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by Melanie Kok
If you are obese (BMI ≥ 30) or more than 15 kg overweight your body has turned into a fat maker. Giving your body the worst possible fuel (fast releasing carbohydrates and lots of sugar) on a consistent and frequent basis has turned you into a fat maker. If most of the fat you gained is in your abdominal area it is a clear sign that you have lost blood sugar control and are accumulating toxic fat.
How can you change from a fat maker into a fat burner again?
You reverse the process. You change the quality of the food you eat. Your body when given the slightest opportunity will do the rest. Restore energy, remove excess fat, do cell maintenance and restore health. Of course, you would need to do this on a consistent basis and you would need to assist your body by giving it the minimum exercise it needs to perform at its optimum levels.
The SIX steps to becoming a fat burner:
- Control your blood sugar by only eating slow releasing carbohydrates. Slow releasing carbohydrates are whole grains, whole wheat pasta, whole rye bread, brown rice, oats, fruits and vegetables.
- To reset your body’s ability to burn fat again by gaining blood sugar control avoid all sugar, alcohol and stimulants such as coffee and nicotine for at least the first three months. This is essential to turn your body’s ,metabolism up and get all the mechanisms to operate the way they should and start burning fat. After three months, you can start introducing limited alcohol, and limited sugar again.
- Eat the slow releasing carbohydrates with protein as protein assist even more to stabilize the blood sugar.
- Minimize saturated fat (meat, dairy and eggs), avoid all trans fats (any food containing hydrogenated vegetable oil, fast foods, baked foods) and get 25% of your calories from essential fatty acids (flax and pumpkin seeds and oily fish and fish oils)
- Eat three meals and two snacks per day (consisting of a slow releasing carbohydrate and a good source of protein) with plenty of vegetables. Limit your slow releasing carbohydrates to a maximum glycemic load of 40 per day (an indication of what a carbohydrate or sugar will do to your blood sugar)
- Exercise a minimum of 30 minutes three times per week
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by Melanie Kok
I have always looked at the marvel of nature and the intricate design, knowing that a very intelligent Person has created it. The design, detail, and balance in nature are just awesome.
When it comes to our bodies, I looked around me and I was confused. At times, I had my own frustrations wondering why everything in nature seems to have built in mechanisms for maintenance and optimum health, yet our bodies do not.
I started reading and studying with the need to understand my body, as I have always struggled with my weight. It was only then that I discovered that our bodies have all the built in mechanisms to keep us lean and healthy.
Our body is a natural fat burner. It uses food optimally to give us sufficient energy, it uses the energy to maintain our cells and keep us healthy, it stores the excess energy and has intricate mechanisms to retrieve the stored energy and release it to our cells when we need it.
I was saddened to realize that I was my own body’s worst enemy. It was like taking a top of the range Ferrari, designed to give power and acceleration and joy and thrill and then stopping that Ferrari in front of the corner fish and chips shop and filling it up with spent oil. Do you think the Ferrari will still be able to perform? Of course not, it will misfire, it will not have energy, it will be slow and it will no longer look and feel like a Ferrari.
I have hope for you. Hope for anyone, any mother or wife that has accepted your lot of being overweight and carrying an excess of 20 to 30 kg because you have just given up on trying to lose weight with dieting.
If you change the fuel you put into your body, you can turn yourself from a fat maker to a fat burner in as little as 30 days. It takes the body about 30 days to re-adjust your metabolism if you give it the right fuel so that all the intricate mechanisms can operate the way God designed it to. Let me explain…
An incredible fat burning machine
Food is the fuel that your body needs to operate. Your body takes the food you eat (carbohydrates and sugar is the food your body uses for energy) and breaks it down in your digestive system to the smallest building blocks of body fuel namely glucose. The blood transports the glucose (body fuel) to all the different cells by circulating through the body.
The main tasks of the blood are to supply oxygen and remove carbon monoxide from the cells and secondly to supply energy to the cells on the cellular level. The cells use this energy for restoration (maintenance and repair), growth and for normal cellular activities to ensure you feel magnificent, energetic and healthy…
Glucose is a highly potent body fuel (the equivalent of high-octane rocket fuel) and it is harmful to the body if the levels in the blood go above a certain level.
One of the very important tasks controlled by the brain is to supply fuel to all the cells and the second task is to monitor the level of glucose in the blood to ensure it remains constant. If the glucose level in the blood goes above a certain level, the pancreas will release insulin to tell the body to move the glucose from the blood into fat stores. This is the reason we refer to insulin as the fat storing hormone, because the release of it results in the storing of glucose as fat.
If the level of glucose in the blood drops low in a healthy body, the pancreas will release glucagon that will increase your blood glucose level by telling the body to break down fat from the fat stores and burn it for energy. We refer to glucagon as the fat burning hormone as it tells the body to break down fat from fat stores. This is the situation in a healthy body where it receives good quality carbohydrates as fuel.
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by Melanie Kok
Some things you have to do every day. Eating seven apples on Saturday night instead of one a day is just not going to get the job done. Fasting for three days before a weigh in is not the same as eating nutritious and healthy meals five times a day, every day.
Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.
Think about it. A few simple disciplines that you know about and apply have resulted in 1 to 2 pounds fat loss per week. Whereas, a few errors in judgment like eating whenever you feel like it, eating more than you know you should, snacking on unhealthy sugary foods late at night repeated every day, brought you to your current reflection in the mirror.
I am referring to our habits. We are all slaves of habit. We succeed if we manage to be a slave of good habits and we fail if we are a slave of bad habits.
Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do”.
This thing called habit
A habit is something you do without consciously thinking about it. These are the rules you follow automatically like how you eat your breakfast, what you do when you wake up in the mornings, what you do when you get home, how and when you brush your teeth.
If we had to think consciously about every step of each ordinary task, our lives would grind to a halt. Our minds assist us with the mundane tasks by the formation of habits. To stay sane and to allow us to do these things every day, we no longer ‘think’ about doing them. Our ‘control box’ or our subconscious mind controls them. We are like a ship on cruise control.
How can habits help us?
Good habits are the key to our success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure. This is so because we become what we repeatedly do. Our habits will either move us away from our goals or move us closer depending if it is a good or a bad habit.
The secret for success is therefore to make sure your habits are bringing you closer to your goal and not taking you further away from it.
To transform your body, form good habits and become their slave. To remove your excess weight, develop systems to accomplishing your daily disciplines like exercising and eating five nutritious meals. A daily routine built on good habits and disciplines is what separates the most successful amongst us from everyone else.”
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by Melanie Kok
What is a goal?
A goal is a specific thing that you have decided you need to accomplish within a clearly defined time.
What is a dream?
Dreams are things we wish for. Things you enjoy thinking about but you are not sure when and where or if they will happen.
Transforming your dreams into goals
Your goals come from your dreams. Most woman have stopped setting goals because they have stopped dreaming. We cope with our lives and stop designing and living it. We exist.
We focus on the present, we get through the day. We feel the best part of our life is over. All the exciting things like obtaining a degree, getting a first job, a wedding, a first pregnancy, the birth of a first child have already happened.
During the child rearing years, we sacrifice our careers for our children. In the process, we also neglect our self-care and our bodies and we start to live only for the present and only for our children. Neglect starts out as an infection then becomes a disease. We stop dreaming. We stop setting goals for us.
It is never too late to make a U-turn for Life and to live again. To start something new. Study something, start a business from home, transform your body, find yourself again. Just start living and stop existing.
Start with your body and set a goal to obtain health and remove the excess weight. This one area affects all other areas of our lives. Set a goal to change from overweight, unhealthy and inactive, to active, in-shape and healthy.
To transform a dream into a goal, you MUST write it down. You must be able to measure the goal. Write it in the present tense as if you have already achieved it.
Why are goals important?
The difference between people achieving success and those that fail or at any task is goals. To quote the words of Earl Nightingale. “People with goals succeed because they know where they are going. It is that simple. Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances… by things that happen to them … by exterior forces. Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take — it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there. Now let’s take another ship — just like the first — only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach — a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance. It’s the same with a human being”.
Unless you state a goal for anything you wish to achieve, it will remain just that, a wish or a dream. The only known way of achieving any task is to set it as a goal i.e. what you want to accomplish in what time.
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by Melanie Kok
If you want to change anything in your life, you need to start on the inside. Darren Hardy editor of Success magazine says it like this in one of his recent posts “Like it or not, how you show up on the outside says a lot about you on the inside. Our body advertises our personal development. All the habits, behaviors, choices, disciplines (or lack there of) are made physical (literally) in your physique.”
Quite harsh, but the truth. If you prefer the couch above your running shoes, or the chocolate above the apple or the TV above reading and improving yourself it will show. Everything counts. Everything shows.
A healthy body at normal weight is best for you
I am not an advocate for everyone having a body of a model, but I am an advocate for every woman being the best person she can be and having the best body for her. For me that is at least a healthy body at normal weight.
Ok, so you do not have good nutritional habits, you do not have positive self-talk, you love the couch and the TV and hate exercising and the picture in your mind of you resembles the picture staring back at you from your mirror. Soft, unhealthy, tired, carrying an extra 10 or 20 kg over your waist and hips and thinking life is not a lot of fun. Your main aim is to get through the day …. How do you even start to change that? Can you change that?
Find a reason to change
Yes, you can. For starters, you make a decision to change. You find a reason to change. Something that is important to you. Is there cancer or diabetes in your family and do you realize that unless you return to normal weight you increase your risk for cancer and diabetes? Is that enough reason to change? You received your health free. Once you have lost it, no amount of money can buy it back for you.
Do you have a desire to be an example for your growing kids about how to live and be successful? Do you want to earn their respect knowing that you can keep up with them in swimming and running and walking?
Is your obese body starting to affect your physical and emotional well-being? Have you stopped to undress in front of your husband? Have you started to ‘hate’ yourself?
Dig deep. If the reason is not strong enough, you will not move in the new direction for long. You will allow obstacles to derail you and be overwhelmed when you have to get up the first morning at 5 to exercise and the call of habit is louder than the desire to change. It must be a real desire to change for a real reason.
Realize that it is never too late to change. You can never be too overweight, too unhealthy, too busy or too old to change. Any dog can learn a new trick, if he wants to. The best day to start is always today.
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by Melanie Kok
Weigh loss by definition say you want to lose some weight…and then find it again. When you lose your keys, you try everything in your ability (energy, focus and effort) to find it again. Most people lose weight and then by means of bad habits allow the weight to find them again…
Look at the size of the weight loss industry. According to the International Journal Of Obesity, weight loss is currently a $150 billion dollar industry in the United States and Europe combined. So losing weight, finding it again and then trying another way of losing it again, has become big business.
Weight removal in principle say you want to lose the weight and do not intend to find it again. The only way that it is possible, is to change your lifestyle by replacing bad habits with good habits and change the way you are thinking about your body. You need to apply the power of the subconscious mind to change your mental set point.
Removing weight and becoming fit and healthy have two essential components. The first is the mind body connection, what do you think about when you diet or eat. The second is the knowledge to understand how the body works and how you can assist your body to be in shape. The body has been designed to do it all by itself, but it needs the correct fuel. Understanding nutrition is to learn what is good fuel or bad fuel and to learn how to give your body good fuel 80% of the time.
For permanent weight removal you need to follow these steps:
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by Melanie Kok
Does it feel like your life is out of control? Are you frustrated with yourself? Is that which is staring at you in the naked mirror a cause of great distress and anxiety in your life? Do you struggle to find energy, struggle to remain positive, struggle to get through the day while part of you echo “ I can’t carry on like this anymore? “
Perhaps you have forgotten: The only difference between a rut and a grave is the DEPTH.
The real YOU is not overweight and unhealthy
If you are not being the best you can be, having a body that closely represents YOU, then in principle you are dying. I am not talking about striving to get the body of a celebrity or a bodybuilder with carved abs. I am talking about striving to become YOU again. The YOU inside of this unfamiliar, unhealthy, overweight and uncomfortable body are not YOU. The real YOU have a normal weight like you used to, can buy normal size clothes like you used to and run and jump without being out of breath like you used to.
To fail to plan is to plan to fail
We do not plan to get fat, to become inactive, to become unhealthy and to have little energy. Just as no one plans to get lonely, unhappy and poor. It does not happen overnight. It takes years to happen and is a result of having no goals in our lives. Between the rut of our daily living, falling pregnant and raising kids and coping with a job on top of that, we give up on ourselves. We give up on our dreams and we stop setting goals. We just get by….and life goes by.
If you do not intentionally plan to become healthy, fit and in shape, then you without knowing it, unintentionally plan to get just that…unhealthy, unfit and out of shape. To fail to plan is to plan to fail. True for you? If you do not built healthy eating habits and exercise into your life and set goals for those areas of your life you are by absence of the plan, planning for the exact opposite. Failure. Just look around you and you will realize this is true.
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by Melanie Kok
It does not matter what type of industry or business you are in. Look closely and you will notice that successful people in any industry do a few daily things different to unsuccessful people.
We are all slaves of habits. Successful people are slaves of positive habits and unsuccessful people slaves of negative habits. This is so because good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure.
If you want to be a leader become a slave of these seven steps. You will discover the power of positive habits.
- Remain a student for life : Have an attitude of learning. Read books. Be inspired by great leaders. Learn from other successful people. Take time daily to listen to audio books or audio programs that will strengthen your character, motivate you and keep you in a positive mental attitude.
- Use affirmations: Make a list of positive statements about the leader you want to be and the achievements you are committed to reach. By constant repetition of these affirmations, you will reprogram your subconscious mind for the success that awaits you. Use daily affirmations to create a positive mindset. Saying loud every morning: ” I feel happy. I feel healthy. I feel terrific. I am focused and I am excellent in all I do”, will create a winning emotional state for you.
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by Melanie Kok
Online marketing has the benefit that the world is your available market. The internet population has grown to 1.7 billion users making this a huge market. The disadvantage is that the personal contact between people is lost. People are no longer real. Your face becomes a gray mass between the millions of others.
Zig Ziglar said: “ If people like you they will listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.”.
If you want to grow your network marketing business, it boils down to trust. People will join your business if they trust you. People will start to trust you if they know you. They can only know you if they interact with you.
How do you create trust in an online world build with walls of emails, auto-responders and broadcasts? You engage. You conversate. You use social media solutions to paint your face!
You can use social media as a lead generation tool where the sole purpose is to drive leads. I have written several articles on how you can use Facebook and LinkedIn to generate new business leads. However, social media works best as a method for retention and engagement with an existing lead list when you have started to gain increasing trust.
Here is a list of methods to use social media to build trust:
- Provide amazing content – Learn to develop amazing and original content. Be educational, inspirational and uniquely YOU. Give your current lead list something that they will want to talk about. Make your content pertinent to the current problems your target audience may face in online marketing.
- Social media listening – Eavesdrop on twitter and other forums by evaluating what people in your niche market are tweeting and writing about. Create conversation that is relevant to the product or business you provide. Publish content that will address the concerns, issues and questions of people in your target market.
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by Melanie Kok
I would like to say to you: Yes! It does. I realize this is a bold statement. And you may even object by saying, but I have been as positive as I can possibly be, yet, I still have problems in my life. I am still struggling to get my business of the ground. I still struggle with my marketing and I have not made the major breakthrough that I was waiting and hoping for and positively expecting!
Face reality
Positive thinking does not change the reality you face. If you are struggling to generate leads for your network marketing business, you are struggling and that is a fact. If you deny yourself the opportunity to evaluate your results, you are being like an ostrich. You are burying your head in the sand. Failure still exists. To ignore it will not make it go away.
Do not dwell on failure
A positive thinker does not refuse to recognize the things that go wrong. He refuses to dwell on it. He refuses to let the failure drag him down into a pot of negative emotions that drains creativity, energy and zest for life from him. He does not spend his energy and emotions thinking about the negative. He spends his energy on positive feelings and positive self talk. He can do this despite setbacks.
A positive thinker sees failure for what it is. A method that did not work exactly as planned. He has the ability to look at the results, take what works from it and to be creative to adjust a failed method or look for another method that will succeed. This anonymous quote defines a positive thinker “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” .
Failure is a normal and natural part of achievement. When failures comes a person that has learned the skill of positive thinking will learn from it and then move quickly along.
Gain from failure
A positive thinker always gains from failure, because he does not take it personal and he insists on learning from it. Zig Ziglar so rightly said “Failure is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.”
It is possible to evaluate your results and say, this did not work as well as I thought it would. It is possible to then critically look at the results and find the best factors that did work and use that as a foundation to improve on. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success. A positive mind knows that.
Expect the best
Positive thinking is a form of thought. It is a habit to look for the best results from the worst conditions. It is always possible to look for something to build on. It is possible to expect the best for yourself, even when things look bad. The remarkable fact is, that if you seek good, you will surely find it. A positive thinker knows that.
Know your roots
The world and the marketplace will not always offer you encouragement. Especially after an event of failure. A positive thinker has learned to find his own encouragement.
You may have good reason to feel sorry for yourself.
A positive thinker knows that it is a choice. He knows that he must avoid feeling sorry for himself. He has learned to choose to feel encouraged. This will make him ready for the next task.
A positive mind comes from failure feeling upbeat and encouraged and can therefore be creative. It can see opportunity and is ready to jump in with all the newly learned skills.
Positive thinking tips
Remind yourself often that you are worthy and relevant, effective and capable of the very best.
Remind yourself that when your efforts meet with failure, you know you are on to something. On the other side of failure lies accomplishment.
Seek not to avoid failure. Seek instead to do your best and to allow failure when it comes. Use the failure to keep you moving on the path to greater success.
Positive thinking will always work to get you there. There where you will meet with expected success.
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