by Debra Arko Novotny | May 7, 2018 | Acupuncture, Fitness, Health Coach
It hit Susan like a train wreck she said. “I seemed to gain weight overnight, and I need help for losing weight after menopause.”
She is a regular for pain related acupuncture but we’ve never talked about menopause or weight gain. “My butt is as big as a caboose don’t you think?” Susan asked me turning around to show me where the fat had deposited itself. Like many women, her body had betrayed her. Why? Simple.
Menopause means a change. That’s what my mother called it. It’s right – a change in hormones. A change in your lifestyle. Particularly food and fitness.
Handing my patient a tissue I explained this.
Start Before It Happens
First thing is don’t wait until you notice symptoms. Start in your 40’s by being proactive. Use acupuncture for wellness care. In my office, we can do acupuncture through health insurance even when you don’t have acupuncture as a covered benefit. Acupuncture is one of the leading ways to reduce stress a major factor in weight gain.
Vary your exercise from walking to cycling. Do weight lifting and some yoga.
Start removing grains, pseudo-grains if you haven’t already.
Losing Weight After Menopause
Susan like many other women I work with in my practice had done an exercise routine for years. She explained that she did these videos at home and then walked every lunch hour for 10 minutes. Yet her belly and butt got bigger. The scale showed a gain too.
Two sizes bigger she felt that losing weight after menopause would be impossible. Not true!
As an acupuncturist, I know that acupuncture will boost the metabolism. I know as a functional medicine practitioner that certain supplements, food, and exercise will help you with losing weight after menopause.
Change Up Your Eating and Exercise
- Begin a move toward a Paleo eating lifestyle if you haven’t already. Remove grains, sugar, and dairy from your diet for a while. Work with someone like myself who is an acupuncturist and a health coach.You’ll need to plan the changes in your eating habits. Cleaning out the kitchen, learning to cook or new ways to prepare tasty yet easy meals. You don’t have to do this alone.‘ Food is the most abused anxiety drug. Exercise is the most underutilized antidepressant.’ Unknown
- Exercise[1] is about to change. Yes, you can still walk daily but the 10 minutes is now 45-60 minutes – daily. If you’re open to it, try other forms of cardio. Going to a spin class or a dance class for women.
For Susan, we needed to add strength training. I suggested weightlifting. She preferred to try Yoga and Pilates. It all works.
The point is you have to change some things up. What worked when you were 40 doesn’t work when you’re 50. It will not work when you’re 60 either. You may move from high-impact to lower impact.
Mix it up at any age Susan did. She found a “spin room” on her way home from work and a Yoga place nearby. She still walks just further outside for longer.
She donated her exercise videos and bought a few light weights. On some days, she lifts weight in front of a mirror in her home.
Expected The Unexpected
Let it be fun. Your acupuncture treatment should be relaxing and a special time for you. Enjoy it. If you get your nails or hair done professionally then invest in your wellness and longevity through acupuncture care too.
Think about finding new recipes with our website.. Aren’t you tired of the same old thing? It’s exciting to eat new flavors and try old favorites with a new approach. A lot of women have gotten away from cooking. Using a health coach helps you find what fits your professional and personal lifestyle.
Susan resisted the idea of anything other than walking. Her busy schedule interfered with fitness classes. Deciding to give it a try she chose the “Spin room”. Indoor cycling helped to relieve stress more than walking. She began to sleep better. Losing weight after menopause became easier.
‘Let exercise be your stress reliever, not food.’ Unknown
Not everyone will have Susan’s amazing results of returning to her old dress size and have a shapelier body yet it’s possible for you too.
Losing weight after menopause always works if you apply my 2 tips. Susan latest comments about her body to me this past week, “Look! My butt looks better than it did when I was 40!”
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296386/
Photo by Abraham Elworo Dan Gold on Unsplash
by Debra Arko Novotny | Apr 3, 2018 | Functional Medicine, Health Coach
I decided to do something different, the great health problem experiment. As an online health coach these 3 questions seem to be on everyone’s mind recently. How do I lose weight and keep it off? If you’re not thinking that it’s might be How To I Slow The Aging Process, I have no energy and I’m stressed out! Or is it that menopause thing getting you down. No sleep, hot flashes, bloating and night sweats – even when it’s daytime?
Be Part Of Great Health Problem Experiment!
Finally, maybe you’re saying ‘girl you got it all wrong’ it’s all of this. I am so ready to scream at the top of my lungs that I am willing to keep reading. Call this the great health problem experiment. Don’t you want to know if your problem is everyone’s’ or not?
As a health coach and licensed healer my thoughts are how can I help you if I don’t know what bothers my reader most? Help me research, support, and guide you through what is bothering you the most.
You say, Deb you’re crazy it’s totally something else. Well I didn’t forget about the other stuff like IBS, thyroid, autoimmune, or you tell me what it is. That’s why I call this the great health problem experiment, I don’t know the answer to the question. What is your biggest health problem so share it with me!
Lose Weight – Slow Aging – Menopause ‘Oh My!’
So how do you let me know what the problem is? Fill out the form below. If it matters to you, it matters to me. Help me help you by giving me so input and insight into how I can support you.
How does that sound? Easy! Below is a simple poll that let’s me know your thoughts. I only ask for your email and name because there are spammers out that that target such polls and I want to hear from real-humans.
I know there are days – you don’t feel so human or maybe not so real that’s okay, we always blame that on hormones. Thank you for trusting me with your health problem. I look forward to sharing the results of this poll with everyone in an update of this blog post! Yes, I will share it! After all this is the great health problem experiment.
Take The Poll!
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by Debra Arko Novotny | May 1, 2015 | Health Coach
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that. What the world needs is more people that have come alive. ~Howard Thurman
Do you ever have those moments when everything is going right? I know I do when I’m writing from my heart, everything is right. It’s a feeling of joy and it’s almost as if something else is doing the work. I can’t even call it work it’s so rewarding. We all have something that makes us come alive.
Health Coaching
As health coaching goes, we often focus on this because our careers aren’t always the same thing. It’s not always a relationship. It’s usually very personal something that you do. One health coaching client found it to be volunteering at an animal shelter. Another found that setting up bicycle rides with other men after work changed his personal relationship with his wife because he loves riding and she didn’t. He didn’t have to not ride, he had to find riding partners.
What Makes You Come Alive?
The world seems to be at a standstill on new ideas. I believe every idea is fresh and unique because it has you in it. Yet many people don’t use their life to live it. They move through relationships, careers, their entire lives forgetting to be passionate about the one thing that sings to their heart. What I mean by this is we simply exist in the world waiting for whatever it is we’re to do.
What is it that makes you smile and come alive?
Instead, what if everyone you knew spent 15 minutes a day doing what makes him or her smile? What if you did the thing that brings you joy? That one thing that feels so perfect for 15 minutes each day. What would it be?
I am not talking about a bubble bath with candles and rose petals, it’s something that makes you come alive in an ah-ha state of awareness. It brings you that feeling everything is right. Often it has some level of service to others involved. For me, I get calls and comments from people telling me how my writing helps them. For the guy setting up the bike rides, he’s created a group of about 30 men who love to cycle and they appreciate that he makes it possible weekly.
Everything Is Right
Howard Thurman rather challenges us to bring it on; to come alive and do what sings to our internal sphere of self. As a health coach, my job is to listen and let you stretch yourself. I don’t tell you what will challenge you, you find what makes you come alive and then you do that – like Howard Thurman suggests.
When were happy if feels like everything is going right and we sit on top of the world. If we know what this emotion feels like then why do we let negative stressors take us out of this state of mind?
Some authors and researchers believe being in a happy mood all the time isn’t possible or healthy.
They reckon that it slows creativity. I beg to differ as I mentioned I feel everything is right when I am writing. My creative juices come alive and what I want to stay seems to flow easier for me than many others. It’s this way too when a client really wants my mentoring. I can feel it. I know by their questions and laugh or smile that we’ve touched that place in health coaching that resonates with them.
My Challenge To You
Do you want to make a simple change in your life? Something that makes you feel like the world belongs to you.
My challenge to you is simple; what makes you happy find that and do it for 15 minutes each day. I’m not talking careers as much as I’m speaking about life in general. For one client taking a walk with her dog, every day made everything right. Do this one thing for 21 days enjoy the sense of happiness? As Howard Thurman would say, That’s you coming alive.
by Debra Arko Novotny | Apr 16, 2015 | Health Coach
There’re a million reasons’ to have someone help you with health and lifestyle but figuring out what type of mentor can be rough. Last fall, a new client asked me why she should invest money and time in coaching at all! It’s a great question. Knowing the key ingredients of a good health coach can help you decide if you want a life coach, business coach, or a health coach.
First, these are not the same thing and often a health coach does lifestyle coaching while a life coach is not qualified to mentor on health and wellness. Having three coaches can be expensive, though trying to find one person who ‘does it all’ can be disastrous to your business, life, and health. Below is a list of traits and guidelines you want in an integrative health coach.
The Integrative Health Coach
An integrative health coach is someone who works with your health issues and has expertise in relationships, fitness, careers, and the big one – Spirituality often referred to as mindfulness or mindset. Food, home cooking, recipes, different dietary theories all play a part. Top on the list of key ingredients of a good integrative health coach is they understand what is happening in your life is just as important what you put inside your body.
Next – The Key Ingredients Of A Good Health Coach
What your integrative health coach is like:
- Is Happy to see you! They create a strong first impression. They’re friendly, create safety, and make you feel okay to be yourself.
- They’re okay with you being a little nervous. They help you build confidence and self-esteem.
- They want to hear what you have to say and actually encourage you to speak while they listen.
- They understand your primary health concerns and that life can be a factor. They help you invest in wellness approaches that you choose, not the other way around.
- An integrative health coach can empathize and support your journey and progress.
- They understand that YOU understand what’s going on with yourself and you just need a little help, accountability, or support.
- They care about your family, friends, children, and pets. They really do and know the names and events happening in your life.
- As great listeners, they use mirroring by repeating things you share creating clarity around your future.
- They catch subtle things that are important. The way you turn a nasty shade of green when asked if you like tomatoes or that you ball your hand into a fist when talking about your ex-mother-in-law.
- A great integrative coach introduces humor into conversations knowing that smiles are healing medicine for the mind and the body,
- They love you up. Simply they are non-judgmental and accept you just as you are. Guiding and helping you where you feel comfortable not forcing you or judging you.
- Finally, they help you breathe because they know life can make you feel overwhelmed and that we often forget to just slow down and breathe.
Integrative Health Coaches Mesh With Business Coaches
A good integrative health coach will hold you accountable for your commitments and they will offer ideas or suggestions that fit you; they don’t spend time ‘telling’ you what you should do better or differently.
In turn, they aren’t a business coach. I remember one of my business coaches a few years back. He wanted me to write a book every 3 months starting with taking my bestselling book, Unleashing Your Hidden Potential and ‘rewriting’ it into a book for women and then another ‘copy’ for men. His thinking was it gave me three books to market and grow my business. It didn’t matter to him that they would be technically the same book. It did matter to me. I found another business coach.
Health coaches aren’t business coaches nevertheless they mesh helping you have true success. A good business coach will have the same key ingredients of a good health coach. Both understand that the important component is you. Your happiness is essential to success in health, life, and business. Business coaches come and go a fully integrative health coach works with life and health.
