Healthy relationships

How can relationships affect weight loss?  Surely weight loss is just about willpower.  If you know me you will also know that im saying this a bit tongue and cheek because I firmly believe in the interconnectedness of wellbeing and how different aspects of our lives affect each other.  In fact, as I write this now it reminds me of a personal experience I had with this.  In 2010 when I was dealing with the stress involved with going through a marriage break up and seperation I suddenly started having asthma symptoms.  Now my lungs have always been a bit dodgy and low performing when measured on a 'peak flow' asthma testing machine - but I had never experienced asthma symptoms of wheezyness or shortness of breath....until this time of emotional stress.  But then after the seperation happened and in January as the stress reduced the symptoms did as well.  Its not exactly a scientific study but it was a very clear example to me of how we have to think about wellness and weight management in the context of our lives as a whole.

This is the point the Gallup organization also trumpets in their 'wellness' book and online questionnaire.  Their research in to thousands of people in over 150 countries has confirmed that 'while it might be easier to treat these critical areas of our lives as if they are independent, they're not!'.  
It was chatting to a client this morning that reinforced this point again this morning.  She was quite proud because she had noticed her weight had gone down on the scales for the first time in a couple of years.  Good on her, I thought!  But as we chatted she explained how her daughter has a broken leg and so is in a caste and is stuck at home at the moment.  She was feeling down in the dumps because she could not go out with her friends on Saturday night so asked if they could go to McDonald together. Wanting to be a good mum, my client agreed and although she wasn't feeling hungry bought a cheeseburger because she was there.  Fortunately for her, because she is feeling more confident than a couple of months ago she only ate half the cheese burger then felt full so through the rest away.  This was a big win for her because a few months ago she would have forced it all down!

So its great to see her confidence growing, it really is what I live for! But the fact remains that if her daughter wasn't injured she wouldn't have been in that situation.  Or if she wasn't wanting to be a good mum she wouldn't have gone to McDonald's.  Until we really appreciate and embrace the idea that wellness and lifestyle change is not isolated from everything else going on in the world weight will just keep going up.  So to reverse the tide remember to take a holistic approach.  A great way to start is a holistic wellness check-in.  The spark check-in is a great way to do this.  Its also free and quick so why not give it a go now to see what your energy for wellness is like.  Click here to give it a go!

Yours in good health

Chris Eastham

Inspiring Actions

How do we become inspired? Whether to take action toward a big lifestyle change?…or to have an important conversation that you have been putting off for a long time? Or to take an important step in business involving a leap of faith?

Last week I had the honor of interviewing an inspirational young lady named Elvira Alic who has inspired me to take action and commit to writing this blog every week as a regular source of ideas and motivation. So this month I will be exploring the who, why, what and how on the topic of ‘inspiring action’.

This week starts with WHO which leads me back to Elvira. At the sprightly age of 24 she is a beautiful and radiant young lady with a stunning smile and positive, no nonsense attitude to life that is infectious. She is into her second year as a television personality and presenter on channel 31 and is the marketing manager for an important not-for-profit organization – Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Association or Australia. She has also recently signed up as an actor in a Play at Melbourne university. She certainly is a high achiever

But Elvira also has to deal with some big big physical limitations. She has SMA and has already outlived her life expectancy (which she is very proud of)! She is wheelchair bound, and also has very limited use of her arms. She has had to learn to thrive in ways that most people (including me) can’t even comprehend and in many ways this short article does not do her efforts justice, so its not surprise that as we chatted over a hot chocolate after the interview, she was a great deal more mature and insightful than the average 24 yr old.

But she had not always been this way, she explained earlier during our interview. 4 yrs earlier she was overweight, unmotivated, feeling lost and did not leave the house very much. So what, I asked, had inspired her into action?. And the answer was….helping others.

A friend had convinced her to do some voluntary work helping other people with physical disabilities and once she was in that environment she realized that there were other people with problems that needed help. This had got her out of the cycle of worrying in her own issues and was the shift in perspective she needed to start living her life. From there she went from strength to strength.

So if you want to make a big change in your work, career or lifestyle but have been putting it off, procrastinating, getting distracted or stuck thinking about all the problems, issues or things getting in your way STOP! Take some time to consider how the people around you will benefit if you just do it! Think about your family, friends or the one or two people closest to you who have faith in you. Because a leap of faith is not logical. There is no way of knowing if you will succeed…otherwise it wouldn’t be called a leap of faith, it would be a logical next step.

In my Spark program we have a number of different ways to discover how your actions can influence and in return inspire you, including a number of interviews with some truly inspirational people like Elvira.

To discover more ways to become inspired, make most of our unbelievable winter offer! Click here to gain access to our 5 chapter audiobook and discover lots more secrets behind inspiring actions.

URGENT-Are you interested in joining me in Supporting Elvira at the 6th annual SMA Charity Gala dinner on 27th August? Tickets are $120 and MUST BE PURCHASED BY 1st AUG. If you are interested call be direct ph 0420 532 522 NOW

“ACTIVELY LEARNING”

For the whole of human history, physical activity occurred unconsciously and incidentally for most people. Traditionally, at a society wide level, people have not had to actively think about ‘adding exercise into their lives’ until the last 30 or 40 years. As a society wide situation, this is a new phenomenon!

Oh sure, there have always been people that wanted to be athletes or have thought about the benefits of being physically active. The roman poet Juvenal coined the famous phrase healthy mind, healthy body over 2000 years ago, the Greeks had the Olympic games, the Romans also had Roman Army training, and various royals throughout the 18th and 19th centuries have had fitness trainers and associated health assistants.
But not everybody wants to join the army or be a Greek athlete, and the vast majority of people who have inhabited the earth over the past few thousand years have grown up being active as part of their daily lives, having to work on the land, walk to the shops, hand wash their clothing and materials, cut their own firewood, physically move files around the office or stack shelves and so on and so forth.
For many centuries obesity was not a major problem in western society. But in the past 100 years the world has changed dramatically. Firstly, with the industrial revolution, automated mass manufacture has drastically changed the way many people work and move. The rise of the motor car and the changes in urban design to accommodate this has changed the way people travel and move.
More recently with the technological revolution, the development of the computer has drastically changed the way people interact and move around at work, globalisation of the working environment and growth of the ‘working family’ also means that many more people now work full time in paid employment, again drastically changing many different social dynamics.

Old office vs New office
Obesity has been on the rise! Not because of discriminatory accusations like ‘fat people are lazy!’ or because of ‘genetic dispositions’. Obesity is on the rise because western society has changed dramatically over the past 50 years!
For his song ‘Burn to Shine’, the folk singer Ben Harper wrote the lyrics:
Funny things you learn from your mama,
like the way to throw your head back when your swallowing pills
Funny things you learn from your papa
like when you’re talking you just can’t keep your hands still
But that was now and this is then, It never lasts for long
How I miss the good old days; but I’m so glad they’re gone

If you do want to change your change your lifestyle, want to add more physical activity into your week and are trying to figure out why you may have had trouble trying in the past, I think its important to firstly realise that some of the things you learnt to do at a younger age, that may have served you well then, might now be out of date. The world is changing. Thomas Edison once said famously ‘its not the strongest of the species that survives, but the one most able to adapt to new environments’.

You may have learnt certain beliefs or behaviours regarding exercise from your parents or as a child at school or for one of many different reasons. There was probably a good reason for learning them at the time, although you may not remember it now. But its important to realise that what ever the reason was, it is now in the past. It is gone and all that is left is a learnt pattern of behaviour. And if you learnt one behaviour, its entirely possible that you can learn new behaviours too...we’ll explore more that a bit later on.

Its important to realise that you are not alone – many people are attempting to change their lifestyles across the whole of western society, including many incredibly intelligent, high achieving and resourceful people! It is also important to realise that you are not lazy and you do not ‘deserve to be obese’. Instead I would like to simply suggest that you have not yet found....
Some people who have been stuck with old unwanted habits or behaviours for a long time start to believe that they have no control over their emotions or actions. Certain behaviours become so habitual that they believe their mind is like a bouncer who has put them on the black list. As a result they have no control, and are prevented them from getting what they want.
Fortunately a researcher by the name of Dr Libit, did an experiment based around free will & free want. His research is famous and looks at the relationship between our thoughts and our resulting actions. In short he proved that when we think about taking an action, after 0.3 of a second there is a desire to move but it is the mind that decides in the final 0.2 of a second whether or not it will.
This moment in time is what he refers to as VETO POWER. The desire to move does not determine that you have to move – your mind decides whether to listen and act. What he showed scientifically was that everybody has the Free Will to ultimately choose their own destiny. We have no power over the thoughts that enter our mind (the initial short term messages our brain sends out) but we do have veto power about what we do or don’t act on.
YOU HAVE VETO POWER TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR ACTIONS!

Dr Jeffrey Schwartz is another scientist, a neuropsychiatric specialist who has done extensive research into how the mind influences the brain. His research is also very interesting and was into having awareness about awareness. For most of us we don’t stop to think how we are thinking but it is this very action that will enhance our ability to engage in new ways of thinking, which will allow us to attempt new behaviours and as a result change our lifestyles.

The act of wilfully reframing a situation or ‘imagining an alternative outcome’ completely changes the way our brain responds to external stimulus. His research follows on from Libit to show that if we want to change habits and change the way we think, by using the power of our imagination in the right way, we can decrease our connection to the negative emotion we feel around a situation and increase our cognition or connection with our preferred alternative action. He showed that when you repeatedly think of a situation in the same way, you strengthen the neurological pathways favouring that pattern of thought. This is kind of like wearing a new path through long grass. Each time you walk through the path it becomes more accessable, and easier to come back to next time.

WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO YOU GET MORE OF

But conversely, he showed that when you learn to think about an old situation in a new way, you utilise entirely different neural pathways in a different part of your brain (the cerebral cortex as opposed to the emotional ‘limbic’ centre. Because the cerebral cortex is partially separate from the limbic system, using this style of thinking actually decreases the amount of emotional stimulation. Its is possible to pay attention to an old situation in a new way to separate from the old emotional attachment.

WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO DETERMINES WHAT YOU MISS!!
To find oout how to make sustainable lifestyle change or enhance performance as an executive visit www.sparkexecutive.com.au

RESEARCH PROVES LONG TERM LIFESTYLE IMPROVEMENT CAN CHANGE YOUR GENETICS

(AND WHY SHORT TERM DIETS DO NOT WORK!!)

In the Herald Sun, January 16, 2009, there was an article written, based on new research about genetics, diets and weight management. As it was a news story, the article had a one sided spin and was designed to shock. So i’ve taken the report and rewritten it in a more balanced way to highlight some very important points! Read on to find out more.....
The Article started: Melbourne scientists have proved for the first time that damage done by unhealthy eating is "remembered" in genetic controls - epigenetics - and turns off good genes needed to prevent diabetes, heart disease and other complications, the Herald Sun reports.

Lead researcher Assoc Prof Assam El-Osta, from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute team, proved that a single sugar hit, such as eating a chocolate bar, damaged the controls regulating the genes for two weeks.

This sounds shocking, and the article continued: The scientists said this meant that eating a chocolate would not only go straight to your hips, but also sit on your DNA. "It is this idea that you are what you eat, and perhaps that is a reflection of what your parents ate, and perhaps what your grandparents ate," he said.

Prof El-Osta warned that regular poor eating meant the damage would last for months or years, and the real problems caused by an unhealthy diet were deferred until later life.

Now this doom and gloom reporting carried on for a few hundred words when they should have mentioned that Prof El-Osta also said

"We think there is [ALSO] good epigenetic memory as well for individuals who have a good diet, not only for themselves but potentially for future generations”.

"If you have had five years [or a family history] of unhealthy control, where health enducing genes are switched off and ‘health damaging’ genes switched on, changing that for a couple of months to a good diet may not have a tremendous impact. "But going back to a good diet would have some effect 10 years later.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction!

A poor diet could lead to very serious changes that are remembered for many months, or even years BUT conversely a good diet will also lead to some SERIOUSLY GOOD changes that will also be remembered for years. A person with a family history of weight problems and poor eating has the power to reprogram their DNA to break the cycle.

The discovery explains why artery damage persists in diabetics even after they have long periods of therapy....AND it also explains that even people with a family history of problems has the power to overcome their genetic disposition....whether it is ‘good or bad’!

This is evidenced by Ann Mennan. Having experienced the problems of obesity, Ann Mennan, 44, and her son Tom, 18, are working to break the genetic cycle. Last year Ms Mennan was Weight Watchers Slimmer of the Year when she dropped from a morbidly obese 105kg to 71kg, while Tom shed 20kg after seeing his grandmother suffer diabetes, heart disease and then a stroke.

"It's really hard to tell if it is nature versus nurture," she said. "My mother had diabetes, her mother had diabetes and I ended up being diagnosed with diabetes much younger than they did, so I think there is a genetic predisposition.

"To hear that I can, by eating well, actually physiologically improve myself so I keep improving over time is really good to hear."

The Herald Sun article lead with the line ‘FAT parents are condemning their children to obesity and disease. Fat people reprogram controls over their DNA and pass on fatness and disease not only to their children, but to future generations’.

But this article is not providing a fair representation of the research. The idea of ‘condemming’ assumes that children would be unable to also reprogram their DNA. The truth is actually that they can.

What the research does prove is that: Dieting doesn't work because what you ate two months or two years ago is going to be reflected now through your DNA."

BUT that making a sustained long term lifestyle change has the power to change your genetic programming and overcome the habits of your parents and even your even your grandparents!

Ultimately, short term crash diets will never work!

But you’re in control of your DNA, and can even change your genetics!

The findings were reported in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
To make sustainable lifestyle change visit www.sparkexecutive.com.au

First with the head, then with the heart!

‘First with the head, then with the heart’. This is the mantra offered by the heavyweight champion of south Africa to PK, the young boy in Bryce Courtney’ bestselling book The Power of One, who then went on to greatness. But how does this apply to me? You ask.
Maybe you want to lose weight, exercise more, eat less, enjoy life more, drink less or change your lifestyle in some way. An action is only the physical result of a corresponding thought. If people were simply machines designed to perform predefined tasks then maybe we could simply change the action and that would be the end of that.
But we are not and in fact these days even machines and new cars have computer chip brains. Little computers built into them to control their function. So to change the action we have to also go to the source of the action and change the thoughts that cause the action!

It’s not a new idea. In the 17th century the renowned philosopher Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) coined the famous phrase: 'I think therefore I am'. And over 1500 years earlier the roman poet Juvenal uttered the words:

‘Healthy mind, healthy body’
Yes people have been talking about the relationship between thoughts and actions for quite some time. But how does this relate to weight loss, or lifestyle change? Well if you want to start a new exercise regime or change eating habits (actions) then it makes sense to assume that you will also have to change the way you think about things!
WHY reasons dig you deeper into habitual holes
Habits only become a problem when we want to change them. Have you ever noticed that with an old habit, you will have 100 different reasons or justifications for sticking with it? Now, I’m a simple man and so I need to simplify things as much as possible. Sometimes I like to think that we have two modes of operation and the first is reason mode (or WHY mode..as in why am I doing this or thinking that…). ‘Why mode’ allows us to dig ourselves deeper into our habit. For example I like basketball and I could give you 100 reasons why basketball is a fun game to play! This is a really useful mindset if we have a habit we want to continue with like eating carrots or driving on the correct side of the road or being hospitable to our house guests, the problem with this mindset occurs only when we want to change a habit. If we have spent years justifying our actions and building up a list of reasons (or excuses) for doing it…they will all effectively act as barriers to change. So how do we get around the barriers?

HOW options can dig you out of the habitual hole
Well if you have a barrier in front of you and you keep staring at it...all you will see is the barrier….not how to get around it. To get around it, you might like to step back so you get a different perspective, or move the side so you can see past it. Ask yourself, what habit do you want to change? When you notice yourself thinking about this habit, are you thinking about reasons, barriers and excuses? If you want to get a different result you have to start thinking differently about the situation. You need new options!!

Maybe you have spent years justifying why things have not been working, or ignoring things or talking about why the barriers are in your way….Well its good to know that whenever the time is right and whenever you choose to you can stop concentrating on the barriers and to start thinking about new options, thinking about how you will plan your lifestyle change and good your life will be in a years time when you are doing more of the things you want. Its about discovering new OPTIONS!
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948) was no weight loss guru but his approach to change resulted in the one of the biggest changes in the modern world. One of his best ideas is so simple it’s almost magical.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

If you want to be healthy, or slim, or to be exercising regularly and eating a balanced diet, it makes sense to start thinking like that successful version of yourself.
Maybe you could try this idea…Imagine yourself in two years time, living the life you desire. Maybe you are playing a sport, jogging or walking in nature, or involved in some activity you enjoy doing. If a problem arose would you immediately worry about it and get emotional? Or would you think about a solution. If you were going to motivate yourself to do a new activity would you stare in the mirror and put yourself down or would you tell yourself something encouraging? Your thoughts can dig you deeper into a hole or dig you out. So it’s good to know that ultimately it is you that is in control of the spade.

This is really important stuff! I know some people will scoff and question the relevance of Gandhi and dead Roman philosophers to weight loss, and that’s ok. But I have seen too many people join up at gyms and start on diet plans only to quit 4 weeks later on the 1st of February. So often we spend our time thinking about a result we want like losing weight and forget to think about the action required to get there and the thoughts and the best mindset to start & complete the action. I also personally know how good it is when you can live the healthy lifestyle you are aiming for. I love living the lifestyle of my choosing....it’s great! In fact it’s so good that I want other people to experience it too.

Our goals are all different. For some it’s all about achieving high performance and being in good shape so you can work hard and play hard, for others it’s more about getting a better work-life harmony. What-ever your goals and whatever you want to be eating, drinking and doing differently in a year’s time. Thinking about the way you are thinking, and learning how to control your mindset are powerful tools to have at your disposal. It’s good to think about problems briefly, because this balances up all the positive thoughts. But unless you want to, there’s no need to spend too much time worrying about or analyzing where you are at the moment If you want to make some sort of change. Thinking like that all the time will just dig you deeper into your existing habits. Worry & guilt create more worry & guilt.

Maybe, just to humor yourself for the rest of the day you could start thinking as if you were already comfortably on the road to achieving your desired goals. Go on, give it a try…I dare you! It’s just like riding a bike…you should be careful at the beginning and might come off the first couple of time if you try to go too fast…but take is slowly and after a few goes your balance and control improve…then before long you have another fun way to get to where you want to go faster!

So now we know we want to think more effectively, and why it will help…how do we start? There are many ways to tap into your inner resourcefulness. Personally I find mindset coaching works really well for clients and myself. But now you understand the idea, there are many alternatives you can explore...who knows… maybe you’ve already started.

For sustainable ways to improve wellbeing and enhance energy visit www.sparkexecutive.com.au