Hello Everyone!
Have you ever wanted an approach that would help you towards:
*slimming down
*having more energy
*decreasing stress
*living longer
all simultaneously?
Today I want to share how an integrative and holistic psychiatric approach can do just that.
I hope that you're having a great summer and enjoying more time in the sun. Thank you for reading my weekly newsletter!
Enjoy!
We hear that "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." In my life, it can also be, "When the teacher is ready, the student appears." For me, when they do appear, they often come in twos.
Now, I am no Skinny Sally, but life has its ironies. Recently, two wonderful women asked me to help them lose weight in the same week. I reacted with pleasant surprise, "Who me? You'd like ME to help you with weight loss?"
Then, I thought, "Why not? I've been working on this my whole life. I can do this!" Knowing that helping them would help me in the process, I agreed to work with them and focused on how to approach weight loss from a holistic psychiatrist's perspective.
In brief, I organized my approach for them as follows:
1) Mental/Emotional: each person has different reasons for their difficulties with weight. Is it an issue with control, love, self-esteem, stress, or abuse? Using EFT or Logosynthesis, it's important to clear these blockages in order to establish a balanced, supportive attitude towards self-care and a healthy relationship with food. I taught both women how to use Logosynthesis, to help them decrease stress, and they both loved it! (Next session, working on their attitudes toward food!)
2) Physical: detoxification, nutritional supplements, proper diet, and exercise are central to lowering weight while keeping metabolism, energy, and mood up.
One way to improve metabolism is to support mitochondrial health (Liposomal Catalyst by DesBio, Mito Cell by Neurobiologix), and include daily smoothies that increase nutrients and living enzymes, to increase metabolism and energy, while lowering food cravings.
Detoxify by increasing fiber intake, foot detox pads, liver support, and N-acetylcysteine or glutathione. Fat cells store toxins to mitigate harm to our bodies. So when toxins are reduced, the fat cells are also reduced.
Stabilizing glucose levels and decreasing evening cravings for sugar can be done through additional chromium (with other general liquid ionic mineral support) and taking some Hoodia at night. But the main way to decrease nighttime sugar cravings is to feed yourself consistently during the day so that your brain doesn't end up with a sugar deficit by the end of the day. Your body may have been sedentary, but your brain has been working hard all day!
Exercise helps in so many ways that it would take a whole page just to list the benefits. However, given my childhood background of having to do Tai Chi every morning from age 7 to 14 (ugh!), I try to avoid pressuring anyone to exercise. Encouraging an active lifestyle and introducing a preferred mode of exercise will ensure integration over the long term.
When it comes to meals, I support patients by making simple shifts, replacing harmful foods with delicious alternatives, and making sure that meals are being consumed throughout the day to keep metabolism up. It's not uncommon to find that a patient has been eating just one meal a day. Eating multiple meals and snacks per day takes your body out of starvation mode and back into the fast lane.
3) Social: introduce the health benefits of having fun. Sometimes this begins by giving people permission to have fun and to take time out for themselves. When people relax and have fun, cortisol levels decrease and abdominal girth decreases too.
Frankly, I don't believe "weight loss" is the best way to measure success per se, since a body filled with muscles and minerals will obviously weigh more than the same amount in fat and flab. I'd rather measure improvement in lowering inches, especially around the waistline. That is where inflammation is often located and when that comes down, you're improving your health and longevity through lowering inflammation.
Ultimately, I believe that slimming down is just a side effect of health and well-being. For myself, it has reflected my growing capacity to care for myself in a consistent, wholesome manner.
Extra! Extra! Here's my newest opinion piece on politics under Viewpoint on my website.
A follow-up picture to last week's newsletter, "If life gives you chives..."