About Movie

Are you finding that the seasonal goodies are finding their weigh, I mean, way, into your dreams? You aren't alone if dancing sugar plums and the thought of cookies, cakes, and other holiday confections are calling your name and putting your weight loss success goals in a danger zone!

So what do you do? Do you give up trying to drop weight over the holidays? And if you do that, what about the next special occasion where food is featured, like Valentine's Day. Then there's Easter.

No matter when we decide to go on a diet, there is always something that gets in the way of our weight loss success. If it isn't a national holiday that fosters a feeding frenzy then it is a co-worker's birthday or some other celebration.

The only way around this is to give up dieting. Seriously! Diets just don't work because they don't allow for real life. It was when I decided to Refuse to Diet that I actually achieved my goal weight.

This may sound backwards, but it isn't. Dieting is temporary, so even if you lose weight while on a diet, at some point you will go off the diet. And, if you are like most people, the pounds will pour back on when you do.

This tends to lead to people thinking they are the failure, rather than realizing it is the diet that didn't work out. And when we feel bad, what do we do? Eat, of course!

Now we have really got ourselves into an unhealthy spiral. Soon we believe that it is impossible to lose weight...other people can, but not us. We even begin to wonder if maybe we just don't deserve to have that healthy, slender body that we crave. We console ourselves with ice cream. Or chips. Or bread. Or all of the above.

And so the spiral continues.

How do you stop the madness?

You start with your mind, not your mouth. Counting calories or carbs is not going to do it. You first have to believe that you DO deserve to be healthy and trim. You have to learn to love yourself-just the way you are. This is a big challenge. We have lots of practice loathing ourselves and not much at loving. Oh we love lots of other people, but us? Fat us? No.

Louise L. Hay has done fantastic work with people in this area. In her book, You Can Heal Your Life, and in the movie by the same name, she teaches the importance of "mirror work"...of practicing looking in the mirror and saying "I love you" as you look into your own eyes.

If that is too big a leap, see if you can find something about you that you don't hate. This was how I started my weight loss success journey.

Once you begin to not hate yourself you can begin to move into liking and even loving yourself. Then it is an easy step to know that you deserve a healthy body. Once you get there, then you naturally and automatically begin to make healthier choices, little by little. You get to enjoy seasonal goodies but you no longer feel compelled to eat them every day. Before you know it, you have the healthy, slender body you always dreamt of-without dieting!