Make 2025 the year you embed the cold-tote habit
We have new people – and welcome!! – I’m sharing five super important posts to read below. It’ll make these weekly posts a lot easier to understand. And if you haven’t received your Aunt Bea copy just write to me at: Wendy@theInspiredEater.com and I’ll shoot it right over.
- Begin Here
- This Metaphor Is My Constant Companion as I Preserve My Weight Loss After Age Fifty
- Brownies for Breakfast
- 6 Pillars of Losing Weight After Age 50
- How to Conquer Your Evening Sugar Cravings
Pearl One
Let’s be honest: losing weight is a trial at any age given that we’ve long been marinating in a culture where food-porn has run wild since the 1950s.
My thought is that until you and I recognize the force behind the Mad Men’s wily marketing campaigns — paid for by Big Food-Porn –, we won’t be able to go forward with a permanent lifetime-loss.
The last sentence might sound over-the-top, but hear me out. If we don’t acknowledge that our culture has played a significant role in our weight issues, then you and I are back on the merry-go-round and totally responsible for our weight issues. We return to the old standby: lose weight on a yo-yo diet for a short period of time, regain the weight and run back to the diet-cartel (who are happy to have us. After all, billions in profit is nothing to sneeze at).
The diet-cartel wants to “help us” lose the same thirty pounds over and over (and over) again. Have you noticed? They’ve never taught us how to preserve (maintain) a lifetime loss. And why would they? It would create a profit-loss tsunami headed straight for their business model.
Why does any of this matter to us? To create permanent success, you and I need to understand what we’re up against i.e. what we’re dealing with.
Every time we leave the house and are confronted by a vast landscape of fast-food drive-thrus, doughnut shops, and giant-portion sized restaurant meals — if we’re even a little bit hungry –, it becomes too seductive to succumb to all the alluring and convenient “food.”
But the instant the light flips on about how this game is played, we can figure out which smart tools to bring to the tango. Have I convinced you yet of the importance of always keeping a tote-bag packed in nutritious food by your side?
If you haven’t yet started to embed this tool, make today the day. I’m convinced that a lot of us overeat because we’re out of the house running errands and are too far from our healthy kitchens. Pack your cold tote in sliced apple, red grapes, chunked strawberries, peeled hard-boiled eggs, dried plums, a small yogurt, and hummus sandwich and so forth. If you haven’t yet seen the beauty of this tool, give it one week to behold its awesomeness. Just one week.
I wish I could share the tote I use, they’re out of stock: this one comes in the right size and has an adjustable shoulder strap, same tote but without cross body strap. I use a small tote made for the individual; anything large might make you like you’re lugging around a baby elephant. The last thing we want is that you get annoyed and give up.
Until food-on-steroids goes the way of la cigarette, our cold-tote will protects us from the blanket of calories across our globe.❄️
Pearl Two
Pearl Two is from a former pearl that I gussied up. This is the one smart tip that moved mountains for me. You might have noticed: Everything involved with losing/preserving our weight loss – buying the right food (at three different stores), chopping the right food, cooking the right food, bagging the right food — is a lot of work and a pain in the neck.
Early on when I was losing, I meta-noticed that I was grumping and grousing, and feeling “put upon” every step of the way. At the same time, I knew that somehow I had to make peace with the massive amount of work involved in losing weight/preserving for the long run.
And one day, it hit me. From this moment forward, I will think about all that’s involved with losing weight and preserving as my part-time job. And boom! No longer was losing weight practically an afterthought; by calling it my part-time job I shifted from thinking of the work as being “in the way” to understanding it for the most difficult undertaking that it is. In a funny way, thinking of the work as my part-time job made the whole endeavor a little easier and a lot more fun. ❄️
Pearl Three
Sequencing is taken directly from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The purpose of sequences is to help us move from reacting to circumstances to responding. I encourage you to do a sequence a day in your journal. Powerful stuff.
This sequence is from an experience my sister had and I’m pretending to be her:
Automatic Sequence
- Knee jerk Situation (something very concrete): My sister Shelley and her Tucson husband hike what’s called the Grand Canyon “rim-to-rim.”
- Thought: Nobody told me this hike included crossing the Colorado River on a swinging bridge.
- Feeling: anger and intense panic.
- Action: Ben was behind me so I couldn’t balk and turn back, even though I tried.
- Result: I never want to do this hike again.
Conscious Sequence:
- (something very concrete): My sister Shelley and her Tucson husband hike what’s called the Grand Canyon “rim-to-rim.”
- Conscious thought: I’ve just done a grueling hike and now I need to cross the raging Colorado River on a suspension bridge? I’ve come too far to stop now; I’ll look ahead and not down because I can see through the bridge to the water and it’s so scary.
- Feeling: Still scared, but then resolved.
- Action: I put one foot in front of the other looking straight ahead and I made it.
- Result: Pride in myself and what I accomplished. ❄️
Pearl Four
Books love us and want us to be happy
Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir by Ina Garten. As you know, memoir is one of my most favorite genres. I love reading about super successfuls who’ve made it. I’m not even a viewer of Ina Gartner’s show and I haven’t read her books, but reading about people who “think big” and slay it is so inspirational to me. In her memoir she writes about her painful childhood and building the Barefoot Contessa’s brand. This phenomenal feel-good book can be read in a weekend. Five stars. ❄️
Pearl Five
“The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will’. Consider nothing impossible then treat possibilities as probabilities.” ❄️
Charles Dickens
My heart is with California. And Canada and Mexicos’ response was crazy impressive.
Stay warm and safe.
♥, Wendy
You know the scoop: I’m an Amazon affiliate. If you buy from a link in my post, I’ll receive money, but the arrangement won’t cost you a dime.
Are you new to the Inspired Eater? Welcome!! This blog won’t make much sense until you first read the Aunt Bea post (and you’ll find Aunt Bea on this page to the right under my short bio). On your cell you’ll see it immediately following the first post. After you enter your email address, the Aunt Bea article will be sent to your email’s inbox. If it’s not there, you might check the spam folder. And always feel free to email me at Wendy@TheInspiredEater.com and I’ll get Aunt Bea right to you!!
I am not an expert, doctor, surgeon, nurse, dietician, or nutritionist: the information within TheInspiredEater.com is based solely on my personal experience and is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
