High self-esteem is the cornerstone of every single area of your life and if you had it you likely would not have much interest in The Fit Shack.

Why? Because if you were rockin’ a life in high self-esteem you’d have the accompanying self-worth, inner integrity, and bottom-line respect for YOU to live in a body that you completely love and adore. A fit, healthy, sexy body.

However it is possible that you do have high self-esteem and are overweight and therefore the reason you are here is because you are seeking a step-by-step action plan that will get you the results you believe you deserve to have: a fit, healthy, sexy body (more on that later in this article…).

Or you could have high self-esteem if you totally and completely love your body without reservation are 100% happy with your weight whether you are overweight or at your ideal weight, have a rockin’, healthy, loving relationship with food, and you have no negative thoughts or negative beliefs about your body, your weight, food, drink, or the like. And in addition, if you remain in 100% integrity and respect with yourself at all times, then you are already living with high self-esteem.

You are going for it in your life.

You are living your dream.

Living with high self-esteem you are passionate about getting out of bed each day, excited about what the day will bring, and you are in love with you. You are in love with life. You are in love, love, love and your work, your relationships, your environments, your thoughts, your creativity, and most especially your body reflects the love you live in.

This doesn’t mean that you never have any challenges, however high self-esteem gives you the core confidence that no matter what comes your way, you can handle it.

You can handle the challenges and set-backs and when you feel down you have confidence that it’s only temporary - it’s only a feeling after all. You certainly don’t abuse your body or abuse food even when you hit a roadblock in life or experience a down moment. Living with high self-esteem you wouldn’t even think of doing such a thing - would you ever abuse your very best friend?? Of course not!

5 Ways High Self-Esteem Makes Weight Loss Easy

“Men and women who enjoy high self-esteem have an active orientation to life rather than a passive one. They take full responsibility for the attainment of their desires. They do not wait for others to fulfill their dreams.” - Nathaniel Branden How To Raise Your Self-Esteem

High self-esteem makes weight loss easy. It’s not a struggle because a person with high self-esteem does not blame others for their issues. Instead they are solution oriented and seek out

1. You look at your weight gain for what it is. When you have high self-esteem you do not identify your overweight as YOU. You don’t internalize the fact that you gained weight and draw the faulty conclusion that you are defective and wrong because you gained weight. Here’s a great example: one of my friends has had 3 children and with each one she gained 15-20 pounds. Her self-esteem was not at all affected by the weight gain and she easily shed the weight within a few months after giving birth. She never internalized the weight gain as being “about her” and she also didn’t use having children as an excuse for being overweight. The weight gain was what it was (because she was pregnant, makes sense!) and she had full confidence that she could handle it appropriately. Which she did.
2. Your believe you deserve to live in a fit, healthy, sexy body. Unless you believe you deserve to live in your ideal body you will not attain it or if you ever do, it will not last. When you have high self-esteem, at your core you have the unshakable belief that you deserve to live in the body of your dreams. Since you are rooted in your belief, you will not sabotage yourself. You will not sabotage yourself during the holiday season, on vacation, when “the outer world” doesn’t react the way you want it to, or at any other time. You wouldn’t sabotage your very best friend from attaining their dream and since you have high self-esteem you treat YOU like you treat your very best friend.
3. You don’t set yourself up to fail with unrealistic goals. It’s a very realistic goal to drop 2 pounds of fat per week - some weeks it will be more and some weeks it will be less but on average that’s a realistic goal. When you have high self-esteem you are nice to yourself, so while you take inspired, healthy action to get the weight off you keep your goals realistic because you expect to meet them. You love to feel good and it feels good to you to see your fit, healthy, sexy body coming into view in front of your eyes when you look in the mirror. If you were to set yourself up with unrealistic weight loss goals you wouldn’t feel good and you would have a struggle continuing with your process and you don’t put yourself in struggle when you have high self-esteem.
4. If what you’re doing isn’t working, you doing something else! If the action steps you are taking to get the weight off aren’t giving you the results you want you simply seek out a better action plan, an action plan that has proven results. If you had low self-esteem you would make yourself wrong for not getting the weight loss results you want and you would keep doing the same things over and over again, even though it wasn’t working for you. You would make YOU the problem, you’d ask, “what’s wrong with ME?” if you had low self-esteem. Instead, when you have high self-esteem you look at the issue objectively and tell yourself, “I’m doing the best I can and it’s not working. I’ve got the ability to seek out the people and the processes that will get me the results I want because I deserve to reach my goals!” And then you follow through with decisive action and get a new action plan that has been proven to get others the results you seek.
5. You are open-minded and realize that you do not know it all. Because your self-esteem is so high you are not intimidated by the fact that you do not know it all. Therefore when you realize that what you’ve been doing to lose weight hasn’t been working you seek out those who specialize in getting the results you deserve to have for yourself. A person with low self-esteem is intimidated easily and feels they should know it all and should be able to do it all on their own. One with high self-esteem does not allow their ego to take over and they instead focus on the outcome they desire: a fit, healthy, sexy body, and they are willing to get help because they do believe, at the core of their being, that they deserve to have what they want. They will not settle for less than that.

High self-esteem makes weight loss easy.

High self-esteem creates ease and flow rather than struggle and “battle”. 

High self-esteem takes action rather than using excuses of time, money, people, or any other outer circumstance.

A person with high self-esteem will go for it in their life and they will get what they want in a manner that is for their highest good and the highest good of all. Meaning that high self-esteem does not drive one to get what they want at all costs while causing harm to others - not at all. That would be an act of desperation and only a person of low self-esteem would consider mowing down all others in order to get what they want.

No, high self-esteem creates more love, peace, and joy in one’s life. It allows you to get out of your own way, stop beating yourself up, and treat yourself like you would treat your own best friend. High self-esteem makes weight loss easy because high self-esteem people seek out the best to help them get what they want.

Why? Because they love themselves enough to know without doubt that they deserve to have exactly what they want: a fit, healthy, sexy body.

What About You?

Leave your comments below and share exactly how your high self-esteem makes weight loss easy for you. Or if you recognize that you have low self-esteem share how that gets in your way of your success.

Shine ON!

 
Photo by .sandhu

…Oh, you want to know what the frog has to do with a post about high self-esteem? He’s just hangin’ out and feelin’ fine - no worries. When you have high self-esteem you’re happy with yourself just like he’s perfectly happy with himself. Confident, happy, and free.

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I sent an email to my list earlier this week to alert them to the fact that I’m doing a fun, free call for them and yes, you can come, too!

What’s funny though, is that when I emailed them (and also wrote the post that I published here yesterday) I shared that I had already dropped 11 pounds in the past 4 weeks. Well today, as I write this, the update is that it’s 12.5 pounds.

And that’s without being “perfect”.

Yes, that’s 12.5 pounds of fat I released over the past 4 weeks and my butt is disappearing. Well, not totally disappearing of course, but it is shrinking. Actually, about 5 weeks ago, I bought a couple pairs of super cute jeans. And hey, that’s ok! I’m willing to buy some new jeans when I get into the next size. Why not?! Cute clothes are F.U.N.

No Force Needed (but FUN Is Good!)

I’m not forcing myself to do anything to get this weight off. I haven’t been struggling over the past 4 weeks. I actually ate quite a bit of Halloween candy where in past years I wouldn’t have wanted to hand it out and if I did I totally stressed about it.

Does this mean I sat down and ate all of the leftover candy that wasn’t given out? LOL, no! And you know what’s super cool about that? I DIDN’T WANT TO. The candy wasn’t “calling me”. I wasn’t attracted to it. I had some, I enjoyed it, and I moved on to lose 12.5 pounds (that’s as of today - who knows where I’ll be a week from now, much less a month from now!).

No More FEAR

But this is the most important part of my transformation, something I mentioned to you in yesterday’s post:

For the first time in over 10 years I am not fearing “The Holidays”.

I’m not fearing:

• Holiday weight gain.
• Being around sweets.
• Making a fattening green bean casserole and cookies for my family.
• Participating in holiday events and not knowing what will be served there.
• How I will look in my clothes (I’m loving how I look and I’m not at my goal weight - yet!)
• Eating a cookie or a piece of chocolate and not being able to stop.
• Stepping on the scale after Christmas and seeing that from Thanksgiving through Christmas I gained 10 or 15 or more pounds (or even 5 pounds).
• Beating myself up for how I ate or how I will eat.
• I’m not fearing having the thought come up that I must make a New Year’s Resolution because I’m not living in Tomorrowland - I’m taking fun, inspired action now and getting healthy results without struggle.

If you can relate to any of the fears I used to have about the holiday season and you’d love to be where I am now, without fear and without forcing yourself and struggling to get the results that I am (yep, 12.5 pounds down…so far) then this call is for you.

If you haven’t registered for my free call yet you can do that here.

And if you think that even one person in your network could benefit from this call then please use the Retweet button and Tweet it out. You can also Stumble it, Digg it, etc. using the links at the top of this post.

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I’ve dropped 11 pounds in just the last 4 weeks and that was with eating (quite a bit of!) Halloween candy. What’s my “secret”?

If you’re fearing the holidays and the yearly holiday weight gain then come join me on the free telecall I’m doing about this very subject.

I’ve gotta tell you right now that the coolest thing is that for the first time in over 10 years I am not at all fearing the holidays. Not one bit. Instead I am totally confident without any more lingering:

• Fear. No more fear of the holiday food that will be around. No more fear of weight gain, no more fear of eating this or that and not being able to stop.
• Stress. No more stressing about what I will or will not eat. No more stressing about going to this or that gathering and not knowing what food will be presented, no more stress about what dish I will make to take to my family’s house (they aren’t super into health & fitness, and that’s ok, I love them as they are). No more stress about gaining weight.
• Doubts. No more doubts that I can have exactly what I want and deserve: a fit, healthy, sexy body for myself. YES, I deserve to have the same exact thing that I help my clients create for themselves - no doubt!

Come to the call and hear a very surprising (albeit funny) fact about what I’ve been up to and how words don’t teach - only experience does. (love that truth - got that from my friend Abe, a.k.a. Abraham-Hicks.)

This Call Is For You If…

This call is for you if:

You are telling yourself you’ll “do it tomorrow”.

You are telling yourself you’ll “start on January 1″. (I’ve got a story to tell you about that on the call, direct from the mouth of fit guy who sees the same thing occur every year at his gym…)

You are sick and tired of going through the same thing every year: attempting to keep your weight “under control” while all along wanting to eat everything in site and knowing you are going to gain weight again.

This is a continual thing for you: it doesn’t matter if it’s the holiday season, a vacation, birthdays, weddings or any other of the 12+ major holidays throughout the year, you still tell yourself that “someday” it will be different (you’ll stop obsessing about food and your weight) but for now you’re going to “let loose” and just “let it all go”. And then later you feel awful, miserable, and ask yourself, “Why can’t I change?? Why can’t I get it together once and for all??”

Life is meant to be fun, abundant, simple and easy for you. How easy does it feel to keep a constant watch on food and the scale? How much fun is that?

What if you were having fun while creating a fit, healthy, sexy body for yourself?

What if you didn’t have to motivate yourself to get moving? What if you wanted to take action and you didn’t have to force yourself…at all?

What if you could enjoy the holiday season, not feel deprived, and still lose weight?

Join me on the call - it’s going to be a lot of fun. See you then!

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Are you still thinking that your weight problem is all about the food?

Are you still stuck in the cycle of, “when I lose weight, then I’ll be happy”?

Well I can tell you from my personal experience, as well as the past experience of my clients, that that does not work. It does not work to take only physical action to lose weight in an effort to “get happy” while ignoring the real reasons you gained weight in the first place. In fact, if you are even able to take physical action without struggle and you do end up reaching your goal weight, you will still be unhappy unless you lose weight (and get happy) from the inside out.

It’s Not About The Food

Your weight issue has never been and never will be about the food. Sure, there are practicalities that come into play when dealing with the human body - the human body loves whole, healthy foods, good clean water, and wonderful, good-feeling exercise. The human body will easily shed fat when fed healthy, whole foods with portion control.

However, if you do not have your Inner YOU aligned with the fit, healthy, sexy body you wish to create on the outside, nothing else matters. You won’t even want to feed your body foods that you believe will help it shed the fat if all you do is force yourself to take physical action while ignoring all of the inner stuff that drove you to become what you are today.

It will always be a struggle for you until you get congruent on the inside with what you want on the outside.

Self-Esteem and Your Weight

“Self-esteem, on whatever level, is an intimate experience; it resides in the core of our being. It is what I think and feel about myself, not what someone else thinks or feels about me.” - Nathaniel Branden, How To Raise Your Self-Esteem

When your self-esteem is in the gutter, how easy is it for you to take fun, effortless action to create the fit, healthy, sexy body of your dreams? How could you possibly believe that you deserve to live in a rockin’ body like that when you think so poorly of yourself?

If you do not believe you deserve to live in your ideal body then you will not even be open to learning how to become a deliberate and conscious creator of your reality. You will not feel you deserve to have the body of your dreams when you have low self-esteem and you will not be open to learning a new inner (or outer) lifestyle.

5 Ways Low Self-Esteem Affects Your Weight

Here are just 5 ways low self-esteem negatively affects your weight:

1. Obsessions Galore - When you have low self-esteem you just might find yourself obsessed with food and your weight. You have the faulty thinking that “if only I lose weight, then I’ll be happy”. You attempt to control food, the scale, your body, how much and how often you exercise…all of this “stuff” becomes your focal point because you avoid the real problem that created the symptom of the overweight body.
2. Something Went Wrong, So I Must Be Wrong! Low self-esteem will contribute to your faulty thinking that YOU must be wrong when things don’t go exactly as you’d have liked them to in your life. You cannot control what other people do - people will come and go in your life, jobs will change, circumstances will alter and the only thing you can control is your own vibration, your inner world. When you have low self-esteem though you think that everything is about you when the truth is, sure, you do have a part to play in your life and you are responsible for your results (absolutely) but just because things go haywire it doesn’t mean that you are now “wrong” as a person.
3. Look At ME - I’m FAT! It’s one thing to be fat and to take healthy action to create a fit, healthy sexy body - healthy action that is driven from the belief, expectation, and feeling of deserving that, “YES, I CAN have exactly what I want”. It’s completely another thing to be living with low self-esteem and tying your self-worth to your overweight body, to your fat. The problem is that your low self-esteem played a large part in your creation of your fat body in the first place and low self-esteem will KEEP you in that fat body. The Inner and the Outer Always Match - Always, Always, Always (Abraham-Hicks). When you continue to connect your fat body with your sense of self-worth as a human being, guess what you’ll get?
4. You Feel Bad…So You Eat Can you truly feel good about yourself when your sense of self is so low? Do you feel good when you have the continual feeling that you are “never enough”, no matter what the heck you do in your life? And what do you tend to do when you feel bad…do you turn to food, think that “what the heck, I feel awful anyway so why not eat such and such”. How can you feel good when living with low self-esteem, feeling like you just cannot handle the curve balls that life throws at you? If you don’t have the tools in your toolbox to know how to deliberately feel good now you will continue to bang around in your life thinking that controlling food and your weight is the answer.
5. A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy The fact is that you cannot maintain an outside that feels good when your inside feels so bad and low self-esteem…well, it feels bad! Low self-esteem is the cornerstone of self-sabotage and self-sabotage is rampant in those who are the “false starters” - you know, you are doing everything perfectly with your food and exercise for a week or two, you get to a certain point either with how long you’ve been sticking to it or you see a certain number on the scale and “suddenly” you stick a wrench in it. Low self-esteem will drive you to sabotage yourself every time and keep you from getting what you say you want - you live a self-fulfilling prophecy that continues to give you the results of failure and disappointment. It cannot be any other way when you continue to live with a foundation of low self-esteem.

The mainstream diet industry sells you that, “once you lose weight, then you’ll be happy”. This doesn’t work and there is the glaring fact that 95% of all dieters fail. The only way you can gain true happiness is by taking action to get happy on the inside so that you honestly, in your heart of hearts, believe, deserve, and expect to live in a fit, healthy, sexy body on the outside.

However, low self-esteem will not allow you to believe you deserve to lose weight and have a fit, healthy, rockin’ body. You will not believe you deserve to learn a better way, to learn how to become a match on the inside to what you want on the outside. You will not believe you deserve to have what you want.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking action to get healthy and fit, in fact if you have high self-esteem you will naturally desire to learn how to do this with ease if you place a high value on your physical fitness. High self-esteem will lead you to take the actions that are congruent with what you live on the inside and when you are “living happy now” with high self-worth on the inside then things will begin to line up for you. You will be on your way to learning how to deliberately create a fit, healthy, sexy body for yourself with effortless action.

In the end though, if you are unhappy on the inside losing weight on the outside will not make you happy. It’s an inside job. Besides that, if you are unhappy on the inside you will be drawn on the outside to whatever keeps you unhappy. How easy is it to take those actions that you believe will create your dream body when you feel so poorly about yourself?

5 Ways High Self-Esteem Makes Weight Loss Easy

Look for my next post on 5 ways High self-esteem makes weight loss easy for more on this topic of self-esteem.

In the meantime leave a comment below on the points you relate to in this article and how your self-esteem has affected your weight. Feel free to include any action steps you have taken to raise your self-esteem and how that has been working for you to help you create a fit, healthy, sexy body for yourself. F.U.N.!!

Photo by pilipala9

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What are you worth?

What is your value?

If you look at it from purely a spiritual perspective, every human being is worthy of all of the abundance the Universe has to offer. However that is not the topic of my question today. I am asking YOU… what are YOU worth?

What ARE You Worth??

Are you worth a trip to the grocery store for some whole foods or are you worth a steady diet of fast food?

Are you worth a walk around the block or are you worth laying on the couch, overeating on chinese food and brownies, and watching T.V. all night long?

Are you worth a new, cute top, a pair of jeans that fit, and some hot shoes so that you feel awesome now while on your weight loss journey, or are you worth a ratty pair of sweatpants and an old t-shirt?

Are you worth some sexy lingerie that fits, a bottle of perfume you love, learning how to cook whole, healthy foods, and people in your life who love, support, and cherish you?

Or are you worth waiting until tomorrow to feel good, waiting until you have the money, waiting until you are ready to live your life finally….tomorrow?

YOU Determine Your Worth

While it is definitely true that every human being has intrinsic worth just for the fact that “they are”, you are the one who determines what you are worth. You determine whether or not you’re worth investing in professional coaching to help you, once and for all, solve your issues with food and your weight.

You are the one who determines whether or not you are worth investing the time in learning a new way of living so that you not only can lose the weight without struggle, but that you can also keep it off for life.

You are the only one who determines whether or not your value is high enough that you deserve to have what you want - a fit, healthy, sexy, rockin’ body. A body you LOVE living in. A body you praise rather than criticize. A body you appreciate and adore.

You are also the only one who determines whether or not you deserve to live a life that includes a healthy relationship with food. A life filled with an appreciation for food rather than a fear of it.

Stay Tuned For More…

Stay tuned to The Fit Shack this week for more on this topic of self-worth, self-value, which at it’s core comes down to self-love and your self-esteem.

You will never have peace with your body and food until you determine you are worthy of that life. It will always be a struggle for you to live with your body, your weight, and with food until you clean up the real issues (and food sure ain’t it!).

Share Your Comments

Leave a comment below to share how your current actions demonstrate how much you value yourself and your desire to live in a fit, healthy, sexy body.

Share whether or not your actions are easy and effortless for you, or share your thoughts on how you’d like to be living right now - whether you’d like to be living with actions that match how highly worthy you feel on the inside… because when you get there, the healthy weight loss actions come together for you with effortlessness and ease. F.U.N.!!

Photo by erin MC hammer

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