Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly!

The clock is ticking. Spring will be here before we know it. We’ve already “sprung” our clocks ahead. Soon it will be June and my first son will graduate from high school.How in the world did that happen?I feels like it was just yesterday when he first learned to crawl and spent almost an hour trying to climb up a step we had between the kitchen and the living room. Scott and I sat and watched, mesmerized by the determination and relentlessness in this tiny being, barely seven months old.He was so determined to succeed and succeed he did, in spite of fall after fall, over and over again. Of course we lavished him with praise and he beamed with pride and delight.A few months later he was walking, then running. Now he’s flying the coop and going away to college in August.

Working Your Way Up

I liken Eric’s progression to what we as adults go through when we take on new lifestyle habits, begin a new business, or take up a new art form.

The crawling stage seems endless as we make small strides, slowly. The problem with adults and lifestyle habits is, too often, you’re not as relentless as Eric was. After a few falls, you are tempted to give up rather than continue on towards your goals.

The big difference between Eric and many people I counsel about health issues is most people don’t even have a clear goal like little Eric did. He was clear about his goal and he kept going until he reached it. If you don’t have a clear goal, it’s hard to be relentless in its pursuit.

It’s similar to my experience with the pottery class I began in January, attempting to “pick up where I left off” when I quit 7 years ago because I had a traveling husband, homeschooling kids, and a small health practice to run.

I am happy to be back, and find I’m back at the crawling stage because I didn’t keep up with the skill set.

If you’re just starting out with healthy eating habits, an exercise program, a meditation/stress management regime, or getting back into one of these after a hiatus, remember the stages. It’s impossible to run before you can walk!

Do You Have Someone Who Uplifts You?

The other thing that was reinforced with my pottery class was the fact that having a mentor is soooooo important.

Back in 2006, about a year and a half after I quit pottery classes because my husband started traveling again and I just couldn’t fit the classes into the schedule, my husband surprised me with a pottery wheel and kiln, a special gift for my 50th birthday.

I was all excited to get started.

By then, I’d forgotten some of the basic techniques, so I purchased a set of DVDs and sat down at the wheel to throw.

It was really hard and really frustrating, fumbling about with no one to turn to for guidance. I did it a couple of times, made a few awful pots, and never even fired them. The wheel and the kiln have been gathering dust since.

Once I started taking pottery classes in January, I realized how much I rely on asking for guidance, getting help with the same technique over and over, and being encouraged and supported.

It really is the same with health habits. SO many people I speak to have more than a few exercise videos still in the shrink wrap, or a food dehydrator they’ve used once, or all sorts of super foods still in their original bags, unopened because they are just not sure how to use them.

Whether You’re Struggling With Crawling or Flying, I Can Help!

Knowing that it’s human nature to need help with change, that’s exactly why I create my programs the way I do. While some people have the budget to get my assistance one on one when they’re ready to finally get their health in order, many don’t.

SO I’ve developed group coaching programs, my most popular being the Energy Recharge Green Cleanse and the B4 Be Gone System for balancing blood sugar and getting rid of belly fat, brain fog and burnout.

With the right support, the “shrink wrap” finally gets removed and people get into action. And I’m there to answer questions and provide encouragement and support.

It’s so rewarding when I hear how much these programs have changed lives. Many have: shed upwards of 60 pounds of unwanted fat, dropped 8 clothing sizes, let go of 9 inches round the waist, eliminated or reduced the need for medication, been freed of joint pain, finally got their brain back to focus, and so much more.

Because I have lost so many loved ones and watched them suffer, I have made it my mission to offer the education and support that people around the world need to avoid this fate.

The Moment That Inspired Me to Change and to Act

Last fall I was at a seminar and the host decided to raise money for a charity that supported children who’d lost a parent to cancer. I was deeply moved to action. My thought was how about instead we focus on educating people on how to avoid cancer in the first place?

Do you believe there are associations raising money for cancer by selling candy?

I am on a mission to raise consciousness and every person who goes though one of my programs can help me on that mission. By embracing a healthy diet and lifestyle and getting yourself strong and healthy, you too can spread the message of health and be an instrument of healing.

Are You Ready to Fly?

My group program,  B4 Be Gone System, guides hundreds of people at a time to  balancing blood sugar and getting rid of belly fat, brain fog and burnout. B4 Be Gone is so much more than a weight reduction program, although those that have extra weight gladly shed it.

It’s about making the changes on the inside that reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

It’s about seeing results on the outside that give you the confidence and mental clarity to be effective in your life’s chosen endeavor, be it Mom or CEO.

For details about B4 Be Gone, go to:

http://www.B4BeGoneSystem.com

Insulin Resistance Solution
Practitioner Training

If you happen to be a nutrition or health coach, holistic practitioner or functional medicine doctor and you’d like to get the behind the scenes on how to run a successful program to reverse insulin resistance and balance blood sugar, one on one or in small groups, check out my new Insulin Resistance Solution Practitioner Training. It includes registration in B4 Be Gone and parallels it with “Rounds with Dr Ritamarie calls”, a community forum,worksheets and assessments and a grand finale powerful all day Saturday virtual retreat.

For details go to http://www.drritamarie.com/programs/irspt/

Love, Health and Joy,

Dr. Ritamarie

5 Cutting Edge Strategies to Balance Your Blood Sugar So You Can Melt Your Midline, Sharpen Your Focus, and Recharge Your Energy!

Do you find yourself wishing you could hit the snooze button instead of jumping out of bed feeling refreshed each morning?

Do you crave sugar, caffeine, or a NAP around 3 – 4 pm?

Have you been carrying around excess fat around your middle that won’t budge in spite of starving yourself and slaving away at the gym?

Whether you’re a busy professional or a professional mom, you need to stay focused and organized all day long and still have enough energy to say yes to enticing social events rather than falling into a heap because you can hardly keep your eyes open after working all day.

Watch this video to get the secret to more energy!

 Register here!

http://www.ByeByeB4.com

The Great Meal Timing Debate!

Your body is designed to be able to go long periods of time without external sources of food. Elaborate mechanisms are in place to keep your blood sugar steady, involving your brain, your hormones, your stomach and your liver.

If you find yourself cranky and irritable if you miss a meal and have been told to eat more frequent, smaller meals to avoid this, you may have been steered in the wrong direction.

Getting cranky and irritable between meals is a sign that something’s out of balance.

Simply eating more frequently takes care of the symptoms, but not the underlying imbalance.

You never retrain your body to do what it’s supposed to do when you simply avoid the behavior that highlights the imbalance.

Eating Frequent, Small Meals May be Damaging to Your Health

The idea that eating every couple of hours keeps your blood sugar levels steady without the dips (and severe hunger that accompanies those dips) has become popular. In theory, you’ll eat less if you never let yourself get hungry enough to overeat.

Recent hormone research tells us that this is actually the worst way to eat for blood sugar balance and weight loss and can actually be damaging to your health.

Join me and find out how eating small meals could actually be causing insulin resistance…and leading you to more belly fat.

Click here to listen in to the radio show recording.

The Myths That Keep You From Feeling Miraculous

Registration for my hot new very controversial teleseminar, and video series was unfortunately delayed due to technology gremlins, The videos have been recorded but woefully need to be re-edited so we’ve delayed the launch until February 9, 2012. This series will address the myths and surprising misconceptions around the metabolic and blood sugar issues that have people confused and chronically ill. Even if you participated in last year’s series, you’ll find something new!

I’ve been intently studying blood sugar imbalances and all the hormones and lifestyle factors involved in creating and preventing them so I can bring you the most cutting edge information.

Once the series begins on February 9, the first video will come to you immediately. Then every day or two, another video will be released until right before my myth-busting teleseminar.

http://www.ByeByeBloodSugarImbalance.com

Another Easy Instant Action Step To Bring You into Balance

How did you do with the action step I sent you last week?

Remember, the one from my “Timing is Everything” strategy?

It was about having your last meal no later than three hours before bedtime.

If you found it hard, join the club. It’s difficult for everyone, yet yields phenomenal results when combined with the other strategies.

My new teleseminar and one of the videos will explain why this is so effective.

So this week, try another super effective step for balancing blood sugar. Sprinkle cinnamon liberally on your food. You heard me right. This common, every day spice is incredibly effective at restoring sensitivity of your cells to insulin, so you no longer have rapidly fluctuating blood sugars and the between meal irritability says bye-bye.

The registration page will be here:

http://www.ByeByeBloodSugarImbalance.com

The first 500 to register on February 9 can take advantage of another helpful resource.

The Recipes That Will Bring Your Inner Miracle Worker Back to Life

I’m going to make available a Bonus Recipe Sampler from my B4 Be Gone System for the first 500 people who register for the Bye-Bye B4 Video Series.

If you’re among the first to sign up for the free series on February 9th you can enjoy a taste of my delicious low-glycemic recipes designed to help heal your insulin receptors and restore your blood sugar balance.

You can ensure you receive your notice as soon as possible by registering for the early notification list here:

http://www.ByeByeBloodSugarImbalance.com

Have an awesome week.

I look forward to connecting on the teleseminar.

Digestion and Diabetes: The Relationship That May be Damaging Your Inner Miracle Worker

Have you ever wondered what really happens inside your body after you eat?

It’s a complicated process that involves muscles, organs, hormones, enzymes, acids and a variety of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.

I am really glad that my conscious mind doesn’t need to get involved to make it happen… it just happens.

Imagine if half way through digesting my food I got distracted by a phone call? The food would likely just sit there until my next meal as I’d be apt to forget I was digesting and move on to other more exciting tasks.

There’s an Inner Miracle Worker Inside You

Your body is a miracle, and it handles all those things behind the scenes so you don’t have to be involved on a conscious level. It’s like having the world’s best personal assistant doing everything you need before you even know you need it.

It all runs smoothly and like clockwork… if you take care of yourself.

When you feed yourself the right fuel, move, sail through the day with joy and ease, and sleep well at night your “personal assistant” inside keeps things running well, so you feel energetic, clear, focused and full of life.

Ideas pop up and you’re able to run with them and create the life of your dreams. You look great. Your tummy is flat, your muscles are toned and strong, and YOU are unstoppable. You are unlimited.

But What If Your Inner Miracle Worker is Run-Down and Ragged?

If what I just described is not your life, then listen up.

It’s not your fault.
It’s not that you’re lazy or unmotivated.

It’s because you learned habits early on that caused you to make choices that basically poison your “feel good” mechanisms.

You were fed processed foods from early in childhood, even just out of the womb in some cases. The processed foods cannot come close to providing the nutrition offered by their fresh counterparts. “Made by nature” is always better than “made by machine”.

The processed foods early on interfered with your body’s ability to choose the foods that nourish your cells rather than excite your taste buds and drain your energy.

By the time you were six, chances are good that you had been on multiple courses of antibiotics and maybe had even begun to put on some excess weight. Like me, you were most likely addicted to foods like M&Ms, Cheetos, cookies, and soft drinks.

If so, you no longer were accessing the inner wisdom that guides you to eat, drink, and move in ways that bring balance.

Fast forward to today.

Perhaps the extra weight is your biggest concern. Maybe it’s your fear of life altering illnesses like heart disease, cancer, or diabetes. Or it might be your lack of energy and your inability to really enjoy things the way you used to.

Whatever it is you are striving for in your life, without your health the path will be obscure.

Are You Eating Yourself Sick?

So getting back to digestion…

When you’re out of balance, missing key nutrients, have eaten foods or engaged in activities that disrupt normal intestinal and hormone function, it’s as if you’re in charge and get distracted by a phone call.

Digestive enzymes become deficient or ineffective, your gut lining gets damaged and can no longer absorb all the nutrients in your food. Worse, it also allows foreign proteins to penetrate the disrupted intestinal membrane.

And you start to feel unwell.
Your energy drops.
Your mind gets foggy.

All the sugar and processed starch causes a spike in insulin. Over time, your cells become resistant to the insulin, and almost all the food you eat gets stored as fat.

The high sugar levels make your blood cells more sticky. The high insulin levels thicken the walls of your blood vessel and make them stiffer.

You are now a prime candidate for a heart attack or stroke.

You are on your way towards diabetes.

You May Not Know If You Have Diabetes Until There’s Damage

Diabetes is on the rise and prediabetes is almost an epidemic. Normal blood sugar balance is one of the prime casualties of an out of balance lifestyle.

The sad part is, you won’t be warned by your medical doctor until much of the damage has been done.

The reason?

The methods used to assess blood sugar imbalances, prediabetes (often called “insulin resistance“), and diabetes are based on standards that are too lenient.

There’s an ideal range for you blood sugar and the conventional standards give too much leeway.

The Myths That Keep You From Feeling Miraculous

On January 31st, 2012, I’ll be opening up registration for an all new and very controversial webinar that will address the myths and surprising misconceptions around the metabolic and blood sugar issues that have people confused and chronically ill. The webinar will be part of my updated free video series called Bye-Bye Belly Fat, Brain Fog and Burnout!

We’ll be sharing fresh, newly recorded videos, so even if you participated in last year’s series, you’ll find something new!

I am soooo excited about this.

The truth is so many of my family members have suffered and even died because they were not given the information I am about to share with you. It’s not that I didn’t offer. It’s just that they were afraid to go against the status quo.

I know you’re really open to the latest and greatest health information or you wouldn’t be reading my newsletter.

Registration opens on January 31st at around noon, pacific time. I will send you an e-mail message when registration opens, but if you’d like to get your notice and access a little early, be sure to register for early notification:

http://www.ByeByeBloodSugarImbalance.com

Once the series begins on January 31st, the first video will come to you immediately. Then every day or two, another video will be released until right before my myth-busting teleseminar on Feb 9th, 2012.

I’ve been intently studying blood sugar imbalances and all the hormones and lifestyle factors involved in creating and preventing them so I can bring you the most cutting edge information.

In the videos and on the teleseminar, I’ll share 5 simple strategies you can start to incorporate right away.

An Easy Step To Help Heal Your Inner Miracle Worker

For now, I would like to close with a small piece of one of the strategies you can get started on right away.

It’s from my “Timing is Everything” strategy.

It’s going to sound really simple, and I know you’ve heard it before.

During the Bye-Bye B4 Video Series, I will share the details about how and why this strategy works. Its effectiveness has to do with hormone balance and your body’s detoxification mechanisms.

Stop eating at least 3 hours before you go to bed.

There should be 12 hours between dinner/supper and breakfast.

Go ahead and try it.

Once we open up registration, we’ll have a blog area where you can post your experiences. Start slowly if this is hard. Increase the time between dinner and bed time by 15 minutes each day until you’ve reached your goal.

Then when you come to the training call and watch the videos, you’ll learn how this affects your hormones, blood sugar, brain chemistry and detoxification. You’ll understand how proper meal timing protects you from life threatening diseases like diabetes, heart attack and stroke.

The registration page will be here:

http://www.ByeByeBloodSugarImbalance.com

The Recipes That Will Bring Your Inner Miracle Worker Back to Life

If you act quickly, you can take advantage of another helpful resource.

I’m going to make available a Bonus Recipe Sampler from my B4 Be Gone System for the first 500 people who register for the Bye-Bye B4 Video Series. If you’re among the first to sign up on January 31st for the free series, you can enjoy a taste of my delicious low-glycemic recipes designed to help heal your insulin receptors and restore your blood sugar balance.

You can ensure you receive your notice as soon as possible by registering for the early notification list here:

http://www.ByeByeBloodSugarImbalance.com

Fear, Anxiety, and Thanklessness – A Sure-fire Prescription for a FAT Midsection

Most people consider me an expert in restoring and maintaining health using diet and lifestyle approaches. My “claims to fame” are my in-depth knowledge of nutrition and biochemistry, and my program effectiveness for restoring balance to achieve vibrant health and energy.

Countless people come to me for advice, wondering why they are still overweight and ill, in spite of eating a healthy diet.

How Stress May Supersize You

While I can usually find things to tweak in clients’ diets, and I can recommend herbs or natural nutrition supplements to restore balance, we’re fighting an uphill battle if we ignore the role of stress, negative emotions, and worry; your health, energy level, AND weight are all affected.

On a past radio show, Your Muscles May be Making You Fat, I explored in detail the mechanism by which stress and worry contribute to belly bulge, and I encourage you to listen for details.

In summary, fear, worry, stressful thoughts and situations, and negative emotions trigger the release of cortisol and adrenaline from your adrenal glands. This hormone release triggers a series of fight or flight mechanisms that cause your liver and muscles to release sugar into your blood. Normally, this release would ready you for your “chase” or “escape”.

But what also happens, and this is the troubling part when it happens frequently, is that your insulin is also triggered to rise, so the sugar in the blood can be absorbed by your cells and fuel them to flight or fight. Keep in mind, that extra sugar in your blood would normally get used. Unfortunately, when your stresses are mental, you can’t burn all the released sugar. Insulin, in following through with its job of maintaining healthy blood sugar levels, causes the sugar to be put back into storage… as white adipose tissues, whose main receptors are – you guessed it – right around your belly.

I discuss more details concerning insulin, its role, and insulin resistance in Video 1, of the 5-part Bye-Bye Belly Fat, Brain Fog, and Burnout video series.

When you get stressed over situations that are beyond your control – like fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, traffic, other people’s attitudes – you are creating the perfect environment not only for “turning your muscles into fat” but for injuring your insides and setting yourself up for diseases. The three most serious and very common sequelae [secondary conditions] to chronic stress are the BIG 3: Heart disease, Cancer and Diabetes.

If achieving a slim trim body and keeping yourself safe from “the Big 3″ aren’t enough motivation to get a handle on stress, there’s more.

A Change of Heart Can Mean a Change in Dress Size

Your thoughts and emotions impact others around you, both those in close proximity and those far away.

Let me explain.

Research at the Institute of HeartMath has confirmed that your thoughts and emotions affect your heart rate variability (HRV). When you’re calm, HRV, when graphed, looks like a nice even sine wave and when you’re frustrated or angry, worried or anxious, it’s erratic and spikey. Notice the difference in the graphs to the right.

The smooth wave pattern is associated with ideal blood pressure, clear thinking, proper metabolic function and overall well being. The other pattern hallmarks disease, dysfunction, resistant weight loss and a host of other serious metabolic disruptions.

This article on the HeartMath website gives all the details, and it also takes you step-by-step through a couple of their techniques for restoring balance:

http://www.alternativeworldwidehealth.com/files/Heartmath_Stress_chapter.pdf

According to HeartMath:

In my Mend Your Metabolism & Maximize Your Vitality webinar, I will take you step-by-step through one of the HeartMath processes for Transforming Stress so you can feel for yourself the effects of being in a state they refer to as “coherence”.

It’s an amazing feeling and you too can learn it. In my 30-day B4 Be Gone program, I guide my patients and students through daily practice of this technique, and send them daily reminders and a recording of me guiding them through the process.

Join us on the webinar to get yourself started.

Get Slim, Stress-free, and Save the World

So now for the really amazing, almost unbelievable finding.

YOU have more power than you think over the state of the world, the energy in the room, and the stressful feelings of others.

Hear me out on this one…

When two people with different HRV patterns come into each other’s energy fields, the HRV’s tend to synchronize, and the strongest field prevails. This has been measured by the institute of HeartMath researchers on medical equipment!

By practicing the HeartMath technique called Quick Coherence several times a day, with as little a time investment as 5 minutes a day, you’ll become proficient at changing your emotional state and the HRV’s of others with whom you come into contact.

How cool is that?

And when you practice their more advanced technique, called Heart Lock-in, you actually practice deliberately projecting your energy out into the room. To master Heart Lock-in takes a bit more time, 15 minutes about 3-4 times a week!

When natural disasters like fire and flood strike, the natural tendency is to feel victimized. That puts you into the “triple P emotional state” that has been shown to be the most damaging of all… powerlessness, pessimism, and pervasive worry.

It’s times like these that we need to band together energetically and send positive thoughts, prayers, and uplifting energy to those whose lives are affected. Imagine the effect of thousands of people all over the world projecting their positive energy field! According to the above aforementioned article from the Institute of HeartMath (which I highly recommend you read in its entirety), “positive thinking” without accompanying positive feelings usually only provides temporary relief from emotional distress. Whereas the activation of positive emotions is more likely to transform the stress at its source.

According to Joe Vitale, author of The Attractor Factor, “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.”

Dr. Vitale lives not too far from where I live, just outside of Austin, and he sent out a plea for help with getting the fires under control through the power of positive emotion.

I’ve printed his entire letter on my blog, where Joe tells of his experience with this process when Hurricane Rita threatened Austin a few years back.

Whether you believe Dr. Vitale’s account of changing the course of natural events or not, there’s no disputing the positive effect of appreciation and love on your own chemistry and that of those around you. Lots of studies at www.heartmath.org support this.

So, what do you have to lose?

Even if you think it’s goofy, it can’t hurt and it will change your own emotions and your internal well-being.

So take a deep breath… find that place of peace inside yourself where you know all is well. Access that area of inner calm…and then just feel the fires going out; imagine the hurricanes heading out to sea; envision the earth’s core relaxing; and perceive that all the people affected are safe, sound, and protected.

Stop, breathe, focus, pray, or in some positive way send out an energy that will help dissolve the fear.
It’s your way of making a difference in the face of disaster, even if you can’t send lots of money or travel to the scene to help.

Check out the book Unconditional Bliss by Howard Cushnir. He says you can find happiness in the face of hardship.

And in the words of Joe Vitale, “… be happy, right now. Smile. Send that loving energy out, in the direction of Texas.

Intend for all to be well, for, in reality, all is well.”