‘If you give someone a fish, you feed them for the day. Teaching them to fish and you will feed them for their lifetime.’

Surprise, surprise, it’s another proverb from me this month. I’m sure whoever first said this never knew how right they were about life after weight loss surgery! Of all things, they mention the great quality protein of fish rather than those harder to tolerate options of steak, pork or chicken breast which many of you may battle with. Anyway, where am I going with all this?

Hair loss after bariatric surgery is very common and can be very stressful. Most patients want to achieve great weight loss results and still have thick hair.

Can you see that these three pictures are the same but different? What’s the same? What’s different? To state the obvious, this chap gets more complete as we go from the skeleton, to the skeleton with muscle, and finally to the skeleton with muscle, skin and clothing. Well, let’s say he’s dressed for the pool rather than the upcoming WLS Symposium if you catch my drift. My point today is about the difference in quality or completeness of proteins in your eating pattern – in other words the density of your proteins.

y nickname is ‘Save the Day Sam.’ I can hide in your locker at work, in your handbag/man-bag, or sleep in the glovebox of your car. I’m generally fine without needing refrigeration, and some might say another nickname is ‘Plain Jane’ as I’m quite boring. I’m okay with that because I’ve been planned to save the day when I need to, but sit quietly every other day.

As New Zealand is now in what we affectionately term Lockdown 2.0 - whether you are at Level 2 or Level 3 - most of us have said or written the words ”this time it will be different”.  I know I have!

This year we have talked about all manner of good things that you can do for yourself so I am back again this month with another - and this one is a doozy.  So much so that it is a key part of my 12 Days of You Project.

Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde, Batman or The Joker, Peter Pan or Captain Hook – there’s ‘good’ and ‘evil’ out there everywhere. Some might say I’m even ‘evil’ in their weight loss journey because of the foods I encourage them to avoid! I hope not, especially as I write about artificial sweeteners today and ask you if they are ‘good’ or ‘evil’ in your journey?

My story started about five or so years ago. I feeling very depressed and the world was feeling a pretty dark place. I marched into my GP and said I need counselling, a green prescription, happy pills and a referral through to the hospital for weight loss surgery.

Isn’t life just great at throwing us curve balls to try and upset our routine? This latest one with Covid has sure been one right out of the bag. In saying that, it looks like the curve’s flattened for now and we can hopefully pick up life from where we left off before lockdown. I sincerely hope everyone’s doing okay and keeping well. I say that because any curve ball can be enough for giving the mind an inch and it taking a mile in terms of letting healthy habits slip – for example, with supplements…

I was having a think about what to write about for this month’s blog and newsletter when I received, in very quick succession, no less than five “help me” messages from people battling the terrible COVID-3.

What springs to mind when you hear those words? I’m guilty at times – my friends will ask me about the weather but I’m a million miles away thinking about everything I want or need to do by the end of the weekend. I’m away with the fairies or quite simply not present and my mind is elsewhere. As you may know, a distracted mind can affect your dietary behaviour, so today I’d like to put a new spin on our classic phrase. I want to use drinks for doing that, and as usual, I’ll start with some questions…

One of the great Lockdown of 2020 jokes is that some of us have said we should be practising physical distancing from the fridge. And I doubt there are very few people in the world who could honestly say that they haven’t had a few extra snacks (or done some extra baking) over the last few weeks.

More than a year ago I answered the call to share my WLS story. Pretty much daily I have berated, shamed, chastised myself for not delivering what I said I would. I have felt self induced fear, anxiety and panic as each newsletter was due and I had the remnants of another partially written, yet failed attempt to write the ‘perfect’ story. I’m a recovering perfectionist who’s learning to get comfortable with it being okay to be ‘good enough’.

Hello all. This blog post is aimed at motivating you to maintain your weight while we’re in lockdown and preparing and guiding you through this phase with a bit of a protection plan.

I hope you’re doing okay so far. The theme of this blog is that “we’re all in this together,” and I’d like to share some thoughts with you to help with beating back old habits while you’re in the process of building new ones – even in lockdown. The main aim is weight maintenance right now.

It is 100% normal and okay to get frustrated (sometimes often) about where we are at in our health and fitness journeys. The question “am I doing enough?” is one that we ask ourselves a lot. It’s often combined with “am I exercising enough?”, “am I losing the correct amount of weight” and “am I doing this right?”.

So Often We Think Of Health, And Getting Healthy, As ‘Things That I Must Do Less Of’.

When we have been through something as big as weight loss surgery and all that life after entails, it is very easy to get into a mindset of “I can’t have that” or “I am not allowed that”.

I’m writing today post Christmas and in the middle of the summer break. I don’t know about you, but I know I’m enjoying some rest and relaxation to recharge for another exciting year ahead. But, does the festive season start you worrying about a word that starts with ‘re’ and sounds a little bit like brain? I’m thinking regain, and I’m picking on a time in the year I see it start happening quite easily…

With December just around the corner, we thought we could continue on the teachings of our Retreat and use this fun activity of making an advent calendar to practice gratitude.

Well, it’s neither. but you might be asking…is it a seed or is it a grain? Is it a carbohydrate or is it a protein? Right now, it’s getting called a super-food, and so today I’m thinking all about the curious case of quinoa (pronounced keen-wah)…

For me, it reminds me of Sarah Ulmer winning NZ’s first ever gold medal at the Athens Olympics. Speaking of gold medals, was that the first thing that came to your mind? Maybe you were thinking of medals in general…and actually gold, silver and bronze medals are along my line of thinking today…