Good morning and happy Monday! Since it’s been as hot as hades lately across many areas, it would be a great time to talk about water and staying hydrated. Staying hydrated will help you regulate your body temperature, prevent infections, and keep your organs functioning properly. Staying hydrated can also improve your sleep quality, cognition and mood.

How Much Water Should You Drink?

At a minimum, you should drink half your body weight in ounces. For example, if you weigh 150 pounds, you should drink at least 75 ounces of water a day. You also need to consider the following factors and adjust accordingly:

• Your level of activity (how much you sweat) – if you exercise and sweat, you will need more water

• How much alcohol or caffeine you drink per day – both are dehydrating, so for every cup of caffeine/alcohol, drink an extra cup of water

• The temperature where you live – if you live in a very hot climate, you will require more water

• How Can You Tell if You’re Drinking Enough Water?

Here are a few ways you can tell if you’re drinking enough water:

• If your urine is light in colour, you’re doing well. If it’s darker, you need to drink more water

• Urine is abundant

• You empty your bladder every two or three hours – when you first start to increase water intake, you will need to go to the bathroom more often than you’re used to, but that will only last a few days, and your body will adjust

What if You Don’t Like the Taste of Water?

If you don’t like the taste of plain water, try the following:

• Add slices of lemon, lime, cucumber, or orange

• Add mint leaves

• Try sparkling water (make sure there are no added ingredients)

• Heat water and drink with lemon

• Try drinking out of a fancy goblet or wine glass

How to Increase Water Intake

Here are a few ways you can increase your water intake if you’re not drinking enough:

• Drink 20 ounces of water first thing in the morning. You’ve been asleep for 6 to 10 hours, so it’s time to hydrate! Rehydrating the body and brain will lead to clearer thinking and better energy

• Keep a pitcher of filtered water containing the amount of water you want to drink each day. Doing so will make it easy to remember to drink water and track your intake

• Drink 8 ounces of water before exercise

• Sip water slowly and at intervals during exercise

• Drink 8 ounces of water before each meal

• Keep bottles of water in your car, at the office, or around your work areas

If you’re feeling the heat wave, stay cool and hydrated! If you have any questions, feel free to reply to this message or better yet, let’s chat!

When you think of hypnosis, do you immediately think of a Vegas act where someone is called on stage, put into a trance, and then asked to cluck like a chicken?

Well, I’m here to assure you that hypnotherapy is quite different! According to the Cleveland Clinic, “hypnotherapy is a heightened state of concentration and focused attention. Guided by a trained, certified hypnotist or hypnotherapist, hypnosis allows you to be more open to suggestions to making healthful changes in your perceptions, sensations, emotions, memories, thoughts, or behaviours.”

A few vital points about hypnotherapy:

• You remember everything during the session

• You are not asleep

• You are in total control

There is growing evidence that hypnotherapy can be effective for a wide variety of disorders, including:

• It can help you sleep better

• It can help ease hot flashes

• It can help you lose weight

• It can help relieve symptoms of IBS

• It can help alleviate anxiety and calm nerves

• It can help with addiction

• It can help ease chronic pain

Are you wondering if you can benefit from hypnotherapy?

Hypnotherapy isn’t for everyone, but it might be helpful for you. It can be a powerful and successful add-on tool to other more traditional forms of therapy. You will benefit from hypnotherapy if you are highly motivated to overcome a specific issue.

If you want to learn more, reply to this message or schedule a 30-minute Zoom call for more information about my hypnotherapy services.

It’s no secret that stress can take a toll on the body. From causing headaches and muscle tension to increasing the risk for heart disease and other chronic illnesses, stress can be harmful to your health. But what exactly is stress doing to your body?

You've decided to lose weight, you read up on how to do it, you select a plan, and you purchase exercise clothing. The first week goes well, and you see the scale dip down slightly. Woot!

You decide to keep going with the plan, but at some point, during week two, you catch yourself sitting on the sofa watching television in your workout clothing, gobbling down a pint of ice cream.

Sound familiar?

If so, you've fallen into one of the most common weight-loss traps: self-sabotage. It's sneaky and often difficult to pin down. It's also confusing, and it's completely derailing your weight loss efforts.

By definition, behavior is sabotaging when it creates problems and interferes with long-standing goals.

In other words, you know what you need to do, but you don't do it. Or you know what you shouldn't do, but you do it anyway. That's the simplest way to understand how self-sabotage works.

Are You Ready to Stop Self-Sabotage?

You say you want to lose weight, but you're not successfully doing it. Chances are you're feeling discouraged, ashamed or confused. Perhaps you also have diet fatigue or lack confidence because you don't believe in your ability to lose weight.

The harsh reality is that you're sabotaging your weight loss efforts because of those feelings. To overcome sabotaging behaviors, you first have to look at what's causing the behavior in the first place, which can be difficult.

If you're willing to make a change in your life, then I'm willing to offer you one laser-coaching session at no charge.

During the session, I'll help you:

Identify how you sabotage yourself. Self-sabotage might look like procrastination, avoidance, over-eating, not getting enough sleep.

Name your fears about weight loss. Remember, fears are usually irrational, so when you put them down on paper, they might seem silly, and that's okay!

Create a weight loss plan. We'll lay a solid foundation to get you started on your successful weight loss journey.

All you have to do is schedule the session. You'll be amazed at what one coaching session can do to jumpstart your weight loss.

Stress and the demands of everyday living have us all struggling to stay on track. We skip our workouts, sleep less, grab food on the run, all to keep up with the hectic pace of living.

With so much going on, cutting back from seven or eight hours of sleep might seem like the answer. You may say if you only sleep six hours, that gives you two more hours to be productive, right?

Well, not really.

First off, your brain is TIRED when you don’t sleep. You‘re operating in a fog, and making the best decisions is pretty much impossible. When you stop by the break room, nine times out of ten, you will grab the donut to go with your coffee because you’re so beat you THINK you need the one-two punch of sugar and caffeine to get you going. Your brain’s reward centers are revved up from lack of sleep, and your food cravings are in overdrive.

Studies consistently show us that when our bodies don’t get enough sleep, we opt for quick-fix, high-carb snacks to keep going. One study even showed that participants who slept less than eight hours chose snacks with twice the fat content of their well-rested counterparts.

Second, crappy choices, bigger portions, and no impulse control in the kitchen are bound to produce weight gain. In addition to changing how your brain functions, sleep deprivation has a powerful effect on hormone production. Hormones plus dieting generally equal disaster. Cortisol, leptin, and ghrelin are the three hormones most commonly connected to weight control.

Cortisol

Cortisol is your stress hormone, and it suppresses your metabolism. Your adrenal glands produce it, and if you aren’t well-rested, your stress will skyrocket. Cortisol tells your body to save its energy, which means it’s going to hang on to fat. There is a debate on whether cortisol directly affects weight loss, but for anyone with emotional eating habits, higher cortisol levels are a recipe for disaster. Stress makes us seek comfort, and for many of us, food is a go-to for feeling better.

Leptin

Leptin is a hormone produced in your fat cells. It tells your body when to stop eating and to burn more calories. When you are tired, your body produces less leptin, so your appetite is out of control, and your metabolism tanks. Not recognizing our body’s hunger signals is difficult enough without the added magic of hormones confusing our wants and needs.

Grehlin

Grehlin is a hormone released by your stomach that makes you hungrier, slows down your metabolism, and decreases your body’s ability to burn fat. When you are sleep-deprived, your body produces more ghrelin. That means you are tired, want to eat a whole lot of garbage, and aren’t programmed to burn it off.

Insulin

Insulin is the hormone your body uses to convert food, particularly sugar and starch, into energy. Four days of poor sleeping can be enough to hamper your body’s ability to process insulin. This means your body can’t process the fats in your bloodstream, so it just stores them as fat.

Research proves that dieters who cut back on sleep over two weeks dramatically reduced the amount of weight they lost from fat even when their eating patterns and intake didn’t change. Lack of sleep killed their metabolism, and that equaled weight gain. If you aren’t sleeping enough, you are disrupting your metabolism, which will make you gain weight or have trouble losing weight.

Set yourself up for success with proper sleep hygiene. That’s how you’re going to win at weight loss. If you need help with your sleep hygiene, I can help. Check out one of my upcoming sleep workshops or schedule a call with me so that we can discuss your concerns and set a plan in place to get you sleeping better.

No matter what your body shape, excess fat isn't good for your health.

In most people, about 90% of body fat is subcutaneous, the kind that lies in a layer just beneath the skin. If you poke your belly, the fat that feels soft is subcutaneous. The remaining 10% — called visceral fat — lies out of reach, beneath the abdominal wall.

Research has shown that fat cells — particularly visceral fat cells — are biologically active. The fat cell is considered an endocrine organ that secrets hormones and molecules affecting other tissues. Researchers have identified a host of chemicals that link visceral fat to a wide variety of diseases.

As women go through mid-life, the proportion of fat to body weight tends to increase — more than in men — and fat storage begins favoring the upper body over the hips and thighs. Even if you don't gain weight, your waistline can grow as visceral fat pushes out against your abdominal wall.

The good news is that visceral fat responds more efficiently to diet and exercise than fat on the hips and thighs. Here are some approaches that may help:

Move. Visceral fat responds well to both aerobic and strength training. Spot exercising does nothing to visceral fat.

Eat a balanced diet and avoid food that encourages belly fat, such as simple sugars, like sweetened foods, beverages, and alcohol.

Don't smoke. The more you smoke, the more likely you will store fat in your abdomen rather than on your hips and thighs.

Keep your mood in check. Middle-aged women who show more hostility and depressive symptoms tend to have more visceral fat — but not more subcutaneous fat.

Have you ever heard someone say they can’t lose weight because they have a slow metabolism? Well, it is true that metabolism is linked to weight but having a slow metabolism is usually not the main cause of weight gain.

By definition, metabolism is the body’s process that expends energy and burns calories. It works 24/7 to convert the food we eat into energy so we can breathe, circulate blood, grow, and repair. Your metabolism controls how much of that energy your body uses.

Metabolism is broken down into two processes: anabolism and catabolism. Anabolism is the storing of energy, supporting new cells, and maintaining body tissues. Catabolism is the breaking down of energy to move, heat, and energize your body.

How fast or slow your metabolism works is determined mostly by your genes, however, there are things you can control that affect your metabolism.

Read on for more information.

Building on small wins is key to creating permanent healthy behaviors. You can use the progress you’ve already made to motivate you toward your larger goal of living healthier.

Baby steps are at the heart of my programs because you don’t create success in one sudden overwhelming swoop unless you win the lottery. Winning at anything is about using each small success to motivate yourself to the larger goal.

Why is it so hard to lose weight over 50?!