A treat is something that is supposed to leave us feeling good, right?  Many people I see in my practice tell me they like to “treat” themselves by eating certain foods. The foods they are generally choosing are contributing to a situation they dislike very much, that of being overweight. So, I ask this question, “How do you feel after you have “treated” yourself with food”? Their answer is usually something like this, “not good, I wish I wouldn’t have eaten that, I always regret it, it felt good while I was eating it but then…”. When you look at the outcome, not feeling good, isn’t that the opposite of what we were after?

What’s really going on is that we’re feeling uncomfortable emotions and to escape the discomfort of dealing with them, we momentarily cover them over with food (or other substances). I usually phrase it like this, “instead of feeling our emotions and dealing with them with kind and loving behaviors toward ourselves, we eat them instead.” When we choose this path of dealing with uncomfortable emotions guess what? We are guaranteeing their return, just the opposite of what we want.

At one point I realized there would never be enough sweets to stop me from feeling the unwanted, painful emotions that kept resurfacing. The only way to decrease or eliminate them was to deal with them or they would keep coming back, and I would keep eating sweets. Here’s a way to picture it in your mind: you are running and someone is chasing you. They continue to chase you as long as you continue to run. One day you decide to turn around and face them down. That is the day they stop chasing you.

If you want to lose weight like I did, but you keep making food choices inconsistent with weight loss, you are not in control of your choices, your emotions are.
If YOU want to be in charge of your food choices, or any other choice for that matter, you can choose to take the emotional journey.* It may sound scary but look at the alternative, continuing to be overweight, feeling stuck, not feeling good about yourself day after day and perhaps not seeing a way out. The truth is;
“If you want something different, you have to do something different.”

What you might gain; freedom from negative thoughts, judgments and beliefs, feeling lighter and brighter.
What you might lose; emotional and physical weight, a feeling of disempowerment.
You get to choose.

With love, Jackie

* What is the “emotional journey”? It’s allowing ourselves to feel our unpleasant feelings instead of trying to distract ourselves from them. It’s also about using our positive and negative feelings to guide us in our choices.
There’s more information about this on 2 previous blogs (see below) and you can always leave a question or comment on my blog in the section titled “leave a reply”.
– 11 February 2015 “Which direction is your compass pointing?”
– 1 March 2015 “Why can’t I lose weight and keep it off?”

Last weeks blog talked about the weight loss tips of “eating our biggest meal earlier” and eliminating carbohydrates by late afternoon or early evening. This brought up the question of “what can we eat if we get hungry in the evening?”   I’m always looking for a better choice. A better choice than eating any snack at night is to have eaten sufficiently during the day so we aren’t hungry in the evening. This includes enough carbs too. When choosing a snack late in the day or at night, eat what you need so you won’t be distracted by hunger but try to limit the amount.

Here’s a list of food choices I came up with for myself that I now share with my clients.

Low or No Carbohydrate Snacks   One “serving” or less is the suggested amount in the evening.

Cheese– string, cottage, one slice or one ounce
Nuts– any kind, plain (1serving is 1/4 cup, usually 10-20 nuts depending on type. Best to check the label
Peanut butter– (1 or 2 Tablespoons) on celery
Hard boiled egg– 1 whole egg or 3 egg whites
Greek Yogurt– 1 cup, or 1/2 cup with a Tablespoon chopped nuts sprinkled on top
*You can also try a sprinkle of cinnamon
Pumpkin seeds– 1/4th cup, preferably non-salted
Sunflower seeds– 1/4th cup, preferably non- salted
Most Vegetables– for evening snacking this excludes corn, peas, potatoes of any kind, and winter squashes like acorn butternut and spaghetti
Meat– any meat, including lunch meat (preferably with no nitrates), fish, including tuna and shrimp
Jerky– preferably with less than 5-8 grams of carb per serving
Avocado-1/4th of a whole one
Possibly sugar-free treats-check label for carbs. Sugar-free doesn’t mean carb free
* if you aren’t sure if something is low or no carb you can read the label, or look it up online

With Love, Jackie
P.S. Don’t worry about the “perfect” choice, there isn’t one. It’s better to focus on making a slightly better choice than you might have in the past.

When it comes to weight loss many “little” things can add up to success.  Adopting new habits or changing old ones can become interesting if we look at them as experiments.   Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Switch your biggest meal of the day to breakfast or lunch.

2. Move the carbohydrate foods you would normally have at dinner time to breakfast or lunch. Substitute another vegetable or a salad for the carbohydrate you would normally have at dinner.

Note: Carbohydrates include grains (examples; bread, rice, cereals, pasta, sweets and anything that contains sugar or flour), legumes (kidney, garbanzo, black, and pinto beans, as well as dried beans and peas, lentils and chickpeas), fruit and dried fruit, some dairy products, (examples; cow’s milk and yogurt) and some vegetables (winter squashes, corn, peas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and yams). These vegetables are higher in carbs. They’re all good to eat but treat these higher carb vegetables as you would other carbohydrates and have them earlier in the day. Remember, “earlier is better” for all of these foods.
This not meant to be a complete list of carbohydrates. If you have any questions you can type them in “comments” below or send them to me at jackie@worthweightingfor.net.

3. Somewhere in the afternoon or early evening (3-6pm), stop eating carbohydrates.

Many clients (me too) have found these ideas to be very helpful when it comes to weight loss. Try them on and see if they’re a “fit” for you (do they feel comfortable and do they make a difference?). Things that “fit” we can easily continue, things that don’t, “we’re done”. Some people may lose weight just by rearranging the time they eat certain foods. Though experts disagree on whether it is necessary, I encourage people to experiment and see if it works for them.

You may be wondering, “what can I eat if I’m hungry in the evening?” I will post my list of food suggestions on next week’s blog. Things you can try the next day if you’re hungry in the evening include:
1. add a snack mid morning or mid afternoon
2. eat a bigger breakfast or lunch.
3. eat more protein at breakfast and/or lunch
Generally, the more we eat during the day the less hungry we will be in the evening, the opposite is also true.

With love, Jackie

Feeling good regardless of the circumstance is one thing that I teach. Here’s a simple, inexpensive way to look and feel better.

Do It Yourself Facial  (for men and women because everyone likes to look and feel good)

1. Wash face using a gentle cleanser
2. Gently exfoliate (gently rub face with something that removes dead skin cells). I like to use the Peter Thomas Roth X Foliating Gel (see blog entry Feb. 7, 2015). You could also slowly and gently go over your face with a damp washcloth.
3. Steam your face for five minutes using about 2 or 3 cups of hot water in a bowl, leaning over the bowl while placing a bath towel over your head. Please be careful here as it can be very hot on your face. You adjust the temperature by the distance your face is from the bowl and by lifting a part of the towel to let air out or keep it in.
4. If you like you can apply a facial mask while your pores are still moist and open from the steam treatment. The type of mask you use should be based on your skin type, dry, normal or oily. You can buy one  at a drug  store or make one yourself (homemade mask recipes can be found online).
5. Finish with your favorite face cream or potion. Because my skin is dry I like to use Pure Argon MILK by Josie Maran at Sephora (Nope, I don’t get these product for free or at a discount for mentioning them. Before purchasing, try a free sample.)

Making time in your life for treating yourself with care & kindness benefits you and those you love too.

With love, Jackie

Last Saturday I took a wonderful class at the Junior College entitled “Building Your Financial Portfolio on $50 a Month”. This might not seem like a daring move, but in my life it was huge. I had to get over three of my fears to accomplish this.

The smallest fear was just navigating the unfamiliar junior college campus. My second fear had to do with the timing of the class, the weekend, when I normally have my disabled son home with me. Third was my fear of dealing with investing, a subject I had always thought too complicated for me to understand.

I believe and teach that there’s always something we can do to empower ourselves in the face of fear, anxiety or discomfort. To challenge my fear of the JC campus, I went ahead of time and scoped out the parking, the machines and the classroom. I figured out how much money and time I would need so that I wasn’t stressing early on a Saturday morning.

For my son, I needed to arrange for him to stay at his group home. I don’t have much experience of weekends without my son. I wondered how this would affect his sense of well-being. Before the weekend I took things to the group home that he might need, and of course, they knew how to contact me.

And lastly, to challenge my fear of investing I told myself that taking the class is just gathering information and I didn’t put any expectations on myself to become an investor. If I felt comfortable after the class to take some action great, and if not I would know more than I did before. My intention (see blog entry March 7, 2015) was to treat it like a new adventure, have fun, and learn something about myself and investing and I did.

What about you? Is there anything you’ve thought about doing and put off or decided it was too difficult? Would it be liberating to take it off the shelf labeled “too hard to do” and try on something new? Adventure, exploring the unknown, contributes to the richness of our lives. How do you know what yours might be?   Check in with the desires of your heart, your next adventure is waiting there.

With love, Jackie

May my words and actions today reflect kindness,
may my thoughts be without judgment,
and may I see only the best in everyone I meet
– Jackie Bowden
Prescription to myself:
Rx: Recite first thing in the morning.
May be repeated several times throughout the day as needed for desired result.
Maximum dosage: Unlimited

With love, Jackie

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”                   – Buddha

What is anger? Anger is the experience of something or someone not being the way we want. Anger may be a normal response to a certain person or situation however, when we hold on to anger it becomes harmful to us.
Holding on to anger is a choice.

Here are just some of the ways anger can affect us.

1. We may think holding on to anger prevents us from getting hurt or disappointed again, but the wall of anger also keeps love out.

2. Beneath anger lies pain. It doesn’t feel good when we think about it, it hurts.

3. When we hold on to anger for a long time, it can become so normal or comfortable that we may not believe that it’s possible to feel good.

4. Anger can  make us feel stuck at a place in our lives that we don’t want to be. We may not understand why we can’t break free of a certain pattern or habit that we don’t like.

5. Some people notice the physical discomfort of anger like a knot in the stomach, a heavy feeling in the chest, or a headache.

6. Anger is the opposite of emotions like happiness, love or contentment. These opposite emotions can’t exist at the same time so, if we are feeling angry we can’t be feeling happy, content or loving.

Given such unpleasant possibilities, why would anyone choose to hang on to anger? Unconsciously it’s our defense against change. Our human nature doesn’t like change and feeling angry at someone or something prevents us from looking at what we could change about ourselves.

How do we begin to let go of anger? We can choose to become aware when we’re feeling angry, realize it’s just a feeling and not allow it to dictate our behavior. For example, if someone has done something that causes us to feel angry, instead of retaliating we could choose to ask them what happened, choose to say nothing, or choose to tell them that we felt hurt.

It’s not easy to rid ourselves of angry feelings. It takes practice.  In return we get to experience love, happiness, freedom, understanding and contentment. Remember, we get to choose for ourselves which emotions we would rather cultivate. Which do you choose?

With love, Jackie

“Children learn what they live.”  – Dorothy Law Nolte

Enjoying parenting and raising happier kids is my wish for you.
One of the most important lessons I learned while parenting was this:

If I wanted a respectful kid I needed to treat them with respect with my words and actions.

Here’s what I’ve come to know:
We are their most important role model.
They are watching what we do more than listening to what we say.
How we treat them and speak to them can make them feel like there’s nothing they can’t accomplish or like there’s no reason to even try.

Like me, you might think this sounds good but HOW do we make this happen? If I may offer a suggestion it would be this, find something you enjoy and start doing it for any length of time. Making ourselves happy is the first step to self-respect. Once we respect ourselves,we just naturally pass it on to our kids.

With love, Jackie

“If you’d like to go on the journey of a lifetime, begin living your life with intention.”                                           – J. Bowden 😉

In my work, one of the things people seem to find most helpful is the idea of intentions. An intention is our statement (to ourself) of what we want, like a new job, enjoying more free time, or to be happier. It’s something we want to create. Living life with intentions can make it more interesting and fun.

An intention can form from something we’ve always known we wanted, like a new car, or it can just be the opposite of what we don’t want, example: we have debt and we want to be debt-free. Why we’re choosing that intention is even more important. Is it because we’re afraid of something or because we desire something wonderful for ourselves? For example, an intention, like having a new car can originate because we want people to notice us (a somewhat negative reason) or because we think the car is fun to drive (a more positive reason). When we have intentions for a positive reason, like happiness or fun, we create good things in our lives and we feel better. The opposite is also true. Intentions that originate from negativity, like jealousy or anger, can create unwanted results and we don’t feel good.

Intentions can be the first step in creating a life that you love. Why not try one on and see for yourself? They don’t usually show up overnight, but over time, just like a toddler learning to walk, you can see the results beginning to take shape.
Happy Creating!

With love, Jackie

Because I work with many remarkable people dealing with the challenge of weight loss, I frequently get asked this question, “I want to lose weight more than anything, so why am I always choosing things that are inconsistent with weight loss?” I asked that question myself for decades.

Overeating, eating when we’re experiencing any feeling we don’t like, boredom, sadness , anger etc., or eating things that don’t support weight loss, comes from trying not to deal with, or cover over, our painful emotions. It’s the very thing that guarantees those feelings will stick around. When we allow ourselves to feel them and not judge them, they will go, and so will the need to compulsively eat.

We all experience painful or unpleasant emotions from time to time. It’s part of being human. I’ll be the first one to tell you, accepting painful emotions is not the most fun thing and sometimes it’s not easy, but it has a big pay off, FREEDOM. There’s a relief from the pull or control of negative emotions.

It’s helpful to be kind and gentle with yourself while you’re experiencing a painful feeling. Here are some examples, think of a comforting thought, recall a pleasant memory, read a favorite book, go for a walk or have a cup of tea.

Here’s what I’ve learned, the more we spend time doing what we love, the less important food becomes”. When we are doing things that make us happy, food is frequently the last thing on our minds.
The opposite is also true.

So what’s the answer to why we eat when we want to lose weight or adopt healthier habits? We are avoiding feeling painful, unwanted or unpleasant feelings. We are stronger than these negative feelings, and so it is possible to enjoy a healthy life and a sensible weight, but we must choose or the feelings we wish to avoid will remain.

With love, Jackie
P. S. The same is true for any other addiction. Remember that an addiction is much more than just drugs or alcohol. It’s anything we can’t stop doing or over doing.