Rants | Triumph Wellness

Get Over Yourself

April 29, 2013 by Emily Segal 9 Comments

OK, so I have a little writer’s block. Writing is like any other discipline, when you get into a shvoong and do it everyday, it just pours out with ease and flow. When you get distracted and neglect the practice, you find that starting it up again has become like rolling that dadgum rock uphill.

So, what to do to get things flowing again? Write something shockingly personal and from the heart of course!

I want to write about something today that really is one of my deepest and darkest shames. And the reason I risk exposing myself like this, is because many of you share this particular shame and really, I am freaking sick of it already! We need to shine some light on this thing and sweep it the heck out.

Here’s the heart of it: I am often fearful of doing things because of how I look.

Backstory: The other day I was speaking to a friend about something that was holding her back from taking her next steps. She knows what she wants and needs to do next in life, but is held back, in part, because she has gained a couple of kilos and that makes her lack the confidence to get out there in front of people.

Gee, I have never heard that one before! And NONE of my clients ever say that. And I certainly have never felt like that myself!

You see, the truth is, that although I am proud of the weight I have lost and maintained, I am still not a thin woman. Every single time I meet a new client or teach a class, or show up to run a race, or introduce myself to new people and say what I do for a living, I imagine people are thinking:

“If she eats so healthy, why isn’t she skinnier?”

“Why should I take her advice? She weighs more than me!”

“She’s awfully large to be running this marathon!”

“I thought vegans are always thin?”

More often than I would like to admit, the fear of those thoughts makes me want to cancel the class, lie about what I do for a living, drop out of the race. Heck, sometimes I even think “I should just go work in a shoe store or something where I won’t be expected to have a certain body.” (No offense to shoe store workers!)

The underlying thread of this ridiculous internal monologue is the familiar old fear by the name of, “Who do I think I am?” Boy, do I hate that guy!

I know that many people have this same fear and it is not always related to weight and appearance. And I know that it DOES stop many of you from doing the things you know you want or need to be doing in life!

So how to get past it?

Well, I convene a Mind Monkey Summit where I invite these fears to the table and let them say their piece. The truth is, these thoughts and fears are trying to protect us from making fools of ourselves. I thank them for that, but then I tell them why it is important for me to proceed despite the danger.

As it happens to turn out, I have information to deliver that literally saves lives. It saves the lives of the people who learn from me as well as saving the lives of their kids and even grandkids! If I let my Ego get in the way of my delivering this information to the people who need it,well that is just a stupid, pitiful shame!

OK, worst case scenario – people really WILL say those things to me out loud, in public, in front of others – then what will happen? Well, I can tell you that they have said some of those things to me, and although painful and embarrassing, I didn’t die. I answered honestly, “You are right that I am not skinny, but I have lost a huge amount of weight and kept it off, reversed a deadly disease, healed an eating disorder, cured emotional eating and sugar addiction. I am still working on my weight and sometimes I still struggle with overeating. But if you think that my current weight is more important than my vast experience, I’d have to guess that you are looking for excuses not to have to make your own changes.”

OK, I don’t say that last sentence out loud but… yeah, pretty much.

While we should all work towards making ourselves the best we can be, we should not wait until we are PERFECT to get out there and deliver our gifts! If we hold back from living our purpose because we don’t think our bodies are the right size or shape, or we are not smart enough, or “Who-do-we-think-we-are” is running the show, we are depriving the world of receiving the work/words/message/gift we are here to share.

And because I know some of you are going to be thinking this, remember: Not knowing what your gift is, is not the same thing as not having one! Subject for a different post.

Now, get over yourself and go leave your mark.

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Filed Under: coaching exercises, Growth, health coach, Inspiration, Rants, weight loss

Purple Toed Vacation

April 5, 2013 by Emily Segal 5 Comments

I’m fairly certain that Marketing 101 says “Keep pictures of your gnarly, ruined feet OFF the internet!” But I’m a rebel, ya?

I PROMISE you that will be the last one! Just wanted to show you where I’m at, because frankly my family isn’t exactly oozing sympathy anymore.

OK, I’m done with the pity party. But did I mention how much it hurts?? OK, OK, but are you feeling bad for me yet, because that is definitely what I am fishing for here…

Anyway, it seems like every time I get in a groove of writing, blogging, seeing clients, a Jewish holiday happens and throws me off track completely. This time it was Passover and I was the designated seder host:

Twas a lovely evening!

We decided on a Stay-cation this year and pledged to spend every day that was not a holy day, out and about, climbing the land. We hiked every day! Yes, with that toe. Yes, I whined so much that everyone left me behind.

We hiked the South:

Nachal Pratt

The giant on the right, simultaneously rooting for the Indiana Hoosiers and the Vancouver Canuks, is MY BABY, by the way.

We hiked the North:

Park Utopia

This is the breathtaking memorial for the 44 people who lost their lives in Israel’s deadliest forest fire on Mount Carmel in 2010.

At the end of all the exhausted climbing, we felt like we had walked all the way back to prehistoric times!

The Carmel Caves where some amazing prehistoric remains have been found.

I have to say that as the first time we have ever taken a hiking holiday when I am NOT training for some future race, how crazily liberated I felt! I didn’t have to worry about my knees, or about twisting an ankle and having months of training ruined. I feel like I have my life back! Well, in 6 months when I have normal toenails again, I imagine I will feel like I have my life back, but this was pretty close.

Clearly, it was time for me to move on from that hobby and so far I am really glad I did!

Alas, the holiday ended and the back-up of waiting clients began. Now somehow it is Shabbat again?! Next week starts off with a very exciting Sugar Blues workshop I’ll be leading for a private group in Efrat on Sunday! After that is done, I pledge to be back to a regular schedule of writing. I have so much amazing information to share! Stay tuned…

And no more toes. Scouts honor.

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Filed Under: Holidays, Rants, Running, Tel Aviv Half Marathon, Travel Tagged With: Exercise, Holidays, Running

Can you Moderate? Or must you Eliminate?

March 4, 2013 by Emily Segal 17 Comments

The three little words that almost killed me:

“Everything in Moderation”

For me, these words are an utter lie, an impossibility, and the height of denial. They made me try and fail and try and fail more times than it is possible to count. As such an accepted part of our lexicon, “Everything in Moderation” must be true! Therefore, I, incapable of eating certain things in moderation, must just lack willpower. Right?

Years ago, when I was suffering from obesity and high blood sugar, my doctor sent me to a dietitian to help me lose weight. After the first week, when I returned to the skinny, perky dietitian’s office with my chocolate-smeared food log in hand, she asked incredulously “But you are trying to lose weight! Why are you eating boxes of cookies??!” I answered, through my tears of shame, “I don’t know! That’s why I am here. It’s like I am an addict and I can’t stop. I need help!” To which she angrily replied “There is no such thing as food addiction. Just follow the diet.”

I never went back to her office. I went home and ate another box of cookies. There is no such thing as food addiction. Just have ONE cookie, Emily. One. everythinginmoderation

But what I found, once again, is there is no such thing as “one cookie”. Not for me.

I honestly and truly owe my life to the angel in women’s clothing, who came along and said “Food addiction is a real thing and I too, am a food addict.” She introduced me to the concept of Elimination of Trigger Foods and taught me the importance of recognizing and having a strategy for handling Trigger Situations. She told me to read a book called Thin Tastes Better by Dr. Stephen Gullo. I read it, mouth agape, one hundred times. There are foods that render certain people utterly devoid of the ability to stop eating. I might be crazy, but I am not the only one!

In his book, Dr. Gullo asks you to remember every diet you ever went on. Then he asks you to remember every time you fell off the diet and what food you fell of the diet with. In 99% of the cases, we fall off our diet with the same handful of foods. For me: cookies, candy, cake. Every. Time.

So, if the same handful of foods lead you astray, those foods are your trigger foods and your life will be so much more peaceful without them in it. Tada, Elimination. As I have written many times before, when we stop negotiating with the terrorists in our minds and on our plates, we finally achieve that sought-after peace agreement.

Now, I do recognize that if this were not my own personal reality, I would probably think it’s nutso, just like that dietitian did. So if you are the type of person who can eat one cookie and stop, then keep on with your “Everything in Moderation”. BUT, know that there ARE people who CANNOT do moderation. They are not weak-willed and they should not just “try harder.” They can’t do it. In fact, you may even be living with one of these people! They may be your own children, or your partner. So when you buy cookies to have in the house for when guests come, and your food addict child or spouse drags the box back to his or her room like a fresh carcass on the savannah, the answer is to:

a. Lecture this person about “everythinginmoderation”

b. Stop buying cookies and leave your loved one in peace

the answer is “b”.

And if you really want to know what it is like inside the head of a food addict, read this most amazing description over on the Disease Proof blog. Then get a copy of The End of Overeating by David Kessler where you will learn why some people get addicted in the first place (brain chemicals and food chemicals oh my!), and that even the former head of the FDA considers himself a food addict. We’re in good company.

So the next time you find yourself looking up from an empty packet of whatever, after promising yourself you would just have ONE, open your eyes and see your trigger food for what it is: a life robbing, self-esteem sucking, lying terrorist with a bomb strapped to his chest. Do not even try to negotiate!

Elimination is not as hard as hard as Moderation. I promise, promise, promise you.

(Part Two of this post is now located here: More on Moderation).

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Filed Under: coaching exercises, Growth, health coach, Rants, Recommendations Tagged With: Anti-Ick Techniques, Getting Kids to Eat Healthy, Self-Improvement, Sugar Addiction

When A Loved One Won’t Change

February 14, 2013 by Emily Segal 1 Comment

Subtitle: ”Why Can’t You Do This For Me, for the kids, for yourSELF?!”

Here is the Mad Libs version:

Your _____________________

(spouse / partner / sister / father / best friend / child)

Needs to____________________

(lose weight / get his blood sugar down / get her cholesterol down / stop smoking / stop drinking / wear a seat belt)

Although he/she insists it has nothing to do with you, and that your nagging is only making things worse, you feel______________________

(betrayed / angry / worried / massively betrayed)

Sound familiar, anyone? I bet it does!

Today, instead of telling you what to do from my standpoint as a health practitioner, I want to share with you the other side of the coin.

I was your spouse. I was the one who was willfully disregarding my health and my family’s future all in the name of getting my next binge. I hope that if you can see things from your loved one’s perspective, you will be able to find some peace and clarity.

Several years ago I tried eating myself into oblivion while my husband was the one to be angry about my growing body and frustrated by my resistance to change. The more he pushed and threatened me, the more I ate and the fatter I became. I truly felt that it was MY business and had nothing to do with him. I seriously resented him making it his problem, even though somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind, I kinda-sorta understood how my health and weight ultimately WOULD impact his life and the lives of our children.

I was in Stage One: Pre-Contemplation (click that link to read the post I wrote about the 5 Stages of Change). I was only dimly aware that there was some sort of a problem but feeling like I was a victim of intolerable levels of stress with food as my only lifeline. I could no sooner have given up over-eating than I could have gone without oxygen.

You can read about what advanced me from Stage One to Stage Two HERE. Basically, I finally understood that my actions were causing my outcome, plain and simple. Change my actions and I’d change the outcome. But more than that, here was this man, Tony Robbins and he had done it himself. And all the thousands of people who followed him, they were taking this kind of action in their lives. I understood for the first time that it could be done and people were doing it. I could change my story and change the way my story would end.

So this is my message to you (and when I get around to publishing that post about overweight kids it will be the same message):

Shut Up and Walk Your Own Talk.

End of story.

People do not hear what you say as much as see what you do. Ghandi said “Be the change you want to see.” You – be the change. Model the behaviors you want others to adopt. SHOW don’t say. Work on Yourself. Be the best you can be. Be Inspiring. Make the people around you WANT to reach higher. Show people what is possible.

Married folks: I realize how painful it feels for you, that your partner is betraying the agreement you made when you got married. He/she is digging an early grave and will leave you holding the bag. But go back and read the stages of change. People who are not changing likely do not believe that it is in their power to do so. No amount of screaming and threatening is going to change that.

Those Stage Oners need hope and belief. They need to come to understand that they CAN reverse their problem. They need to move from helpless victim to artful designers of their own destiny.

Model it for them and then butt out.

P.S. I am not suggesting you stay with a partner bent on self-destruction. You may decide that you need to leave a relationship in order to take care of yourself. That is modeling healthy self-care as well.

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Filed Under: coaching exercises, Growth, health coach, Inspiration, Love, Positive Thinking, Rants Tagged With: Obesity, Overweight, Self-Improvement, weight loss

Announcement and Close-out Sale!

January 14, 2013 by Emily Segal Leave a Comment

So, here we are, January 2013. As I may or may not have hinted in my last post here, I have been doing some personal work that will be affecting my business structure.

Basically Louise, we be movin’ on up! To the east-side. To a DE-luxe apartment in the sky-hi-hi…

Seriously though, my services are going to be expanding in value and in price. Other things will drop away. The first things to get the ax are my lower priced products and services. DY-NO-MITE!

1. My D-I-Y 30-Detox Feast E-book is going to never-never land in two weeks (February 1,2013). I am going to be re-formatting the program to make it interactive and a much higher price point. If you want it as it is now, you have 2 weeks to grab it. I am lowering the price from $47 USD (170nis) to $35 USD (130nis) to clear it out.

Folks, this program is a LIFE CHANGER. Every single person who has bought it and done it on their own, has written back and told me the amazing impact it has had on their life and health. Just today in fact, I got the following email:

Hi Emily! I just wanted to tell you that my friend X and I did your 30 day detox right after Purim this past year, and I’ve been completely off sugar ever since! I had one piece of cheesecake on Shavuot, but nothing else, and I feel better than I ever have in my entire life – much more energy, clearer skin, less dark facial hair, and of course, I’ve lost weight – 12 kilo so far. Thank you so much!

When I decided to do the detox, I did it because I was curious to see if anyone could really get un-addicted to sugar – I wasn’t really in it for the health, I just didn’t like the out-of-control feeling that I had when I started eating something sweet and couldn’t stop. I wasn’t planning to make a life change! But after only a couple of weeks, I felt SO much better in so many different aspects of my life, and I just couldn’t find a reason to go back. People hear that I don’t eat sugar and they say “oh, that must be so hard” but it really truly isn’t! I’ve just gotten used to a less-sweet life, and I feel totally happy and satisfied, and am not even tempted when others eat sweets. And only now that I see the dramatic results on my body do I realize how unhealthy I must have been. ~T.C.

People, if getting off sugar sounds impossible, I promise I make it easy and delicious! AND I help you formulate an “exit strategy” for what to do when the detox is over (ie, can you consume sugar, wheat and dairy in moderation or are there things you would be better off eliminating completely).

To grab your copy of the 30-Day Detox Feast ebook at the amazing discounted price before it disappears forever, go to this page HERE.

2. Also going away is the Vegan Jewish New Year e-cookbook. For only $10 USD (36nis) you get 12 delicious, healthy vegan recipes including:

Mock Chopped Liver

Persian Vegetable Soup with Chickpea Flour Dumplins (Ghondi)

Stuffed Cabbage with Tempeh and Mushrooms

Rice Stuffed Zucchini

Black-eyed Peas and Pumpkin in a Tomato-Curry Sauce

Rose-scented Wheat Salad with Pomegranates and Almonds

Pineapple Noodle Kugel (yes, no eggs!)

Spicy-Sweet Carrots with Silan Glaze

Marinated Beets

Garlicky Swiss Chard

Pumpkin Blondies with Cranberry and White Chocolate (oh yum!!!)

Marzipan Apple Pie!

There are pictures of each of the dishes on the webpage and in the ebook itself. To purchase the Vegan Jewish New Year e-cookbook, visit the page HERE.

3. My coaching programs…

I’m not sure just how much I want to say here yet, but know this: I am re-structuring how I run my programs and right now, they are as low-cost as they will EVER be again!

If you have had any inkling that you would like to work with me “someday”, let this be fair warning! There are not many “somedays” left at my current price structure and commitment level.

Current Clients: Do not panic! Nothing will ever change for you if you are in a continuous program.

Before things change, this is what I have right now:

My 3-month Health and Nutrition Program. Details HERE.

One-on-one 30-DayDetox Feast. Details HERE.

Vegan Nutrition Coaching HERE.

Healthy Family Program HERE.

If any of those programs interest you, book NOW before I change them up and raise my fee schedule!

Change. Growth. Evolution.

Breathe Deep ~ Change is Good!

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(Hat-tip to my secret weapon against attacks of fear and low self-esteem, the ever brilliant Andrea Friedenberg)

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Filed Under: Detox and Cleansing, Growth, health coach, Rants, vegan Tagged With: Detox, Goals, Sugar Addiction, weight loss

Stand Up and Speak

December 5, 2012 by Emily Segal 7 Comments

My dear blog readers. For 3 and 1/2 years you have followed my life and my career. You have been inspired by where I am strong and felt compassion for where I am weak. I have shared private moments of struggle and the glorious rays of victory.

But I must admit to you that increasingly, I held out on you. I put up a screen and hid behind it. I knew that this was not serving you. I understand that we are mirrors for one another. In my blocks you can see your own and my victories help you push toward yours. For that reason I share this very personal story. My hope is that it will help you move out of any fear or stuckness you may be feeling yourself.

Last night I redeemed a gift I had been given – a free coaching session with one of my heroes, the world-famous chef and health coach, Andrea Beaman. Andrea, a published author, TV show host, Top Chef contestant, and overall big shot in my world, was one of the lecturers at my nutrition school, The Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

When I saw her face pop up on the skype screen last night I almost fainted dead away. Am I really going to lay open my soul to Andrea-freaking-Beaman?? Well, in about 30 seconds Andrea zeroed right in on the thing I have been hung up on. The next 59 minutes were spent figuring my way through it.

Here’s the deal: When I first went into health coaching I was so on fire with excitement and inspiration you couldn’t have held me back with a team of Clydesdales. As my business grew, more people began reading my articles and coming to me for advice, the good AND the bad happened, and instead of growing with it all, I hit my ceiling of comfort and started to contract.

I created all sorts of reasons for why I was contracting: mean clients, crazy blog commenters, people so blocked and frightened of change that they lashed out at me instead of themselves. I put up walls to protect myself. I stopped speaking so loudly and soon I found that I couldn’t even remember what it was I had wanted to say!

“Be moderate. Don’t offend. Speak and write in a way that people can hear your message rather than be offended and turn away.” These were the things other people were saying to me all the time, and I mistook those thoughts for my own. Last night Andrea helped me to see that when people give you advice like that, they are speaking from their own fears. The only thing I should be listening to is my own heart and the message that G-d put in it for me to share.

Today I was in a class at the gym. The other women were moaning about high cholesterol. The teacher – who I happen to know is also vegan but I never spoke to before even though I have wanted to – said “How about changing your diet instead of taking all those meds that don’t even help.” Everyone rushed to attack her because they know she is vegan and people get very defensive about that and the thought of the magnitude of change they would have to make to be like her. They were saying “Diet can’t help hereditary high cholesterol” and all the other myths people believe.

I was sitting there inside my head screaming “Speak Up! Say Something! High cholesterol CAN be treated successfully with diet!“

I contracted in fear and remained silent.

But Andrea’s words were in my head and by the time the class ended I was almost hyperventilating.

Before I could shrink back, I marched myself over to the teacher and trembelingly told her I am a vegan health coach and she is right, you can lower cholesterol through diet and my clients do it all the time.

She said to me “WHY didn’t you speak up??”

I didn’t answer. I just looked at her and she saw what was in my eyes. She said “Oh I see. You are scared. Well, I am sorry but you do not have the luxury to be scared. People are dying because they don’t have good information.”

BAM!

People are dying because they don’t eat well. People are DYING because they don’t eat well. People. Are. Dying.

It is true that some people don’t want to change the way they eat. They would rather suffer the consequences and in order to defend that decision, they will convince themselves – and everyone around them – that change wouldn’t help anyway. Sadly, the Western medical system is only too happy to push their drugs and their surgeries and placate the unwilling-to-change folks.

But who the heck am I to shrink back because I am afraid of people’s resistance? What about all the people who DO want to change and need my help? Isn’t my job to serve with the gifts I was given?

From now on, I am going to trust that if I have something to say it is because someone needs to hear. If you catch me shrinking again, call me on it please! And if you have the desire to tell me (or anyone else) to shrink, look within yourself first and see what you are afraid of.

What message are YOU here to deliver? People are dying. We don’t have the luxury of being scared to speak.

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Filed Under: coaching exercises, Goals, Growth, health coach, Inspiration, Rants Tagged With: Achievement, Anti-Ick Techniques, creativity, entrepreneurship, Self-Improvement

The View from Here

November 19, 2012 by Emily Segal

(Tel Aviv, Israel)

You are all waiting for me to write something.

I can feel it.

It would be far easier and undoubtedly better for business if I mentioned nothing of our current conflict. But I know who my readers are and that I am the only Israeli and in many cases the only Jew that many of you know. I recognize that I have an opportunity here to share a viewpoint you might not hear elsewhere. I understand that most of you listen to standard media outlets who I can tell you are not even making the simplest of efforts to get their facts straight. Yesterday the BBC showed footage of people running from missiles and identified it as Gaza City when in fact it was Tel Aviv – and in front of one of Tel Aviv’s most iconic and easily recognizable hotels, the world-famous rainbow facade of the Dan Hotel! If they are messing up simple shit like that, trust me, they are not even getting close to the facts on the ground, nor do they even try. There is so much you don’t know that it makes my head hurt.

My country is doing what it has to do to take care of it’s citizens and protect our free, democratic society. There is not another country in the world who would put up with the kind of terror and hate we have had directed at us for the past 6 decades of our existence. It is enough to me that I know we are a just people; that we try harder than any other nation has ever tried to fight a war while limiting civilian casualties even while Hamas is trying to maximize them! I know that my tax dollars go to providing Gazans with electricity, aid, medicine and food at all times, not just during the current conflict. I know that injured Gazans are sent to Israeli hospitals where they receive top of the line care and compassion. I know that in other parts of the country, like my town for instance, Arabs and Jews live side by side with no strife. My kids play with Arab kids in the park. My doctor is Arab but it was two years before I even knew that because guess what, Arabs and Jews look exactly the same. When I go running in the morning, Arab women in hijab often speed-walk right past me (which tells you how fast I run). There were 3 Arab women in my last Hebrew class who had come to Israel from other Arab countries because here they can study and have careers that are prohibited to them in their home countries. These Arabs are citizens of my country enjoying the same rights as me and suffering the same terror.

We are fighting Terrorists, not Palestinians. I would be quite happy to have Palestinian neighbors in a country under their own control IF and only if, they would agree to stop trying to blow me up. I don’t think that is too much to ask.

How this war effects me personally? Where I live is about 13 miles from the farthest missile strike in Tel Aviv. We have not had any air raid sirens in my city and we have not had to run to our safe rooms, although we were instructed to ready them. The fact that we go about our day normally while 13 miles away people are running for cover is beyond weird. We hosted some of our family who live in the South over Shabbat and when a car alarm across the street went off, they rose robotically to head to the shelter like some sort of twisted Pavlovian PTSD.

In a country as small as ours, pretty much every person I know has a husband or child serving in the IDF. We literally dodged the bullet on that one, but in 4 years it will be my son’s turn. Of course by then, all wars will have stopped and my son’s job will be to plant daisies and sweep the porch, said every Israeli mother for the past 64 years.

OK, enough of that. I am happy to answer individual questions you may have if they are respectful and something that I, as an Israeli citizen, would be able to answer. I have been having email exchanges with a few of you who wanted to understand some things better and that was really wonderful. I am closing comments to this post though, so you will need to email me if you want to ask anything. However, if you just want to share your opinion, don’t bother writing as I will delete it without reading. I have had opinions up to my eyeballs!

If after reading this you wish to stop following this blog, go right ahead and click the unsubscribe button at the bottom of your email. This is who I am. You don’t have to like me.

****************************************************************

Next: People keep asking me if I am training for the Tel Aviv Marathon. The official answer is yes, but don’t tell myself as I am trying to keep it a surprise. From myself. Otherwise I won’t do it. I’m in my 6th official week of training with 17 weeks left to go. My long run is up to 13 kms so far. My husband is actually training with me, although that doesn’t really mean anything as he takes his first few steps with me and then bolts off way ahead. But when I hear him tell people how he never liked running before he watched me finish 42.2 kms and was inspired him to try it himself, I feel pretty darn proud! I am still undecided if I will run a Full or Half Marathon at this point and have given myself the early registration deadline of December 15th to decide.

In order for me to register for the full marathon, I have determined that I need to drop another 5kgs between now and December 15th. I am down 4kgs from the steroid gain, but it’s not enough to run 42kms with. To that end, my last tidbit of news today: Starting today, Dr. Fuhrman is running a 6-week Eat to Live Challenge, based on his book by the same name. It is free to register and for the 6 weeks you get free access to his member forums at the Gold Level. I had a Silver membership which was upgraded for the challenge, in which I will be participating.

Eat to Live is a program of eating called Nutritarian. The main tenet of Nutritarianism is to eat the greatest amount of nutrients for your calorie buck: tons of veggies, fruit, limited fats, measured nuts and seeds, limited starchy veggies and grains. Most Nutritarians are vegan, but some include 10% of daily calories from animal protein. I have been an Eat to Live dabbler for years, but I am committing to a 6 week challenge to see if I can’t get down to fighting weight. Running weight. Whatever, smaller, you get it. If you’d like to join me, the link to the challenge is HERE.

And now, to confound those of you who read this and concluded I am “right-wing”, here is a little song I like. Hm… am I left-wing? Darlings, I have two wings right there on my back. They do not define me in one direction or the other!

Filed Under: Rants, Recommendations, Running, Tel Aviv Half Marathon, Tel Aviv Marathon, vegan Tagged With: Exercise, Running, Tel Aviv Marathon, weight loss

The Frightening New Normal

November 11, 2012 by Emily Segal 1 Comment

We live in a world where the following things are considered “normal”:

Eating everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING … but in “moderation”, of course

Allowing our kids to eat sugar and junk food every day because they are doing so “in moderation” and because not doing so is not “normal”

Spending day after day completely sedentary, moving from house to car to office then back to house

Hiring people to do all manual labor around our homes from cooking to cleaning to gardening to childcare

“Relaxing” at the end of our long day by watching mindless television or chatting with our equally exhausted and equally “normal” mindset cyber-friends

Believing that despite our hired help, our cars to take us everywhere, households full of time saving equipment like dish washers and washing machines, and the hours spent on passive screen-based entertainment, that we don’t have time to cook healthy meals or get any exercise

Taking all kinds of pills to alleviate illnesses and symptoms brought on entirely from doing all of the above

Having to take more pills to alleviate the side effects caused by the first pills

Undergoing surgeries where a doctor cuts our bodies open with knives and saws (um hello, SAWS, yes they do!) to fix the problem the pills didn’t fix

Feeling this physical and mental decline is all an inevitable part of the aging process

Feeling hopeless to change anything

The other day on Facebook, someone posted one of those quote boxes that said “Adulthood: If you’re not tired, you’re not doing it right.” and a whole string of people said “Amen to that!” People, I would like to add, who are at least 20 years younger than my remarkably UN-tired self.

WHA????

I feel so bad for these people. I feel so sad that people just stumble through life exhausted and drained, not ever imagining the kind of energy and health they could have if they just chose it. I sometimes feel like I am living in a world that is the exact enactment of the films Wall-E and Idiocracy! The future has arrived indeed.

Folks, please, please, PLEASE wake up! Please make the connection between HOW you live your life and the way you FEEL living your life! Stop waving your white flag of defeat before even stepping onto the battlefield!

My thoughts:

I don’t think that most of us can live in this modern food obsessed, food-abundant world and NOT worry about what we eat and how much. Very few people have the ability to stop when they are full and only eat when truly hungry. Some can, but judging by the “obesity crisis” most can’t. I can’t. I have tried it and it got me obese, sick and miserable. I pledge everyday to not ever go back to that dark place. Read the fascinating Myth of Moderation HERE.

Kill yourself in the gym? Give me a break! I don’t “kill” myself in the gym. I kill myself when I am NOT in the gym. Our bodies need to move, lift heavy things, stretch, jump and climb. If those actions are not part of your natural life (ie you sit at a computer all day) then you need to work them in somehow. Working out is what keeps us alive, strong, supple, and mentally well-balanced. Being sedentary is what is a death sentence. How have we gotten that so backwards?

F*&k Normal! “Normal” these days is synonymous with diseases like cancer, being overweight and or under-strong, and complaining of how tiring life is. People hobble along like sheep following the crowd, accepting that cancer is normal, stiff bodies are normal, being tired and overwhelmed by life is normal. They believe that making time to cook healthy food is some weirdo fringe behavior and that rolling up to the drive-through window is “normal eating”.

People say to me “I let my kids eat junk food because I want them to “feel normal about food.” When did junk food become normal food? When did cooking healthy food become bizarre and extreme??

Every day I wake up and say “I can be better. I can do better. I can feel better. I can be happier.” Eating healthy, exercising, having a purpose, a dream, and the energy to pursue it – those are the rungs on the ladder I will keep climbing.

”Normal” is going to kill you – escape while you can!

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Filed Under: coaching exercises, Exercise, Goals, Growth, health coach, Inspiration, Positive Thinking, Rants, weight loss Tagged With: Dieting vs Lifestyle, Exercise, Getting Kids to Eat Healthy, Goals, Self-Improvement, weight loss

The Things We Think And Do Not Say

August 15, 2012 by Emily Segal 5 Comments

Today is my 46th birthday. Forty-six is a lot of dang-nabbity years!

I started this first day of my 47th year with my favorite Spinning class. You know, Spinning is the magical wormhole into the endorphin dimension. You can keep your “E”, your 50 Shades of Grey and your 70% fair trade chcolate. Just throw me a spin bike, some awesome music, an Israeli to yell at me, and I’m deep into the happy zone.

Then, on my walk home from Spinning, I was thinking about Jerry Maguire.

It all started yesterday when, fueled by temperatures that topped 180 Kelvin, and some free radicalized estrogen/progesterone circulating in my boiling blood, I wrote a really long and very passionate blog post on parental culpability and responsibility for overweight children. Luckily, before I hit the “publish” button, I decided to send the post to a friend endowed with good taste and common sense. The subject line of my email to her read “Is this too bitchy and negative?” To which she basically answered “Um, yes.”

I decided to shelve the post for the time being and as I logged it into my Drafts folder, I saw a looooong string of posts I have written and not published. And I thought to myself, “Ah, these are the things we think and do not say.”

Which led me back to the movie, in which Jerry, fueled by some bad pizza, sits down and pours his heart out into a rambling and scathing Manifesto on his company’s policies. He has, he tells us “Lost the ability to bullshit”.

OK, so I am SO far past that point, I am not even in the dang bull pasture anymore! There is not a bone of bullshit left in my being. The trick though, is how to SAY things in a way that people can HEAR and not just run screaming from me with their hands over their ears. Which is of course what happens to Jerry. No one wants to hear his manifesto because it makes them feel guilty. He shines a big ole flashlight on everyone’s lack of integrity and they don’t like it one bit.

Well, it’s MY birthday and MY blog and the “things I think and do not say” are freeking CHOKING ME. So here goes… duck and cover dears:

Stop waiting for “the right time”. There is no right time. There is only Now and The-Hell-of-Putting-it-Off-For-One-More-Day time. Do you have any idea how many emails I get from people who write “I just love your philosophy Emily. One day I am going to work with you when I am ready.” ? Yeah, yeah, one day aint nevah gonna get here honey. One, five, ten years are going to pass and you are going to be fatter, more out of shape, sicker, and turning things around is going to be even harder. Now. Today. Just Begin. GO.

Ouch! Ooo, hurts so good. You still with me?

Stop waiting for the time when you will “FEEL” like making changes. You are never going to feel like doing it, trust me. If I did what I felt like every day I would pretty much live on a regime of cookies and couch-sitting. Been there, done that, fun while it lasted, nearly killed me. I don’t ever feel like going to the gym. I generally don’t feel like running until I am several kms into it. I certainly never woke up and said “I feel like running 42 kms today!” I do NOT prefer lettuce to chocolate. I do what I have to do to get what I want to get. Boom.

If you haven’t already listened to this @ss-kicking motivational talk by Mel Robbins, do so now and wake up fresh and tingly: Mel Robbins in the WISH Summit HERE.

Know your addictions. Don’t even try to negotiate with things you cannot control. You will lose over and over again. Eliminate, don’t Moderate. Life is so much more peaceful when you are not constantly trying to battle those cravings and will-power struggles.

Stop wondering if it’s worth it. Did you ever notice that those people who say “I would rather eat what I want even if it means living a shorter life, than moderating myself and exercising” pretty much never say that anymore once they are really sick? That’s because most of us don’t go straight from main-lining cheeseburgers and milkshakes to peacefully dead in one day. First we get sick. And being sick is really, really awful. Being sick and feeling regret is even worse.

On the other hand, being in shape and having tons of energy? Not too shabby! It’s worth it. Like, totally.

Last one, hang in there…

Stop blaming. Your life = your responsibility. Your family isn’t derailing you. Society isn’t making it hard for you. Your husband isn’t sabotaging your efforts. Your busy schedule isn’t dooming you to failure. YOU are letting those things happen! You. You. You. The people who succeed at healthy behavior change are the ones who figure out a way to do it despite their challenges. They go to bed earlier so that they can get up earlier and pack their healthy meals. Instead of sacking out in front of the tv, they chop their veggies in advance so that healthy options will be ready when hunger hits. They plan in advance. They keep track. They LIVE ON PURPOSE, not just at the whim of the day-to-day.

All those other people and things that you believe are obstacles in your path? They are not the ones who will have to live in your body when you feel like crap, are burning with heartburn, bloated with gas, struggling to breath at the top of the stairs, recovering from bypass surgery, suffering through dialysis or chemotherapy. You will be alone. You already are.

Please read this illuminating article from Tom Venuto, The Weight Maintenance Predictors: 13 Behaviors and Attitudes that Keep Fat Off Forever HERE and let me just say in advance, I told you so.

OK I’m done. You survived.

I am not going to send this post by rational, calm editor friend today. This is going out into the world to become the things I THOUGHT and SAID.

C’mon, you know I had you at hello… (email subscribers click the post title to enjoy the musical accompaniment)

Filed Under: coaching exercises, Exercise, Goals, Growth, health coach, Inspiration, Positive Thinking, Rants, Running Tagged With: Achievement, Exercise, Goals, Running, Self-Improvement, weight loss

Incorrect Assumptions

June 14, 2012 by Emily Segal Leave a Comment

Several of you have asked what’s happening with my suspected gluten intolerance. So I am happy to say that I have good news! I think my “gluten intolerance” was more of an “over-eating intolerance”.

Yup, that’s correct. I made an incorrect assumption. Allow me to explain:

You see, every time I ate gluten, I had gastric distress. But when I looked closer (thank you Health Coach!), I realized that every time I ate gluten, I also tended to over-eat because I just LOVE breads, crackers, tortillas, pasta, crackers and crackers. However, when I woke up to this fact and began to carefully measure and eat a small portion, voila, I am OK.

That got me thinking about how we often attribute an effect to a cause without properly evaluating other causes.

For example, a million years ago I worked at a family planning clinic. Women would often complain that the birth control pill they had recently started taking had caused them to gain weight. While I am sure that in some cases there may indeed have been a hormonal problem caused by the pill, many times, when we dug a little deeper, we found a different cause entirely.

These women were going on the pill because they were in new relationships. In new relationships we often eat together with our lovers often as a form of romantic entertainment don’t we? We eat out in restaurants a lot more than we did when we were single. And as time goes on and we get more comfortable in the relationship, maybe our previous desire to stay slim when we were “on the market” mellows a bit, we eat a bit more, workout a bit less and waistlines expand. But it’s a lot easier to blame the pill than to take responsibility for our own actions, isn’t it?

I also see this incorrect assumption effect in play when I hear people say “Yeah, I tried to be vegan but I just didn’t feel well.” Usually when I can get these people to open up a little more, I hear them say that yes, they really weren’t eating very well in that phase. They were not cooking or were relying on processed vegan foods, or never took the time to learn about their nutritional needs or how to meet them as vegans. They rarely ate the large amount of green vegetables vegans need to thrive or they were eating too much fat or sugar.

And quite often I think that new vegans don’t adjust for the lower calorie density of plant-based foods. The fatigue and loss of vitality they experience as vegans is quite likely due to a too low caloric intake. (Yes, you must eat a higher VOLUME of food on a plant-based diet. Can I get a yay to that??)

Could there be people who ate great and ate enough calories and STILL felt bad as vegans? There probably are. But it’s a lot easier to blame veganism than to take responsibility for our own actions.

Are there places in your life where you are drawing incorrect assumptions?

Maybe you assume that your metabolism is “messed up” because no matter how hard you try, you just can’t lose weight? Get your metabolism tested and I’ll bet it’s just fine. You probably have trouble losing weight because you have never gotten to the root of why you gained it in the first place. Or because you have a problem being consistent with your changes or sticking with it long enough to see results. It’s a lot easier to blame our metabolism than take responsibility for our own actions.

Perhaps you have drawn the incorrect assumption that you need to eat some low-carb fad diet in order to lose weight. Incorrect because you never counted your calories and if you had, you would have seen that your low-carb fad diet is simply a lower calorie diet. You could have achieved the same weight loss by just eating smaller portions of the regular food you enjoy. It’s a lot easier to blame a certain food (carbs) than to take responsibility for our own actions.

I don’t mean to sound preachy. We all do this. I did it with the gluten issues above and as I am learning with my coach, I have done it repeatedly with my incorrect assumption that I cannot achieve anything without OVERCOMING some sort of major adversity. I am stuck on my hero scenario. (in case you, um, hadn’t noticed…)

I hope you can see how believing incorrect assumptions takes your power away. It makes you a victim. It gives you no hope.

The only way to move forward is to… take responsibility for our own actions.

Explore your assumptions. Shine a big ole flashlight on them. Expose them for what they are, and