Irene Karp · Holistic Health Care and Nutrition Counseling for Long Island Residents

917-992-8276 · e-mail: stepuptohealth@optonline.net

1. Don't choose a diet, rather elect to alter your lifestyle to support you along your path to wellness.
2. Get an old picture of yourself, one that reflects the size you would like to achieve. Get several copies of it and place them strategically throughout the house, your desk drawer at work, each wallet or purse you use and in your car. Keep them private where only you can see them.
3. Don't tell anyone else what you are doing. They may hound you and you are your best advocate, along with your health coach.
4. Read labels. If it has trans-fats, put it back. They are toxic to your health and will sabotage your weight loss goals.

Everyone approaches weight loss from their own point of view. What should I give up and how long will it take to get where I need to be. The answer to that is complicated. How long did it take you to get where you are? What do you know about nutrition and how what you are presently eating is affecting your weight and health?

There is a huge amount of conflicting information about health and the foods that are best to eat to support good health. Originally, we were called ?hunter-gatherers'. We hunted wild game and fish. We ate fruits and vegetables that grew wild. Nothing was processed and nothing was injected with antibiotics, hormones or sprayed with pesticides.

We eat a large amount of grains, which are filled with Omega 6 Fatty Acids. These grains are overshadowing the Omega 3 Fatty Acids which are found in leafy green vegetables, wild, grass-fed meat, fish and flax seed. The original ratio of 3 to 4 Omega 6's to 1 Omega 3 has become more like 30-1 in the Standard American Diet. This ratio leads to an assortment of problems, one of which is disproportionate weight gain.

All too often I hear about radical diet ideas that lead to a yoyo syndrome of weight loss and then rapid gain. I am told ?what's the point of giving up what I like to eat?? The point is that food is just part of your life. What else gives you joy, a sense of well being and a sense of accomplishment? By learning some basic nutrition, you can be empowered along your journey to wellness.

Have you ever walked into a room filled with people and felt uncomfortable? Have you ever thought about someone you would like to hear from and suddenly the telephone rings? Go on vacation, sit down at a table in a restaurant and see someone from your hometown. All of this has to do with energy, the energy that you are emitting from your body, mind and spirit. Everything on our planet gives off some type of energy. If you were looking back at Earth, through a tremendously powerful telescope, from somewhere in outer space you would be able to distinguish life from inanimate objects by the degree of energy waves each emits. We are comprised of different energy wheels, called Chakras which receive energy, as well as project energy outward.

Everything begins with your consciousness. It is who you are, your experience of Being. It decides what ideas to accept and what to reject. When these decisions leave you feeling stress, it is experienced in your physical body, creating symptoms. People are affected by this differently, depending upon what is happening in their consciousness. Attitudes differ based on what is happening in their consciousness. This consciousness is energy and it fills your entire body. This energy communicates within itself to all parts within your body. A change in consciousness creates a change in your energy field/aura and a change in the energy field occurs before a physical change occurs. When someone makes a decision leaving them stressed, this creates an energy blockage which then creates a symptom on the physical level. There are no accidents or coincidences. Our inner guidance system is our connection to our Higher Self and works through our intuition or instinct. When we ignore it, the signals get louder, more physical until we either pay attention or possibly become ill. When we change our way of being, the symptom no longer has a reason for being and may be able to be released to the degree we believe that we able to move beyond it.

Through periodic energy balancing your mind and body can be assisted in its journey toward healing and remaining in your most optimum health pathway.