How Incredible Shrinking Women Keep the Weight Off

How Incredible Shrinking Women Keep the Weight Off
by Sunny Massad, Ph.D.

The National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) studies groups of people who lose at least 30 pounds and maintain that weight loss for at least one year. Most of their “successful losers” share the same tips as those who lost inches and maintained their new body shapes as a result of classes taken at the Hawaii Wellness Institute. Those tips include:
Consuming low-fat/low calorie versions of foods they love
Eating a high fiber breakfast
Participating in more physical activity
Practicing self-monitoring (such as weighing themselves or food journaling)
Incredible shrinking women cut portion sizes and find satisfying and delicious foods that are not full of fats and sugars but use healthy substitutes. An example might include a 120 calorie piece of chocolate peanut butter pie in place of the original 550 calorie recipe. “Knowing what I can buy, cook, and eat to look and feel my best has helped me make this way of eating into a way of life,” boasted Lisa, a successful loser.

Another big reason for success is exercise. Eighty percent of the successful losers exercised three or more times a week and listed it as their number one strategy for keeping weight down. It takes conscious effort to conjure the discipline and manage the time to change a lifetime of old habits. It can be done, but it’s not easy to do alone.

If You Only had One Month Left to Live

If You Only had One Month Left to Live
by Sunny Massad

“Ironically, after I have spent a year practicing dying,
the quality most noticeably enhanced is a new joy in life.”
Stephen Levine

Although our society is obsessed with a wide-ranging struggle against mortality, I have spent 17 years assisting both “terminally ill” children and adults to come to peace with the fact that they are dying. I am continually impressed with the radical life changes that some people make when faced with death. Some even report discovering their own “deathless nature” as they begin to appreciate each valued moment.

The most common regret, though, is not having expressed their deepest sentiments to or spent enough time with those whom they had so dearly loved. Many adults who lived by the notion that earning a livelihood to care for their family was their valuable contribution to their loved ones, came to the same conclusion that researchers have: that what kids and spouses want most is time and personal interaction. If you had only one month left to live, what would you do with your precious time? The answer to this question helps to reveal our most cherished values.

On his deathbed Socrates, and later the Dalai Lama, both recommended that we should “always be occupied in the practice of dying.” Stephen Levine, author of A Year to Live: How to Live this Year as if it Were Your Last, decided to dedicate a year of his life to living as if it were his last year on earth. He concluded that although he was exploring the fear of death, it was the fear of life that needed to be investigated first.

SUNNY MASSAD, PH.D., has worked very intimately with dying patients in the last hours and days of their lives to assist them with their transition, in ways similar to that of a midwife who assists with birth. She was a volunteer at HUGS, an organization that gives special care to children diagnosed with terminal illnesses, and a volunteer and teacher at Hospice Hawaii. Sunny has a gift for taking profoundly deep subjects and making them not only digestible but inviting.