By Holly

Hunky doctor, Travis Stork, revealed some startling statistics on The Doctors today. Apparently, two-thirds of Americans are currently overweight or obese, and within 20 years, 86% of our population will be.

Just take a moment to let that sink in — but please don’t use the time to beat yourself up for over-indulging during the holidays. Today is a new day in a new year, and you can commit to real change any day you choose. No one is watching or judging, and if they are, they need turn their focus on themselves anyway, right?

For me, the holiday season is no longer about consuming mass quantities of treats I deny myself the rest of the year. Instead, it’s more of a time to enjoy indulging in books I’ve wanted to read, movies I’ve wanted to see, cleaning I’ve needed to do, etc. It wasn’t always that way, though, which is why I’m sharing with you today. This transformation happened with a shift in mindset first, which compelled the nutritional changes to naturally follow.

If anyone reading this has struggled with a lifetime of health issues or weight “yo-yoing” then I want you to know that — if you haven’t understood it up to this point, please hear this now — you aren’t alone and the “magic bullet” to finally achieving your ideal weight lives in your head.

Ask any successful personal trainer, diet expert, or nutritional guru how important this is, and they will rank it at #1. It’s how you think about food and your relationship to it that determines what and how you eat.

Don’t believe it? Try a juice feasting program — with the complete support of my family physician, I was able to personally define and change my unhealthy relationship to unhealthy foods with one of these programs, and am eternally grateful for it.

Too extreme? Dr. Dean Ornish has The Spectrum Program, which a girlfriend of mine swears by — it was even covered by her health insurance! She told me that her favorite part of her program is the included group therapy, where every participant was able to discover their eating triggers. Come to think of it, the personal therapeutic support component of achieving and maintaining a healthy body weight and BMI (body mass index) isn’t new, Weight Watchers has been incorporating that aspect for years.

Just some productive sugar plums for thought to start this new decade and year. I hope you — should you need to shift consciousness in this area of your life — uncover your relationship to the food you eat, and incorporate a weight loss/maintenance program that works for you.  Consider it a belated holiday gift that delivers health and wellness for this year and many more to come.

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