Tag Archives: Diet

Monica Cardone Tid Bits Articles

What Day am I On?

AppleI have no idea what day I am on…

I’ve lost track at this point – and have nearly lost myself in just surviving through the run-on-Mondays!
Isn’t there someone who can rescue me? Even if it’s just from my children….ugh
Monica Cardone Weight Loss Tips

Weight Loss Tip #17: Identify Your Ideal Weight and Stick to It

If you’re 5′7″ with a certain build, there’s an ideal weight that matches your body type. One person’s ideal body weight may be completely different from another’s. Find yours– and make that your goal. If you don’t know what your ideal weight or goal might be, try findyourbodytype.com BMI calculator. Set this goal as a screen saver or background image in your pc that really helps you courage and remind your goal.

Body Types Featured Articles Monica Cardone Weight Loss Tips

Weight Loss Tip #17: Remove Toxins from Your Body Naturally

In order to lose weight, it takes a two step process. First, you must remove the toxins blocking your fat burning hormones controlled by your body’s organs, and then you must feed your body the right nutrients it needs to activate these hormones (naturally). You need to eat properly to activate hormones. If you’re too busy to cook and don’t like the vegetables you need to consume in your diet program or you want to super charge your results; I would highly recommend you supplement your diet with your body type supplement.

There are four types, custom made to support whatever body type you have. All the products are all natural, pharmaceutical grade, made with organic, and food-based!

FYI – this is what your body type kit will help with (the price is about $150 for the complete 8 week program…Detox kit and Fat Burning kit):

· Works naturally as a Total Body Cleanse…helps purify the liver, organs and blood.

· Helps restore absorption and helps balance the fat burning hormones

· Replenishes the body with nutrients that can help activate the body to shed fat cells

· Increases overall health

· Increases energy, naturally

· Reduces cravings of sugar, fried foods and carbohydrates (even chocolate!)

Body Types Featured Articles Monica Cardone Weight Loss Tips

Weight Loss Tip #14: Stop Comparing and Know Your Own Triggers

Don’t compare yourself to others. Everybody is different, and every ” body” is different! Everybody loses weight differently as well. This is the reason why I always support 4 different body types. I’m sure you have found that even if you follow the same diet and program as someone else followed, who did lose the weight they wanted to - doesn’t translate to success where YOU are concerned.

The key is in knowing your body, and finding out what works for your body.  The body type philosophy is based on hormones, which control metabolism and can either trigger fat burning, or fat storage. Hormones are triggered or blocked; by foods, exercise and other activities. The best way I know of, to learn about your body’s triggers, is to find out what body type you have (knowledge is power!).  Then, keep your goal in sight, and do whatever you have to do to meet that goal. When you start looking at someone else’s weight, you’re losing focus on what the real goal is…get yourself to a healthier, happier stage…and don’t worry, the weight loss will follow.  After all, its physically impossible to be anybody but yourself!

Body Types Featured Articles

You Have to Be Healthy Before You Can Lose Weight

You have no doubt heard that you should lose weight so you can be healthier, because obesity is a health risk causing heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and stroke. Right? People have been pushing the idea that fat
directly causes these other problems.
This is not true!

Dr. Berg found it is just the opposite. You need to be healthy first before you can actually lose weight. You are fat because some area of your body is unhealthy. In other words, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, stroke AND
obesity are all the result (symptoms) of the same thing—an unhealthy body. Somehow, someone has assigned obesity as a primary cause or a disease, when in reality it is an effect or result of something else.

The problem with making it a disease is now it gets treated with medication, and if some nonmedical practitioner treats it, he or she could be practicing medicine without a license. If you have stubborn weight problems, you have unhealthy hormones. You can’t be fat and healthy at the same time. The body can’t and won’t release fat until it is at a certain level of health. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn why your body is holding on so dearly to fat if you understand the purpose of fat. It is a survival mechanism, and the body will not let go of fat until the source of stress or the threat to survival is gone—in other words, until the body is healthy.

Weight Loss Tips

Weight Loss Tip #9: Define Your Best Exercise

The benefits of exercise are undeniable. It increases circulation, flexibility and stamina. Exercise helps to regulate mood, weight and sleep and is a key component to living a vital life. No exercise was created equal. You must decide which types of activities, exercises or sports you enjoy. Next, you’ll find answers to your typical exercise excuses. You might like running, so run. You might like swimming, so swim. You might like dancing, so take a samba class. Don’t pick a routine that you don’t like or you won’t want to do it. If you do, you certainly won’t stick with it for long. I’ve lost weight without hurting myself, and you can, too. Compete with yourself. Avoid the tendency to compare yourself with others by focusing on your abilities. Make exercise a part of every aspect of your life.

Body Types Diet Diary

Day 88: How to Know If Your Doctor Is Feeding You Bull****?

Along my own personal quest to find solutions that (actually) worked (simple and easy to understand), I learned that I first needed to decipher what was a “hidden sales pitch” from “Doctor data overload!”

Discussions with doctors on the topic of weight loss can quickly lead anyone struggling to lose weight, into brain overload, or worse yet – utter confusion.  Unfamiliar terms, conflicting information and opinions backed with reason that simply makes no sense.  Most of us who reach this level of desperation, after years of failing to get permanent results on our own, quickly find ourselves nodding along – pretending like we understand every word.  I have recently lost 30 lbs in 9 weeks.  I made the common sense decision after being baffled by you know what, from one too many doctors…and at the end, I had just one question really:  “can you explain this to me in 30 seconds or less, and in terms that even a five year old could understand?”

If the answer was no – I discovered it was for one of two reasons.  One, the “professional” was intentionally “confusing” because a puny lil’woman consumer could never understand something so profound. I mean, if she did it would somehow hinder their success, which had been built on the “only the doctor knows all” mantra.  Or, the second; the doctor was so entrenched in the details that he couldn’t actually decipher which ones had the most relevance…ie. They were ALL equally relevant – there is no possible way for him to make even a 30 minute response.

The fact is, when it comes to common sense weight loss, this industry is seriously lacking a modern woman’s perspective.  There are either hokey figures that link fat loss to emotional horoscope stuff, or tests that are so confusing even the professionals can’t agree on what they mean! One of these ultra-confusing tests gives you readout with the percentage of fat you have in each body type.  How does that help? One compelling philosophy is that of four distinct body types – based on hormone imbalances.  But while the theory seems to make sense, the end result is lacking resolution…there are no answers to the question, “How can it be that I have a combination of all four types?”

Turns out this theory is about as well refined for women as most of the weight loss magic pill or burn-fat devices that I used to devise campaigns for…they have nothing to do with you, the consumer, it’s all about the latest gimmick, hype or technology – doesn’t matter if it works or not, they know that we, as women, will try – and pay – literally anything (and I am living proof of this) to lose a little weight.

Being a woman myself, we want something simple, straight forward, and easy that makes sense and gets results that last!  Well, I hate to have to admit that it has taken me over ten years to actually become one of “those women” – confused with what works, what doesn’t work, and ready and willing to try anything to lose weight(even it made no sense whatsoever).  I found myself middle aged, somewhere between fatness and fitness and utterly confused with all of the sales gimmicks and promises.

In just 8 weeks, I tried no less than 5 entirely different ways to get “results.”  And I am not someone who is gullible in this industry…I have spent the greater part of my life working with weight loss “experts”…I know how these programs work, or how they’re supposed to work, and yet I found myself floundering, losing traction & totally frustrated with the level of understanding & application of principles that was so sorely lacking both in myself & in the lives of the men & women around me who are trying desperately to lose weight but just not making it.

I met up with Dr. Eric Berg and convinced him to formulate a supplement for each type of hormone imbalance; complete with a detox phase and then the fat burning phase (i.e. the 4 basic body types).  This had always been something missing from the industry, and frankly, completely missing from his discoveries (published anyway).  Dr. Berg has done a tremendous amount of research on the four body types and has trained over 2000 weight loss doctors to use his same theories (most of them however, I wouldn’t trust to duplicate the same methods – it is a long shot!).  The missing link with Dr. Berg, is that his solution for all women was to follow a very rigid, (and taste bud-less, might I add) difficult (to say the least) diet plan.  It would have been difficult enough to follow the diet if you had your own chef and the finances to surgically remove your taste buds; but truthfully, and according to his own research – the diet couldn’t be easily successful from a nutrition stance due to the falling nutritional values of our current food supply.  In laymans terms – figure ten apples today amount to the same nutritional value as one apple in 1965.  This is due to depletion of minerals in the soil, environmental issues, genetic engineering of the plants, shipping issues, ozone stuff and all of the doom and gloom we can get overdosed with at our leisure by simply tuning into to CNN or any of your favorite “breaking news channels”.

Well, I partnered with him to build out a nutritional line pretty much just for us women who wanted our cake and to eat it too (literally).  The thing with nutrition that I learned through the years, and most impacting – through my own weight loss battle – is that if your body is starved for nutrition (like minerals, vitamins, etc.), you will have these pesky constant cravings (and I am not talking about the kind from KD Lang…in my experience – “those kind” begin to diminish and the “others” come into closer proximity).

Take a test that’s simple – mark the symptoms you have and…”find your body type.”

You’ll find I simplified the test a bit so it is easier to follow (with his agreement of course).

Now, you can start to get educated about your type.  Instead of adding the 400 pages of body type information written on the topic (about 150 pages to read on each type), I figured that most of you would really only be interested in reading about your test results and what you need to do now.

So..the book for each body type is available for a download right after you finish your test.

This guide will provide you with your long term plan.  A plan you are actually starting the day you decide to lose weight – but one with a strategy that is different from just quick weight loss…on this we’re talking long term health.  Once again it is simple and easy to follow – at the end of the day, it is all common sense…easy and simple enough for a five year old to understand!

So, if you are confused about why you have not been able to lose weight and keep it off; continue to hear conflicting information from so-called “weight loss experts” and feel lost in this sea of confusion…I hope that you find some comfort in discovering a simple, easy to understand road to get results.  These were the steps I took, and what I have used to repeat success over and over again.

  1. First, decide that you can understand why you have failed in the past…
  2. Second, learn about your body and get the simple facts (you only need yourself!)
  3. Find your body type, and start now! (trust me, there is not a reason good enough to wait till tomorrow, or next Monday, or the first of next month…do it right now)

Ironically, the last thing I tried was actually the only thing that made enough real sense to actually work. The trick is approaching it consciously with a simple, common sense plan that targets.

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From Instinct to Extinct

The great, liberating thing about losing weight and getting healthy is the fact that it is 100% done by you.  The worst thing also happens to be that the problem is created 100% by you.  For most of us, the health and physical shapes of our bodies is one of the only things in our entire life that we have 100%, total control over….pretty hard to make excuses when you look at it that way though!

The goal is take FAT from (seemingly) instinctually “wanting to be there” to “wanting to be EXTINCT.

So you know, excess fat only grows where your brain tells it to. Your brain only wants it to be there because it is confused- this can happen for a lot of reasons. Sometimes we learn bad food habits growing up (the standard “I don’t care if you’re full, finish what’s on your plate!” comes to mind). Sometimes the bad habits are cultural – my grandma (who was from Germany) used to tell us about eating “goose-grease sandwiches”. Yep, goose-grease. As in goose fat smeared on bread. Yummy! While other food patterns are picked up who-knows-where. Either way these bad habits only serve to make the situation worse. Sometimes we don’t even realize we have a habit and that’s the hardest one of all. Anyway, these habits progress with time, sometimes fading out, or trading places and other times just getting worse.  Makes you think about your kids, doesn’t it?)

In order to achieve any goal, you have to set one.  This is one of the easiest things to do and doesn’t require a date of December 31st to begin to take effect! So today I am going to set a goal to try to identify all of my food habits, figure out the good from the bad & try to eliminate the bad ones from my life so my daughters won’t be plagued by them when they grow up. Okay, is that one goal or three?

Diet Diary

Day 76: Using your kids to motivate you!

One of the greatest motivational tools ever invented is a progress chart.

My three-year-old will do almost anything for the opportunity to add a sticker to her sticker chart. It really works wonders!

Diet Diary

Day 65: Body types and barriers

Okay, so common sense would agree with the theory of body types.

But now let’s look at the actual “potential causes of too much fat” – the actual “barrier”.  I am only discussing this from the frame work of logical common sense – not at all pretending to be a doctor.  So take the following as if we were having, as the English would say, a “High Tea conversation”, woman to woman (or man) – since normally the topics of discussion are “what is being done to save the world”…this should fit right in!…(since according to Michelle Obama, we are a country whose fatness has become an epidemic!)

The biggest barrier I can think of today takes me back to my days of researching weight loss programs – discovering the customer who could not be sold on any promise she could lose weight.  No matter what telephone script or advertising freebie gimmick was used, this type of customer was convinced that there was NOTHING that would actually cause her to lose the weight (not that frankly speaking, any of the products would have made that great of an impact if she did decide to buy either) – she was dead set on this point of view and there was no way around it.  Why?  Because she was convinced that she had a bone fide “medical reason”. “ You are genetically predisposed to be “overweight.”

For those who were sold into this theory (and for the record, it is still technically “a theory”) because someone wanted to sell a new drug or treatment plan, or keep you thinking it was “nearly hopeless” so that you continued to rack up bills to cure your continuously sprouting health issues…. If you think this statement is true, forget ever losing weight.  It would be like convincing myself that I can’t sing, but still adopting a lifelong goal of being the next Celine Dion.  You have been defeated before you even start.

On the other hand, if you are now getting depressed thinking that you are in fact doomed to “living’ large” – let’s seriously look at this statement  – just use your own mind (it has gotten you this far anyway – so maybe you should use it a little more!)… We know that excess fat causes excess stress on the body and will eventually result in an earlier-than-normal death (one way or another).  So how can someone be born and as an infant or even a toddler, “decide” to start packing on the pounds?  I don’t know that there is a person on earth who could argue that a one year old is suicidal (despite the fact that my daughter HAS done some things at that age that could make you think otherwise!).

Now let’s say that your entire family is “large” – so, doesn’t that illustrate a “genetic predisposition”?  Did you know that the beautiful and svelte actress, who just had a baby herself and still managed to look amazingly thin, comes from a family of, for lack of a better term -“large” people? (Jessica Alba)  Just because you have large people in your family doesn’t mean you must follow suit.  There is nothing inherited here that you cannot change.

Point number two:  we don’t inherit our taste.  It feels like I have inherited cravings for only the worst possible foods that completely ruin my diet.  But I doubt I would be dealing with this temptation if I grew up in Ethiopia!  You learn to like different things.  You learn to accept different standards or traditions…My husband hates the taste of Indian food but an Indian friend of mine hates the taste of a McDonalds Big Mac.  Who becomes thinner as a result?  Eating, as well as taste preference and cultural habits or idiosyncrasies have proven through the centuries to be a “learned behavior”.  I grew up in the Midwest, in farming communities for the most part – and enjoyed a traditional dinner of three courses; salad, meat and potatoes, and desert.  Thankfully for me, now that I look back – food was more often used as a punishment than a reward (eat everything on your plate even if you hate the taste, or else… You didn’t finish your chores? Fine, no dessert., etc.).  But “store bought sweets” on the other hand were a rare, coveted prize that I would save up my money to buy.  My mother exercised every day to the latest Jane Fonda craze and as soon as I could wear my own leotard, I joined her.  I learned early on that I “needed to exercise” or “I could get fat from eating sweets.”  Freud would blame my problems on my mother.  I could say I “inherited” her sweet addiction!

Looking at my family of four younger sisters, we all love those “forbidden sweets” and none of us have successfully bought into forgoing “taste” to roll up our slaves and dig in to a diet of raw healthy veggies and tofu.  Each of us exercise or diet (exchanging a skipped meal for a few treats more often than we should) – and this (truth be known) is the way we “control” our weight.  You could pretty much say, we either exercise to eat, or starve ourselves to avoid exercise (right or wrong, that is the truth!)

The biggest problem here is that we “learned” this culture and I dare say “we” are not alone in our habits!  “Play today and pay tomorrow”…hummmm isn’t this novel idea issue found seated in the very economics of our country today?

Let me just sum it up here: there is no better motivator that being told you “can’t” do something.  Any one out there who fits this bill, you are not alone!  We are told every day that things are difficult, too hard, can’t be done, odds are against you and so on.  Well, they are.  It is not easy.  In fact, it just may very well be the hardest thing you have ever done – and probably one of the only things you have actually done for yourself!  But, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it…it just means it may take a little longer J  Don’t give up!!!  Don’t compare yourself to anyone else and don’t give in to the thought that “maybe you cannot be successful”.  I sound like a broken record continuing to promote the body type program – but I think it honestly could help any person, at any health stage to get dependable healthy results….and it just starts with a little decision to begin (today!).