New address at: www.treshatch.com

Hello Lovely Guest,

If you landed here curious about claiming ideal weight (without diets or programs), please visit my new blog and website at: www.treshatch.com.

At this new site you will find more FREE video clips, cooking segments, coaching tips, recipes, chocolate (yes!), permanent weight control tools, and lots of true concepts that bust myths and eliminate weight battles.  Each blog reveals how to cultivate a body that tells you what you need, when you need it, and in what proportion.  When you have balance, you increase your metabolism, honor your preferences, and eliminate binge or compulsive eating.  In a nutshell, you have ideal weight without struggle.  Cool huh.  C'mon over and check it out.

See you there: www.treshatch.com

Design Your LIfe

There comes a point in every one of my client’s transformations where they simply gasp in unbelief at the burden of change looming before them.  “You cannot seriously expect me to prep vegetables EVERY week!”  Or, “What do you mean I need to sleep more in order to speed up my metabolism?  I always get less than 7 hours.”

What is your sticking point?  What is the one thing you won’t do (or give up) that prevents you from progressing towards health and body peace?  We sometimes dig in our heels and simply refuse to do that thing.  And we usually have a VERY good reason for refusing.  Maybe you don’t like to cook, or maybe you don’t like to exercise.  Perhaps you have stated categorically that you DON’T like vegetables and you clearly don’t have enough time to cook a wholesome meal every day.

Bear in mind no matter how valid our reason for sticking to the status quo we are still designing our way right out of health and an ideal weight.  That’s right.  We design our lives for better or worse.  The ABSENCE of time to exercise is part of our life design--the one we put in place.  Processed food out of a box, can, freezer, or bag, for all its convenience, is also part of the design.  Truth is we create the life we want.  When we want an active healthy body that hums along with a fast metabolism and maintains an ideal weight we design our habits to result in that transformation.  No one is going to do it for us.  No one else can.  My beautiful friend Elizabeth Anderson, a renowned trainer and fitness guru, once told me she could tell a lot about a woman’s health by looking in her purse.  She went on to suggest a stash of raw nuts, protein, foil-pack tuna fish, hard-boiled eggs, fruit, chocolate, and water, generally belonged to someone with a fit body.  

When I cited this life choice with one former client she complained that it was too much trouble to pack her bags with sustainable whole foods.  She was too busy to think ahead like that.  It seemed to her to be a bit obsessive.  In addition, she hated to be in the kitchen and therefore would not be able to take a lunch to work every day.  Her conclusion was she needed to continue to eat fast food with her co-workers every day and find another way around that pesky weight problem.  Her chosen life design was firmly in place and unmovable because she forgot she was in charge.  She forgot she could BE who she wanted.  No one held a gun to her head requiring her to order French fries.  Eventually she realized she could be someone that planned ahead for lunch by packing the necessary fuel.  Was it more effort?  Yes.  Did she want to be someone that CLAIMED her health with her actions and choices?  Yes.  She decided the payoff from shopping, prepping, and cooking more meals with plant fuel and lean protein was worth it.  We have the freedom to honestly recognize where we have relinquished our own power and to retake the pilot’s chair.

Are there areas in your body management where you have designed healthy habits out of your life?  Do you wanna insert a new design?  Go ahead.  Enjoy.  Please feel free to share your discoveries along the way.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Tres Hatch is the author of Miracle Pill 10 Truths to Healthy, Thin, & Sexy.

Truthful Conversations

How much value do you give food?  No, I'm not talking about the fact that we must eat food to live.  I'm talking about attributing more value to food than to the way you want to feel.  Do you allow food to be more important than...you?  As I learned to have a connection with my body based on truth, and to trust in the perfect design of my body I discovered numerous instances where I had to remind myself (sometimes out loud): It's just food.  It has no feelings.  But, I do and my feelings matter.

Have you ever assigned more value to inanimate food than you do your own preferences?  For example, have you ever decided to have a hamburger at the 4th of July barbecue because hamburgers are a part of your family tradition on Independence Day?  But, what if you didn't really feel like a hamburger?  What if, in fact, it is hot outside and your true preference is for a tall drink of water and a bit of salad (and perhaps a taste of Jello because...there's always room for Jello)?  What conversation must take place in order to rationalize having something you don't really want or need?  In this instance, you perhaps convinced yourself if you don't have a hamburger it just won't FEEL like a celebration.  Or, perhaps you tell yourself it is special food, or you paid a lot for that, or it took a lot of work to prepare it and you don’t want to waste it.  There are lots of conversations that assign value to food.  They are all true.  But the moment we place greater value on the food than we do on ourselves, we end up eating the wrong food at the wrong time in the wrong amounts.  Multiplied by many years these incorrect values can result in a body out of balance and thoroughly ingrained habits based on lies.

Any time we override our true preference for what we want or how much we want, we rationalize with a conversation with ourselves.  Many times that conversation is based on false logic.  In this instance would the 4th of July become meaningless without a hamburger?  Probably not.  It might even be a better event if we end it feeling balanced and perfectly fueled.  Yet, without examining our rationalizations (conversations) we often assign greater value to a food than it really has.

A coaching client recently shared with me an incident involving lemon pie.  Her daughter-in-law knew the mother-in-law adored a turbo-tart lemon pie and so she brought it to my client on Sunday as a gift.  This was a food offering representing the daughter-in-law's time, effort, and love.  After the big family dinner she handed my client a big piece of the lovely pie.  My client felt obligated to eat some even though she was full and did not actually want it at that time.  She handled it beautifully by having a tiny bit--making the appropriate "oohs and ahhs"--and then saving the rest for later.  She later reflected on how different this episode was from past incidences which would have surely ended in her having a big piece, followed by polishing off the whole pie in the car on the ride home.  When I asked her what had changed she shared it was because she now has true conversations, such as: My daughter-in-law wants to feel her pie is appreciated, but she loves me and does not want me to stuff myself full of pie and be unwell and out of balance.  Out of compassion I will taste one bite and then have the pie when I am ready for it (not the other way around...because pie doesn't have feelings).  Food obligations rarely require us to actually become stuffed and out of balance.  We just need to have truthful conversations with ourselves.

Another client once told me she needed to have some of every dessert at the Sunday Church pot luck supper or she would offend the other church members.  She was adamant there would be injury and hurt feelings if she didn't gorge herself on their homemade desserts every Sunday.  I challenged her to call every one of those women that brought dessert to the previous supper and ask them to describe what my client had been wearing.  The result: of course not one of the women remembered what she had been wearing, nor had they paid any attention to what she had been eating.  Nobody cared whether or not she ate their bundt cake.  Once my client realized that she believed an untruth she no longer felt compulsive energy to binge.  The trigger was removed and she started to enjoy the Sunday Supper and eat what she needed--not what she imagined her Christian obligation to be.

As we roll into the middle of summer would you like to discover any instances where you misapply value to food?  Try it and please share your moments of truth.  I would love to hear them.

Get more out of your pot luck salads with this crazy-good recipe that incorporates kale with currants, walnuts, apple, and blue cheese.  For you kale haters this salad may convert you because the salt massage actually breaks down the kale, removing the sulfurous flavor common in cruciferous vegetables.  After a short massage the kale is left tasting crunchy, mild, and in perfect balance with the other contrasting flavors.  Enjoy.

Tres Hatch is the author of Miracle Pill 10 Truths to Healthy, Thin, &Sexy.  She is also a widely acclaimed speaker and cooking instructor.  For more information visit: www.miraclepilltruths.com.

Massaged Kale and Currant Salad

Makes 6 servings

Before my beautiful friend Tamara Roberts emailed me this recipe I felt much the same way most people feel about kale: yuk! Apart from kale chips, I had not experienced raw kale in a recipe that I truly enjoyed (despite its trending health properties and popularity in smoothies).  However, this recipe changed my mind.  “Massaging” salted kale ribbons actually breaks down the sulfurous cruciferous flavor and gentles the texture to a cross between romaine and Napa cabbage. If you are not a fan of blue cheese feel free to substitute Parmesan cheese for the Gorgonzola, or eliminate it altogether.  However, you won’t believe the perfect balance of salty, sweet, pungent, crunchy veggie, and rich cheese melding together in perhaps the world’s most perfect salad.  Feel free to make it a day ahead and keep it stored in the refrigerator in a sealed container. 

1 bunch kale (about 4 cups chopped)

½ tsp sea salt

¼ cup diced red onion

1/3 cup currants

1 cup diced apple, skin on (about ½ apple)

1/3 cup chopped walnuts, toasted

2 tablespoons unfiltered apple cider vinegar

1/3 cup Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

De-stem kale by pulling leaves away from the stems. Wash leaves. Spin or pat day.

Stack leaves, roll up, and cut into thin ribbons. Put kale in a large mixing bowl. Add salt, and massage it into the kale with your hands for 2 minutes.

Stir onions, currants, apple, and walnuts into kale. Dress with oil and vinegar. Taste for salt and vinegar, adding more if necessary. When at desired flavor, toss in cheese. The flavors in this salad will deepen for several days and still be great.

The True Value of Food

Since December I have been on the proverbial hamster wheel chanting, “…if I can only get to the end of the day, week, month.”  It seems that life has been a glorious pattern of lather, rinse, repeat.  Can you relate?  However, in broad-strokes there is a lesson to be gleaned by noticing the rhythms and patterns of everyday life.  In the end, an occasional push of motivation is not nearly as defining as the patterns we repeat over and over.  This is true in all areas of our lives, including: work, health, education,  relationships, money, etc.  Our overall trajectory is more greatly impacted by consistency than intensity.  My favorite mantra is: We are defined by what we regularly do, NOT what we occasionally do.  In regards to our eating habits, how full do you prefer to feel after a meal: 60%, 85%, even 110%?   Do you occasionally protect your true preference to feel just full enough to make you energized, or do you regularly ignore your own preference and eat more food than you want, buttons popping, aching gut, guilty conscience notwithstanding?  Notice the difference if it is the other way around (you normally have the exact right amount of food).  The reverse paradigm results in peace with your body and a life free of weight issues.

So, why do we so quickly surrender our own preferences?  And, how do we get away with this level of hostility over and over again without even becoming aware of the pattern?  Let’s look at the value we place on food to see if we can reveal false conversations with ourselves.  For instance, if your dinner is special does that make it more important than your preference to be in balance?  If it is expensive, exotic, took a long time to make, only available at this holiday dinner, etc., does that give it more value than your body?  If the true value of food is to keep mankind alive, does food have any value when you don’t need it?  Does that leftover doughnut have value because it is the exact kind you like—even if you already had plenty of treats today?  “But,” you say, “I don’t want to WASTE it.”  Ever said that?  If you are unlikely to die of starvation in the next 24 hours does that leftover peanut butter and jelly sandwich on your child’s plate have any value if you do not need it?  Be wasteful.  It is more honest.

Treats are our friends.  They are as important to our overall balance as salad.  Yet, when we attribute greater value to food than it actually has we subjugate our own value to an inanimate object.  Brownies have no feelings…but we do.  My “ah hah” moment came sixteen years ago on a boat.  After losing 110-pounds my husband and I went on a hard-earned Caribbean cruise to celebrate.  After spending the day hiking waterfalls in Jamaica and dining on lobster and flambéed Cherries Jubilee at dinner, I was exhausted and wished only for my pillow.  Over the loudspeaker the Captain announced that evening was the famous Midnight Chocolate Buffet.  Because I paid good money for the cruise (notice my untrue conversation with myself that placed more value on money than on my worth), and because I didn’t want to feel like I missed out on an once-in-a-lifetime event, I dutifully lined up at 11:45 p.m. to witness the greatest food spectacle of my life.  The ballroom had been converted to a sea of tables with artfully crafted chocolate desserts.  It was like a cartoon depiction of decadence come to life.  Every parfait, torte, cookie, truffle, fondue, cheesecake, muffin, and an endless array of chocolate-adorned confections loaded the linen-draped tables.   My husband excitedly asked me what I wanted to taste.  It was in that moment I realized the truth.  “I don’t want dessert right now.  I don't need it.  I’m tired and I really just want to sleep,” I told him.  So, instead of bingeing on chocolate at midnight, I took my time selecting a plate of the treats I MOST wanted to try.  I handed the plate to a trusted waiter we had become acquainted with and asked him to store it until I was ready for it.  

The next day while I was lounging by the pool feeling hungry for a snack he brought me the plate.  I had a bite of each, and two bites of the things that were worthy of me.  Perfectly sated, I felt completely balanced and happy.   Food has value only when I need it—not when the food needs me. 
 

Today can you discover a false conversation in which you attribute greater value to food than it really has?  Can you adjust your choices to reflect your true preferences of how you want to feel, look, and live?  Please feel free to share your feedback.

Tres Hatch is the author of Miracle Pill 10 Truths to Healthy, Thin, & Sexy.

To celebrate chocolate and its value when I need it, I want to share with you the most blissful hot fudge recipe I have ever encountered.  

Hot Fudge Sauce

Gourmet | February 2004

This thick, glossy sauce makes chocolate syrup taste ho-hum. It's wonderful poured over any flavor of ice cream to create a luscious hot fudge sundae. Yield: Makes about 2 cups Active Time: 10 min Total Time: 30 min 2/3 cup heavy cream 1/2 cup light corn syrup 1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar 1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 6 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), finely chopped 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 teaspoon vanilla Bring cream, corn syrup, sugar, cocoa, salt, and half of chocolate to a boil in a 1 to 1 1/2-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat, stirring, until chocolate is melted. Reduce heat and cook at a low boil, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes, then remove from heat. Add butter, vanilla, and remaining chocolate and stir until smooth. Cool sauce to warm before serving. Cooks' note: Sauce can be made 1 week ahead and cooled completely, then chilled in an airtight container or jar. Reheat before using.