If you’re not familiar with life coaching, think of your coach as someone who can help empower you to change your life in whatever way you feel is needed.

Do you want to lose weight?
Improve your relationships?
Get a job or a better job?
Get your stress levels under control?

You can listen live at BlogTalk Radio or you can listen to the archived version anytime.

Call-ins are welcome during the live show. The call in number is 714-868-0221.

Sign on early. There will be lots of great giveaways to those on the live show.

The FDA has issued seven warning letters to companies marketing HCG products labelled as homeopathic for weight loss.

The FDA threat has already affected the availability of HCG drops from a number of manufacturers fearful of being fined by the FDA for “false claims” that homeopathic HCG helps in weight control.

I won’t go into all the details here, but the effectiveness of HCG drops, at least those from recommended companies, is unquestionable. I have seen dozens of successes with people I’ve coached through the HCG diet using drops. I know it works. I also now these drops are safe when used in conjunction with a sensible diet — in my mind that is a minimum of 700 calories a day — as outlined in my book, The Super Simple HCG Diet.

The FDA warned that “The HCG products marketed over-the-counter are unproven to help with weight loss and are potentially dangerous even if taken as directed,” said Ilisa Bernstein, acting director of the Office of Compliance in FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

There are a multitude of reasons not to trust the FDA and my personal opinion is that the FDA exists to protect drug companies. There’s a new pharmaceutical anti-obesity drug in the FDA’s pipeline (Qnexa by Vivus) that lists heart problems and birth defects among its side effects. It’s also not coincidental that the FDA’s December warning letters were issued at precisely the time of year when many Americans begin diets.

If you are using HCG drops, you may still find them to be available, but as a precautionary measure, I suggest to you buy as much as you think you will need to reach your goal weight–just in case the brand you know is effective for you disappears.

I’d also like to hear about your successes with specific brands of drops. You’ll see the ones I recommend because I know they work, but I am sure there are many others out there that can help fill in any gaps caused by FDA threats. Since this situation is very fluid, please keep visiting my HCG website for the latest information.

Food should be pleasurable, but for many of us, the “stop” mechanism is broken. What’s wrong with a little cream puff or Swedish meatball? Nothing in itself. But can you stop at just one? I know that is extremely difficult for me and I suspect it may be for many of you.

If that’s the case, read on. Here are a few ways to keep off that “traditional” holiday five pounds:

1. Eat before you go. Have a salad or better yet, some soup, to fill you up before you’re faced with temptation.
2. Bring your own. What hostess would reject your offering of a beautifully prepared veggie or fruit tray? It’s a sneaky way to get yourself something healthy and keep you away from the high-calorie goodies.
3. Avoid the cheese and crackers (and the potatoes and gravy). At parties and dinners, skip the highest calorie and fat foods. Fill your plate with turkey and some veggies and enjoy the party!
4. Drink club soda. Alcoholic beverages can be very fattening, especially eggnog and other sweet drinks. Be satisfied with one glass of dry wine and then switch to club soda for the rest of the evening. You’ll feel and look better in the morning, since excessive alcohol intake also promotes wrinkly skin.
5. Indulge: Eat just one. By yourself. It’s the holidays, right? OK—Have just one. Put it on a plate and walk over to the corner by yourself. Conversation tends to foster mindless overconsumption. Enjoy your treat. Savor every morsel and be satisfied. Then re-join the party.
6. Stay away from the buffet table. I mean stay as far away physically and you can get and still be part of the party. That will quell the temptation.
7. Use tapping to stop cravings. If you’re not familiar with EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), go to http://www.thetapping solution.com and learn the basic technique. It’s a combination of acupressure and affirmation that shifts cravings and other physiological and emotional challenges (includes destructive self-talk) quickly.
8. Skip the hors d’oeuvres. At dinner parties, quietly abstain from those high-fat, high-calorie appetizers and enjoy your pre-dinner glass of wine or club soda. You can even a cheat a little by putting a few things on your plate and then ignoring them as you become engrossed in the conversation.
9. Pick yourself up and get back on the horse. If you slip and overindulge, don’t beat yourself up. Recriminations are the biggest diet saboteurs, so don’t indulge in them. Get back on your healthy eating plan the very next day. Don’t wait until the holidays are over. The damage will be far less.
10. Don’t punish yourself. The goes hand-in-hand with #9: If you go overboard, don’t try to survive on carrots and water the next day. That will just spark more cravings feelings of guilt and urges for stealth eating. Get back on a sensible eating plan, make some broth-based veggie soup, eat a salad for lunch and affirm that, yes, you can control your eating and keep your weight at the right levels for your entire life.

Kathleen Barnes is a natural health writer and health advocate. Her most recent book is The Super Simple HCG Diet (Square One, 2011). Find more of her weight management advice at http://www.supersimplehcgdiet.com.

Reserve your teleseminar seat now by e-mailing me: kathleen@kathleenbarnes.com.

I know. The holidays are coming and this time of year is a traditional time for overindulgence. Even our best intentions sometimes fall by the wayside.

I’ve done it and you can, too.

I got rid of 100 pounds of unwanted fat in 9 months with HCG and the accompanying diet. You can read all about it in my book, The Super Simple HCG Diet.

I’m now maintaining my weight with a program of sensible eating and exercise.

Whether you have 20, 40 or more pounds to shed, you can do it with The Super Simple HCG Diet.

Let’s get through the holidays, but it’s not too early to start thinking about the aftermath. If you’ve always wanted to shed those excess pounds, think of making a New Year’s resolution that will really work, that you can keep and that will have a positive impact on your health and longevity.

I’ll be starting new coaching groups and individual coaching sessions in early 2012. More info . . .

Start planning now, get everything ready and blast out of the box in 2012 with a weight control program that will surprise you with its simplicity, the health food you’ll eat and that fact that IT WORKS!

If you’ve searched HCG diet online and been daunted by how strict it is, not to worry. Kathleen has developed a simplified version that allows you stick to a healthy low-calorie, low-fat low-carb diet and achieve significant weight loss quickly and without strenuous exercise.

The HCG Diet works for men and women and is especially effective for women over 40.

Learn all about what you need to do to be successful and manage your weight for the rest of your life with the Super Simple HCG Diet.

If you’ve already done the HCG Diet, I welcome your participation. There will be time for questions.

During the teleseminar, you’ll get information about upcoming group coaching sessions and special pricing for those who attend the live webinar. There will be one replay of the recording scheduled a few days later.

Please feel free to pass this e-mail on to others who might be interested.

Register now by e-mailing me: kathleen@kathleenbarnes.com. I’ll send you back the call-in number right away.

To Register, e-mail Kathleen@KathleenBarnes.com

Want to get rid of excess weight? Have you tried every diet under the sun without success?

Now is the time for success with the Super Simple HCG Diet.

Kathleen Barnes has done it and you can, too. Kathleen, author of The Super Simple HCG Diet, got rid of 100 pounds of unwanted fat in 9 months with HCG and the accompanying diet.

Whether you have 20, 40 or more pounds to shed, you can do it with The Super Simple HCG Diet.

If you’ve searched HCG diet online and been daunted by how strict it is, not to worry. Kathleen has developed a simplified version that allows you stick to a healthy low-calorie, low-fat low-carb diet and achieve significant weight loss quickly and without strenuous exercise.

The HCG Diet works for men and women and is especially effective for women over 40.

Learn all about what you need to do to be successful and manage your weight for the rest of your life with the Super Simple HCG Diet.

During the webinar, you’ll get information about upcoming group coaching sessions and special pricing for those who attend the live webinar. There will be one replay of the recording scheduled a few days later.

Please feel free to pass this e-mail on to others who might be interested.

Space is limited, so please register early. To register, e-mail me: Kathleen@KathleenBarnes.com

I’m looking forward to connecting with you on Nov. 16!

Title: Super Simple HCG Diet introductory webinar with Kathleen Barnes
Date: Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2011
Time: 7:30 – 8:30 PM EDT

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

There are two problems here:

1. A process called “pinkwashing” defined by Breast Cancer Action as “a term in which the activities of companies and groups are criticized for positioning themselves as leaders in the struggle against breast cancer while engaging in practices that may be contributing to rising rates of the disease.

Cosmetics that contain carcinogenic substances including phthlates and bisphenol A (BPA) are frequently the subject of pinkwashing” criticism.

BMW, for example, gives $1 to Susan G. Komen for the Cure each time you test-drive one of their cars and Ford is touting a special edition Mustang with pink accents, even though pollutants found in car exhaust are linked to breast cancer.

2. Public relations campaign pressing women to have annual mammograms over the age of 40, despite a large body of research that shows mammograms deliver high levels of cancer-causing radiation (1,000 times the quantity in a chest X-ray) to sensitive breast tissue potentially aggravating small hidden cancerous growths.

For women who have had annual mammograms for more than ten years, more than half will get the dread phone call –in error — that they may in fact have breast cancer (called a false positive). Follow-ups will most often find them cancer-free at the cost of great emotional distress and, for many of them, disfiguring biopsies.

In addition, there is no proof that mammograms save lives when compared to breast cancer survival rates among women who perform monthly breast self-exams.

Safe alternative

Thermograms show patterns of heat and blood flow. They are a safe alternative to mammograms for a variety of reasons:

1. They are non–invasive. Nothing touches your body. There is no compression that may actually rupture growths, seeding the cancer.

2. There is no radiation.

3. A heat-sensing camera detects early formation of blood vessels that feed cancerous tumors and inflammation that may indicate breast cancer long before it approaches a dangerous size.

4. They can show signs of hormonal effects on the breasts that increase the risk of breast cancer before it actually occurs. We know that lifetime exposure to estrogen is the single greatest risk for breast cancer, so this is an important element of thermography.

5. They can be predictive, giving you as much as ten years head start to make lifestyle changes and be vigilant in monitoring your breast health to stop the growth of cancer cells.

Sisters, please don’t fall for the hype about mammograms. They could cost you your health or even your life. Instead, do your monthly breast self-exams and give serious consideration to including thermograms in your annual health regimen.

Find a thermography center near you.

I guess I was trying to find a polite way to say this is a bunch of bunk. Then this statement from Dr. Susan Lark, a physician I’ve long admired, crossed my desk. It says it all:

“Vitamins and Women’s Mortality–Don’t Believe the Negative Reports!!
Posted: 11 Oct 2011 09:31 AM PDT
“Yesterday, you may have seen some media reports about a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine that concluded that the use of multivitamins and some dietary supplements (vitamin B6, folic acid, iron, magnesium, zinc, and copper) increased the risk of death in older women.

“I was extremely disappointed to hear about this study and find it to be another unwarranted attack on the supplement industry. The fact of the matter is, our diets, no matter how good and well-balanced, simply do not meet our bodies’ nutritional needs. Conventional farming practices leave our fruits and vegetables lacking in nutrients, and thanks to our on-the-go lifestyles, processed and fast foods dominate many American women’s diets.

“Furthermore, this one study contradicts the literally THOUSANDS of earlier studies that have consistently shown the countless benefits of supplements for the reduction of breast cancer, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and other health problems that plague women. It also contradicts years of years of clinical findings by physicians like myself, who have seen great positive results in patients by prescribing nutritional supplement regimens to prevent and treat illness and disease.

“Of course, this one negative study comes on the heels of increasing attempts by the FDA to regulate the supplements that so many of us take every day to maintain our health and well-being. The timing of this study’s release is very suspicious!

“I, for one, will continue taking my multivitamin and other supplements with extreme confidence, and I suggest that you do the same. ”

I’m with you, Dr. Lark!

Great news for chocolate lovers: Two new studies show that those who regularly eat chocolate, especially dark chocolate, have a significantly lower risk of heart attack and stroke.

The first, a British study from Cambridge and published in the British Medical Journal, shows that those who eat the most chocolate have a 37% lower risk of heart disease and a 29% lower risk of stroke.

What’s more, the study says that chocolate eaters have a surprisingly lower risk of cardiometabolic disorders. That’s a fancy way of including diabetes and metabolic syndrome in the mix, both disease conditions that are triggered by excessive sugar and fat consumption and obesity.

The second study, which looked at dark chocolate consumption among more than 14,000 adults in Jordan, found at those who ate four dark chocolate bars a week had substantially lower blood pressure, even among those with a family history of high blood pressure.

High blood pressure is a major cause of heart attack and stroke, so the Jordanian study validates the British study in its finding that chocolate consumption can prevent these potentially deadly diseases.

Researchers theorize that the wealth of antioxidants found in chocolate is responsible for these happy results.

CAUTION: This does not mean it’s OK hog out on chocolate. Chocolate has a high sugar and fat content. A 1.5-ounce milk chocolate mini-bar (think or it as a two-biter) has 235 calories and 13 grams of fat. Dark chocolate is a better choice: It’s about 20% lower in calories and fat, but chocolate in any form cannot in any way be considered a diet food.

Moderation is still the key. An ounce a day should be more than sufficient and I think the Jordanians who chow down four chocolate bars a week may have lower blood pressure, but they are almost surely fatter.

My regular readers know that I have recently shed more than 100 pounds of unwanted fat. Chocolate has absolutely not been part of my regular eating program. However, now that I am phasing off the diet, I think there is reason to add a couple of ounces of dark dark chocolate to my diet each week and the addition of 200 to 300 calories on a weekly basis is a worthy investment for the health return I can get from it. (Oh yes, and there’s the element of pleasure, too. Chocolate stimulates the cannaboid receptors in the brain, producing a feeling of well-being.)

That “dark dark” chocolate was not a typo. If you’re a chocolate lover as I am, you’ll discover that really dark chocolate (60% cocoa or more) is much more satisfying than milk chocolate, so an ounce or so is sufficient. I know the milk chocolate and its high sugar content triggers sugar cravings for me and probably for many others, leading to taking in hundreds of unwanted and unneeded calories.

My neighbor likes to call her nightly Dove dark chocolate habit her ”heart medicine.” It turns out, she’s right!

I did it!

I’ve now shed 100 pounds. I can’t begin to tell you how good this feels on every level of my being.

Let me try: The other day I was carrying a 44-pound bag of dog food up the stairs. Now needless to say, I wasn’t very happy about it. Who would be? Then suddenly I realized just nine months ago, I was carrying 2.5 times (give or take) the weight of that bag on my body, lugging it around with every step I took. No wonder my energy is so good. -I don’t have to haul around all that extra weight anymore!

Intuitively, I have decided that I should taper off the HCG injections I have been using for nine months. It just seems like it would be difficult for my body to adjust to a sudden withdrawal of the hormone. A conversation with a doctor friend confirmed this ida. So I am now tapering down by 25 IU every two weeks until I am off it–ten more weeks.

I am increasing my calorie count to my maintenance level (about 1600 calories a day, up from the 700 I’ve been consuming throughout most of the time I’ve been on the diet). However, if you’ve read the early version of The Super Simple HCG Diet, you know that it is very important to continue to low carb for three more weeks as I taper off the diet. I think i will amend that to keep off the carbs at least until the ten-weeks phase out period is over. I have begun to understand that carbohydrates are probably my worst enemy.

Case in point: I ate a cookie a couple of weeks ago. Now you know that I don’t consider these occasional slips to be cause for a barrage of negative self-talk. That little cookie actually gave me some valuable insight when it set off a craving that astonished me. I wanted to eat 20 more.

Now tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and lettuce, stapels of my diet, don’t set off cravings ike. that. This time of year, I’m happy to eat at least one of each from garden every day. But eating one doesn’t make me want 20. It’s the sugar. Duh. I needed to experience that.

I’ve posted new photos on the website.

Blessings to everyone who is sharing this journey with me and those who are inspired to begin the weight management journey for themselves. Please let me hear from you and keep up the good work!

reprinted with permission from Jordan Rubin

There’s one thing you can count on when it comes to diet advice: it’s always changing. For years, I’ve promoted the benefits of eating whole foods sourced as close to nature as possible—not only from a healthy weight standpoint, but also for overall health. In the past, calorie counting was the primary message of conventional weight-loss strategies in our culture, but it finally seems to be catching on that it’s not just about calories—even in the diet industry. In fact, not all calories are created equally, so people are turning more to caloric quality, not quantity.

The trend now is that health- and weight-conscious people are less concerned about caloric restrictions and more concerned about nourishment. In fact, some market research among health- and weight-conscious people found that their top preferences were not for low-calorie foods, but for high-quality, fresh, nutritious and organic ingredients in their food.

Don’t get me wrong. Calories do count, but they’re not the only measuring stick. Eating nutrient-dense foods is weighing in much more heavily these days.

But what about those calories? We know that we get calories from the foods we eat and what we drink, but what happens after that? When we eat, the chemical processes that make up our metabolism break down the food and turn it into energy for us to use. Ah…there’s the key: metabolism. It’s how calories are metabolized that makes the difference.

The idea that “a calorie is a calorie” has been the basis of conventional weight loss strategies for years, but people are realizing that not all calories are alike. There may not seem to be a difference between 500 calories of Twinkies (for the Twinkie diet guy) or 500 calories of fresh veggies and fruits—until the calories are metabolized. The calories you eat are absorbed at varying rates and have differing amounts of protein, fats, carbs, fiber and other nutrients which translate into various complex metabolic signals controlling your weight.

For example, sugar from processed carbs enters your blood quickly, while sugar from legumes enters your blood slowly. Sugar going into your bloodstream all at once leaves the calories you’re not using to be stored as fat. If, however, sugar from another food is absorbed over time, then your body has more time to burn those calories and not store them as fat. In short, high-carb diets made up of rapidly absorbed sugars increase blood sugar and insulin levels, cause weight gain and increase cholesterol and triglycerides. That can lead to a fatty liver, which can cause even more weight gain.

Leading nutrition researchers, including Walter Willett, M.D. and his group from the Harvard School of Public Health, designed a study on calories and weight loss. Here’s what they found: one group was fed a low-fat diet—1,500 calories for women and 1,800 calories for men—while another group was fed a low-carb diet of the exact number of calories. A third group also consumed a low-carb diet, but ate 300 more calories a day than the other groups—1,800 for women and 2,100 for men.

The results? Over 12 weeks, the low-carb group eating the same number of calories as the low-fat group lost more weight—an average of 23 pounds compared to 17 pounds for the low-fat group. (That’s six more pounds of weight loss over 12 weeks.) The difference? The low-carb diet was mostly whole, unprocessed foods like lean animal protein, veggies, whole grains and beans. The low-fat group included more refined carbs. Both groups ate the same number of calories, but those who ate the whole, unprocessed foods had greater weight loss.

Here’s the kicker, though. The group eating 300 more calories a day with the low-carb diet lost more weight than those eating the low-fat diet—even though the extra 25,000 more calories they ate should have appeared as seven pounds of increased weight. They lost an average of 20 pounds more than the low-fat group who ate 25,000 fewer calories during those 12 weeks.

Calorie quality is more important than calorie quantity because the type of calories you eat has an impact on how your metabolism functions. Your diet—in the quality of calories you consume—impacts what your genes tell your metabolism to do.

You can see why calorie counting has been countered.

Find this article and much more here.