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Free Teleseminar: One Minute Plan for Dealing With Challenges

September 11th, 2009, No Comments »

How many times have you set a goal or started down a path towards change only to fall off track because life got too hectic, you got busy, and your plan fell off the radar?How often do you feel so busy that you aren’t even sure HOW
to slow down?  Do you sometimes feel you don’t even have time to think let alone create a plan for success?

Slowing down is hard. Stopping and listening to yourself is hard. Being mindful of where you want to go is hard.

What if I told you that there is a one minute plan that could start to make these things easier?

I’m thrilled to be interviewing Stacey Mayo, The Dream Queen, and the creator of The One Minute Meditation™.

Our Topic: The One Minute Plan for Dealing with Overwhelm, Stress and other Life and Business Challenges

During this free teleseminar you will learn:

• How you can respond more effectively when life and business challenges as they come up

• The importance of finding and aligning with your BIG YES and how it significantly reduced the overwhelm

• That it is possible (and easy)  to access peace of mind in just one minute and

• Practical steps that will bring you more peace AND success

Stacey Mayo is the director of the Center for Balanced Living and the author of  I Can’t Believe I Get Paid To Do This!: Remarkable People Reveal 26 Proven Strategies for Making Your Dreams a Reality.  She has been featured on the CBS Evening News, in Forbes, Newsday, and the Wall St. Journal. Stacey loves to help people get out of their own way to make their dreams come true, integrate and balance their personal and business lives, become Peaceful Entrepreneurs who make an big impact and great living while doing something they love.

Won’t you join us?

The call will take place on Thursday, September 17 at 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern and will run 45-60 minutes.

This call will be recorded and all who register will have access to the recording.

Go here to reserve your spot.

Melissa

PS: This is not a call to put off.  Click here now and in 30 seconds we’ll get you registered.

Accountability: my win-win vacation ritual

July 20th, 2009, No Comments »

Accountability is one of the most powerful tools for change, and smart independent women often overlook it when working to create new habits or take on new challenges in their own lives.  Creating accountability doesn’t have to be an unpleasant chore.

Every summer my family spends one perfect week on my favorite island in the Pacific Northwest.  The same families return every year, and over the time we’ve been doing this, some very special friendships have formed. Each year we marvel at the changes in our children and catch up on the events of the last 12 months. It never ceases to amaze me how much can—and does—happen in a year.

One rainy summer, when the lake was not so appealing, my friend Margo and I started one of my favorite traditions.  We’re both business owners and life coaches with missions we feel strongly about.  That rainy day, we sat down and committed to goals for ourselves and our businesses for the next year.

Each year since, we’ve come together to share our wins, evaluate where we got stuck, and set our goals for the coming twelve months.  Committing our plans to paper and to each other makes them real in an important way and, we find that it actually creates some powerful momentum.  There is always something that I push myself to do, “because I told Margo I would.” The results of this one short sit-down are pretty powerful. Each year as we review how far we’ve come, we never fail to be surprised about something that we hadn’t quite realized we’d accomplished in just 12 short months.

Who know what you want to accomplish? Do you have an accountability partner? I’d love it if you’d leave a comment and share how accountability works for you.

Take good care,

Melissa

PS: That’s me and Margo just before we set our goals for the next 12 months.

Smart Choices Success Circle: Key ingredients for creating winning lifestyle change

June 22nd, 2009, No Comments »

Announcing The Smart Choices Success Circle

Calling all smart savvy women who are BEYOND sick-and-tired of struggling with food, weight, and their eating: I’ve designed the program you’ve been asking for–a Mastermind Community for smart capable women who want to make peace with food, get off the diet roller coaster, and start living the life they hunger for.

Accountability, motivation, help and active support–it’s all here.

The Smart Choices program is designed to be effective, accessible, and easy to use.

This innovative program provides the tools, support, and targeted coaching busy women need to get on track, stay on track, take charge of day-to-day overwhelm, and create lives that support the new choices they are making.

This is NOT a diet program. I know that you probably know more than you ever wanted to about what you think you “should” be doing to get where you want to go. This is a program designed to help you take those tools and make them work for you. The Smart Choices Success Circle is designed to provide the tools that traditional weight loss programs don’t discuss. The focus of the Smart Choices Success Circle is accountability, motivation (that lasts), solid support, and enduring change.

In the Smart Choices Success Circle, we take on the reasons those other plans haven’t worked.

Fun (really!) and easy to use, the Smart Choices Success Circle provides wrap-around resources including a motivating goal-setting process, online message board and community forum, weekly audio tips and coaching challenges (emailed directly to you), a weekly accountability tool, and productive Smart Choices Coaching Club phone calls where laser coaching, brainstorming, strategizing and celebrating keeps members in action and out of stuck spots.

Too many women feel alone with their struggles with food and weight.

The Smart Choices Success Circle provides the opportunity to share in the collective wisdom and support of other like-minded women who are striving to make peace with food and end their struggles with weight, eating, and overwhelm in a lasting way.

You can learn more about the program here.
Take good care,

Melissa

PS: I’d love to have you check out this great new program. Join us this month and use the code NEWSLETTER to receive your first month’s membership for only $12.99!

Are you busy reinventing the wheel when you could be enjoying success?

June 16th, 2009, No Comments »

You have a lot on your plate and a lot of things that are important to you. You’ve decided that you want to make health or lifestyle changes and spend more of your valuable energy on yourself. You want to feel better and be more of the person you know you can be.

The question is, “How do you actually make it happen?”

How do you keep your goals on your radar? How do you remember to say no to other requests that interfere? How do you stay strong in your resolve and how do you keep moving forward when you aren’t sure how to do it or if you even want to?

In the years that I have worked with strong, capable, determined women, I have observed a crucial mistake that can make the going much tougher, and the related component that will boost the success rate of just about any attempt at lifestyle change.

The crucial mistake that I see frequently is the tendency to underestimate the benefit of a dynamic support structure when working to create new habits with food, with exercise, or with managing a busy and stressful life.

Many successful women have found success by learning that they can rely on themselves. They know they are tough and many feel like if they want it done “right” they want to do it themselves. While some struggle to delegate in their professional lives, they know that success in business comes from creating and leveraging a team that can support you, expand your capabilities, and help you get where you need to go.

The place I see many smart successful women struggle, is in allowing themselves to have that same type of quality support when working to build something important in their personal lives.

The truth is, engaging a strong, active support system is one of the most effective strategies for creating changes that last. I’m not just talking about having a group of people who care about you. I’m suggesting that you evaluate your current support system in terms of its ability to actively help you get where you want to go.

Here are some questions to consider:

1. Who’s in your corner? Who can you rely on to stand with you and support you in your current goals? Who are the people who want you to achieve whatever it is that YOU want to achieve?
2. Who holds you accountable? I’m not talking about the “diet police” here. Who is willing to hold you to your goals and your objectives in a kind and helpful way? Who helps you make sure that you follow through and asks you about it (again, in a way that feels helpful), when you haven’t?
3. Who contributes to your motivation? Who can you rely on to remind you why you are doing the hard work involved in making changes? Who can you count on to hold up that picture of your final destination and encourage you to keep going? Who reminds you how far you’ve come and all the ways your efforts will or are paying off?
4. Who do you celebrate with when you achieve victories along the way? Acknowledging the milestones on the way to the finish line are incredibly important in maintaining motivation and feeling good about the work you are doing. Who encourages you to celebrate when you decide you are “too busy?”
5. Who believes in you? Who are the people in your support system who know you are capable of achieving what you have set out to achieve? These are the ones who can tell you WHY you are able to be successful. They know your strengths and help you see how you can leverage them to move forward more easily. They remind you that you can do this during the times when you might not believe that you can.
6. Who is your example? Are you the leader of the pack-the one who motivates everyone else-or do you have someone in your support system who is one or two steps ahead of you? Are you reinventing the wheel or learning from the wisdom of others who have succeeded before you? We tend to see more possibilities and grow more when we are surrounded by others who encourage us to stretch our ideas of what we believe we can do.
7. Who is your sounding board? Who do you talk things through with? Who do you go to to brainstorm strategies, tweak plans that aren’t working for you, get advice or just blow off steam after a tough day?
8. Who tells you the hard truth? Who do you trust who will tell you (in a supportive and helpful way) when you are missing the boat or getting in your own way? Sometimes strong women send out the vibe that they are “fine,” they “have it under control,” and they don’t need help. The truth is, we all need help sometimes. Who are the people who will call you on it when you are trying to be the Lone Ranger and it isn’t working for you?

Use these questions to identify any holes you need to fill in your support network. Doing so will absolutely pay off.

Why smart successful women struggle with food, weight, and emotional eating

May 13th, 2009, No Comments »

As we all know, Oprah Winfrey isn’t the only smart successful woman who struggles with food, weight, and emotional eating. I work with many clients who have accomplished tremendous things but who see food as the one place in their lives where they can’t seem to take control. Frustration, self-blame and self-consciousness can make the problem even worse and lead to more stress or comfort eating, another binge, or a sense of hopelessness and despair.

What’s a smart savvy woman to do?

Here are some areas to pay attention to if you’d like to get back in the driver’s seat with food and weight.

1. Are you paying yourself first?
Where do you fall on your priority list? Many of the successful, hard-working women I know and work with juggle multiple projects and priorities. Sometimes they make the mistake of believing it would be easier just to put themselves to the side–have one less thing to juggle. Do you even show up on your priority list or have you fallen into a pattern of attending to your own needs last–if there’s time? If the latter sounds like your pattern, then you probably know that the to-do list can be never-ending and if you come last, it’s too tempting to resort to food as an easy, “quick fix” for comfort, stress-relief, or even a reward for that day of hard work.

Learning to prioritize and budget for your own needs, wants and dreams (and learning to identify them in the first place) is more important for ending battles with emotional eating than any nutritional advice.

2. Are you holding yourself to impossible standards?
Do you have an inner perfectionist, dooming you to failure before you even start? High-achieving women can be incredibly hard on themselves. The truth is, nothing will derail an emotional eater faster than unrealistic, impossible expectations. Learn to do your best–and to keep doing your best even when it doesn’t work out. That will pay off far bigger than shooting for perfect.

3. Are you a hard worker?
Hard working women often fall into the trap of believing that the way to resolve their problems with food is to “get tough with themselves and just work harder.” The problem is, pushing yourself harder, in a direction that wasn’t working in the first place, just creates a more painful struggle.

Many times, the way out of food and weight battles is to stop pushing, fighting, and “working hard” long enough to examine the situation, listen to yourself, and start to take stock of what you REALLY need. Compassion and curiosity will help you identify your triggers for turning to food and overeating in a way that “getting hard on yourself” NEVER will. Remember. If things didn’t work out, odds are the plan failed you. You didn’t fail your plan.

4. Are you too focused on “flying solo?”
Have you convinced yourself that emotional eating is a problem that you “should” have solved on your own by now? Do you struggle in silence and isolation? Although smart women know the value of seeking help and connecting with expertise, a common emotional eating trap is the belief that struggles with food and weight are easy for everyone else and that it is a sign of personal failure to be struggling. I cannot adequately describe the power and effectiveness that come from applying the appropriate support, mentoring and guidance to this problem area.

The truth is that emotional eating is an issue that many successful, savvy women struggle with and the nature of a busy woman’s life can make emotional eating even more of a temptation. Making peace with food and finding solutions that work for you are absolutely possible–but making those changes and making them last requires a thoughtful, and yes, a smart approach.

Get on track with your healthy self and take control of emotional eating

April 28th, 2009, No Comments »

Spring is finally here and it feels wonderful. For many, it’s a season of renewed interest and commitment to getting in shape, taking charge of emotional eating and making those health changes—once and for all.

This spring, I’ve joined forces with someone who is as passionate as I am about making a difference in women’s lives. Together, we’ve put together an incredibly powerful series of teleseminars at a ridiculously affordable price. The goal—to help you spring into action and get where you want to go—and to make that process as painless (and even as fun) as we possibly can.

My partner in this series, Debi Silber, is a nutritionist, personal trainer, and dynamic coach who specializes in helping moms “get their mojo back.” I hope you’ll join us, every Wednesday in May as we cover:

• How to start to take charge of emotional eating—tools that will last for life
• How to determine your “fitness personality” for quick, enjoyable and lasting results
• How to identify strategies for learning how to feed yourself in ways that won’t leave you feeling deprived
• How to identify food triggers (people, places, thoughts, feelings) before they derail you
• How to tame your “inner bully”, reduce negative self talk and limit limiting beliefs
• Tips to change your focus from surviving to THRIVING

…and so much more. You can get all the information (and learn how to qualify for a special private bonus class) as well as registration details here.

Take good care,

Melissa

Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Group Program

March 11th, 2009, No Comments »

Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Six Week Tele-Groups, including a specialized program for weight loss surgery patients, begin next week.

Designed to enhance and expand the Emotional Eating Toolbox™ 28 Day Self-guided Program, these small groups have received great reviews. The groups have been newly updated (I’ve added on two additional weeks) and now contain new upgraded activities and exercises.

Learn how to:

• Identify emotional eating
• Learn what you are REALLY hungry for (when it isn’t food)
• Develop tools and strategies you can use INSTEAD of eating
• Reduce anxiety and stress in your life
• Identify strategies and mindsets that sabotage you and begin to eliminate them
• Set goals that are designed to be successful and motivating
• Address perfectionism, negative thinking and self blame

Groups are limited in size to ensure plenty of time for individualized coaching, feedback, and discussion. There are still spots remaining in the traditional Six Week Emotional Eating Toolbox Program™ as well as in the specialized Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Program for Women Who Have Had Weight Loss Surgery.

Both groups begin 3/17/09 and will be held by telephone on six consecutive Tuesdays. Specific times and dates and registration information can be found here. Registration fees for the group include a copy of the Emotional Eating Toolbox™ 28 Day program ($139 value).

Take good care,

Lessons About Emotion Eating from Weight Loss Winners

February 18th, 2009, No Comments »

I am truly honored to be coaching a phenomenal group of women in a program called the Weight Loss Winner’s Circle™. These women, brought together by phone and the internet from all over the country, are committed to achieving lasting success with weight loss while at the same time creating their best version of their lives. Motivation, accountability and support are in abundance at the three times monthly coaching club meetings and on the online forum.

The collective wisdom that flows from this group is amazing and I am regularly touched by the uplifted moods, the changes in motivation, and the shifts in perspective that occur on the group coaching calls. Each week seems to bring new insights, learning, and great take-away ideas. Here are just a few of the powerful lessons that were shared in the last month:

1. Every moment is a learning moment. Whether you’ve had a great day, a lousy afternoon, a successful experience, or a difficult day with your eating, you can always learn something if you pause and look at the situation. Taking the time to stop and learn helps people STAY in action and make progress. Seeing the learning helps you stay out of sabotaging self blame and negative thinking.
2. Sometimes somebody else can see things more clearly than you can. It’s not unusual for someone to come to Coaching Club feeling discouraged—completely oblivious to some progress they are making or some shift that could easily change everything. Having the courage to seek support when you aren’t feeling so hot usually pays off.
3. Moods and motivation can shift powerfully and quickly—with the support and input of others. Again, sometimes we are so close to our own “stuff” that we aren’t seeing it accurately. It’s amazing what can happen when you put it out there in a group of people you trust and open yourself up to different perspectives, to coaching, and to challenging yourself.
4. It’s not only about weight loss. Making enduring changes with weight and new habits ultimately means building new skills and new strategies. For the women of the Weight Loss Winner’s Circle, the consensus this month has been that these changes also involve creating lives that are rich and rewarding in and of themselves.

Tonight’s the night for the weekly Coaching Club and I’m looking forward to it. I’m guaranteed to come away with something helpful to think about.

Take good care,

Melissa

Join me for a free teleseminar and lighten up

February 4th, 2009, No Comments »

Announcing my first free teleseminar of 2009

This year, my theme is THRIVING and I picked a topic to reflect it. Join me for a free teleseminar:

Lighten Up: how to have more fun and increase your motivation as you make healthy lifestyle changes

Creating change isn’t automatic and it isn’t always easy. However, it DOESN’T need to be a struggle. I encourage you not to miss this call where I will answer your questions and address your concerns about how to take the unnecessary struggle out of making healthy lifestyle changes. Learn how to have more fun and increase your motivation while avoiding the “helpful” mindsets that will sabotage you every time.

The teleseminar takes place February 25, 2009 at noon (Pacific), 3pm (Eastern).

If you can’t attend, don’t let that stop you from registering. The call will be recorded and registered participants will receive access to the class recording after the call.

If you’ve never attended a teleseminar before, it’s easy. You’ll just dial in on the phone number you will receive when you register (you are responsible for any long distance charges) and when prompted you’ll be given an access code to enter.

To register, submit your question, and get more information, go here.

Hope you can make it,

Melissa

Of laughter, weight loss, and staying in the positive

January 7th, 2009, No Comments »

Somebody asked me today what my approach was to helping my clients lose weight. Here’s what I told her. “I take on the non-food part.”

I told her that in my experience, most people who are struggling with food and weight know the food part upside down and backwards. Diet veterans know about eating less and exercising more. Most can write out a pretty spiffy plan of what they “should” be doing. Information about food is usually not the problem. The problem is the implementation.

Knowing and doing are two different things. Unfortunately, many “plans” don’t send that message and when users of the plan fail they often fall into the trap of blaming themselves, not realizing that the plan left out a crucial component: if you’re going to “not do” something, you need to have a plan for what you are going “to do” instead.

As a brilliant participant in the Weight Loss Winner’s Circle said yesterday, “Having the goal to not do something (eat less) is not really a goal. You are taking something away. When you set out to not do something, what you end up with is a hole.”

I help people fill the hole. My job, as I see it, is to help my clients create a life that feeds their cravings. When we have the tools and resources we need to cope with our needs and feelings and with hard times, our relationship with food shifts dramatically. When our life becomes more of a reward, chocolate doesn’t hold the same power that it used to.

My approach means that my groups and coaching programs aren’t filled with talk about weight or calories or what to eat for breakfast. Much of the work that we do focuses on taking the focus off food. Learning other ways to take care of ourselves, find comfort, relieve stress, and celebrate. And we laugh—a lot. Not only that, but the process is it’s own reward.

I hope you’ll keep these ideas in mind as you move forward in your weight loss journey.

* Don’t set negative goals.
* Fill the holes.
* Have fun along the way.

Take good care,

Melissa