Dates for a Sweeter Life: Living Without Processed Sugar
My Dates with Dates: An Overview
Dates are one of the ways I live a sweeter life without processed sugar.
These are medjool dates, and they are my favorite. I have dates almost every day. Dates are calorie dense, so I have to be careful how many I have in a day.
I often add dates to my smoothies and blended salads. Dates add a delicious sweetness, enough so I can get more vegetables into my mix, especially leafy greens.
I have also discovered that I love dates as part of my soups. I often blend a few dates with a few nuts to add as a paste into my tomato-based soups to help add flavor.
Eat When Hungry: An Overview of My Transform Shadows Framework
My Framework for Personal Change
This is an overview of my Transform Shadows Framework. The top part helps me tell my story about the mental actions that I use to be successful in losing weight and maintaining weight loss.
These mental actions may help you guide change within yourself. I use these for my self-talk in many ways. Try them and see if they work for you:
NAME Your Shadows
FACE Your Shadows
UNDERSTAND Your Shadows
FIGHT Your Shadows
REFRAME Your Shadows
TRANSCEND Your Shadows
I wish I transcended my shadows all the time, but my life does not work that way. When things are easy and effortless in my lifestyle, those moments of transcendence are glorious.
Transforming My Shadows: My Framework for Making and Sustaining Personal Changes
Personal changes are hard to make – especially the changes that run counter to our human tendencies. Making these changes and sustaining them in my life are challenging processes.
When I decided to embark on a serious journey to improve my overall health, I knew I faced a 97% failure and 3% success rate for sustaining long-term weight loss.
I wanted to understand the roots of my failures. I wanted to learn from these failures in ways that led to the long-term successes that had eluded me all my life.
I am still learning to try to maintain long-term success. Doing that means understanding the blurry line between failures and successes where one is always part of the other.