Your first steps towards sustainable weight loss: Week 1 challenge!

What are the first steps?  Week 1 challenge!

Ask yourself the following focus questions every time you want to eat something this week:

1.    Am I really hungry? Every time you feel hungry, ask yourself- am I really hungry or do I just feel like eating for other reasons?  If you are bored, tired, stressed or emotional – or just eating out of habit – is there something else you can do?  Take a nap, call a friend, have a shower or a massage, go for a walk, etc.  This is the first step to adopting the Homemade eating philosophy by reconnecting your hunger with your eating.

2.    What is the most healthy way to nourish my hunger? Secondly, if you really are hungry, search for the most healthful and nourishing way to satisfy your hunger.  You should not deprive yourself as that will only lead to binge eating later down the track.  If you truly are hungry, consider whether a piece or fruit, handful of nuts or a yoghurt could satisfy your hunger?  Don’t think about calories – focus solely on what healthy food you can provide your body so that you don’t feel hungry anymore.  By nourishing your body with healthful foods you will begin to fix your body systems from the inside so gradually you will have less cravings for ‘junk foods’ and require less food to satisfy your hunger – try it and see!

                                        Chloe enjoying Homemade heirloom tomato and basil with toasted lavash

What about counting calories?!

What about calorie counting?

Homemade is not a diet and does not promote calorie counting or food restrictions.  We know many of you have become so accustomed to trying to measure, control and restrict your eating in these ways that it can seem pretty scary to let go of these habits.

However, ask yourself these questions:

-       How has calorie counting and dieting served me in the past? 

-       Have they empowered me to sustainably lose weight and be as healthy as I can and should be?

-        Do they make me happy and enable me to live a fulfilling life from day to day?

-       Are they easy?

If not, then perhaps it is time to experiment with a different approach?  What have you got to lose?   

Instead of focusing on counting calories, we focus on nourishing your body with the most delicious and healthy foods - so you will be satisfied and lose weight sustainably without deprivation.

Which would you prefer?  Counting calories with Weight Watchers.....

Or eating delicious, fresh, healthy and satisfying homemade food?

Homemade program for sustainable weight loss & healthy lifestyle changes

How can I achieve sustainable weight loss?

The good news is that you can easily reverse the damage that following a poor diet in the past has done to your body systems in order to achieve sustainable weight loss and a stable, healthy body weight.  It takes time, patience and practice but the end result is freedom from carrying excess weight and the mental torture of constant yoyo dieting.

The Homemade weight loss program will teach you how to awaken, recalibrate and prime your body’s systems and your thinking so that losing weight and maintaining optimum health is no longer a battle of willpower and is something you can sustain and control with ease for the rest of your life.

How does Homemade for sustainable weight loss and optimum health work?

Our weight loss program is based on the following 3 simple principles:

1.    Cook your own food and know what goes into it!

2.    Eat natural, whole foods, as close as possible to the natural state.

3.    Practice the Homemade eating philosophy based on intuitive eating – which means learning to listen to your body and letting it guide you in what and how much to eat.

We know that making healthy lifestyle changes is hard – that is why we designed Homemade to make it easy, sustainable and fun to follow these principles.  You don’t need to be a chef or a nutrition expert because we help you to prepare a week’s worth or healthy, portion controlled meals in each session.  You will learn more about each of these principles and how to apply them in your life through the Homemade program.

 

                     Every week, we cook a week's worth of healthy, portion controlled meals
for each member to take home - in 2 hours! 
We provide all recipes, ingredients and cooking instruction

Why am I overweight….and why can’t I lose weight and keep it off?

 Your body is an incredible machine designed to maintain homeostasis or balance – and that includes your optimum weight and health. 

Unfortunately, by following a diet containing too many processed foods, simple carbohydrates and refined sugars and by eating for reasons other than hunger such as stress, boredom, being overly tired or emotional reasons, we constantly override our bodies’ incredible regulatory systems.  Over time, they start to break down.  Your metabolism, insulin regulation and hunger hormones stop working for you and start to work against you.  You don’t burn fat or calories as effectively, and you constantly crave sugar and simple carbohydrates – making you want to reach for a candy bar, bagel or fries!

Most people turn to diets, calorie counting or restricting particular foods to try to reverse their weight gain.  The problem is that this is basically pitting your willpower against your broken or sluggish body systems.  That is, you are telling your body not to eat when it is screaming at you to eat more.  This is why losing weight is hard.  And although willpower can win out for a while, it eventually fails - leading to binge eating or falling back into your old patterns, which can quickly undo any benefits (and more). 

                                     You can lose pounds by depriving yourself from food....

                              BUT then you put all the weight back on (and more!) when you stop

Develop and live your ideal self image

If you see yourself as an overweight or obese person, then that is what you will be.

If you believe that there is nothing you can do to change your shape or lose weight- because of your genes / age / job / lack of willpower / lack of time, then nothing will ever change.

Repeat after me: There is NOTHING wrong with you.  You CAN achieve the body shape and health you dream of....

We learn to associate ourselves more with the person who isn’t fit or who eats too much or who makes unhealthy food choices. The effect of this is that we become our own self fulfilling prophecies.  You start to believe that there is something wrong with you - YOU can never be one of those effortlessly slender people, who seems to eat whatever they want....

Yes, you can.

The starting point to achieving and maintaining your ultimate body FOR LIFE (with minimal possible effort) is to determine and develop your ultimate self image. What does the ultimate you look like and act like?

Is it:

• a healthy, outdoorsy, sunny, beachy person who bounces around and eats fresh fruit and nicoise salad? 
• an introverted bookish person who listens to classical music and eats homemade stews and porridge? 
• a gym junkie in the latest expensive nikes and lycra who has protein shakes and tuna salads? 
• a combination of all 3? Or something different entirely?

For me, what I really connect with is living the most healthy, natural life I can so I know I am giving my body and mind everything they need to perform at their best and so I feel my best. This means that I love being in the fresh air and sunshine and ocean. I love exercising with fresh blood and oxygen being pumped through my body and my lungs, muscles and joints working. It also means that I love eating fresh fruit and vegetables and grains and meats and fish and eggs and home cooked food made from scratch. 

 It is entirely a PERSONAL CHOICE. Figure out your own ideal self-image and then let it guide your food decisions.  This is one of the most important steps you will ever take on your journey to sustainable weight loss and optimum health.

Come back to this post whenever you need a reminder. :)

Building partnerships with Local, Organic Farms!

About 5 years ago I subscribed to my first CSA box.  CSA is a program which brings you beautiful fresh produce right to your doorstep (or local pick up spot).

Little did I know how life changing it would be! Not only did I start receiving abundant, fresh, local organic produce of the highest nutritional quality, but I started to understand - and pay attention to what was in season.

Before I got my local boxes of goodness, I would go to the grocery store and try to be adventurous but always end up buying the same 5 or 6 items - lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, onion, mushrooms... and I would never think twice about buying oranges in summer or grapes in winter.

Once you have received really juicy fresh seasonal produce for a few months or years you start to regard most of the produce in the supermarkets with suspicion - how long and far has this orange (from AFRICA!) travelled to reach me... how many carbon emissions has its delivery created... and how early was it picked to get it without going off... and how much nutritional quality could this poor orange possibly have left!?

Most of all though, you start to realize how BAD most of this produce tastes - and how AMAZING fresh local in season produce tastes with comparison.  IF YOU REALLY WANT TO EAT HEALTHY AND ADOPT LIFELONG HEALTHY EATING PRACTICES THE FIRST STEP IS TO START WITH THE MOST DELICIOUS, FRESH RAW INGREDIENTS!

Now I am a co-founder at Homemade and I am building partnerships with local (hopefully organic) farms to source our produce  I had the privilege to go down to Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale yesterday to meet some of the people behind the beautiful farm.

I am so much look forward to creating and building these partnerships.  I feel so lucky and excited to be combining some of my personal values with some of my greatest joys with our business, Homemade!

Introducing: Homemade for weight loss!

I started this blog almost 3 years ago because I wanted to do something to help empower men and women with their weight loss struggles.

At the time I was working as a commercial litigation solicitor in a big law firm.

Now... I am pursuing my life's greatest passion and am the co-founder of a business, Homemade, which is dedicating to helping all men and women achieve sustainable weight loss and optimum health.

Homemade is a weekly cooking community for sustainable weight loss.  Every week, we bring our members together and we teach them how to cook healthy meals from scratch.  We provide structure and convenience for healthy eating throughout the week because our members prepare 18 healthy meals to take home in each weekly 2 hour session.  We provide recipes, ingredients and cooking instructions.  Our members support and inspire each other in a real life community.

Weight loss with Homemade is easy, convenient and sustainable because it is not a diet - It is a new way of life, and a totally new relationship where you discover the joy of cooking and eating healthy homemade meals and how completely satisfying that can be!

We developed the Homemade model after nearly 8 months of research, testing, getting feedback.. and speaking with people like YOU who have struggled to achieve and maintain their best weight.

We are launching our next intake in mid-June. It is so exciting!  Check out our website: homemade-cooking.com for more info or to leave a comment.

We love feedback and real stories, so we would love to hear from you!!


Chloe prepping for a Homemade healthy cooking session:

Our venue in Menlo Park - sweet serenity before the cooking storm begins!

Some of our lovely Homemade members and supporters

An example dish: Kale and beet salad with parmesan and toasted nuts

 

 

Above: An example of a week's worth of healthy meals you get to take home after a 2 hour cooking session with Homemade - Yum!