Category Archives: Habits

Resistant Starch – Who Knew?

Resistant starches are a weight loss TRICK that really works. These starches contribute in many ways to weight loss and over all digestive health. What are they? Beans, peas, lentils, potatoes, yams, nuts and seeds, unripe bananas and whole grains such as barley and brown rice are all resistant starches and will help you lose weight.

Starch consists of molecules of glucose linked to each other forming amylose and amylopectin. Amylopectin molecules have a branched shape and fit together loosely, which makes them easier to digest. Amylose molecules fit together tightly and form granules that are much harder to digest. Most plant food is made up of 20-25% amylose, but resistant starches contain much more amylose (60-80%) than amylopectin, so they are resistant to digestion.

Normally your body digests starches in your stomach and small intestine, turning them to glucose (blood sugar) to fuel your body and store the excess as fat. When you eat resistant starches, however, they digest differently, passing through the stomach and small intestine and settling in the large intestine. There they ferment, helping in several different ways.

One: They create beneficial short chain fatty acids including butyrate that help promote weight loss by increasing the amount of stored and just consumed fat your body burns and reducing blood sugar and insulin levels.

Two: They protect the lining of your colon by decreasing ph, which boosts calcium absorption and blocks absorption of cancer causing substances.

Three: They help the growth of healthy bacteria (probiotics) which gives your immune system a boost.

Four: They prompt your body to produce more of the hormones that signal satiety and fullness, so you feel full sooner and eat less!

How do you benefit the most from eating these foods? Cooking these starches breaks them down somewhat (gelatinization), making them easier to digest; cooling them thoroughly before you eat them gives the starch a chance to harden into a crystallized form (retrogradation) that is harder for the body to digest. So eat these foods cooked then cooled!

I would really appreciate your comments below. Ask me any diet related question or let me know what you would like to know more about.

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If you read this article and could forward it to a friend you could really help them out.
Most importantly, if you are struggling and need help all you have to do is email me at tiffany@skinnycoach.com and I’ll set up a complementary session with you to pinpoint your triggers and help you with ways to deal with them. You don’t have to struggle with your weight and health. I can help you.

Get Skinny!
Take the Skinny Coach quiz and the
Skinny Coach will call you with the results.

Please add me to your Facebook friends and I will send you the list of the 100 names of sugar and 1 tip to lose that belly fat. www.facebook.com/skinnycoach.

Are you tired of the word “lifestyle change?”

“It’s not about starting another diet, it’s about making a lifestyle change!” Lifestyle is the buzz word right now as people are becoming painfully aware that diets have a dark and dirty under belly. Unfortunately, while we may hear it every day it doesn’t change the fact that when you wake up tomorrow, and start eating 1200 calories a day and exercising like Peyton Manning you feel like you’re on a DIET.

Allow me to clarify what the difference between another diet and having a true and meaningful lifestyle change. Your body has been on one diet or another since you were born. Whether it was the ‘junk food diet’, the ‘I’m in college and eat Top Ramen diet’, or the ‘I’m pregnant, step away slowly diet’; either way it’s a diet. It’s a conscious decision to eat a certain way every day- that literally is all a diet is. Think for a moment the first time you tried something; for instance, your favorite ice cream- once you started eating that ice cream, once you realized you liked it and it made you feel good, you started eating that food repeatedly. Therefore, making that ice cream a part of your diet. Once the ice cream became a regular part of your diet, it became a lifestyle change in which you now eat ice cream almost every day. You can see through this chain of thinking – a diet decision became a lifestyle change before your very eyes.

Of course, that leads to the next thought- which is how can I make healthy food that will make me thin, healthy and happy a lifestyle change. There is good news and bad news. Our brain is very clear about what it desires, if you consume something that rewards your pleasure center you will crave that thing… Potentially a lot. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can train your brain that healthy food, while it may not light up your pleasure center right away, still makes you feel good and right. If you eat good wholesome food every day, and you never get stomach aches or bloats from rich food, or indigestion from fatty or greasy food, and you feel light and energetic, your brain will get that message. That means that you are always speaking with your brain, you are constantly trying to communicate. If you tell your brain and body that the best you can do is light up that reward center- it will take what it can get. But if you tell your brain that these certain foods can make you clearer, give you less headaches, and allow you to be at your best- your brain will hear you!

So the truth of the matter is that everyone starts a ‘diet.’ You can’t escape it, if you are eating in a way that is making your fat and sick today, you will have to start a diet if you want to be thin, and healthy- there’s no trick. But once you start that diet, once you (and your brain) really believe that this diet food is rewarding and making you feel good- you will start to crave good food!! Believe me, today I crave yummy creamy yogurt with cooked apples and cinnamon- and my brain believes me!

If you’re ready to start the diet, that will lead to the lifestyle; that will make you thin, healthy and incredibly happy take my SKINNY COACH QUIZ today!

Do you need a Mentor?

When people want to learn something they go to school to be taught by a teacher who is trained extensively on that which they wish to learn. When it is time to learn to drive you are instructed by your parents (people who have often been driving for decades.) When you want to learn a sport you are guided and trained by your couch. But, when a person wants to lose weight, suddenly it’s time to ‘pull up your boot straps’ and do it on your own. Why is that?

Weight loss, potentially one of the most difficult struggles that a person will ever encounter, is a job that people believe one should be able to accomplish on their own. It is unrealistic to think that this is something you can handle. If you are overweight it is because you never learned the proper skills to healthy eating, and/ or you do not have control over what you are eating. There are very specific foods and activities that will allow you to control your food intake more effectively. To learn what foods you can eat without binging, and to acquire the skills you’ll need to practice to get skinny and stay skinny you need to be TAUGHT! We aren’t born with this knowledge or these skills, and you do not have to feel bad or guilty for needing help. You need someone to rewire your brain, you currently have the brain of a fat person, you need a Skinny brain to be skinny.

Hiring Dr. Wright, the Skinny Coach, to help you with your weight loss will give you the support and education you need to succeed at your weight loss goals. In your skinny journey, you will have questions, you will make goals and commitments, and you will feel discouraged; it is during all of these times that having the Skinny Coach there anytime day or night, to help guide you through, that will ensure your success. You need help to rewire your brain and train you to think like a skinny person, you need to be trained to have correct eating habits, and you need to be taught the right foods for your body. Find out if you’re a sugar addict by taking this quiz or talk to Tiffany Wright, Skinny Coach, and see how she can coach you to success.

Is this real?

Food addiction is real. It has been recognized by scientists across the globe and it must be taken seriously. When you eat highly palatable foods like sugar and flour our taste buds send messages to our brain and release dopamine. However, in as little as THREE weeks of overeating the dopamine receptors started to get compromised. This leads the overeater needing more and more to get the same feeling – what is this called? Tolerance. Additionally, because the dopamine receptors have been compromised if you are not feeding yourself more and more then you feel bad because you are not getting normal amounts of these feel good hormones. What is this called? Withdrawal. Tolerance and withdrawal are the hallmarks of addiction with all addictive substances – cocaine, alcohol, cigarettes and SUGAR.

Willpower and moderation are not relevant options with addiction. The sugar and flour must be removed. Your brain must be clean from the substance and your body must detox. This is a biochemical reaction and willpower is ineffective in the face of a bio chemical reaction that happens every day of every week of every year. This is why a smoker can’t just decide to smoke less. The logically part of their brain, their executive function, does not have control anymore – the addictive reward system has control. No addictive treatment advocates moderation. No one ever says, just have one line of coke a day or one drink a day. The body and brain can be healed but FIRST you must detox from the substance through complete abstinence and SECOND, you must engage in evidenced based treatment that includes cognitive behavioral therapy, behavioral modification therapy, talk therapy and group therapy. The Skinny Coach Solution offers all of this and that is why it works. That is why it will work for you. Please take a chance and schedule an appointment to talk.

I would really appreciate your comments below. Ask me any diet related question or let me know what you would like to know more about.

If you read this article and could forward it to a friend you could really help them out.
Most importantly, if you are struggling and need help all you have to do is email me at tiffany@skinnycoach.com and I’ll set up a complementary session with you to pinpoint your triggers and help you with ways to deal with them. You don’t have to struggle with your weight and health. I can help you.

Get Skinny!
Take the Skinny Coach quiz and the
Skinny Coach will call you with the results.

Please add me to your Facebook friends and I will send you the list of the 100 names of sugar and 1 tip to lose that belly fat. www.facebook.com/skinnycoach.

Brain Candy?

Americans as a whole are focused on health, well-being and weight loss, but down the road we may be more concerned about our brain function. Did you know that women and men with chronically high blood sugar have an increased risk of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia? High blood sugar causes inflammation and oxidative stress, both of which are very bad for your brain. A study published in the December 2008 issue of the Annals of Neurology, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the American Diabetes Association concludes that abnormal regulation of blood sugar is linked to an increased risk of cognitive impairment and dementia.

What can you do now to insure that you will be able to read and understand this later?

Eliminate sugar, flour and all refined foods from your diet; it’s a lifestyle change that will benefit your waistline and your mind. And exercise – even if it is just 10 minutes a day. Use your mind in unusual ways – try sudoku or a crossword puzzle, learn a new language – you can even brush your teeth with your other hand to give your brain a boost.

I would really appreciate your comments below. Ask me any diet related question or let me know what you would like to know more about.

comment-arrow-right

If you read this article and could forward it to a friend you could really help them out.
Most importantly, if you are struggling and need help all you have to do is email me at tiffany@skinnycoach.com and I’ll set up a complementary session with you to pinpoint your triggers and help you with ways to deal with them. You don’t have to struggle with your weight and health. I can help you.

Get Skinny!
Take the Skinny Coach quiz and the
Skinny Coach will call you with the results.

Please add me to your Facebook friends and I will send you the list of the 100 names of sugar and 1 tip to lose that belly fat. www.facebook.com/skinnycoach.

It is all in the Brain

I talked to the most wonderful woman today and she told me she used to be able to do anything but now she can’t, “I just don’t have any willpower anymore.” I was sick to my stomach. There are so many bright, beautiful, talented women that are ruined because of their addiction to food. The problem is they think it is their fault. But it is not. A new study validates the current research that sugar and flour are addictive. In fact Oreos are as addictive as Cocaine.

Our pleasure center in our brain called the nucleus accumbens is activated by sugar in the same way it is by cocaine and morphine.  In fact, many studies have shown that sugar is MORE addictive than either cocaine or morphine because it activates more cells in this area making it even more pleasurable.

This is not about willpower – it is about addiction.

I can help you – take the sugar addiction quiz and schedule an appointment with me and be free from your addiction and stop battling the bulge.

Skinny saves (you money!)

I help women lose weight and take control of what they put in their mouths. After a potential client has poured her heart out to me, cried, laughed and told me that she is ready to get skinny and that Skinny Coach is perfect for her, sometimes the next thing she says is “I can’t afford it.” Money is on everyone’s mind these days. Nevermind that McDonald’s stock went up 10% this quarter (they are “lovin’ it!”)

Economic hard times push people to eat cheaper food and what could be cheaper than the fast food dollar menus. Hard times also produce stress and stress leads people to self-medicate. The drugs of choice for many, when self-medicating, are sugar, fat and refined foods. But make no mistake about it, your health is your most important asset and being overweight taxes your health and life in so many ways; naming ALL of the costs of being overweight would make this a novel – not a blog entry. But some of the costliest, and most obvious side effects of being overweight include: overweight people are more likely to have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease and stroke.

Being overweight not only burdens your health, it is a burden on your purse. What are some of the costs of being fat? Well, aside from the fact that eating more costs more, there are many other costs associated with being fat. If you are overweight you are less likely to get hired and once hired you will get paid less. In fact, fat people tend to make less money and accumulate less wealth in their shorter lifetimes than their skinny counterparts. It chips away at your earning power and efficiency – and happiness. There’s some research that suggests that overweight people are even less likely to be married and stay married.

I found this at:
http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2007/04/lose_weight_and.html
Here’s how they add up the savings:

* Latte factor: $783
* Life insurance: $275
* Health insurance: $680
* Health-care costs: $151
* Employer incentives: $600

If you took these savings each year and invested them at 8%, in 20 years, you’d have almost $114,000. Do it for 30 years and it’s $282,000. 40 years gets you $645,000. This makes getting skinny pocket change. Can you really afford not to take care of your health and body? I say start saving money… it is your body and you deserve skinny.

I would really appreciate your comments below. Ask me any diet related question or let me know what you would like to know more about.

comment-arrow-right

If you read this article and could forward it to a friend you could really help them out.
Most importantly, if you are struggling and need help all you have to do is email me at tiffany@skinnycoach.com and I’ll set up a complementary session with you to pinpoint your triggers and help you with ways to deal with them. You don’t have to struggle with your weight and health. I can help you.

Get Skinny!
Take the Skinny Coach quiz and the
Skinny Coach will call you with the results.

Please add me to your Facebook friends and I will send you the list of the 100 names of sugar and 1 tip to lose that belly fat. www.facebook.com/skinnycoach.

Food Crisis – What to do when the cravings hit

The easiest part of any diet is the starting. The planning the food, the coaching, the gearing up; these are the moments that are fun and exciting. But, what about when you’ve been on the diet one or two days and you are hungry (or at least you think you are) and you’re ready to eat something BAD!

Imagine for a moment you’ve been on a healthy eating plan, like the Skinny Coach diet, and you’re feeling great, but you have just had a fight with your husband and suddenly, as if from nowhere you hear a small voice calling to you… “Eat me!!!” It’s the ice cream!!!! What do you do next?

  • Call your Skinny Coach
  • First off, what is the darn ice cream doing in the house still? And your husband or children want it is not a good reason! If you’re going to start a diet- REMOVE your temptations.
  • Remind yourself how happy you are that you’re finally doing something about your weight.
  • Refer to the journal in which you wrote all of the reasons you want to be thin.
  • Read, exercise, take a bath- divert your attention to something that will make you feel good, and that you can’t eat while doing
  • Eat your next meal of snack that is on your plan
  • Plan your meals for tomorrow
  • BEST PLAN OF ALL: CALL YOUR SKINNY COACH IMMEDIATELY!
  • The Skinny Coach plan is based on a foundation that you are likely addicted to sugar and that you have tried doing diets on your own. That in the moment, if you were strong enough to resist you probably wouldn’t be fat, and that you may need someone to help walk you away from the edge. Tiffany Wright PhD, has been successfully coaching people through cravings since she lost 100 lbs. When you join the Skinny Coach Diet you will have access to Tiffany and her coaching anytime day or night- this is where the Doctor and her plan really shine.

    To get your first complimentary consultation click here to setup a time to speak with the Skinny Coach.

    What are your behavioral cues or triggers?

    Losing weight is not about a diet or food plan. It certainly is not about an exercise plan. Losing weight is about changing your behavior. You have to design a life where weight loss is automatic. Changing your behavior is very difficult because you have associations, cues and triggers about food that are hard wired through repetition and reward pathways in the brain. If your unconscious eating habits are making you fat, sick and tired it is important to realize that the reason you can’t stay on a healthy eating plan is because you are not conscious of your underlying patterns. Therefore, while there are a number of ways to effectively help people change these patterns you first have to recognize them so then you can “reprogram” your behavior. Environmental triggers are by far the most common type of trigger. Seeing a bag of chips, chocolate chip cookie or the ice cream in the freezer is an obvious environmental cue to eat, eat more, eat too much. Shifting the unconscious choice is as simple as removing the trigger. Of course, first you have to have motivation to change, but assuming that is there – remove the ice cream and you have behavioral design! You have removed the trigger so you don’t eat it. Over time the association to even eat ice cream at home or at all begins to dissipate because you have not rewarded the association – thus you have behavioral change. Systematically identifying, removing and replacing your emotional and behavior association with food is a multi step proposition and usually requires help. I can help – schedule a time to discuss, id and narrow down your emotional eating patterns. There are lots of behavioral cues you have to deal with and I know them all. Let me help

    I would really appreciate your comments below. Ask me any diet related question or let me know what you would like to know more about.

    If you read this article and could forward it to a friend you could really help them out.
    Most importantly, if you are struggling and need help all you have to do is email me at tiffany@skinnycoach.com and I’ll set up a complementary session with you to pinpoint your triggers and help you with ways to deal with them. You don’t have to struggle with your weight and health. I can help you.

    Get Skinny!
    Take the Skinny Coach quiz and the
    Skinny Coach will call you with the results.

    Please add me to your Facebook friends and I will send you the list of the 100 names of sugar and 1 tip to lose that belly fat. www.facebook.com/skinnycoach.

    How Rachael Handled the Bake Sale

    I am feeling exceptionally good this morning and feel like writing, a month into maintenance after dropping a cool 51 lbs this year. It is the day after the big AYSO Picnic in the Park event with which I was very involved this year – soccer tournament and kids carnival – long hours in the sun, lots of physical activity, kids running wild, you get the picture.

    On this day, day 198 on plan, it was there I found myself pushing my hand-truck of boxes past sponsor booths, games booths and the dreaded FOOD booth, breathing the savory aroma of fresh pizza, subway sandwiches, chips and chilled juice boxes. Not one other bite, I repeated to myself, you’ve eaten all this before and really, where did it get you?

    Next up, the catering booths – tacos, bacon wrapped hot dogs, I don’t know what else but again, armed with my mantra, I turned aside, hell-bent on my mission to get to the end of the field with NOT ONE OTHER BITE.

    And just as I rounded the last row, I peeked to my right and there I saw it, a booth so crowded it’s 6 foot tables were completely obscured by kids and parents jockeying for position, thrusting their tickets at the volunteers with requests I could barely make out over the noise. Slowly I glanced up at the banner hanging from the easy-up canopy and like a lighthouse beacon calling out to a lost ship I saw it …. BAKE SALE!…BAKE SALE!….BAKE SALE!

    Slowly and with great caution I approached the far side of the booth, for I had to pass this way in order to deliver my crates of supplies. Eyes forward, I stole a glance at the plates and platters piled high with… with….well, I won’t torture you longer with my ranting and raving. Suffice it to say, if it went in an oven and had frosting – it was on that table!

    BUT, relying on what I learned from my 10 months of training with Tiffany (and the fact that without tickets, you could not buy food and I purposely left all my money in my car so as to make it terribly inconvenience to buy tickets), head held high, teeth gritted against the onslaught of “treats for sale, help raise money to help your kids!” I soldiered onwards, sailing past the Bake Sale booth and down to the field of carnival games and team photos, safe in the knowledge that having passed this way the first time without incident, it would be that much easier for the remainder of the day to continue to do so.

    And it was.

    By the end of a 13 hour day, having eaten my own packed lunch of 4 oz turkey burger patty, half avocado, cup of carrots and tomatoes and 10 mary gone’s, I can say, with only slight hesitation (as we know, this journey is an ongoing one) I GET IT.

    Thanks! Rachael

    War, famine – fast food! which is worse?

    203 million people died in the last century from war and oppression – including military and collateral civilian casualties from conflicts, genocide, mass murders, and famines. But the junk food habit kills more. The junk food habit is killing 40% more people than wars, famine, dictators, murderers, and politicians put-together.
    God knows it taste great – in fact the manufacture it so that it taste so great you can’t stop… but are you willing to let you life be driven by a drug? Yes, food is a drug, it alters your brain chemistry and provides a high that can not be attained in a natural or normal way. Causing a desire, obviously, to want more because normal life and food is no longer pleasurable enough. Just like any drug, abstinence is the answer because if you could moderate you would have done it by now… You wouldn’t be 40 pounds overweigh, you would not have high cholesterol, you wouldn’t be in XL clothes. This is not what you want yet you can’t stop. Let me help you. Schedule an appointment with me and we can work it out.
    Email me or give me a call (310) 633-1333.

    I would really appreciate your comments below. Ask me any diet related question or let me know what you would like to know more about.

    comment-arrow-right

    If you read this article and could forward it to a friend you could really help them out.
    Most importantly, if you are struggling and need help all you have to do is email me at tiffany@skinnycoach.com and I’ll set up a complementary session with you to pinpoint your triggers and help you with ways to deal with them. You don’t have to struggle with your weight and health. I can help you.

    Get Skinny!
Take the Skinny Coach quiz and the
    Skinny Coach will call you with the results.

    Please add me to your Facebook friends and I will send you the list of the 100 names of sugar and 1 tip to lose that belly fat. www.facebook.com/skinnycoach.

    Can you believe she said no?

    I was teaching a workshop recently and a woman there had sleep apnea, was 100 pounds overweight, was on medication for weight related issues, and has a daughter following her eating path and had been talking to a Skinny Girl for 3 years about being a Skinny Girl. In fact, they had been talking about weight issues for years before that. Even knowing four people in her community that are on the Skinny Coach Solution – she still could not bring herself to help herself. The insidious nature of this disease still surprises me today. The food addicts mind is a computer of rationalizations, guaranteed to fool even the most astute. This computerized mind holds several rationalizations for every kind of situation. The people serious about getting control over their eating behavior, the behavior that is LITERALLY killing them has to be able to recognize the rationalizations before it is too late. As food addicts, we have been using these mind games for years and they are an integral party of their personality.

    “I’ll have just one”

    “I’ll start tomorrow”

    “What will people say if I give up sugar”

    “It’s the only thing that makes me happy”

    “The holidays are coming”

    The most important part of the Skinny Coach Solution is to get rid of these rationalizations and the feelings that come with them. We are vigilant and consistent. This is why a diet alone does not work. Without these changes in thoughts and attitudes you will go back to the treadmill of your inevitable obesity related death. Your diet must include a mental remake. The Skinny Coach Solution does just that. I can help you. It is a lifetime program so you can’t fail unless you quit.

    I would really appreciate your comments below. Ask me any diet related question or let me know what you would like to know more about.

    If you read this article and could forward it to a friend you could really help them out.
    Most importantly, if you are struggling and need help all you have to do is email me at tiffany@skinnycoach.com and I’ll set up a complementary session with you to pinpoint your triggers and help you with ways to deal with them. You don’t have to struggle with your weight and health. I can help you.

    Get Skinny!
    Take the Skinny Coach quiz and the
    Skinny Coach will call you with the results.

    Please add me to your Facebook friends and I will send you the list of the 100 names of sugar and 1 tip to lose that belly fat. www.facebook.com/skinnycoach.