Counseling From A to Z
More Discoveries?!!!
Apr 16, 2013
Training the Brain to Improve On New Tasks
I have used a program based on the n back task for several years, called Mind Sparke Brain Fitness Pro...and I love it. Memory is better, focus is better, impulse control better...mostly I am confident that my 65 year old brain is going to last longer. You can find a link in the right sidebar of any page on this site, if you want to check it out. Mike
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Jul 23, 2012
Safe Weight Loss Supplements
Pretty amazing weight loss journey since April 6th or 2012! I am now down 32 pounds, and will cross the 200 pound barrier soon. That is the lowest I have been since 1991, when I got down to 190 to staff my first New Warrior Adventure Weekend, and what is really nice, as the fat disappears, there is still some musculature underneath it. I am really excited to feel the difference in my ability to move, and my endurance is better also. However, the last three weeks I have been stuck at 210 pounds and even went backwards a bit. The first 30 pounds were easy, but I lost my focus for a bit at 30 pounds, and had to work to get it back. So what I did was get my bicycle out and start peddling around the circle we live on which is .6 mile, and I found that I really enjoy it, although there is more traffic than I expected, and sometimes I need to get off the road briefly. No problem for me. Surprisingly enough, my Body Media arm band tells me that the bicycle riding is "vigorous" activity, even more so than the stair master, which sure feels like it is more strenuous, probably because there are no places to coast on the stairmaster. I have continued my use of the Sisel Lean Meal Replacement shakes and have not had any candy since April 6th also, although I have had some cravings recently. I was able to recognize the cravings as such and not act on them, though. Just like the Beck Diet Solution said, so long story short, I continue to make progress, and I am looking forward to making my target weight of 180 later this year.
Jun 29, 2012
Healthy Weight Loss Tips
I am now about 11 weeks into the most consistent effort I have made to lose weight since 1990...about 22 years ago. At that time I was perhaps 10 pounds over my football playing weight of 180, and in pretty good shape for 43 year old, but when I returned to graduate school, I slowly began to pack on the pounds until I weighed about 260 when I graduated. I lost about 20 pounds shortly after that, and once got back down to 210 about 12 years ago, but slowly backslid to 240.
This spring I came across an article in WIRED magazine about some gizmos that the WIRED folks thought showed a bright promise, and one of them was the Body Media arm band.
I checked out the Body Media website, and actually I was looking for an affiliate link rather than a weight loss tool, and there was an affiliate link, so I bought the tool. I did not have much committment to its use though, but then discovered that my wife had an arm band which she had been using, which had been useful for her.
I am sure you are going to ask why I did not notice her armband. Well, maybe it was my chocolate addict that was blinding me.
Anyway, I got my arm band, and tried it out, and just going through the motions of wearing it and writing out my meals, I lost almost five pounds. I was astounded. And hooked. It is now about 10 weeks later and I have lost about 27 pounds, and my shorts are too big. Healthy weight loss tip number 1? Write down what you eat at each meal. The arm band and the Body Media website will give you a picture on calorie intake and burn and overall net loss or gain. It is easy to keep to a schedule with the arm band on. More tomorrow.
May 24, 2012
Amazing!
Ongoing weight loss! I am amazed! I have lost a total of 15 pounds in the last six weeks, and what is really amazing is that I am more and more confident that I can comfortably continue with the changes I have made in my eating habits. I consumed about 1200 calories yesterday, without having to fight off hunger pangs, and even after cooking hamburgers for the kids dinner. I also was able to keep from eating what the kids leave on their plates, which is another problem for this Boomer, who grew up with Depression era parents who were adamant about eating what was on your plate. It is very hard for me to watch food go to waste, so throwing out their remainders is hard for me, but I did it. So over the last six weeks or so, I have incrementally lost weight without any extreme exercise plan by using the Body Media tools to pay attention to what I eat when I eat it. One month ago, I also started using the Sisel Lean meal replacement supplement, which a friend of mine has used to lose 100 pounds over the last year. My first thought was that it could not hurt, and for the first 30 days, I used it sporadically with mixed results, so imagine my surprise when this week, I tried it, and experienced a feeling of fullness for several hours. The most uncomfortable part of weight loss for me has always been the craving, which seems to be running in the background all the time, when I do not get to eat to a feeling of "very full". Did not have that, and I think that is because of the Sisel Lean....
If you want to find out more about Body Media, click the link below to go to their web site.
With BodyMedia FIT, you can take control and achieve your weight loss goals!
May 18, 2012
My Weight Loss Tools
My experience with this tool is amazing. It has helped my lose 11 pounds in the last 5 weeks. It takes very little time to download the days step activity, and it does register my workouts as steps, and I can catalog my meals very quickly too, especially if I eat the same thing at each meal. If you like your menu varied, it will take a bit more time to record it. Body Media then provides me a summary of the days food intake and calorie burn and a plus or minus total for the days calories. I can get a daily, weekly, or monthly summary if I want, I can add recipes and get a calorie report, so it has several tools that I can use to pay attention to my weight loss and exercise goals.
This morning after my workout, I actually broke the arm band. I was very sweaty and the arm band and pedometer actually stuck to my arm, so I tugged and the arm band popped lose. Lesson learned, do not pull on the arm band, just life up the pedometer, but I was actually in a bit of a panic about losing my tool, which reminds me of what I am doing in regards to weight loss. When I feel a craving, it is so easy to just go eat, and think about how once I am feeling full, I will be able to hold off on the next meal.
Anybody else ever had the same inner voice that says something similar? Having the Body Media tool on helps me to quickly remember that I have a meal schedule, and I can live until the next meal. It is becoming a key ingredient in my behavior change. Here is what it looks like.
With BodyMedia FIT, you can take control and achieve your weight loss goals!
May 16, 2012
Nutrition Counseling and the Body Media Suite
Beginning week five of the Body Media experience and I am at minus 10 pounds. Very amazing to me that after all these years of not being able to consistently pay attention to my food intake, or eating on a deliberate schedule, that the addition of this simple arm band, and writing down what I eat and when I eat has resulted in what is becoming a regular part of my daily lifestyle. I am amazed. As I settle into new habits, the goal I have of 60 pounds of weight loss does not appear so far fetched, nor does in induce such anxiety about "got to lose 5 pounds today". I will keep you posted.
Continue reading "Nutrition Counseling and the Body Media Suite"
May 14, 2012
Weight Loss Counseling for Me-Part 2
The research I quote below really hits home for me. When I was first building my business, after graduate school, I saw every client who I could, often scheduling appointments until later in the evening, which meant I would finish my day at 9:00 or even 10:00p.m. and then head home tired and hungry.
My evening meal would consist of meat and potatoes and I would eat while reading the paper, not paying attention to nutritional value or fullness.
So I would eat when my circadian clock said I should be resting, and I would eat high fat foods and actually I was eating for comfort rather than nutrition.
I actually trained my body to be hungry at that time, and it will still feel hungry at that time, even if I have eaten within a couple of hours.
Breaking that circadian habit takes some attention and choice behaviors on my part, and I do believe that in the last month, I have begun to significantly reduce the impact of that signal from my body.
"ScienceDaily (Nov. 6, 2007) — Our body's 24-hour internal clock, or circadian clock, regulates the time we go to sleep, wake up and become hungry as well as the daily rhythms of many metabolic functions. The clock -- an ancient molecular machine found in organisms large and small, simple and complex -- properly aligns one's physiology with one's environment.
Now, for the first time, a Northwestern University and Evanston Northwestern Healthcare (ENH) study has shown that overeating alters the core mechanism of the body clock, throwing off the timing of internal signals, including appetite control, critical for good health. Animals on a high-fat diet gained weight and suddenly exhibited a disruption in their circadian clocks, eating extra calories during the time they should have been asleep or at rest.
The study, which will be published in the Nov. 7 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, also shows that changes in metabolic state associated with obesity and diabetes not only affects the circadian rhythms of behavior but also of physiology. Probing beyond the behavioral level, the researchers observed actual changes in genes that encode the clock in the brain and in peripheral tissues (such as fat), resulting in diminished expression of those genes."
May 13, 2012
Weight Loss Counseling For Me.
Hello everyone, sorry it has been so long, but I have been auditing my site to conform with Panda and Penguin updates, with not a great deal of success, so I am just going to do what I have always done, and not worry about Google. If you remember back to last Oct., I posted quick updates from Science Daily, usually about brain fitness research. Since my brain is 64, I want to keep it as fit as possible. My most current brain fitness adventure? I gained a lot of weight when I was making my career change in the '90's, getting my Master's degree, and I have never taken it off, although I exercise regularly. But a month ago, I ran across an article in Wired Magazine about a tool called Body Media, which Wired recommended. The Body Media tool is an arm band that one wears 24/7 which records physiological activity and has a website where one can record meals and set up a target exercise and calorie intake and calorie burn daily record. Since there was an affiliate program, I decided to try it out, and ran to tell my wife, Julie, about it. Of course, Julie already had the tool, although she hadn't been using it. Anybody relate? So she resurrected hers and we began to use them regularly and support each other, and low and behold, I have lost 10 pounds in the last month. Julie has lost 9 pounds. More surprisingly for me is that having the arm band on has tipped me just enough into awareness of cravings and scheduling meals that I am eating the right kind of foods at the right time and feeling full. That is a behavioral change of major proportions for me, and I am only one month into it, actually still getting it firm. I am back about 2 belt loops on my old belt, and feeling confident that this is a program that I can sustain, even with whiny kids who think fast food from Culvers is the best. They are great and persistent temptors. I also have a friend locally who has lost over 100 pounds in the last year using a secret ingredient, a meal replacement shake, which is from an mlm company. I decided to try it out, and started a week ago to use it (but not sell it), just to give me some insurance, and when I mixed it the way I was supposed to, it left me feeling full without eating a meal. That was really amazing.So stay tuned for updates.
Nov 06, 2011
Dede Smith, MA, LPC, CCLS
Hi Mike, Wow, oh wow! I found this website by googling techniques for counseling children, and now I'm hooked, beyond hooked--hopelessly addicted! In
Nov 02, 2011
New hope for treatment of cocaine addiction
Amazing what we keep discovering about the human brain. I know when I was in the addictions field, we taught clients some tools to handle relapse thoughts, like call your sponsor, or go to a meeting, use the AA slogans, like Let Go and Let God, which actually change the brains focus, and don't go around slippery places if you do not want to slip. I know there were some folks who were on medication even way back then to help with the physical side of addiction, and there was some controversy in the recovering community about that, and there probably always will be, but I do not think this drug can alter your mood, so it should be OK with recovering folks.
"ScienceDaily (2011-07-15) -- Researchers have discovered that a common beta blocker, used to treat people with hypertension, has shown to be effective in preventing the brain from retrieving memories associated with cocaine use in animal-addiction models. Cocaine is one of the worst drug addictions to kick, with about 80 percent of those trying to quit experiencing a relapse within six months...A common beta blocker, propranolol, currently used to treat people with hypertension and anxiety, has shown to be effective in preventing the brain from retrieving memories associated with cocaine use in animal-addiction models, according to Devin Mueller, UWM assistant professor of psychology and a co-author with James Otis of the research."
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Nov 01, 2011
Amino Acid May Help Reduce Cocaine Cravings
The brain is so plastic, and is constantly changing based on the environment...and it looks like it can remember what used to be before cocaine and return to that. This is very interesting research, and I will follow up on it for you.
"ScienceDaily (2009-10-23) -- A new study in rats has found that N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a commonly available and generally nontoxic amino acid derivative, reverses changes in the brain's circuitry associated with cocaine addiction. The reversal appears to lessen the cravings associated with cocaine, thus providing protection against relapse...ocaine is a highly addictive drug characterized by frequent relapses. Recent advances in brain imaging are helping scientists uncover what happens in the brain when an addicted person is exposed to the drug-associated "cues" that trigger craving -- and lead to relapse. They've found that repeated exposure to psychoactive drugs such as cocaine causes an imbalance in the brain circuits regulating reward and cognitive control.
One of these circuits is a pathway involving the neurotransmitter glutamate. In the current study, Moussawi and his colleagues found that NAC restored normal functioning to this circuit in rats that had been previously addicted to cocaine. In addition, after receiving NAC, the previously cocaine-addicted rats did not reengage in drug-seeking behavior, even in the presence of drug-associated cues."
Continue reading "Amino Acid May Help Reduce Cocaine Cravings"
