Bitsize Changes for Rightsize Living

I thought I was getting away with it.

My bloodwork wasn’t sounding the alarm on my vitamin and mineral levels, so I had convinced myself that I could get away with skipping my calcium supplement.

That false belief came crashing down to Earth at my recent dental cleaning.

I’ll admit that with the pandemic and a cross-country move, I was overdue. But, SHIZNIT! I was not expecting 14 cavities. FOURTEEN! That’s more cavities in one visit than I’ve had in my entire life.

But wait…it gets worse.

A closer look at the x-rays showed that my front tooth needed to be extracted.

I thought, “Ok, I can live with this. I’ll just get an implant and I’ll be good as new.”

Think again! Long story short, for the next year or so until my mouth is ready for an implant, I will be living with something called a “flipper”—that’s a temporary tooth attached to a retainer. Ewww!

The flipper makes it difficult to speak clearly...

One of my favorite quotes is: “Starve your distractions. Feed your focus.”*

Too often we starve and feed the wrong things.

Sometimes we starve our bodies of nourishment. Sometimes we starve ourselves of self-love or body acceptance. Too often we feed into the diet mentality or behaviors that do more harm than good.

Here’s the Thing: It’s No Secret That You Get More of What You Focus On.

I want to make clear that I’m NOT referring to the law of attraction. I believe that all the focus in the world on something is not going to make something magically happen without taking the right actions.

That said, I do very strongly believe that you get more of what you focus on. For instance, if you’re experiencing post-surgery regain and you’re hyper-focused on that regain, what do you think happens? If you’re in a stall and you’re hyper-focused on the stall, what do you think happens?

Focusing on Regain Leads to More Regain.

I’ve...

After your history with dieting, you’re like a walking encyclopedia on weight loss. Before turning to surgery, you probably read dozens of articles and book on nutrition, tried just about every big-name diet, worked out beyond exhaustion, and lost the same 50 pounds ten times over.  

Yet sometimes all that knowledge and experience can work against you. Why? Because of ego.

Ego. Blech! I am not a fan of that word, ego. Does the word ego bother you, too?

Ego is complex. Sometimes, it can give you confidence and fuel your self-worth…and that’s great. But at other times it’s the know-it-all teenager inside of you. It’s the side of you that sometimes gets a bit caught up in body image. It can be the control freak in you.

3 Ways Ego Can Get in the Way of Rightsize Living

#1: Ego Can Create Resistance

Before surgery, you tried countless ways to lose weight and elevate your wellness. So many, that you may have built up a resistance to new...

How often do you follow through on the commitments you make to yourself?

So many of us in the bariatric community are really awesome at keeping the commitments we make to others. In fact, I’m guessing you probably bend over backwards to keep your commitments to others, right?

But, how are you when it comes to following through on the commitments you make to yourself? Like committing to drink more water, committing to work out a certain number of times, committing to get all your vitamins in, or committing to get a full 8 hours of sleep. Whatever they are, do you ever struggle with following through on the commitments you make to yourself?

Why do you think that is? Why do you think it’s easier to keep commitments to other people than to keep commitments to yourself?

One thing I learned is this: Keeping your commitments to yourself is crucial in this journey to rightsize living.

In fact, it’s so vital to your success that you create a pattern where you do everything...

“I’ll do that after I lose 20 pounds.”

How many times have you said that?

Personally, I’ve lost count. That was my modus operandi both before bariatric surgery and after surgery when I was dealing with regain.

I put off adventures I wanted to take, put off wearing bold new fashions, put off any professional opportunities that would shine the spotlight on me and so much more. All because I had this weird perception that I wasn’t good enough “as is” or that I’d enjoy them more if I was thinner.

What a bunch of poppycock!

If you put off the important things, you might NEVER get the opportunity to experience them.

Last year, I lost one of my college besties. Her name was Mindy and she passed away at only 52. I hadn’t seen her in years because I kept putting off traveling to Arizona to spend time together. Now, I’ll never get that chance. Her bright light and exuberant laugh are emblazoned in my memories, but I’ll...

There are small actions you take every day … so small that they often slip under the radar … that negatively or positively impact your success on the journey to rightsize living.

You already know that I’m a Bitesize Changes fanatic. After all, it’s the little changes I implemented and mastered, one at a time, that helped me shed my post bariatric surgery weight regain and keep it off.

Do the Math

I got even more excited about these small changes when I started doing the math. For example, one itty bitty change helps me burn an extra 2,080 calories a year. I park in a multi-level parking garage when I go to the gym. I used to ride the elevator up and down the parking garage, but I felt kind of silly. I was at this place to work out and improve my fitness, yet I was riding the elevator. So, I started parking on the fourth floor and only taking the stairs. Four flights of stairs might not sound like much. However, it’s estimated that you burn two...

If you assume that on January 1^st you’ll automatically have weight to lose on account of holiday eating, think again. There is a way that you can enjoy the holidays, including great food, without going overboard.

Here are 5 suggestions that can help you stay in check during holiday time:

1. Try the “3 Meal Magic” plan.
   Three meals with nothing in between but calorie-free liquids. You’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to abstain from unhealthy foods when you work within the three meal structure; only eat meals, not nibbley things like nuts, chips, or candies. You will be eliminating most of the trouble foods when you practice 3 Meal Magic!
2. “Just one” Theory.
   Remember, there is no such thing as “just one”. If you think you can handle eating just one, or even just one handful of nibbley things, take a hard look as how successful you’ve been at eating “just one”. “None” is better than “some”,...

Lessons from Miss Piggy

The President called former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, Miss Piggy when she gained weight. One of his staffers called a journalist, April Ryan, Miss Piggy. Tabloids have compared songbirds like Adele, Jessica Simpson and Christina Aguilera to Hollywood’s most famous swine. And, it happened to me to.

I was part of a group called Fat Fighters in 5^th grade. Led by a nutritionist, the group consisted of a bunch of kids who were overweight, like me. This all took place in 1979 when the popular “ Milk, a natural wonder” commercials were all the rage. It was like the “got milk?” campaign of that era.

Anyway, some genius decided to shoot a commercial featuring me and my little Fat Fighters gang making healthy shakes with non-fat milk, ice and fruit. Healthy or not, heavy kids drinking milkshakes is not the story of happy endings, right? Oh, but it gets better. They decided to air the commercial right smack dab in the middle of The...

Do you have a love–hate relationship with your scale? You know … you love the thing when it tells you what you want to hear, but when it tells you you’re up five pounds nothing would make you happier than to drop it from the top of a skyscraper and watch it shatter into a million pieces … ker pow!

A few weeks after weigh loss surgery, I invested big bucks into a really good scale that measured weight and body fat. I loved that thing … because the numbers kept going down. But a year out from surgery, that scale started telling me things I didn’t like. Like that my weight was starting to creep up a bit.

So, I panicked and did what a lot of people do when the scale exposes a truth you don’t wanna hear … I broke off our relationship.  I put that sucker in a box, covered it with my old fat pants and buried it at the back of my closet! 

But, you can’t live in denial forever. When it’s time for your annual exam, the...