KIRSTIE ALLEY PACKS ON THE LBS & TONS MORE PLASTIC IS DUMPED IN OUR OCEANS . . . AND THE CONNECTION?

Updated since Kirstie’s appearance on Oprah yesterday.  Please check out our new Diet and Life Style page … if you are looking for help loosing weight and keeping it off!

 

What’s so funny?

Well not Kirstie’s weight gain or  thousands of tons of additional plastic contaminating our oceans and the environment every year.

I wrote about plastic pollution, Oprah’s weight gain, and New Year’s resolutions in January. You can read it here.  Now we faced with a similar dilemma.

American actress Kirstie Alley has revealed that her one desire right now is to lose 80 pounds so that she can wear a bikini again.

Alley, 58, said in an interview on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” on April 30 that she is ready to work out, and is sorry for the people she had let down.

Sadly, Kirstie ended up comparing herself to Valerie Bertinelli who has successfully kept the weight off.  Kirstie has made a classic mistake of comparing herself with someone who has a completely different body type.

Having once taught health and physical education as well as physiology of exercise I could do an entire column on diets and healthy life styles.  I won’t here, but let  me make a couple of points about weight gain before tying in our misuse of plastic to Kirstie’s increased girth.

For starters, when people say diets don’t work, I submit that it isn’t that diets don’t work. Diets, no matter how silly usually work.   If a person has lost the weight then the diet worked.  The problem is once the desired weight loss is achieved many/most people fall back into their old habits. Why?  They focused on the wrong  goal . . . they focused on the scale or a particular dress or suit size. Wrong goal!

The goal should never be just to reach a particular weight.  The goal should be to change your life style so the weight won’t return.  Changing your life style and changing habits takes time.  Researchers have found it may take up to 6-9 months to change a particular habit because of the way the pathways in our brains function.  If you recognize before you start that slipping up is NORMAL then  it is easier to forgive yourself if you slip back or forget.  This doesn’t make you a bad person.  Hear that Kristie?

If remembering to bring reusable bags when shopping is so difficult (and yes it is) changing the habits that packed on the pounds can be equally challenging. Remember, I said challenging… not impossible.  It takes commitment and a recognition that you will occasionally slip, but that’s part of the process.

I gave this advice to Oprah and I’m going to give this advice to Kirstie.  Ease up on yourself and start looking at ways to incorporate life style changes into your daily life. Those changes mean less food and more exercise . . . but you know that already.  Remember to focus on the right goal.