Cindi's Stressful Week
Dear Dr. Gray,
This week was a hard week to stay focused. I really don't have a problem staying focused on exercise - I'm completely dedicated to 6 days a week, taking Sunday off and never missing any other day!
The diet is really not a problem either. I eat no refined sugar or breads, no hydrogenated oils - I stick to close to the source, natural foods, low fat meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, and whole grain bread (once a day).
I think my challenge is staying mentally focused on what's important in my life. I get so caught up in worrying about things that could happen, that I do not always get to enjoy all of the great blessings that are around me. You could say I was a stress case this week!
After talking with you I definitely felt better. Going through the exercises with you really helped me to understand why I feel the way I do and to know what to do about it. It also was a great release just to really get at what was wrong and tell somebody about it.
When you know exactly what is bothering you, and why it makes you act the way you do, it makes it a lot easier to deal with and take care of!
Hopefully I can have a much better week and have no dark train detours! I really feel refreshed and positive!
Many Thanks!
Maribeth: Thank you again for this chance to speak with you and ask you questions.
This has been a very busy time. I'm working a lot of hours, getting ready to
move into my first home and planning my wedding for next year. But I have
to thank you from the bottom of my heart for this chance to help me
see the possiblities in my life. I've finally "GOT IT" in regards to getting my
diet under control. This is very strange to me coming from a girl who was
eating anywhere from 2500 to 5000 calories sometimes a day.
The simplicity of your program has enabled even someone as hard headed
and stubborn as me to see how taking control of what I do to my body is
the most important thing. Without doing so all would truly be worthless.
This week has been okay with my eating pattern but I seem to be sore in
my legs. I have not been doing anything too hard but your tape and walking
about three times a week . Any thought on what that may be from?
Thank you again and I look forward to speaking to you soon.
Dr. Gray: You will receive the new version of the Isoflex exercises this week. Your soreness probably comes from straining in some of the "power moves". In the new routine I made a few adjustments to make it much easier and more effective. The soreness should go away very quickly. Remember this program is designed to stimulate healthy hormones, increase the flow of cerebral spinal fluid into the brain and stimulate the lymphatic system to cleanse the body. The "power moves" towards the end of the set are designed to tone the muscles and therefore do not need to be as intense. I have people in their nineties doing these new exercises without any soreness. If one is an athlete and in shape then these exercises serve as an excellent warmup. For most people however, to achieve optimal brain chemistry and fat burning these easy movements are most effective. For maximum benefits do the second DVD which has the forty-five minute "extended routine." In this routine the last ten minutes including the seven bounce and shake movements are the most important for fat burning. Let me know when the soreness goes away.
Cindi's Plateau
Cindi: The first month is already over with and it flew by. I have been doing great, losing fifteen pounds, and 32.5 inches (six weeks total)! However, the last two weeks, I have reached a plateau. I am wondering if that is normal and what to do about it. I think that trying the two day fast is the thing to do, but I wanted your opinion. If there are any other good tricks for getting out of this rut, please let me know.
Dr. Gray: A two day cleanse would be great. Having three shakes a day for two days is generally very easy. It should do the trick. Let us know what happens.
By giving your body a rest from digesting solid foods, your liver can do a little house cleaning. Remember to drink lots of water and if possible do the 45 minutes of Isoflex once in the morning and once in the afternoon. This will accelerate the process and make it easier to finish the cleanse. We will be sending you some Aquarius Oxygenated water. It will also speed up the process and minimize any detox symptoms. During this time make sure you make a cleansing drink in the morning with lemon and aloe vera.
How do I eat right and exercise this time of year?
Maribeth: I am in the middle of moving, and at the same time I work in retail, and
it is the busy season! It is difficult to find any time for myself, and even challenging right now to find time for all of my exercise, or to eat as well as I would like. I know how important these things are! How do I make time to eat right and exercise, when I am working so hard and I have so many other time commitments and pressures?
Dr. Gray: The hoidays are the most stressful time for everyone and people usually put on the pounds only to then work on releasing them in January. Take this into account so that you don't feel guilty for not being diligent in the process.
Foods or Supplements to help with Anxiety?
Cindi: Is there anything that I can take food or supplement wise that helps with stress or anxiety?
Dr. Gray: One of the best suppliments for anxiety is lithium orotate. It is in your super minerals mixture. Simply double the dose and it will make a difference. Also do the fat burning exercises before sleep. By stimlating fat burning before sleep your body will get more oxygen to recharge in the night.
The best thing to do is focus on what makes the biggest difference. Make sure you take your super minerals in the morning and afternoon. Have a shake for breakfast and at least do five to ten minutes of bounce and shake before drinking. This is the most important thing. Whenever you are rushing and at home give yourself more time by replacing a meal with a shake. To cope with stress more effectively you can also do five or ten minutes of bounce and shake before bed. This will help lower cortisol levels and encourage fat burning in your sleep.
Update From Cindi
It has now been about three months since I initially started the Mars-Venus program. Since then I have made tremendous progress, and let me tell you...I know progress! I am a diet junkie, meaning I have tried just about every program there is! I have lost almost 30 pounds, but more than that, I've lost over 60 inches! Can you believe it? I know I wouldn't if I heard it, but it's true. The most amazing thing is the way the inches are coming off! Never before have I lost so much in my butt and thigh area. I once thought that I was doomed to be shaped like a pear forever but my body seems to be evening itself out!
Dr. Gray explained the way this program works is by eating non-processed, healthy foods your body stores and releases fat in a much better way. I guess I never realized that all the non-fat and low-fat diets I was doing were actually making me look worse. To tell you the truth, I was skeptical at first but now that I see the results I am grateful!
Another great thing about this diet is my stress level. I tend to be a perfectionist, so any diet I have been on has been a great stress in my life. The great thing about the Mars-Venus plan is that it is doable everyday. The shake is easy and good! There is not any strict calorie restriction and Dr. Gray doesn't make you feel highly pressured or stressed about the program. I was not aware that there is so much brain chemistry involved in losing weight, but he has taught us that the hormones your brain releases play a big part in your weight loss.
This has definitely been a life changing experience that I have learned so much from!
Thanks so much!
Cindi Franklin
Cindi & Dr. Gray
Cindi: I'm sticking on my diet and doing my exercises, but I had a real stressful week, and I'm wondering if you have any pointers? Are there any foods that can trigger certain things? Or is there anything that I can do to bring the stress down a little bit?
Dr. Gray: You sound a little overwhelmed and pressured right now. As you start to lose weight, issues that have been held down start to come back up. Life just seems to be more chaotic. Not that life isn't more chaotic this week, but it always seems to reflect the emotional state that we're in. What happens is that we start to relax and start to feel better; our emotional issues start to come up. My solution is to use the "Little Blue Box", the Nine Day Relationship Makeover. As soon as you start doing the exercises at night, they will start to process the limbic system of the brain, and other parts of the brain that start to become over excited as the brain starts to heal.
Cindi: So what I'm feeling is normal? I've been thinking, "What is wrong with me? I don't know! I can tell on the days that I'm stressed out that I don't lose as much, so I know that it has a direct connection.
Dr. Gray: Tell me what your progress was before in terms of how many pounds you lost?
Cindi: This week I lost two pounds, but before I was losing a lot more every week.
Dr. Gray: That's good progress. But because you lost so much weight very efficiently and very effectively, that was a sign that your body was really responding to the nutrients. When your cortisol levels start to go down, your brain goes into a mode of repairing itself. Connecting different parts together to become more complete, and that will tend to make the brain more aware of unresolved issues, so they start coming up. But when unresolved issues start coming up, they don't say, "Hi! I'm your unresolved issue about the time when you were six years old and someone was mean to you." Instead they come up and they say, "Today is awful, this person is mistreating me", or "I'm not doing the right thing", or, "I feel terrible, I should have done it this way". We tend to put it in present time. What frees the brain is when you can relax the brain and feel these feelings that we're having, and put it in a context where those feelings make sense. Which would be remembering times in your past when you felt stressed. The way we start, and this is the basic principle, is to identify what's bothering you in present time. Describe something that's not comfortable for you. It is good when the unresolved fears of childhood issues and traumas and so forth come up!
The most important thing you have control over is how you FEEL about everything. That's where you want to regain your control; it's how you feel about it. That happens by identifying the feeling, and then processing the feeling. You can see where all of those feelings come from now. One of the things that happens when you start feeling out of control is you start eating unhealthy foods, but more importantly, when you are eating unhealthy foods, it means your cortisol levels are going back up to suppress all those uncomfortable feelings. But because now you are producing more serotonin, your cortisol levels aren't going as high, so those feelings have a chance to surface and be resolved. (Every night before you go to bed you can do those exercises.) Now we are getting to the root of the whole reason why you put on weight. It is because your cortisol levels are elevated, and your body can't burn fat when your cortisol levels are elevated.
You started to lose all of that weight; this whole program helped you to lower the cortisol levels. When your brain works to repair its self, the levels start to come back up, stress starts to come up, cortisol levels are elevated, and the cycle of eating for comfort during periods of stress continues …a lot of it is just how you are viewing your life. As you do the exercises you will feel lighter.
This is what happens to people who go on a diet. They go on a diet, and the brain starts getting healthier, there is more serotonin, which now means that the brain can now go out of the repression mode, and then issues start coming up to be processed and healed. When people are not aware of the feelings that surface during the healing process, or their source, they might interpret the healing brain as increased stress, and the dieter often at that point reaches for a moment of comfort from a 'dependable' food source. When they start to over eat, they get a spike, and then the cortisol levels start elevating again. When you are eating the right amount of food, that's when your body starts healing itself, but when you are over eating, your body can't be in a healing mode, it's trying to process all of that extra food. When you start eating the right amount of food for your body, your body will go into a healing mode. And one of the aspects of 'healing mode' is healing the brain, and then these issues start coming up. See it as a healthy part of healing, but also know that just like winter comes, we get cold, but we can put heaters on in the house, and curtains on the windows, and get double pane glass! It doesn't have to topple us at all, and it can all go very smooth if we have all the right cushioning. That is what the shakes are, and the super minerals, (and the little blue box, the Nine Day Relationship Makeover.)
Maribeth & Dr. Gray
Maribeth: I used to get headaches quite frequently, but I have noticed since I started this program, I hardly ever get headaches. I was taking a couple of Motrin easily every other day.
Dr. Gray: That is such good news!
Maribeth: It's been really great! I just now realize that normally I'm always buying a bottle when I go grocery shopping on the weekends, and I haven't bought one, I have the same bottle that I started out with three weeks ago!
Dr. Gray: I've seen it with the shake, but it's not just the shake, it's that you are doing the exercises everyday, the mild exercises that don't produce adrenaline. If you produce adrenaline, you can also get headaches. But if you stay in the fat burning mode, the headaches go away! That's what you've been doing!
Maribeth: It seems like it's too simple! It's the only diet that I've ever been on that I really enjoy!
Dr. Gray: You can't keep extreme programs in your life, that's why you want to keep primarily relying on just thinking in terms of how nice life is to have a quick little shake for breakfast! Then, anytime you miss breakfast foods, you can have that for lunch. But don't eat it first thing in the morning. And don't drink the shake first thing in the morning. You want to always make sure that your body is warmed up before you drink a shake, because it's harder for your cells to assimilate the protein, and burn it, unless you have exercised first. People don't even want to eat protein sometimes because the body just can't handle proteins unless your muscles are warm. That's why at least one of the 15-minute routines needs to be done before taking a shake; otherwise it won't have the same effectiveness.
For the same reason that people don't want to eat protein first thing in the morning, they often don't feel like exercising when they wake up in the morning. The reason people don't do those things at home on the regular basis, (and it really is the majority of the people who don't), is because they don't emphasize warming up the muscles first before they even think about doing the more difficult things. It's like the same thing that you are doing with diet, which is, "Well, just let me have some shakes, and I'm not going to think about the difficult thing, which is depriving myself of meals, let me just take the shake and not worry about it." The same thing is what I'll do in the morning sometimes when I'm stiff, I'll get up, and I'll go, "Okay, I really don't feel like exercising, but at least let me do five minutes of bounce and shake and then see what I feel like doing!". And that's the way I trick my body into doing the whole exercising thing. I was like the anti-exercise person until I discovered these real easy exercises. But when you are really young, like in your twenties, there is more collagen, more circulation, and there's more flexibility. And you can get up and do yoga! But even still in my 'Yogi days' many times I just dreaded it, and would often skip it; just because my muscles were cold! If somebody would have told me, "Go bounce and shake", then I would be able to start doing them again. In retrospect, that is the reason I use to take long, long showers, which also heats up your muscles. Then you start feeling alive again. Now that I do the bounce and shake before my showers, I take short showers!