Category: Health Coaching

Motherhood Woes and Why Emily Blunt sucks…

Post author By Amanda Wright
Post date May 12, 2015

Happy belated Mother’s Day to all Mothers, Step Mothers and Adopted Mothers and Grandmothers out there, too. I am blessed to witness some really incredible mom’s in my world. As I reached out to my Mom, Grandmother, Mother-in-Law, sisters, mother to my step daughter Eden, as well as all the friends I have that are also mothers, I wanted to be sure I fully expressed how much I love them, how in awe of them I am, and how great I think they are doing as a mom because I know, as a mom, you never think you are really doing “good enough.”

Indeed, from some of these moms, I did get an almost expected reply back to my praise and adoration, saying, “I fail a lot, but thank you!”

It’s such an honest response to how I know most mom’s feel.

I certainly feel like I “fail” a lot as a Step Mom and have intense feelings of guilt trying plague my mind and thoughts. It can feel defeating.

But, what does that word even mean? FAIL.

To me, this word doesn’t signify an indication of merely the result of an effort made, but is more of an indication of what the goal was to begin with!

If you have ever felt you have FAILED at something, it is likely because your GOAL in this particular area was to be PERFECT.

There are just certain areas of our life where we strive for PERFECTION.

Perfectionism has fooled our minds into thinking that:

There is such thing as perfection;

That we actually have ability to be perfect;

Anything short of perfection is failure.

But, what we may not realize is having a mindset geared toward PERFECTION is a design from God Himself.

“I have planted a longing for perfection in every human heart. This is a good desire, which I alone can fulfill.” —Sarah Young, Nearer to Jesus

But what goes wrong, is we try to fill our hearts with things that are imperfect (hint: anything that is not God is imperfect, so yes, even your children are an example of this). Those areas then become our IDOLS and we suffer more because of it. We burden ourselves with expectations that can never be met and our mindsets suffer from our inner Self Critic pointing out every “failure” along the way.

But there is a way to beat this! There is a way to feel successful, full and complete!

In this 2-Part Blog Series We’re Going to TACKLE this issue of our Mind:

Part 1: Expose our perfectionist thinking by identifying the Self Critic in your Mind

Part 2: Offer the Alternative Goal that will allow for more God, more Grace, and more “Success” (HINT: the key word is PROGRESS).

OUR SELF CRITIC SABOTEUR!

WHAT IS OUR SELF CRITIC?

Our inner Self Critic is that voice in our head that is always nagging on us and criticizing us. It is the voice in our head that tells us we are not “good enough.”

For simplicity sake, let’s be clear there are 3 facts about our Inner Self Critic:

Our Self Critic is NOT the voice of God telling you you’re not good enough.
Our Self Critic is NOT the “real us” even though it’s a voice that sounds like us.
Our Self Critic IS a scheme of the Devil himself.

The devil can be so good and so smart that he might have you convinced that this voice in your head is “just the way you are” or it is God who is ashamed of you, but that is simply not the truth.

Being aware of these facts is a source of empowerment.

Discerning this Self Critic voice from God’s voice and your TRUE self is the awareness that you need in order to move beyond the limitations it tries to set upon you.

CHARACTERIZING OUR SELF CRITIC?

I was first introduced to the term “Self Critic” from the book, Playing Big, by Tara Mohr.

She says, “All women grapple with this voice of self-doubt in one way or another. For some women, it is most prominent around their professional lives. For others, it comes up around their sense of competence as mothers or partners. For others, it speaks mostly about appearance, body image or aging.”

Preach, Tara, preach!

There she invited me to think of my Self Critic in some character format so I might see her as someone other than me. I loved the idea and encourage you to do the same!

I named my self critic “Emily” after the character played by Emily Blunt in the movie The Devil Wears Prada. She’s the “popular girl” type who thinks that no one is ever good enough, pretty enough, smart enough or skinny enough. Yeah, she sucks. (Not the real Emily Blunt, but the character she plays in my head.)

For some of you, your self critic is going to be an older woman/man of authority that barks down orders. For others, your inner self critic might actually take on the character of your mom or dad or another family member that you have historically never felt “good enough” for.

Whatever the voice is, it’s important to recognize it so you can distinguish it. You can then learn to live with it (because it may never go away) but also ignore it because you recognize this voice for what it is.

Recognize the common phrases your self critic might use. Tara Mohr says our self critics will often speak in extreme phrases so you’re either “awesome” or “pathetic”. It’s usually harsh, mean and rude. Fear based and mischievous. Tells you you’re “not ready yet” to embark on a dream. Irrational, persistent, and seemingly like a “broken record” that just plays and plays.

I know personally, I recognize my self critic when I walk by a mirror and I hear “Ugh.” It may take a while to fully acknowledge, but it’s really important to start to recognize the character and cues that our Self Critics will use.

THE AREAS OF FOCUS FOR OUR SELF CRITIC:

Our self critic (i.e. the devil) is incredibly smart and knows to prey on those very areas of our mind and hearts that are the most susceptible to sabotage. Our very weakest weaknesses.

In fact, once you think about it, your Self Critic seems to expand in areas on your life that you fall most prey to idolatry. Those areas that you have a tendency to put ahead of God.

Allow me to humbly admit the 3 top ares of my own demise and idolatry:

First in my RELATIONSHIPS, “Emily” likes to keep me worrying about what everyone is always thinking of me and keeps putting pressure on me to be a “perfect” wife, “perfect” friend, “perfect” step mom, “perfect” health coach and all that.

Then in my WORK, “Emily” has been especially hard driving on me lately to get more done and do everything all at once to make sure that my new business will succeed. She’s been basically yelling into my head with a megaphone on this one.

Then in my HEALTH, “Emily” has been historically a real b-word. She has yelled at me in my head to workout longer, eat more strict, and especially focused on my body’s flaws and how I just must not be “working hard enough” to see quicker changes!

I fully admit that in all the three areas, I wake up every day putting unrealistic pressures on myself to strive for a level of perfection that doesn’t exist.

Every. Day.

But, my power is is recognizing this voice and ignoring it.

THE ANTIDOTE TO OUR SELF CRITIC:

The other day I was listening to a Rick Warren podcast called “Daily Hope” (one I highly recommend for anyone looking for “quickie” Spiritual guidance!) where he mentioned that the antidote to FEAR is to FOCUS ON THE PRESENCE OF GOD.

That same focus applies to this Self Critic since the truth about these “perfectionist” thoughts is FEAR as well.

Transitioning our focus to the one thing that IS PERFECT is the perfect way to overcome this Self Critic voice from the devil.

Recognizing our weaknesses and imperfections and offering them up to God is the only way we can be made perfect in Him.

“But he said to me, ‘My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

We DO have the opportunity for perfection, but it is only found where God dwells in us. So if we seek God and connect with God, we find that perfection we long for.

The Devil will continue to try to tear that away and you will struggle every day, in many different ways, to keep that connection to Christ, but God knows that.

God knows that you have a heart that desires perfection, He created that so you would seek HIM more. This means not once, not twice, not 100 times, but every day, several times a day, you must seek God and find the fulfillment you need.

The more you practice this, the more God will relieve your worrisome mind and rest your fears that you are not “good enough” at motherhood, health, or whatever areas your tend to fret.

This awareness, has been incredibly powerful for me. I have been able to use this GodPower source and He has given me a new word and a new GOAL to strive for.

PROGRESS!

Part II of this series will cover how you too can transition your areas of “Perfectionist” thinking in your pursuits for health and use instead a goal of PROGRESS to keep you motivated and find success and satisfaction!

Tags Faith, God, Health, imperfections, perfection, progress, relationships, self critic, work

Food & Nutrition Health Coaching

4 Ways to Handle Unsupportive Friends When You’re Trying to Be Healthy!

Post author By Amanda Wright
Post date May 6, 2015

Naysayers

The other day, I was on my weekly call with one of my clients and she had just experienced a lunch outing that I was very familiar with.

Now, my client has made a lot of progress over the course of the last 6-12 months. Having turned 40, something has been sparked inside her and she has been in hot pursuit of her health and her life! She has lost over 27 lbs and has sparked a passion for strength training and fitness that she has never felt before! In fact, 2 months ago, she hired me to help her achieve a big dream of possibly doing a Bikini Competition or a Fitness Photoshoot.

In other words, she has just pushed the “GO” button on pursuing a dream that is out of her comfort zone! It’s big, bold and audacious, and she is doing it a SMART way by hiring someone like me to make sure she is staying balanced, level-headed and doesn’t lose herself in a quest for a fit body. We have seen incredible progress so far! She’s a shining example!

However, with such audacious goals she and I both know that she has to be very consistent and mindful of her nutrition. In any Fat Loss effort, your NUTRITION is ~75% of the solution! She already trains about 4x/week and works out HARD, but if her nutrition is not on point, there is little hope that her metabolism will spark up enough to continue to lose enough body fat to reach her goals.

Well, this week she experienced an outing with some of her coworkers that I have experienced dozens of times before—what I’ll call the “Girls Who Lunch Conundrum.”

They all went to the standard restaurant chain, ordered a fried appetizer, sandwiches and fries, and I’m guessing diet sodas too. My client declined on eating the appetizer and ordered a chicken salad with dressing on the side. I am so proud!

Well, as you can imagine that she got quite of bit of slack for being the “only healthy one” at the table. They made jokes and little snippy comments and really bummed her out. I’ll call this reaction the “naysayer” reaction.

She came to me on our call feeling a little defeated. She said, “I’m just trying to be healthy for myself and they try to make me feel guilty about it. I’m not judging them for their food choices at all, I’m just not choosing not to eat them. I don’t see why they are judging me for my food choices.”

You can imagine how she feels right?! I mean, haven’t we all been there? I know that I have felt this exact same way with not only acquaintance type of friends (the coworker variety) but also with some of my closest friends, and family members. This is exactly what I discussed on my 5-Part Series called WINE NOT?! too. The social implications of being healthy can be the hardest!

Being healthy can sometimes make you feel like you are on an island all alone. Not only are you battling the urge blow off your new healthy food and exercise habits, but you are now also battling some of your closest friends and family who are not exactly supporting you!

What I learned over the years of being the “healthy one” at the restaurant has allowed a shift in perspective and spiritual awareness that has made a monumental difference in how I handle the snippy little comments from people or simply any friend or family member that just doesn’t “get it” with regards to my health choices.

I shared these lessons with my client on our call and I am sharing them with you today too!

4 Ways to Handle Your Unsupportive Friends:

1. You can Empathize with Their Defensiveness:

Before you started to make all these tough health choices for yourself, you knew just what it was like to be in their shoes. You can remember all those times that you used food as a coping mechanism for your own stress and can empathize with the fact that they are feeling insecure and defeated by their own choices.

In the situation for my client, all of her coworkers were professional women that had small children at home. So they worked all day and had families to care for at night and all had some weight to lose. I reminded her how they must be feeling on the inside. Their stress is likely so high that they saw the fried appetizer and the sandwich and french fries as their best solution to cope with that stress. They see their food choices as their “reward” for their hard work. All too common and we can all relate.

Now mind you, they are wrong. Those food choices are actually making their stress worse in many ways because they are getting way too much fat (especially trans fats) and not nearly enough nutrients which would help their bodies physically deal with the cortisol and adrenaline (e.g. the stress hormones) much better.

But I simply reminded my client that they just haven’t learned that lesson for themselves yet. She is lucky that she has!

The same goes for all of us. If we can detach from our reactions for a beat and simply take the perspective of their journey and understand that their reaction is not about you at all, but rather is a symptom of their own struggle, then you are able to detach and move on.

“How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.”- Wayne Dyer

Empathy takes away their power and ability to change you. Empathy gives you a stronger mindset that will stop the event from festering in your mind and consume any part of your energy. Empathy allows you to move on unfazed.

2. You Can Realize that God Didn’t Design You to be Defensive Either:

This one is a big one and a more challenging one to grasp but really important. It is all too easy to use someone’s defensive behavior as an excuse to react defensively ourselves.

We all do it:

Someone criticizes you and in return you criticize them.

Someone questions your actions or beliefs and you immediately want to question their actions and beliefs right back.

We must all realize that this is our own sin that will not serve us or our Greater Purpose.

I was reminded in a book I read recently called “Good News for Those Trying Harder,” by Pastor Alan Kraft that some of the most overlooked sins in our lives are the following:

Gossiping
Complaining
Criticizing
Boasting
Shifting Blame
Defensiveness
Deceiving Others

The author challenged me to try to go 1-week without doing any of the above.

…I lasted about 20-minutes. Ha!

So often, we think just because we are doing something good for ourselves that we now have the right to judge others for not catching on with us yet.

This is called being “Self Righteous.”

To me, this is the number one sin that many Christian people have today. That we can get caught up thinking just because we are “Christian” that we are some how “better than” or “above” everyone else. We don’t realize that this very thinking is a sin itself!

Now, I could clearly get into a theological tangent here, but I won’t.

Suffice it to say, all of us must hold ourselves accountable for our reactions and stop worrying about theirs.

If we want them to stop being defensive with us, we first just learn to not react defensively either.

If we want them to support us, we better be sure that we are already supporting them!

God did not design us to react this way and we must recognize our own sin and focus on bettering ourselves first!

“Let ye among you without sin be the first do condemn.”

3. You Can Give More Love Because You Have Love:

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in life is very few relationships are actually 50/50.

If you find yourself being the one that always seems to give more effort in your relationships, this can often harbor feelings of resentment within you.

But for those that find the courage and ability to SURREND’her your life up to God, means that you can experience a fulfillment of love on unprecedented levels.

By opening up your soul to the love of God to fill you up causes a massive shift in all of your relationships.

You realize, you depend less on other people’s love, affirmation and validation because you have more than enough of all of that from God.

This is also the case for our friends and family that don’t understand or criticize our health and behavior.

We can love them back, even in their criticism, because we have enough love to give. We don’t have to depend on their praise or affirmation. We have all we need from God.

4. You can be a Student and a Teacher:

I have come to understand that my friends, family members and acquaintances in my life come to me with a purpose—-I can both learn and teach!

Be A Student: By opening yourself up to the empathy and understanding from lesson #1 you learn so much! This creates a better version of you! Always strive to gain wisdom and understanding in this world and realize these circumstances and people are the tools that will give you that.

Be a Teacher: Now this is not to say that you need to tell all your friends exactly what they need to be doing. Umm….no! That will probably get the opposite reaction than the one you hope for!

Instead, you teach them by doing.

So whether my client or her coworkers realized it right then too, she was serving as a valuable teacher for them. She showed them that it is possible to stare something like fried asparagus in the face and not eat it. It is possible to order healthy foods at typically unhealthy places. It is possible to create big, audacious goals and to actually stick to them and conquer them!

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

My personal and mission for A.Wright Fit is found from Matthew 5:16. I want to “Let my Light Shine Before Others so that They May See (My) Good Deeds and Glorify my Father in Heaven.”

I encourage us all to continue to be the best versions of ourselves so that we can shine a light on others to be the best version of themselves!

Tags be the change, Bikini Competition, body, Diet, friends, Health, Mind, naysayers, restaurant nutrition, Soul

Food & Nutrition Goal Development Health Coaching Spiritual Health Uncategorized

7-Steps to Conquer Emotional Eating (Part 2)

Post author By Amanda Wright
Post date April 30, 2015

“I’m not hungry but I really need something sweet right now. Well now that I’ve had one bite how about another bite…. and then….ok just one more.”

This is essentially my inner monologue several times per week. I am thinking these thoughts usually in the evening, after I’ve had a healthy dinner, my body feels satisfied, and I could easily go to bed content.

But, I don’t.

Why? Because usually at that time, I also have this little nagging feeling in my head, mouth and stomach. As though there is this little creature that is screaming “I need something sweet! I need a treat!” Sure enough, I wind up in our pantry munching just for the sake of munching. I’ve learned to have healthy sweet treats on hand, thankfully, but when we are away from home, forget about it! I get myself into some precarious, overeating situations quickly!

I know I’m not alone with this little creature in my head. For me it’s all about the sweets. For you, it might be salty/crunchy variety. But we can all easily suffer from CRAVINGS for food that is not about hunger at all.

Yesterday, I wrote about reading a very relatable book called, ‘Made to Crave’ by Lysa TerKeurst, where she wrote about her journey of trying to refocus her Cravings to God instead of the junk food she felt controlled by.

Her book and scriptures prompted me to take a deeper dive into what the bible actually has to say about food and cravings too! Surprisingly there was a lot! It made me feel more “normal” knowing that if God uses food as an example in the Bible, then I’m not the only one out there exploiting and idolizing the role of food in my life. It also gave me Hope because it gave me some scriptural places that I should be focusing my attention and cravings:

The Word of God
His will for my life (i.e. My Greater Purpose).

This begs the question, however, how do we apply this to our every day life? How do we actually take such a challenge and convert it into applicable, every day ACTION toward lasting success?

For me, the answer is easy because I’m going to use the same strategy I implement for ALL changes I want to make in my health and in my life.

Make a goal out of it.

Not just any goal, mind you. No, as a woman of Faith, I know that this kind of challenge (which clearly has some Spiritual depth to it) means I need to make this a SURREND’hered goal!

I will use my 7-Steps to SURREND’hered Goal Development that I will use to effectively plan and implement this new way of health to defeat my affinity toward emotional and overeating.

I recently offered an 8-day workshop explaining all 7-Steps to SURREND’hered Goals to an amazing group of individuals that included daily emails, examples, resources and videos of me explaining each step. Sorry if you missed it!

Lucky for you, however, because I have actually turned all 7-Steps into an Ebook that I am now offering for FREE to all email subscribers. The book includes an in-depth look at all 7-steps to succeed in any goal, a list of books and references, PLUS a bonus of my fillable forms and charts that will help you effectively plan your own success! You’ll see more of those is this very article.

Click this link to receive your FREE copy of this Ebook here!

My 7-Steps to SURREND’hered Goal Development are:

So, while you get the full in-depth explanation of all of these 7-Steps in my Ebook, I wanted to offer a living example of these 7-Steps to SURREND’hered Goals as they apply to this goal I have of overcoming my emotional and overeating!

Step 1: SURREND’her It:

As I explain in my ebook, this step is all about offering my goal as a living sacrifice to God. This is recognizing that I will need to depend wholly on God’s strength to actually be able to conquer this dream. To effectively practice this art of SURREND’hering I know I will need to do both PLANNING + PRAYER. From one of my favorite books, The Circle Maker, by Mark Batterson, I have to do as he advises:

“Plan like it depends on me, but Pray like it depends on God.”

Also, even the Bible reinforces that to achieve any dream there is much activity required.

“A dream comes through much activity, and a fool’s voice in known by his many words.” Ecclesiastics 5:3

So, I’m not going to be “all talk,” or even “all prayer”, I am going to make a plan and put it into action!

Step 2: DREAM It!

As I also explain, while I say my goal is to “not overeat or be an emotional eater” I know that this is not actually how I am to phrase my goal. Nope, my goal needs to be AUDACIOUS, S.M.A.R.T., stated in the POSITIVE and PROACTIVE tense, and is BALANCED to include not just BODY goals but also MINDSET and SPIRITUAL goals too! (You’ll have to read up to know what all of these rules mean!)

So my dream is actually:

To go 6-months straight of emotionally disconnecting from my food, intentionally “eating to live,” only eating until I’m 80% full, planning and eating on a timed schedule, and use the act of eating to draw me closer with God, my Greater Purpose and His Word. I will measure my success by body measurements as well as journaling/emotional comparisons.”

You can see that my above dream is measured and includes BODY, MIND and SPIRITUAL aspects to conquering this dream.

Step 3: DIVIDE It!

As you’ll see, again, in the ebook the purpose of DIVIDING your ultimate goal is to create short-term “Phases” of goals that you focus on. This will help not only help avoid the feeling of “overwhelm” by such an audacious goal, but it will also provide opportunity for the very important REST periods and CELEBRATIONS after I accomplish each Phase Goal.

For this ultimate goal, I will divide all 6-Months up into 6 Phases:

Phase 1 (Month 1): For 70% of the first 30 days of “eating to live,” only eating until I’m 80% full and eating on the planned schedule, and journaling and praying for each meal.

(*note* this will be broken down into “Mini-Goals” for this first Phase as is covered in the ebook)