Jenn's Losing It

It's a savvy way to streamline prep, shop efficiently and stay on plan! Benjamin Franklin once said " If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail".  He couldn't ne more on point when it comes to success in weight loss!  As with most things in life, advance work pays off with mealtime.  Whether you pre-track your dinner in the afternoon, batch prep the week's lunches or decide on a full day's menu before you even eat breakfast, planning make it easier to do the following: Avoid spur of the moment eating.  When you know what and when your next meal is, you are less likely to be influenced by extreme hunger or external triggers (think donuts). Multiply your possibilities!  Planning your meals helps you explore different foods and bring in a range of flavors and nutritional benefits. Save money.  If you enter the supermarket with a solid list of ingredients for specific meals, you won't spend on food you don't need.   Get in the Healthy Eating Z

Setbacks happen to all of us.  Here's how to get back on track. Whether you missed a Weight Watcher's meeting, unplanned eating, skipping your morning walk, or not keeping track, lapses like these are temporary when you identify, accept, and move past them. Thinking of a setback as a time when an old, unhelpful behavior change.  The good news?  A setback is also a sign of success.  The new behaviors that you've acquired have been established themselves that your old behaviors seem - just that - old and unhelpful. To bounce back from a setback, ask yourself what you can learn and what you can change to ward off the setback again.  Then, turn to your support systems - online, meeting room, friends or family.  Having a support system to lean on during times that you feel you've gone off track is an important tool to have.  They can help you find your way out of a dark time and remind you that the bad time you're having now, may not be nearly as bad as it was be

Use Weight Watcher's guidelines to make them powerful and effective. I know I am guilty of setting unrealistic goals for myself ALL THE TIME.  I get my mind in place that I want to get fit, healthy and lets be real skinny - then I want those things to happen overnight with little to no effort by me.  Because let's face it - all of those things take a lot of work, dedication and time.  Lasting results don't happen overnight. Setting specific, attainable goals make it more likely for you to accomplish them and make the behaviors you want to adopt long-lasting.  Weight Watcher's Weekly on this subject give you some suggestions on setting SMART goals! So let's take a look at what goes into a powerful goal. It's specific.  Describing what you want, be exact on what you want to accomplish.  Saying you are going to do yoga this week is less likely to happen than saying - I'll go tot the 10am class on Monday and Wednesday after dropping the kids at school.

It's always with us, but there are ways to rethink, reframe, and respond to stress that are healthy - and helpful. Stress is natural and it's something that everyone experiences.  It's your body's automatic response to perceived pressure or threat.  Stress seems to know when to hit you and it can hit you all at once - like on the day of your big presentation or it can build up over time - exploding like a time bomb.  I know my tendency is to try and suppress the stress as long as possible and when it bubbles up BOOM...there's either a cry fest, scream fit or both.  I'm the worst at handling stress.  I may look like I have it together, but most days this is what's happening inside.  Bless my family for braving those storms!  I have yet to learn how to channel that stress into something positive or useful. The Weight Watchers Weekly on this subject reminds you that you can use stress to motivate you, like when you pull all the details together for a surp

Something that has been on my mind a lot lately is all of the different weight loss and “healthy lifestyle” programs that are out there. Now let me begin by saying that whatever program you choose has to be what’s right for you and I don’t judge anyone’s personal choice. This is just me being honest and sharing what’s best for me. What’s not a surprise is I’ve been struggling to lose weight. I feel like I’ve been in battle for the past 4.5 years-since having James aka baby #2. I’ve run the gamut during this time of different programs. From seeing a dietician that had a fat and weight loss formula - which I liked the program because it was focused on eating “real” foods to doing a few Standard Process Cleanses with supplements and protein shakes to Weight Watchers - off and on between these other programs. During all of this I never really focused on exercise. I focused on the scale and how quickly I could get that number down.  One thing I learned quickly is that I struggled

Planning when you'll eat helps you manage hunger, avoid unplanned eating and make healthier choices.   There's a lot to be said for this.  If you have a scheduled healthy eating plan for the day, you're definitely less likely to go off the rails and eat unplanned foods (and for most of us, that's junk food- Am I right?).  A few years back i saw a nutritionist to help me in my weight loss efforts and that was the main sticking point to her whole program.  Eating breakfast as soon as you wake, then a snack a few hours later, then lunch, another snack, dinner and an optional snack in the evening if you needed something to tide you over until the morning.  Her schedule also included "food rules", that I won't go into all of them here, but one of them sticks with me today - which I still try to achieve (not nearly as much as I should) is no carbohydrates for dinner - proteins and veggies only.  Which makes sense if you really think about it.  Going to bed