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You Are the Shark

A few years ago, my son and I were scuba diving the “Fish Bowl” just off the coast of the beautiful island of St Thomas in the Virgin Islands.   This dive was 60-80 feet below the surface and was some of the most beautiful coral reef and aquatic life I have ever seen.  The water was crystal clear with unlimited visibility and there were hundreds of schools of fish in this area.

As we dove into this amazingly beautiful depressed bowl-shaped area of coral that was about the size of a football field, more and more aquatic wildlife came into view.

We saw thousands of fish – the most colorful fish I’ve ever seen, hundreds of different species.  We saw sting rays, barracuda, lobster, and some of the most beautiful coral I have ever witnessed.   It was exhilarating, breathtaking and peaceful all at the same time.

However, as we swam over and around the ocean floor and through the coral caverns that lined it’s walls, I noticed something very unique.  All of these species of aquatic life would swim, then rest.  Many of them would rest for a period on the ocean floor or in a cove or cavern of the beautiful walls of coral reef.

Then, every few minutes, I’d catch the view of a group of reef sharks as they swam by.   As they swam, they would watch us, and swim over or under our diving group.  Yet, the sharks never stopped.  They never rested or waited quietly on the ocean floor like the other aquatic predators we saw that day.

Majestic and fearsome creatures with the beautiful waving motion of their tails, sliding smoothly through the saltwater along the edges of the reef. These reef sharks and the other nurse and hammer head sharks we saw never stopped.

I learned a fascinating lesson that day.  If a shark stops swimming, it dies.

The ocean may be its home . . .

And, the shark may be one of the most fearsome creatures under the deep blue . . .

But, without forward movement, the shark will drown.  Sharks rely upon obligate ram ventilation of water passing through their mouths filtering oxygen as it is rammed against the gills.

If they stop swimming, they stop receiving oxygen.  If they stop moving, they die.

It was a powerful life lesson.

You and I are much like the shark, we survive on a diet of protein, fat and movement.

You are a fearsome collection of appetites, powers, and instincts made for constant forward movement.

If you do not grow . . .

If you do not evolve, risk, or expand . . . Slowly but surely, you will die a spiritual or emotional death.

You may wish and pray it were otherwise.  You can try to will yourself content with stagnation and starch . . .

You can try to force yourself to be satisfied. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Yet, as you know by now . . . it doesn’t take. It doesn’t work. Your hunger increases, and you start gasping for air.

You are the shark.

To whatever extent you have failed to move forward, that lack of momentum is drowning you in a deep blue sea of “what if’s,” “could have’s,” and “if only’s.”

You and I are not overwhelmed.

You are not suffering from too much.  You and I suffer from TOO LITTLE.

Underwhelm frequently masquerades as overwhelm, and it stifles the life-giving apparatus.

You’re not over stretched. You’re not tapped out.  You are profoundly under-utilized . . . bored, rotting & stymied.

The narrow walls of your life begin crushing your heart when you’re not moving. You know it’s true.

Even when everything within you wants to retreat . . .

Fin your tail, flair your vents and MOVE FORWARD.

Do not be afraid to play the bigger game, take the wild risk, make the bold move.

I gained four life lessons from this experience. These make more sense when viewed with this perspective:

  1. Happiness is not the absence of problems; it is the ability to deal with them, swim at them head on.
  2. Feeling sad after making a decision doesn’t mean you made the wrong decision. You decide and you keep moving.
  3. You’re not stressed out because you are doing too much.  You are stressed because you are doing too little of the things that make you feel most alive, the thing that keeps the oxygen moving across your gills.
  4. The lesson you struggle with will repeat itself until you face it and learn from it.

Be the shark you were meant to be, and, at last, watch your life begin.

 

 

 

 

Adam Nally, DO

@DocMuscles

Man is Messy

There is this feminist notion that masculinity is a basket of “good” and “bad” characteristics that men can pick and choose from. The pleasant qualities are things like provision of food, provision of funds, providing a home, duty, honor and procreation. The “bad” or distasteful characteristics are things like intense strength, lust, violence and furious indignation.

The project of radical feminism has been to convince men, and women alike, that men must rid themselves of all the distasteful qualities and characteristics of their nature. If they don’t, they threaten, the “toxic male” will no longer find acceptance in the feminized world in which we now live.  The term for this is emasculation.

And yet, you cannot cherry-pick the parts of masculinity that you are happy with.  Just as an engineer cannot keep the abutments and dispense with the footings of a wall, bridge or building, the man is the totality of strength and weakness built in perfect tension and relationship to each other. The man is much like a high tension bridge.  You cannot have the strengths without the foundation spanning the weak points.

In every textbook or class on biology, the male and female of a species are dramatically different and can never be expected to act, interact or look similarly.  But, ask any woman and the majority will tell you that men are looked at from the female mind as a hairy, misbehaving woman.

When a man seeks to rid himself of the “nasty parts,” pointed out and perceived as “bad” by the female, the bridge collapses.  You cannot bridge an ocean without tension, without a mass of steel suspended in configurations of terrifying force and power, that steel welded together with white hot heat and molten flux.

The solution is not to rid yourself or conform. It is to admit, acknowledge and own every aspect of your gender, no matter how ugly, volatile or untidy it may appear to the opposite sex.

Man is messy.  He always has been. Try to bury that fact and your gender will bury you.

Denying the mess is a recipe for repression, misery, malaise, fatigue and heart disease.

Make no mistake, when you go off script and embrace the mess, you will feel, and appear, dangerous.

Feminism will treat your masculinity like a loaded gun because unapologetic fully-embraced masculinity IS a loaded gun.  You are dangerous.  That’s what it means to be a man.

Uncocking the hammer does nothing but emasculate you, and render you a useless tool, a dull blade, to your family and the world at large.

The lie is that you can get rid of the “nasty bits” and retain your masculine power.   In truth, you have two choices.

  1. Be dangerous, yet well disciplined
  2. Scale yourself down to a cap gun . . . shooting blanks.

Be warned, the second choice sounds great, and actually is initially pleasant to the females in your life, but it leads to depression and the modern male malaise.

Chose wisely.

If you’re reading this, trying make a choice barraged by voices on all sides . . .  If your reaching has reached its limit . . .  If all the tendons of your soul are straining to hold it together, feeling like their about to snap . . . You’re not alone, my friend.
I can’t fix it for you, same as you can’t fix it for me.  However, I can at least assure you that you’re no stranger to me . . . That your fears are my fears, your longings are identical to my own.
I see you not as some washed-up, broken down grizzly bear, but as one of our finest.  An honorable, noble, disciplined dangerous man yet in the fight, nose split, teeth broken . . . Spitting dust and blood for the hundredth time . . . Swaying in his boots, but still standing.
There is hope.  Read about it here.
Much love always,
DocMuscles

(Adapted from Bryan Ward’s Third Way Man)

Are You the King or the Second Queen?

When you were a boy, much like me, you likely dreamed of the day you would be a king.  You dreamed of the day you would marry a beautiful maiden, have children, own lands . . . You dreamed of the day you would be loved, feared, and venerated.
You saw the way of the king, and you knew in your belly that this was your call:
  • To build the kingdom that you dreamed about
  • To live a life of benevolent power
  • To be admired, respected and beloved.
But somewhere along the way, the dream was corrupted. For we saw that kings can be craven.
We saw that some kings can be cruel.
And when the queens of the land bristled in unison . . . men, seeking to appease them, broke their scepters over their knees. And, men, the world over, resolved not to be king, but to be a second queen.  They resorted to work in cheerful cooperation as a second wife, without the danger or the terror that lives within the man, that husband king.
Thus, the path of misery for man, and wife alike, was paved. . . the emasculated king, living his life as a second queen.  Yet, man was never meant to take a wife and father children only to relinquish his God given dominion to become the “second queen.”
You and I, we come to marriage and family for kingship:
  • To provide safety and shelter for your queen and her cubs
  • To ravish the queen and see the animal heat in her eyes
  • To live in glory and honor
  • And when called upon, to willingly go heart-in-mouth into the fray
You may not have servants or lands or chests of gold. But, if you have a wife, if you have children, if you have an audience to serve . . . you have everything required for true, abiding kingship.
For a king is king not by the command he claims for himself or the fealty others pay him.  He is king by pressing and wielding his dangerous power to the noble service of others in the creation of value and honor.
Kingship is the exercise of dangerous magic nobly.  It is an exercise in unconditional love applied. Through force of will and force of imagination, you make your visions manifest.
Kingdoms are not won, they are not granted, they are not inherited . . . Kingdoms are CREATED.
Do not wait for your wife to become the queen. Do not wait, grumbling, for her to adulate or serve you. The principle buried by the softened souls of this civilization, by generations of absentee fathers, by generations of fatherless homes, by generations of men without their scepters is this . . .
It is the KING that makes the queen, not the other way around.
You stare foggy and angry at the hole in your drywall, at the un-replaced light bulbs, at the broken fence in the yard . . . at the mind-numbing banality all around you.  Yet you want to feel alive again . . . deeply, lastingly, the way you dreamed as a young boy that you would feel when you became king.
That feeling doesn’t come from a manicured yard, a check in the mail, or even from some bestowed title from an Ivy League tower.  It comes from indwelling and OWNING the role you’ve already won. You “have” a family, but it will not glow until your breathe everything you have into it . . . until you animate it with all your might and mind and heart and lungs.
Why are you waiting for some outside appointment? Rise up. Stand up. Throw out the box of cereal.  Give the macaroni to the neighbor. Eat the bacon, fire up the smoker. Take on that task that’s been gnawing at you for months.
Create your kingship NOW.  Do it TODAY: one kiss, one meal, one light bulb, one filled hole-in-the-drywall, one meal, one poem-in-the-lunchbox at a time.  Stop sitting there braiding each other’s hair.
BE THE DAMN KING because the queen is already taken.  Whether or not she returns that love does not matter.  It is the act of loving her that actually fires you, it is not the reciprocation.  Any love or adoration she returns is immaterial.  The essential magic has already happened inside you.  The fire has already been lit.
“Why would I kiss that mouth?” you say. “Why would I gaze into those cold, bitter eyes? How could I treat as queen this woman who sneers and scorns so unbearably?”
And that, there, is the double-bind that has been holding your very kingship, holding your marriage captive.  This love, this respect, this adoration you long for her to give to you . . .
It is not hers to give, but for YOU TO CREATE within her.
You see, it is the KING that molds the maiden into the queen, into her best and highest self.  Not with silence or criticism or ultimatums, but with acts of imagination and love.  No matter how deep your disillusionment, it is the only way.  You must create the queen.
The power is within you . . .
Click Here Now To Learn How.
(Adapted from Brian Ward’s Third Way Man)

Does Jung & Myers-Briggs Typology Effect Obesity?

Sitting around the dinner table this evening we began discussing personality types.  As a fun exercise, we each took the Jung Typology Test based on Jung and Myers-Briggs findings about personality.   If you haven’t taken this personality test, you might find it quite interesting and the topic of hours of conversation around the dinner table  . . . as we did this evening. The test is free on-line and takes about 10 minutes.

jung
Carl Gustav Jung – Swiss Psychiatrist & Psychotherapist

The actual Myers-Briggs Type Indicator costs about $50.00 and includes an interpretation by someone trained in giving the test. It differs slightly in its questions and the way the testing is interpreted.

Both tests provide an interesting insight into your individual psychological preferences regarding four categories.  According to Carl G. Jung’s theory of psychological types published in 1971, people can be characterized, first, by their preference or general attitude about the source of and how they express their energy:

  • Extraverted (E) vs. Introverted (I)

The second preference is one of the two functions of perception, or related to how they perceive information coming from either the external or internal world:

  • Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N)

and the third preference relates to how one processes the information that they have received, acting as one of the two functions of thought or judgement:

  • Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F)

Isabel Briggs Myers, a researcher and practitioner of Jung’s theory, proposed that the fourth preference related to how one applies or implements the information that he or she processed above.  She proposed a judging-perceiving relationship as the fourth dichotomy influencing personality type in 1980:

  • Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P)

Each of these dichotomies represents an opposite pole of preference and each of us have a dominant pole toward which we gravitate.

Based upon your dominant traits, a personality type index is assigned.

PersonalityChart

Kim and Lee studied these personality preferences and how they relate to diet, health and propensity toward obesity.  Their findings were interesting in that expression, perception and judgement did not seem to have any bearing on  health or obesity. However, the application of judgement vs perception did play a role in health. Judging (J) means that a person organizes all of his or her life events and, as a rule, sticks to those plans. Perceiving (P) means that he or she is inclined to improvise and explore alternative options.

Significantly better dietary and health behaviors were identified in those preferring Judging (J) versus those preferring Perceiving (P) traits.  Those preferring the Judging (J) behaviors included eating breakfast, regularly eating three meals a day, smoking less, exercising more and having a lower tendency to nocturnal eating.

The findings show that the use of  Jung Type or Myers-Briggs Type Indicator may be helpful in identifying and index those with a Perceiving (P) trait that would benefit from dietary and exercise education, nutritional counseling and/or behavior modification programs.

It has been my experience that those with a “P” type dichotomy preference would benefit greatly from daily food planning and journaling.

So, what is your Jung/Myers-Briggs type?

Just for fun, and because my kids were very curious about what each personality type would appear as in character, I’ve included the Jung/Myers-Briggs Disney typing.

I’m an ENFJ, just in case you’re curious.

Disney Character Personality Types

References:

  1. Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types (Collected works of C. G. Jung, volume 6, Chapter X)
  2. Briggs Myers, I. (1980, 1995) Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type
  3. Kim BS, Lee YE. College Students’ Dietary and Health Behaviors related to Their Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Personality Preferences. Korean J Community Nutr. 2002 Feb;7(1):32-44. Korean.

 

How to Stay Motivated on Carbohydrate Restriction

This evening on PeriScope, we talked about the 10 things you can do to stay motivated on your low-carb lifestyle.  A number of great questions were asked including:

  • How much carbohydrate should be restricted?
  • What labs should you be monitoring regularly?
  • What’s a normal blood sugar?
  • Why is Dr. Nally freezing in Denver?
  • Is fermented food good for you?
  • Why should you eat pickles and kimchi even when you’re not pregnant?

And, much much more . . . It’s like a college ketogenic course on overdrive . . . for FREE!!!

You can see the PeriScope with the comments rolling in real-time here: katch.me/docmuscles

Or, you can watch the video stream below:

See you next time.

PeriScope: #LowCarb #Motivation. Good Morning Arizona! AZ Earthquakes.

PeriScopeI have been using PeriScope as a fun method of staying in touch with each of you, my fantastic patients, and people all over the world.  If you’re interested in seeing me live, you can down-load the PeriScope app onto your iPhone, iPad or Android phone through the App Store.

You can see this mornings PeriScope (with the rolling comments and hearts on the screen) with Dr Nally here on Katch.me/docmuscles.  Katch is a great site that holds a record of all my recent PeriScopes.

Or you can watch the video stream (without comment stream) below:

If you have a question you’d like me to address on PeriScope, please let me know.

Have a great morning!!

New Year Resolution Project

A few of my patient’s have fallen off the carbohydrate restriction waggon this last year.  In celebration of restarting your low-carb lifestyle and resolutions to improve your health, I propose the following celebration.

1) Go home right at 5pm

2) Pull out your favorite skillet (mine is a well used Lodge Cast Iron pan)

3) Remove your favorite full fat sausage from the freezer.

4) Look up your favorite cream cheese waffle recipe.

5) Make your self a Sausage Sanctuary, a Bacon Bungalow or a Low-Carb Cabin (whatever tickles your fancy) in celebration of restarting your carbohydrate restriction and removing the carbage from your life.

Sausage House

I suggest you use a Low-Carb cream cheese waffle you can find here for the roof.

Good Luck! And, may the ketones be with you!

Don't Fear Fat

Dont Fear Fat

 

Don’t fear the fat.  If you haven’t seen the movie Cereal Killers, you should watch it by clicking here.   D.J. O’Neill ditches wheat and sugar in a food plan consisting of 70% fat – under the guidance of legendary South African Sports Scientist Prof. Tim Noakes.

The Fire Within

I recently read this counsel given at the Northland College by Principal John Tapene in 1959.  It still applies to us today. It is a state of mind that applies to life and to all that we do, including our approach to weight loss.  I paraphrase it below.

We frequently hear the cry from our teenagers and young adults, “what can we do, where can we go?”

My answer to them and to you is this: Go home, mow the lawn, wash the windows, learn to cook, build a raft, get a job, visit the sick, study your lessons and after you’ve finished, read a book. Your city or town doesn’t owe you recreational facilities and your parents don’t owe you fun. The world does not owe you a living.

Fire WithinOn the contrary, you owe the world something.  You owe it your time, talent and energy so that no one will be at war, in sickness and in loneliness as we have been in the past.  In other words, grow up, stop being a crybaby, get out of your dream world and develop a backbone and not a wishbone. Motivation is a fire from within.  If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are, it will only burn very briefly.  Start behaving like a responsible person.  You are important and you are needed.  It’s too late to sit around and wait for somebody to do something someday.  Someday is now, and that somebody is you.

 

Burnout

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Does your job limit interaction with people and/or do you spend most of your time with a computer screen?
  • Have you become cynical or critical at work?
  • Do you drag yourself to work and have trouble getting started once you arrive?
  • Have you become irritable or impatient with co-workers, customers or clients?
  • Do you lack the energy to be consistently productive?
  • Do you lack satisfaction from your achievements?
  • Do you feel disillusioned about your job?
  • Are you using food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or to simply not feel?
  • Have your sleep habits or appetite changed?
  • Are you troubled by unexplained headaches, backaches or other physical complaints?

burn outThese are the ten most common signs of “burnout.”  46% of respondents in surveys indicate at least one of the above symptoms of burnout. Two or more of these imply that you are suffering from some degree of “burnout.” The classic triad of burnout is:

  1. Exhaustion
  2. Cynicism
  3. Questioning the quality of your work, or questioning whether you are making a difference in the world any longer

What is burnout? It is defined by “Mr. Webster” as “physical or mental collapse caused by overwork or stress.” But, that definition doesn’t seem to do it justice, and many people experiencing burnout don’t actually “collapse.”  They do, however, become significantly less productive, depressed, and loose the enjoyment of life.  Work begins to feel like slavery, exercise becomes a chore, food begins to have associations with guilt, friendships are seen as obligations and love looses its luster and looks more like a social construct.

Burnout is often likened to discontent, however, these are two very different emotional feelings.  Discontent can be defined as dissatisfaction with ones circumstances. There are two kinds of discontent in this world: the discontent that works and the discontent that wrings its hands.  The first kind often gets what it wants and the second looses what it has.

Burnout differs from discontent, in that continued work toward a goal brings on the triad of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and the feeling of reduced personal accomplishment. Burnout is, in reality, the sum total of hundreds of thousands of tiny betrayals of purpose.

Burnout can occur in any field of work, however, a study published in the 2012 issue of JAMA reveals that over 40% of the ~800,000 U.S. physicians are experiencing burnout and are more prone to burnout than any other worker in the United States.  The journal Academic Medicine recently reported that medical students, when compared to age-matched fellow college graduates, reported significantly higher rates of burnout.

So, how do you overcome burnout?

I’m an Osteopath.  I see disease in the context and inter-relationship of the mind, body & spirit.  Overcoming burnout requires one to restore balance in these three areas.  I am impressed by the work of Charlie Hoehn in his book, Play it away: A workaholic’s cure for anxiety.  Charlie does a wonderful job of describing the broken inter-relationship of the mind, body and spirit in a person experiencing burnout.

The first step to repairing the broken inter-relationship is to recognize and remove those anchors keeping you tethered to the feelings of burnout.  The anchors are the stressors that cause you to worry on a daily and weekly basis.  Journaling these stressors, writing them down in 3-5 word sentences is the start.  Identify which of these stressors is the biggest or causes the most angst, then write out the following question.  “How can I eliminate [stressor] from my life?  Do this with the largest two or three stressors. Then write out a solution that is small and uncomplicated to each stressor.  Put the solution to work immediately. If your solution has not improved your feelings of stress and anxiety within a week, then drop the first and try to find a second stressor, or otherwise switch to a second solution. Journaling these thoughts, questions, feelings and answers allows your mind to change from a self-centered focus to an action based focus.  It clears the mind to move into action. Nothing is more important in reducing burnout, than nourishing the imagination. Using a journal helps stimulate thought and the imagination.

The second technique is scheduling some real play. Write down the five most fun activity involved with play that you did as a child. Then, set aside dedicated time for your favorite activity of play.  It is essential that you actually schedule this play time into your daily activities.  There are a couple of rules associated with play time.

  1. Disconnect from all social media
  2. Harmony of the playtime is more important than winning
  3. Have some serious fun
  4. Shoot for 30 minutes of play time per day
  5. This should ideally be done outside in the fresh air and sunlight

“A lack of play should be treated like malnutrition: it’s a health risk to your body and your mind.”  (Stuart Brown)

“Play is the highest form of research.” (Albert Einstein)

Technique number three is related to sleep.  It is essential that you have a consistent bedtime and give yourself the opportunity to take an afternoon nap.  You can optimize your sleep by turning off electronics before getting into bed, going to bed at the same time each night, decreasing the room temperature to 68-70 degrees Fahrenheit, draw the curtains to make the room dark, and use a relaxing loop of quite background sound like ocean waves, or the sound of a trickling stream to ease your mind (can be found on a number of apps).

It may take up to a week for your body to unwind and get used to this schedule.  Also, schedule a 20 minute afternoon nap.

Meditation and/or prayer is the fourth technique.  Sit or kneel, close your eyes and observe the thoughts that enter your mind for 10-15 minutes. Listen to and keep your breathing calm and deep. Pay attention to the rhythm of your breathing.  Reading can also be a form of meditation and has become an important refreshing part of alleviating burnout.  We can only be as good as the books that we read.  Read, ponder over and talk about good books.

Fifth, eat healthy meals with healthy friends.  Decrease the carbohydrates and increase the good omega 3 fats in your diet.  The insulin response to carbohydrates stimulates the inflammatory and parasympathetic nervous system making you more fatigued and tired. Reduce the bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, carrots and corn intake in your diet.

Increasing the good fat in your diet (like Kerrygold Irish Butter, Coconut Oil, Olive Oil, and real animal fats) actually increases your bodies access to essential B vitamins and improves the use of Vitamin D.  Making dietary changes become a habit is often easier when it is done with a friend.  Schedule opportunities to eat healthy meals with family or friends attempting to do the same thing.  You will help support each other and be more likely to succeed.

The last recommendation is spend time in nature.  One weekend a month spend at least two hours out in nature. Take a hike, go on a nature walk, go camping, swim in the river, etc. Give yourself permission to unplug during these times.  Then, pay close attention to how you feel when your in different environments.

In the words of Shakespeare, “Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin/As self-neglecting” (King Henry V, Act 2, scene 4).

I conclude with the rhetorical question, “If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?” (The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly)

 

Relapse

FallOffWaggonDid you fall off the low-carbohydrate wagon this week?  Did those donuts just call out your name as you walked by the bakery in the grocery store? Maybe you feel like you were shot out of the carbohydrate cannon, landing in the nearby Potato County? If so, you probably had a relapse.  You were doing so well, then all the sudden, your will-power caved.

Relapse is not uncommon when making a dietary lifestyle change. What causes relapse? I often see people relapse back to the Standard American Diet, the SAD diet, because of a number of reasons.

Neurohormones of Hunger
Neuro-hormones of Hunger

First, it is important to recognize that there are a milieu of neuro-hormones that drive hunger cravings or suppression. Anything that triggers a change in these hormone levels can cause the carbohydrate cravings to kick in . . . and you find yourself stuffing yourself with “carbage.”

Second, is boredom.  Many people find an increased nervousness when they get bored.  They find that eating, with it’s calming parasympathetic nervous system effect,  diminish the nervousness that arises out of boredom.  They often create a near Pavlov’s type trigger to eat when they experience boredom and it is quickly interpreted as hunger. There is actually a release of endorphin associated with eating and chewing that suppresses stress and or anxiety.  Reduction of stress, exercise, and journal writing have been found to help patient’s reduce the food cravings associated with boredom.  It is important to have “rescue foods” like string cheese, a handful of almonds, beef jerky, or “fat bombs” available that can be used when you experience these symptoms.

Following the line of triggers, Pavlov demonstrated that repeated actions associated with rewarding consequences will form a physiologic trigger.  Frequently. our desire to eat carbohydrates (“carb cravings”) are often tied to triggers. For example, growing up in my home as a child, our family frequently would relax by watching prime-time television while eating a large bowl of popcorn and a Pepsi.  To this day, whenever I turn on the television in the evening, I get cravings for carbohydrates.  It is important to look at what you were doing or what was going on around you at the time the craving occurred. Substitution of foods has helped to solve these cravings by replacing the popcorn and Pepsi with pork rinds and Diet Dr. Pepper. (Don’t cringe, pork rinds and guacamole tastes fantastic and is a very low carbohydrate substitute that works for me.)

Lastly, many patients fall off the wagon when they visit or have a meal with family. They are often made to feel guilty if they don’t eat Aunt Velda’s homemade chocolate chip cookies.  They are afraid of offending their relatives if they don’t partake of those tasty cookies.  The challenge is that cheating by eating the cookies causes an insulin spike and leads to 24-72 hours of carbohydrate cravings thereafter. Are those cookies worth 72 hours of carbohydrate cravings?  Maybe. But it is important to consider helping Aunt Velda to understand what those cookies will do to you, and that you still care for Aunt Velda even if you don’t eat her chocolate chip cookies.

In many families, food is often associated with love.  “If you don’t eat the food I made for you, you don’t really love me” is an underlying tone that can be found in many family dynamics that I see in my office.  Some times bringing your own low-carb chocolate chip cookies, and offering one to Aunt Velda, will stimulate a conversation about your dietary changes and diffuse the guilt and offence that might arise.

Often, knowing what will cause you to fall off the wagon, helps to keep you on the wagon.  What challenges have you had staying on the wagon?

The Self-Discipline Muscle

Many patients come to my office desiring to loose weight, but complain of no self-control.  They feel they cannot loose weight because they don’t have the willpower.  Willpower, or self-control, is an elusive and mysterious thing. “If only I had more self-control,” I hear people say, “I could . . . ” exercise regularly, eat right, avoid drugs and alcohol, save for retirement, stop procrastinating, achieve a noble goal, or loose weight.  A 2011 American Psychological Association study reveals that almost 30% of those interviewed felt that lack of willpower was the greatest barrier to making a change in any of these areas.

So what is “willpower” or “self-control?” It is the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to fulfill a long-term goal. Image

I meet and work with people every day who feel they have no willpower.  In actuality, will power and self-control are learned behaviors that develop over time.  Anyone can have willpower, you just have to understand how willpower in certain areas can be strengthened and what makes it weak.  In fact, a 2005 study showed that self-discipline or willpower was more important than IQ in academic successes.  This study also found that increased self-discipline lead to less binge eating, higher self-esteem, higher grade point averages, better relationship skills and less alcoholism. Fascinating isn’t it!?

The answer can be found in a quote from Henry P Liddon, “What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.”  This means that willpower or self-control can be learned or improved.  How, you ask?

First, you must establish and write down a reason or motivation for change.  In addition, that change must fulfill a clear goal. Just wanting to loose weight isn’t good enough.  You have to be motivated because of a consequence that arises from the obesity or overweight.  And, you “loosing weight” isn’t a clear goal.  You must set a weight reduction goal. It has to be clearly written down with your motivational reason.  Willpower or self-control cannot begin to form until these two steps occur.

Second, you must begin to monitor your behavior toward that goal.  When it comes to weight loss, I ask every one of my patient’s to keep a diet journal.  In this journal they are asked to write down every thing they eat and drink.  The night before, they are to write down their plan for tomorrow’s meals, then the next evening, they account for their success or failure by journaling on that same page what they actually ate and drank, then after comparing what they did, they plan for tomorrow and journal why they were successful or why they weren’t.  It’s the last part that is so powerful, a short 3-5 minutes of self-introspection. Self-introspection is the key to behavioral change.  It is the key that allows a person to see their habits and then make very small changes that break bad habits, solidify good habits and strengthens willpower.

Third, willpower is developed over time.  It is developed by being accountable to ones-self on very little things every single day.  But it MUST be written down. If I planned to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast and I didn’t, why?  When I look at my day, I may realize that I went to bed too late to get up early and cook bacon and eggs. So, instead, I ate a yogurt that was in the fridge. I am accountable to myself.  If I plan to eat bacon and eggs tomorrow, I must either go to bed earlier, prepare them the night before, or throw out the yogurt . . . so not to be a temptation again.  This is written down and I make a very small change tomorrow.

kid-musclesOver time, this self-introspection becomes easier and easier, to the point that you do it sub-consciously.  It is this sub-conscious self-introspection and change will be seen by others as self-control or willpower.  Just like a working or strengthening a muscle, recording short goals and and accounting for them makes your self-discipline stronger.  The self-discipline muscle becomes more powerful. In time, a split second decision not to binge on that piece of cake will be seen as strong willpower by those around you. You’ll recognize that it’s just flexing your self-discipline muscle.

So, my next question to you is . . . where’s your diet journal?