Body Language: Learn How to Listen to What Your Body Is Saying

Today’s article was contributed by my dear friend and body image coach, Laura Fenamore.

Our bodies hold all of the information we need to function at our best, but too often we ignore their messages and plow ahead with what our minds tell us. Perhaps it’s because we’re taught from an early age to focus on external demands, we frequently ignore what our bodies are saying.

More often than not we treat the physical symptoms rather than looking for the internal cause of pain, depression, and weight gain. We take another extra-strength aspirin rather than investigating what’s causing our head to ache. We use more caffeine or sugar to give us a lift when we feel tired, rather than listening to our body’s message about needing rest. A look at our pets may be all we need to see about the value of naps.

Our bodies communicate a thousand little messages to us every day. For instance, is your mouth pinched and tight? Are your shoulders up around your ears? Do you feel a knot in your stomach as you promise to do something? Your body is telling you that you are tense, stressed, and over-extended.

As a society, we notoriously put deadlines ahead of the protests of aching bones or inadequately nourished bellies. Your body is the a highly sophisticated, intelligent machine, but too often, we fail to understand them because we don’t value them as highly as we should.

So what do you do to give your body an equal say in how you use it?

Start with the breath. Breathing consciously is a major part of body awareness. Allow your thoughts to come and go in the background while breathing in and out. As you inhale and exhale, think the words “In. Out. In. Out.”  Lovingly make a note to yourself how and where you are failing to breathe; many of us breathe only in our chests when we should be allowing the breath to expand down into our abdomens. Perhaps you are denying life by taking in shallow breaths, and your body is asking you to stop and breathe more deeply. There’s no reason to make yourself wrong if this feels odd or uncomfortable. Just practice this daily to begin for 5 minutes and soon it will be easy for you.

Allow yourself quiet time. Sit for ten minutes each day, or even five if that is more manageable. This will give you a chance to listen to your body. Begin by sitting while breathing and become the conscious observer of your thoughts. This would be a great practice especially in the middle of a busy day. This time can also be taking a walk or a nap or soaking in a hot tub rather than taking a quick shower.

Get a massage. This is not an extravagant indulgence; it wakes up the whole nervous system and helps you tune in. Massage is proven to alleviate stress and help circulation and muscle recovery.

Use your journal to dialogue with your body. Ask your body how it’s feeling, what it wants, what’s going on. Give that sore wrist or stiff lower back a voice and let it tell you what its message is.

Eat when hungry, sleep when tired. Take a week and really pay attention to your body’s most basic needs. Do your real rhythms for eating and sleeping conform to the habits you’ve established? If they don’t, ask for help changing them.

Do a body inventory to relax. Start with your toes and work upwards. Scan your body from the inside. Tense each part slightly, then relaxing it to release residual tension. Start from your feet upwards. Tense your feet first, then your calves, and so forth, until you reach your face. Relax your entire body.

If your body suggests rolling down a grassy hillside, taking flight on a playground swing, or skipping down a winding path, why resist? Listen to your body. It knows what it needs and is a true guide. If you want to be truly happy and healthy, begin to start listening to your body. Body awareness is part of a healthy lifestyle, just as much as eating nutritious foods and exercising regularly. Its impulses hold the key to your well-being.

Weight Release & Body Image Coach Laura Fenamore is on a mission to guide women around the world to love what they see in the mirror, one pinky at a time, so they can unlock the secrets to a healthy weight and start loving their lives as soon as possible.

Her popular Body Image Mastery program is celebrated by hundreds of women who have lost weight, reclaimed self-esteem, and started bold, happy lives with Laura and her proven programs as their guide.

Having overcome her own battle with addiction, obesity, and eating disorders, Laura released over 100 pounds 24 years ago to begin a journey to guide other women to live more joyous, balanced lives. The author of the forthcoming book Weightless: 7 Tools to Love Your Body (and Lose Weight For Good) and a frequent contributor to local and national media – including First for Women, Ladies Home Journal, the Dr. Pat Show and blog contributor on Betty Confidential, Daily Love and Positively Positive.  Laura believes that self-love and self-care is where the transformation begins. Learn more about her programs, invite her to speak or contribute to your program or conference at OnePinky.com.

Join Laura Fenamore for a class titled, “Love Your Way to Your Perfect Weight” starting June 7^th, 2012. Your body will change and your whole life with change. http://www.entheos.com/academy/courses/Love-Your-Way-to-Your-Perfect-Weight-Part-1

Joe Vitale: Let Your Thoughts and Love Rain on Austin

- by Joe Vitale
- reprinted from http://www.attractmiracles.com/

Years ago I wrote an e-mail asking people to help me stop Rita, the hurricane that geared up right after Katrina.  I advised people to stop and send love and prayers to the hurricane; to dilute their own fear, find faith, and be a source of peace.  Rita did in fact drop from a category 5 hurricane to a category 2. When it finally blew through my area, it didn’t even rain.

Well, I’m asking for your help with the fires burning around the Austin area. I know it may seem goofy to some, but there are over 25 scientific studies that prove when a group of people meditate together, they can change their surroundings — just by getting settled inside.

I’m asking you and everyone else reading this to send love, light, prayer, positive thoughts and maybe even rain.  I am asking for the most benevolent outcome in this situation.  I’m asking you to sit, get quiet, and in whatever way you can imagine it, see the fires going out, and see people safe, sound, happy and healthy.  I’m asking you to help me clean on this outer reality representing an inner imbalance.

Together, we can do this.

Obviously, real people need to do real things to help control and extinguish these fires, but we can help them by being a source of calm.

I’m not asking for money or muscle; just your concentrated focus so we can attract a preferred outcome.

Will you help me?

Just take a deep breath… find that place of peace inside yourself… that place where you know all is well… the center of the essence of you… the Witness behind it all…the power source that is all love…

Get to that area of inner calm…

…and then just feel the fires going out… and people safe… and all is well….

That’s all I’m asking you to do.

Love,

Joe Vitale

PS – Excerpts for the original e-mail about hurricane Rita

I’m not saying ignore the storm warnings. I’m saying don’t get caught up in the fear that the warnings often trigger.

Look. If you think the storm will get you, then it’s already gotten you. You’re living in fear. Your life is dark, gloomy and in a cage. The media is flawless at whipping us into fear. So I suggest ignoring the media. It’s not information, it’s propaganda. It gets large groups of people to think negative, which of course then becomes reality.

Why can’t we do the opposite?

Why can’t we get large groups of people to think positive? At this very moment, as I type this and you read this, all is well. Isn’t it? Aren’t you ok? Aren’t you feeling fine right now? Yes, be sure to have batteries and water and supplies.

But also check the storehouse in your mind. Are you living in fear, or living in trust? Are you focused on the negative, or are you doing something to create a positive?

We are all, always, at choice. Happiness is a choice.

http://www.attractmiracles.com/

Are You Living to Your Full Potential?

- by Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo

Do you have dreams, visions, or unfulfilled ambitions? Do you sometimes think about the things you’d like to do then stop without even trying because you’re afraid you won’t have the energy or strength to complete?

What’s holding you back?

Are you:

• Tired?
• Burned out?
• Unfocused?
• Uncomfortable?
• Dealing with aches, pains, and health challenges that leave you with little energy to pursue anything outside of your day to day obligations?
• Or perhaps you’re embarrassed about the extra weight you’re carrying around and are afraid to put yourself in the spotlight.

What if it didn’t have to be that way?  What if you could overcome your fears, refuel your energy tank, and get rid of all the excuses that hold you back?

Bustin’ Excuses with Berkson

My friend Lindsey Berkson is my icon for someone who does not allow circumstances to get in the way of achieving her goals.  She was a “victim” since birth, yet refuses to see herself that way.  Her mom took DES while pregnant with her.  DES is a potent drug that prevents miscarriages and causes cancer and other very serious illnesses in the offspring.

As a result, Lindsey wound up with breast cancer and has had several organs removed as a result of the exposure.  She only has 1 kidney, half a thyroid gland, and only one ovary.

The prediction for premature death and debilitating illness for DES survivors is very high.

Lindsey decided at an early age that she was going to beat the odds.  As a result, she became an avid researcher in the health and nutrition field.  She learned early on that maintaining excellent nutrition and lifestyle habits were not only a good idea…they were crucial to the quality of life.

You’ll never believe what she is in the process of doing.  To me, it’s mind-blowing.  When she called me on Saturday and told me about it, I was shocked.  Most women in their twenties wouldn’t have the guts or the strength and stamina to do what she’s doing.   SHE’S WELL INTO MENOPAUSE and is missing some organs.  What an inspiration.

What is that dream in your heart?

What’s getting in the way?

Pick something you’d like to accomplish.   Write it down, then think of all the steps that need to be taken to get you there.  You can do it, if you believe you can and take really good care of yourself…

…like Lindsey.

Dr. Lindsey Berkson: Waltzing to Your Wildest Dreams

- a note from Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo

I am delighted to have as a guest blog contributor today, my dear friend, colleague and mentor, Dr. Lindsey Berkson.

For the last three decades, Dr. Lindsey Berkson’s focus has been as a nutritional consultant with a specialty in women and hormones. During this time, she’s run nutritional and hormone tests on thousands of women, worked with their doctors, and consulted with them about nutrition, food, and exercise choices.

I met Lindsey over a year ago at a continuing education class she taught on hormone balancing and we instantly became fast friends.  We partnered to bring the 5 week course, The Secret to Being Sexy at Any Age , Get Your Gut in Gear and have plans for more joint endeavors.  We both have a passion for helping people to overcome health challenges and recharge their energy tank so they can live their life with passion and purpose.

YOU CAN DO IT!!!

- by Dr. Lindsey Berkson

Who knows where life takes you if you face your edges and push them back with all your might?

Yikes!

I never thought being well into menopause I would be flying high on some gorgeous man’s shoulders and doing back flips 6 feet off the ground, but here I am. Ritamarie and I were supposed to have a meeting yesterday and I told her, “I just had this two and a half-hour dance rehearsal, and I could barely put the key in my front door and turn it to let myself in.”

I told her why.

Several weeks ago when I was moving back into my home and going through boxes that had been moved and stored and moved and stored, I found an old tape cassette of a song for which I had written the words and music, had professionally produced, and then eventually forgot about.  Once I found this tape I ran to see if, with all the years in storage, it even still worked.

And it did!!!

Though my professional work as a hormone specialist now occupies my time, I am also a dancer.  A social dancer.  Though I haven’t been dancing very much the last 4 years with everything going on in my life: dealing with my mother’s dementia, taking care of her, living with her in the lock down dementia unit (which prompted writing the book My Mother Who Worse Her Purse as a Shoe), getting engaged (and unengaged), handling a year of the 3 M’s – mold, men and moving, and publishing 7 books (one – Safe Hormones, Smart Women, which bumped me fairly solidly off the dance floor).

Wow I thought. A real dream, before I die some day, would be to dance and perform to my own song. Wouldn’t that be a ‘died and gone to heaven’ kind of deal?

So I had the song (called Walking Through Rooms and professionally sung by Ellis Hall) transposed to a CD 2 two weeks ago and contacted one of my favorite dance champions, Mike Topel, from right here in Austin, and played it for him. He said, “Let me choreograph this; I think we can come up with a lovely performance.”

The song is a waltz.  Writing a waltz was easier for me, and it was one of my earlier songs. But I am not really a waltzer.  Considering that I am a medium to advanced social dancer, I just blazingly thought, I can do this… Why not? (Little did I know….)

I called up Sherry Reynolds, a dance champion who is part owner of Uptown Dance Studio in Austin, and it turns out she is hosting the Lone Star Dance Invitational Saturday, August 13^th, which gave me around 10 days to put something together and perform it at the dinner show.

“I had no idea,” I told Ritamarie, begging off our business meeting as I could hardly walk or move after my third rehearsal, “that performance dancing was such a totally different animal than social dancing.”  I had no idea that I signed up for:

• being dragged (not the correct dance term I am sure) on the floor, him grabbing my arms and me rolling across the hard wood dance floor, lying down, while he walks through my legs
• holding his waist while my legs whip around at chest height
• grueling ballet pliés and seemingly endless lunges
• kicking legs up in the air (and if they are not straight and high enough one looks like an idiot)
• being up in the air balancing only on my abdomen with head high, then back flipping out and snaking across his abdomen and down through his legs back onto the floor.

Now I work out daily, but all this “waltzing” requires incredible core strength.  Lots of it. Thank god I down chia seeds and green drinks!

The whole time Mike is giving me directions I have two loud dialogues in my head:

1. What the F… am I doing? Am I nuts? I can’t do this! I am scared to death! What if I fall? My old bones–yikes–I am out of my mind!
2.  I can do this! I can do anything! Why not? Sure, cool.

Soooo much distraction; I’m sure Mike was wondering why I kept asking him, “What did you say again?”

Two concurrent dialogues — faith versus fear.

But that has pretty much been my entire life: pushing the edges of fear and having faith that it will work out. Who would have thought that even though I am older, this theme has not seemed to have slowed down? Yikes.

Have I mentioned yet that this physical and mental marathon all has to be done in a long, floor length skirt, which I have NEVER worn let alone danced in. We had an argument as I insisted I just simply could NOT do this in a long skirt; he replied that with dance regulations I simply could not NOT do it in a floor length dance skirt. So that was that.

Will I get to do this next Saturday at the cabaret dinner dance in front of the hundreds of dancers and judges? I am not positive. If we decide we need some more weeks we may dance it somewhere else, or feel it is finished enough to perform next week. We are working our b…. off to try to pull next week off.

But I do know that age is just a number. Stretching oneself physically and emotionally is part of the de-acceleration process of anti-aging and staying younger no matter the numbers that keep (thankfully) ticking away. You truly are just as old as you fight back the demons of fear and go for things you never dreamed of even in your 20′s–if your adrenals, blood sugar, lifestyle, and food choices are watching your back.

You just take a deep breath, pull those shoulders back, and say, “Hell yeah, I can do this!”

My website is in a new construction phase, and Ritamarie felt I needed to say all this, even here in her blog, to get this out to all your sisters and brothers as a message of hope from a crone-ish cougar doc, so I am writing this to share with you. I want to remind you, “We can all do it. Whatever you have held as a dream in the corner of your consciousness, no matter how wild and hanging out there by a dental floss string it may seem to make you feel, now is the time. Go for it. You can do it!”

LindseyBerkson.com

Detection of Bone Loss and Dietary Interventions to Reverse It.

Healthy Bones should last a lifetime.

How healthy are yours?

Most people don’t realize that bone is actually living tissue containing a plethora of minerals.  They think it’s static rather than ever changing.  Normal bone metabolism consists of osteoclast activity, which breaks down bone and frees the minerals contained into your blood stream, followed by osteoblast activity, which creates new bone.  This break and build cycle allows you to continuously have fresh new bone.

When your bone breaks down, certain by-products appear in your urine and your blood. The N-telopeptide or NTx test is one way to evaluate the rate at which your bones are undergoing bone resorption.  NTx is a stable and specific breakdown product of type I collagen, which makes up 90% of the organic matrix of bone and consists of numerous cross-linked protein strands. Elevated NTx level is reflective of increased bone resorption and correlates with diminishing bone density over time.   Levels can be measured in either urine or serum.

The NTx test measures these bone by-products and provides a dynamic measurement of what’s actually happening inside your bone at any given point in time, unlike bone density tests which provide a static snapshot of your bones. With the standard bone density test, there’s no way to tell you’re currently in the process of doing at a higher rate — building or breaking down bone.

The NTX test allows you to assess the effectiveness of diet and lifestyle modifications geared towards building strong bones.  It’s less invasive and less expensive than the bone density test and is a really good test to run every six months, or more frequently in the early stages of an Test results are reported as bone collagen equivalent units/mmol creatinine.   The range is 5–65.  A very good value is considered to be 36 collagen equivalent units/mmol creatinine and a number somewhere between 30 and the mid-40’s generally indicates a safe rate of bone turnover.

The NTx test can measure N-telopeptide levels in the urine or blood. For details about the test, visit Osteomark.com.

Click Here to order a home test kit

5 Strategies for Saving and Restoring Your Bones

So what do you do if your NTx test shows that you’re resorbing bone faster than your building it back up?

1. Adopt a bone saving diet and lifestyle that contains ALL 20 of the nutrients required for strong bones, not just calcium, or calcium and magnesium.  For a complete list of these nutrients and the foods that contain them, listen in here:  BLOG TALK RADIO or attend Eating for Bone Health for checklists and food charts.  Green leafy vegetables and sea vegetables in copious amounts can have a dramatic impact on bone health.
2. Another important piece of the bone strength puzzle is maintaining a diet rich in alkaline ash foods.  Using my acid/alkaline food chart as a guide, eat between 75 and 90% of your foods from the alkaline side of the chart if you’re in bone breakdown mode as reported by the NTx test or if you have already been diagnosed with osteoporosis or osteopenia.
3. Add foods that have been shown in research studies to fortify bones, like prunes.  Dr. Bahram Arjmandi says yes, the humble prune can reverse bone loss, and his research data is looking strong. Dr. Arjmandi of Florida State University in Tallahassee has been testing a variety of “functional foods” for their ability to reverse bone loss.  He tested soy, blueberries, strawberries, raisins, dates, and finally prunes. He reports that no other natural substance comes even close to having the consistently beneficial bone-building results of prunes.  According to Dr. Arjmandi’s special phenolic compounds in dried plums increase growth factors linked to bone formation, like IGF-1 and counter the activity of factors that inhibit bone formation, like TNF-alpha. Prunes are also high in antioxidants and contain copious quantities of a variety of key bone nutrients, including potassium, boron, and copper. In Dr.  Arjmandi’s research, he found other natural substances that could halt bone loss, but only prunes restored lost bone. The quantity of prunes that was most effective in Dr. Arjmandi’s studies was quite high – 100 grams or 9-10 per day.
4. Adopt a gluten free diet.  Numerous studies have tied gluten sensitivity to inflammation and bone loss.  Removing gluten from the diet of those with gluten intolerance and bone loss has reversed the condition within as little as six months.  Of course, in addition to just removing gluten from the diet, you mush heal your gut lining, which can take u to a year or two.
5. Weight bearing exercise is key to improving bone strength as is exposure to daily sunshine or a Vitamin D supplement.

Here’s a HOT off the Press New Bone Strengthening Recipe.

Bone Lover’s Arugula Pesto

• 1 5 ounce package baby arugula
• 4 ounce fresh basil
• ¾ cup macadamia nuts
• ¾ cup Brazil nuts
• ½ cup hemp seeds
• 3 cloves fresh garlic
• 1 teaspoon kelp powder
• 2 teaspoons nettles powder
• 2 teaspoons ground horsetail
• 2 teaspoons ground alfalfa
• ¼ teaspoon whole unrefined sea salt

Place all ingredients in food process and process until almost smooth

I served this as follows:

1. Place a handful of greens on a sheet of Nori (I used Mache greens)

2. Form a handful of the pesto into a sausage shaped log about the length of the Nori and place on top of the greens.

3. Put a handful each of broccoli sprouts and sunflower greens on top.  Roll and seal closed with a bit of water.

4. On one of my Nori rolls, I put a few slices of pickled ginger and ½ teaspoon of Ume paste (available in the macrobiotic section of the health food store)

These were very filling and delicious.  My bones were very happy.

There are lots more recipes like this to support your bones in our class, Eating for Bone Health,  both live and videotaped!

Strengthen My Bones Green Smoothie

Skeleton Supporting Savory Sesame Sauce

Bones Don’t Crack Crackers

Creamy Italian Bone Boosting Soup

Bone Building Super Salad

Bone Building Brownies

Love, Health and joy to you,

Dr. Ritamarie