Archive for month: August, 2014

Fat is an emotional issue

In 1978 ‘Fat is a feminist issue‘ written by Susie Orbach. It encouraged women to look at their bodies and why they needed to look a certain way. This was especially important when women were renegotiating their position in western society and challenged the view that men had of the female form. Well, fat has moved on since then, or should I say has grown since then and has become an ever-bigger issue.

The western world is getting fatter. Britain is now the fattest country in Europe, but what does that mean, why is it happening? There are several ways of looking at this.

Protection
Fat forms a protective layer. Sometime people hide emotionally behind a layer of fat. There are three types of fat white, yellow and brown. Brown fat is dense, highly insulative and thin. This is found in those that are more athletic where they are lean, yet their bodies retain heat as well as bigger people.

Yellow fat is the halfway house between the white and brown and appears in most emotionally well balanced people. It is not as dense as the lean brown fat and gives a body a softer look and rounded curves.

White fat is more like loft insulation you need a lot of it to have its effect. Inches of soft white fat have the same insulative properties of the thinner yellow and brown fats. White fat develops from overeating and lack of exercise and is often related to emotional protection. It is as though the person is hiding behind the layer of fat.

I have often worked with women who feel that when they are big men leave them alone and when they are slim they get too much unwanted attention. But there is another issue that effects both men and women, it is the relationship between carbohydrates and depression.

Fat food and serotonin
In the podcast I mentioned the book, ‘Food and Mood’. The realisation that food effects how we feel and think has become current science. The bit that interests me is the carbohydrate cycle. We now know that when we eat comfort foods our brain secretes serotonin the happy hormone of wellbeing.

The carb cycle is when someone is feeling down and self medicates with carbs to make themselves feel better. Their subsequent weight gain makes them feel bad so they eat more carbs to feel better again and so the cycle goes on.

When I look at it this way I suspect that what were seeing is not simply that Britain is the fattest country in Europe but that it is the most depressed country in Europe. I am not sure what this says about the USA and their weight gain.

Other ways to get serotonin
Ok, so if we have a natural drive towards maintaining a level of serotonin in our brains that makes us feel good and creates our sense of wellbeing how else can we do it apart from comfort food?

Well, serotonin will be produced in response to pain which is the basis of self harming behaviours that lead to a sense of relief or well being, not recommended. Humour does the trick when you laugh so much that your face hurts. Sensitive and sensual sex does it. Though, top of the list is exercise. When you heart rate increases for about twenty minutes your brain responds by releasing the endorphins that make you feel really good and happy.

For me exercise is running. It takes about two kilometres for my brain to start to release it and then after twenty minutes it begins to flow. For other exercise may be keep fit, Zumba, gym sessions, energetic yoga, power walking, running up and down the stairs. Whatever it is, twenty minutes does the trick.

You need muscle to burn fat
Sometimes, when you have invested a lot in building your fat bank it can be difficult to shift it. This is because you need to be able to move muscle to burn the fat. This may mean doing muscle building exercises to develop the strength needed to then create an exercise regime that is able to deal with the fat. This can be a longer term issue that requires consistent and persistent determination to create success.

There is another issue worth looking at when considering your fat bank, it is Vitamin D. There is a bit of an argument taking place in the scientific world as to whether Vit D is a hormone or a vitamin. It doesn’t really matter, what is important is the effect Vit D deficiency can have on our systems. There are many disease and illness situations for which Vit D deficiency is the precursor. It is the psychological bit that interests me.

Vitamin D is the precursor of serotonin production in the brain. Vit D is produced in the skin in response to sunlight. This explains how seasonal affected Disorder SAD comes about. As the sunlight diminishes the level of serotonin drops as the level of Vitamin D drops. Our response in the winter is to eat more, generally carbs, that boost our serotonin and take us through the dark months until we get back to the light in the spring.

There appears to be a correlation between our collective paranoia about skin cancer, the increase in the use of sun creams, that can reduce the production of Vit D by over 90%, and the increase in weight of the British population. I could be bonkers but it would seem to me that if we allow ourselves more exposure to sunlight we might reduce our craving for carbs and lose some weight in the process.

Anyway, in considering your fat it starts with what you are eating and why you are eating it, whether you are exercising, if you are having some fun and maybe if you are getting enough sunlight on your skin.

All positive routes lead us towards happiness

Be happy

Sean x

Why do we travel?

Having just come back from a long weekend in the Yorkshire Dales I can directly feel the benefits of ‘getting away’. From where we live it is a two hour drive, and an easy drive at that. For most people ‘getting away’ involves planes, airports, delays and a good deal of stress. I hear people say that they don’t know why they bother, coming back more flustered than when they went. Surely travel should be a joyful experience, if not why do it? It seems that it is all to do with the speed that we now need to do everything, time to slow down I think.

The human body was designed to move at a walking pace or, at a pinch, a jogging pace. Humans moved out of Africa, and the Garden of Eden, to populate the world but they did so at a walking pace, there were no boats, planes or cars. At a walking pace there is time to acclimatise to the new land and the flora and the fauna as our system adjusts. We don’t get Delhi Belly and can leave the Imodium at home.

But we do all seem to need to get away and, we need to get away now. We can’t stop doing it; we call it “going on holiday?” So, why? What does travel do for us?

There are lots of types of travel from the package all inclusive that can ensure that we get all the comforts of home abroad, the same food, same drink, same music and TV programmes, the only difference is that it is in the sunshine, through to cruises, holiday camps and activity holidays, to those where we go native and become a local. What do you do?

At a psychological level several things are taking place. The first is that when we travel we are learning and that may be social, cultural, cuisine and wine and so on, and that is stimulating. The second is that it is different. There are different smells, colours, tastes and sounds that expand the way that we see the world. The third, and perhaps the most important, is that travel is therapeutic.

We hear a lot about stress hormones, first on the list are normally adrenalin, epinephrine and cortisol. While stress hormones are associated with stress related illness they are also the fuel that keep us going in life. When we are working it is these chemicals that help to get us out of bed, give us drive and maintain our motivation levels. They are the high octane fuel that powers our daily life. When we are over worked and stressed the levels of these chemical become to high and we feel their effects as hypertension, raised blood pressure and stress related diseases.

When we take a break, when we travel, or go on holiday the levels of these chemicals begin to drop, though it takes a few days. If we leave on Friday we only feel that we have arrived on the Tuesday, when these chemical levels have dropped. At the other end of the holiday when we go home, the levels are low. We arrive at work on the first day back and we just can’t seem to get going. Over the next couple of weeks the chemical levels rise again to their normal levels and we say ‘I feel like I have never been away’.

The holiday gives our stressed system a rest. More importantly is that it reminds us of what life is like without the stress. This is what we should be aiming for.

As you will know I am a meditation junkie. When you meditate on a daily basis you have a daily holiday when your stress hormones drop to holiday levels. Over all you become calmer, more relaxed and more effective. When we become truly relaxed in life everyday is a holiday, yet at the same time we become more productive than ever before.

I love holidays, I enjoy going away and we try to do so several times each year. I also love the daily holiday in my meditation.

Where could you go today?

Take care and enjoy the trip

Sean x

Did you really just say that?

Do you listen to what you say? Do you hear the tone of your voice? Are you aware of how others hear you? I guess if your answer to these questions were ‘no’ then you would not be reading this. However, becoming really aware of what is coming out of our mouths is an art and requires awareness and awake-ness.

You only need to stand in a bus queue or sit in a coffee lounge and listen the voices around you to realise where people hold their consciousness. Sadly you will discover that the majority of what people are saying is negative. There are many reasons for this but the bottom line is that for some people they live with negative images and beliefs about themselves and about others.

From being children we have learned all that we know from what we heard and what we saw. In the beginning this was from our mother and our father and that went on to siblings, teachers, cultures and nationalities and so on. And we have gone on repeating all that we have learned again and again and again.

The problem is that what you say is what you hear, and what you hear reinforces your basic beliefs. If you see negative things in other people and you verbalise your negative thought you will hear those negative thoughts and simply continue to have more negative thoughts.

You will never find happiness or contentment
while you have negative thoughts about other people

The two things can never go together. If you say anything negative about another person, and you hear what you have just said, you have simply added another little pebble to the negative mountain inside you. If on the other hand you have a positive thought about another person it is as though you have just taken a little pebble off the mountain. Many positive thoughts will rid you of the burden of negativity that you carry around with you.

You can always tell negative people because they find it hard to say anything that is positive. If it’s sunny they will be expecting rain, if it is raining they will be expecting a flood. They will suffer illnesses, bad luck and assume, in someway, that the universe is out to get them, they will feel that people don’t like them and become distrustful.

Thoughts become things

The magic of thoughts is that they precede words. When you think a thought you do not need to say it, to allow it to have its effect. If you have good thoughts you will take the pebbles away from the negative mountain and lighten your load. If on the other hand you spend your time ruminating on negative thoughts you will add to the mountain and the burden that you are carrying.

There are particular words that add greatly to the negative mountain. These will include most swear words and profanities. The word ‘can’t’ should be banned completely because if you say that you can’t, you hear it and it is a done deal. If someone says, “I can’t do that” they are right they can’t.

The other words that do not serve us well are ‘ought’, ‘should’ and ‘must’. The only reason we ever need to act is because we want or desire to do something. There is nothing that we ought to do, there is nothing that we should do and, there is nothing that we must do. The only relevant action is that of free choice.

Just as you hear what you say other people hear what you say. When you are negative with there people you simply are adding to the negative mountain within them. When you act with kindness and love you are lightening their load. In all forms of therapy and healing it is the acceptance by the therapist with unconditional positive regard of the person that they are working with that does the healing.

When we use thoughts and words that treat us with unconditional positive regard we feed our self with the highest positive emotions, we develop self-confidence, happiness and love. We allow our self to enjoy the magic of being alive.

But the world is full of choices. Listen to yourself. If what you are saying makes you feel good then, say more of it. If, on the other hand, it makes you feel not so good, then change your script.

Be happy and love what comes out of your mouth.

Sean x