbate this issue further by getting people to continue with this thinking when it comes to their health. Goal setting can be a wonderful tool for helping people transform their lives but when this goal setting is merely focused on making people 'better' in some way it is an extension of the hamster wheel we live in. In my honest opinion, those fitness industry folks who are obsessed with more and more training, lifting more all the time, running further all the time and continually improving their 'fitness' are missing the big picture. They all need to chill a bit.

The issue with most people's health is that we don't stop. We don't sit still. We are focused on continual improvement or feeling guilty for not improving. The affect of stress hormones, the chemicals necessary to keep us in the constant running to only get nowhere state, create sleep deprivation, early wear and tear on all our tissues and and inability to learn. Our brain chemistry can become severely altered blocking the ability to change unhealthy thought patterns which translate into unhealthy behaviours.

The self help industry including the fitness industry are guilty of the idea that people need to focus on making themselves better. More is not always better. In fact, we need a lot less of work, a lot less of reaching for more money, a lot less stuff and a lot less of constant busyness.

We need to shed a lot of shitty ideas about what it means to be in the world, what life should be like and find a way to get back to our true selves. The selves that find joy in the simplest things. The selves that have open hearts and open minds.

Maybe many people in the fitness industry are just too young to get the necessity of slowing down for true personal evolution to happen. It's just too bad that so many regular people caught on the hamster wheel seek help from fitness professionals who can't see that they themselves are on their own wheel, one just as out of balance and going nowhere as everyone else's. And sometimes fitness pros will actually preach that their wheel is the one to be on.

FREE Osteopathic Treatment for Women with Lymphedema

I met a super smart, intuitive healer named Kerri-Lynn LaPointe at a Reiki workshop I was in over the long weekend. We discovered that we both have an interest in working with women during and after cancer treatment. She is offering FREE Osteopathic Treatment for women with Upper Extremity Lymphedema after Breast Cancer Treatment.

Lymphedema can seem like something women just have to live with and deal with BUT there are emerging treatments that can be very very helpful and Kerri-Lynn would be a true gift to have on your health team.

Here are the specifics of her offer:


Recruiting female volunteers to participate in a research study for upper extremity lymphedema that began after treatment for breast cancer. All assessments and treatments will be provided free of charge. Research is to be conducted at 465 St. Johns Rd, Toronto, ON. Study date: Fall/Winter 2012.

You may qualify if you meet the following criteria:

1. The symptoms of lymphedema appeared after medical treatment for breast cancer
(mastectomy, radiation, and/or lymph node dissection.)
2. The lymphedema is unilateral (one-sided.)
3. You have been experiencing symptoms of lymphedema for 6 months to 5 years.
4. You are a female between the ages of 40-65.
5. You have received no previous osteopathic treatment for lymphedema.
6. You are able to commit to 7 appointments within a 10 week timeframe.

Kerri-Lynn LaPointe, ND is a Naturopathic Doctor practicing in Toronto. She has successfully completed 5 years of training at the Canadian College of Osteopathy, and is performing this research study to complete her Diploma of Osteopathic Manual Practice (DOMP.)

Osteopathy is a hands-on system of diagnosis and treatment that focuses on restoring proper movement and function to the entire body. Rather than focusing on the symptoms, the underlying causes of dysfunction are treated: physical injury, poor posture, trauma, emotional stress, etc. The position, mobility, and quality of the tissues (bones, muscles, and internal organs) are assessed, and focus is placed on the body’s natural ability to self-regulate and self-heal. The main premise is that structure governs function: any abnormality of structure will create disease.

If you're interested, you can reach her at:
healthkerri.com info@healthkerri.com

6 Super Simple Ways to Clean up Your Diet or Lose Weight Right Now

Losing weight or cleaning up your diet really isn't rocket surgery. It's more about knowing where to start sometimes and realizing it doesn't have to be a painful experience. Sometimes starting with the lowest hanging fruit so to speak is the way to succeed with any change.

So here are my top six tips:

1) No more liquid calories (with the exception of a glass of red wine a day)

2) No starchy carbohydrates after lunch (corn, rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, cous cous, quinoa)

3) Fill half your plate with veggies always.

4) If you don't understand the ingredients listed on a package, don't eat it.

5) Try to choose food your great grandparents would have eaten.

6) Avoid white stuff.

Sounds way too simple right? Well it kind of is. But the hard part is really putting new habits into practice. Ongoing consistent moderation is what's it's all about.

The truth about children's health in the big smoke (For Doug Holyday)

Doug Holyday is just plain ignorant about the suburbs being a healthier place for kids.

He said, “Where will these children play? On King St.?” Holyday said in reaction to a push to have a condo developer include family-friendly, three-bedroom units in a proposed 47-storey tower at King and John Sts. “I mean, I could just see now: ‘Where’s little Ginny?’ ‘Well, she’s downstairs playing in the traffic on her way to the park!’ ”

Well guess what Doug? There's research that shows kids raised in the burbs are more likely to be overweight.

Taken from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada Position Statement
Built Environment, physical activity, heart disease and strokeCOMMUNITY DESIGN, PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, HEART DISEASE AND STROKE:

1) The risk of obesity has been shown to decline by 4.8% for each additional kilometre walked per day and can increase by 6% for each hour spent in a car per day.

2) A recent study compared rates of active transportation with obesity in Europe, North America and Australia and found that generally, the countries with higher rates of active transportation had lower levels of obesity.

3) Across Canada, only about 12% of trips to the grocery store, work, the library or school are made on foot or by bicycle. While this is higher than the 7% rate in the United States, it is much lower than in the Netherlands (46%) and Denmark (41%)

4) In major urban centres, 34% of residents report walking, biking, or taking public transit to get to work, while in smaller Canadian communities, this figure is 18%.7

5) In urban areas, neighbourhoods that have good street lighting, availability of continuous sidewalks, and a greater density and variety of shops, services, parks, schools and workplaces within walking distance of homes are often called “walkable” neighbourhoods. Canadian studies have shown that adolescents are more likely to walk or bike to school if the journey is short and takes place in a walkable environment with a variety of land uses and a high density of street trees.

6) A number of studies in the United States and Canada have shown that people who live in moderate to high density areas and in more walkable neighbourhoods make more trips on foot or by bicycle, spend less time driving, and are more likely to meet recommended levels of physical activity. 9,,10 People living in more walkable neighbourhoods are less likely to be overweight or obese than those living in rural areas or low density areas with a lack of shops, services and other amenities close by.

7) Users of public transit tend to have higher levels of physical activity.


Plus, even wikipedia states that:

The study found people that live in cities (Census Metropolitan Areas) had significantly lower obesity rates in Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia.

THE ONTARIO COLLEGE OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS, in their position paper "The Health Impacts of Urban Sprawl, Volume III" state the following

Spread-out suburban communities make car travel the fastest, most convenient, and sometimes the only, way to get around. The design of most sprawling communities makes it difficult for residents to walk or ride their bikes to carry out even the most basic errands, such as buying milk at a local store. The lack of daily physical activity is a factor in the growing rate of obesity among adults, teenagers and children across Canada. Obesity has been linked to serious health problems, including:

• diabetes
• high blood pressure
• heart disease
• some cancers
• osteoarthritis

Obesity is a growing public health crisis, so much so that it is often referred to as the “new tobacco”. The number of deaths in Canada related to obesity has almost doubled over the past 15 years, from 2,514 in 1985 to 4,321 in 2000.

I could spend the next few hours getting more statements or statistics from respectable organizations. But I won't. That's all the time in my life Doug Holyday deserves.

Top 5 workout mistakes

Ever wonder why you've been putting in all this time at the gym, pounding the pavement in your sneaks, or spinning away on a bike, lifting weights and you're not seeing results? Chances are you're not choosing the right type of exercise or you're choosing the right type of exercise but just doing it wrong.

I'd say these are the top five mistakes I see people making when trying to shed pounds, change their body composition or generally just improve their fitness level.

1) People don't change their diet and think exercise will change their body alone. In fact, some people use exercise as a way to increase caloric intake. It's largely a numbers game in terms of weight loss.

2) People think too much about how much time they spend exercising instead of to what intensity. The classic example of this is the old school cardio equipment fanatic reading a magazine. If you're only working out a few times a week, make it count.

Clocking time at a gym has no correlation with results. Effort in = results out.

3) People don't know how to strength train and try to go it alone. If you finish a set and still can do more, you WILL NOT see results. If you think you can spot reduce a problem area, you're in denial. Our bodies only adapt if we force them to. Doing the same strength exercises over and over again without working to fatigue (not being able to do one more repetition with proper form) will mean you stay the same. Plus if you're reconditioned, don't let me see you doing bicep curls! Work with compound movements that hit several large muscle groups at a time.

4) People do too many repetitions. The best rep range for strength training is around 10 -12 reps. Consistently doing high reps as a way to avoid getting big is just foolishness. You aren't going to get big unless you eat a lot more and change your hormone levels too!

5) People give up too easily. It takes about 3-4 weeks to start feeling different and 3 months for other people to really see a difference. If you're constantly stopping and starting an exercise program, you will not see results. It's better to consistently do 2 full body strength workouts a week and watch what you eat without being to insane then it is to do short spurts of bootcamp like workouts and crash diets. You're just cruising for a crash in eating and likely an injury. Slow and steady always wins!

The death of personal training or the rebirth of something new?

I have to be totally honest. I really don't like many many things about my industry. I think many high level experts and/or big fitness businesses might be confused about their alignment: the pursuit of profit or the pursuit of helping people. They don't always co-exist. I also find my industry intensely misogynistic. The fitness gurus getting most of the clout are often the most elite minded, the most judgmental and the least open minded about the variety of ways people can find transformation. AKA if it's not their way, it can't be right.

I'm not saying every influential person in my industry is that way. I'm just not finding that I want to be identified with the mainstream. I like to learn from people who not only know their stuff, but live life with a goal to increase their capacity for compassion and with the knowledge that the more we learn, the more we find out we DON'T know.

So what are people's options if they are looking for a more evolved approached to movement and health with more socially progressive, compassionate people. Often times, we can find this type of supportive vibe at Yoga or Pilates studios. But where do people find help getting stronger by lifting weights or doing traditional resistance training? Certainly not big gyms that pressure sell you as soon as you walk through the door. And any environment oozing testosterone is a sure fire miss.

I think this is where the personal training industry is dying a slow death. Regular people don't want to go to harsh, judgmental, rigid and obsessive compulsive personal trainers who are primarily jocks. How can these people without outside interests relate to people juggling so many different things? If you're lucky, you will find a balanced personal trainer. But if you're not lucky, like so many new clients I meet, you will run into someone who just can't understand your challenges. If they can do it, why can't you?

Because change doesn't happen that way. Where do I think the personal training industry is going to go? I'm not sure, but I know I want to create a path that includes compassion while maintaining personal accountability, that focuses on relational coaching, and explores that opportunity to heal through movement on a very deep level, not just look better in jeans, or be able to lift more and more weight, run further and further, feeding a compulsion to always be reaching instead of allowing ourselves to just be and rest sometimes. Something we do so poorly as a culture, to just be content whenever we can!

I like my little bubble at the studio and I love that I share space with two very balanced trainers who bring in regular clients who struggle like we all do.