Recent Articles | DianePetrella.com

Nov

5 Tips to Thrive This Holiday Season

The true spirit of the holiday season is meant to fill you with appreciation and love. Instead, it is sometimes fraught with the emotional and financial stress of excessive holiday shopping, additional time draining responsibilities, and added food challenges with the abundance of sweets and special meals.

No need to let holiday stress derail your weight loss plans. Here are five tips to stay focused on what matters most so you can enjoy the season while remaining true to your journey. (more…)

Nov

Your Object of Inspiration

Diane Petrella

As a steady and gentle reminder to remain focused on your weight release goals, find a meaningful object to inspire you and help you feel grounded. For example, a bracelet with a special phrase or symbol, an affirmation card kept in your purse, or a religious or spiritual symbol to fit in your pocket.

I keep many inspiring objects around me and here is one of my favorites. I love stones. I especially love this one and had a hole drilled in it years ago so I could use it as a pendant. Every time I attend a spiritual retreat or workshop, I intentionally wear this so it absorbs the uplifting energy of what I learn. I find it soothing and grounding to simply rub and feel it’s smooth surface. When I’m tense, I make a point to hold it and take a deep breath.

Take a special object you already own, or set your intention to find just the right one and trust the Universe to bring it your way. Keep it accessible as an object of inspiration, strength and as an anchor to ground you. Use this to help you stay focused on your weight release goals especially during those food challenges unique to the holiday season.

What will you use as your object of inspiration? Please share below!

Oct

Ho’ oponopono for Emotional Eating

Diane Petrella

If you struggle with emotional eating, I’m sure you know that quality nutrition, mindful eating, and exercise—while important for a healthy relationship with your body and food—aren’t enough to control those forces within that contribute to emotional eating.

This is because emotional eating isn’t only about making peace with food and your body.

It’s about making peace with your feelings.

Compulsive behaviors and addictions stem from a difficulty experiencing and moving through painful feelings. While there are differing opinions about whether you can be physically addicted to certain foods, it’s generally accepted that emotional eating reflects a psychological addiction. Food becomes the means to avoid, deny, or otherwise cope with painful emotions.

When you experience a trigger that causes you to turn to food, chances are that trigger brought to the surface deeper feelings that already were inside you.

For example, after a tense phone call with her sister, my client Susan numbed her anger with a heaping bowl of ice cream. While the phone call itself may have been difficult, it most likely brought to the surface other times she experienced similar anger. Otherwise, she could have let it go more easily.

Susan will continue to feel easily triggered, and perhaps keep turning to food to cope, until the energy of that deeper anger is neutralized and released from inside of her.

When you release painful emotions at their deepest level, external triggers in your life no longer have the same power over you.

A Spiritual Approach

The Hawaiian problem solving and healing practice of Ho’ oponopono is a process of forgiveness and release. It helps you connect with your inner Divinity. By releasing the heaviness of overwhelming and painful emotions you more easily can hear Divine inspiration guiding you to live your highest and best life. When used for emotional eating, Ho’oponopono can help ground and calm you. It also helps release the deeper roots of your overwhelming feelings that trigger you to turn to food.

Your Inner Child

From a psychological perspective, conscious— and subconscious—memories of painful childhood experiences continue to be activated today unless they are resolved and released. Your inner child holds the memories of these past painful experiences within your mind, body, and spirit. With emotional eating, the intense urge to eat reflects the pain of your inner child (and your nervous system) calling out for your love and attention. Ho’ oponopono helps neutralize and release those painful emotional energies carried by your inner child. (more…)

Jul

Lose Weight with Ease by Appreciating Your Good

Diane Petrella

“When you consider yourself valuable you will take care of yourself in all ways that are necessary.”
M. Scott Peck

Have you noticed how connected your weight loss efforts are to how you feel about yourself? The most essential ingredient for permanent weight loss has nothing to do with food, exercise or how mindfully you eat. While these are important, they are not as important as this:

Your self-worth.

How we feel about ourselves impacts everything we do. When we feel good about ourselves, taking a brisk walk or eating nutritious foods feels easy. We’re drawn to healthy choices because they mirror our healthy mind-set.

When we feel unworthy, however, the heaviness of that emotional state leads us to make less than healthy choices. Unless we interrupt the cycle, those choices tend to reinforce feeling worthless. For example, if you’re upset with yourself for overeating, you may feel “What’s the point?” and feed your disappointment with chocolate chip cookies. This negative cycle continues with guilt and self-blame for eating the cookies. (more…)

Jun

Honor Your Body with Exercise

Diane Petrella

Our bodies need to move! If we don’t challenge our bodies physically, they stagnate. They adapt to a familiar routine and reach a fitness plateau. As their caretakers, we need to encourage our bodies to reach their true potential. We can do this by routinely challenging our bodies to move beyond their comfort zone.

For some people, the word exercise implies grueling, hard work. It doesn’t have to be this way! If you change your mind-set, you’ll discover the joy, (yes joy!), associated with simply moving your body.

Your body is your ultimate life partner. It needs you to keep physically challenging it so it functions efficiently and is the best partner it can be for you. In the same way a child feels secure when she knows her parents are sensitive to her needs, your body needs to know you will honor its needs for proper nutrition, rest, and movement so it feels secure with you, too. (more…)

May

Use Affirmations for Weight Loss Success

Diane Petrella

People often ask me if saying affirmations really “works.” I respond, “If you think they work, they will and if you think they won’t, they won’t. But no matter what you’re thinking, your thinking is working.”

Let me explain.

An affirmation is simply anything you say or think. We affirm what we expect in life all the time with our thoughts and beliefs. The Universe then brings back to us experiences that match the vibration of those thoughts.

For example, if you believe releasing weight is difficult and grueling, it will be. If you believe it is challenging at times but achievable, it will be. Your thoughts about releasing weight create the quality of your journey. They either help you succeed or hold you back.

Using affirmations simply means deliberately taking charge of your thoughts. When used with other strategies, affirmations help you create a confident mind-set for success. (more…)

Feb

Listen to Your Body’s Wisdom

Diane Petrella

You’ve probably read many articles and books about the best ways to release weight. What you’ve learned may be sound advice. But do you know you already have all the guidance you need to help you release weight?

That guidance is your own body.

Our bodies have an inner wisdom that is readily available to us when we take the time to listen. I like to think of this wisdom as the voice of my spiritual consciousness, or my Higher Self. As a child I felt a connection with my body and somehow learned to communicate with it.

It was my way of talking to God.
(more…)

Feb

My New Yoga Practice

Diane Petrella

I started a yoga class today. My work-out routine normally includes twice weekly strength training and cardio three times a week. I’ve been to plenty of yoga classes over the years but with a busy schedule I never managed to practice yoga on a regular basis.

As I reached middle age (my husband likes to remind me that at 56 I’m actually beyond middle age. Thank you, Carl.), I’ve heard my body’s plea to offer it more gentle, loving care.

I searched quite a while for a yoga class that worked. Anything I found was either too far, too hot, or too powerful. (Excuse me, but power yoga is an oxymoron.) My health club offered several yoga classes but somehow I couldn’t reconcile practicing yoga in the same place I ran on a treadmill, swung kettle bells, and strengthened my glutes. It didn’t seem to fit. And besides, there were no candles, no Buddhas, and no lotus flowers.

I was a yoga snob. (more…)

Jan

My Theme For 2012

Diane Petrella

I love rituals!

Every year I complete my thank you/release/intention process for the New Year. I also pick a theme that becomes the context for my personal growth. A yearly theme becomes my guiding light for decisions I make, projects I’m working on and how I want to evolve. It’s the big picture that carries me through life’s ups and downs. Like a gentle voice in the background, my theme keeps me on track.

For 2012 my theme is:

INSPIRATION

I want to live a more inspired life. I think I’m pretty good at this already. I meditate daily because I know this is a powerful practice for accessing my intuition. I trust my instincts and listen to my inner guidance.

But I can be better at this. (more…)

Dec

Welcoming the New Year!

Diane Petrella

Here’s my favorite New Year’s ritual that has become my trusted pathway to releasing the old and embracing the new.

Get yourself cozy and comfortable with pen and paper. A cup of soothing tea and a blazing fire also helps.

1) Offer Thanks

Write down all the things you are thankful for in 2011. Let the Universe know how much you appreciate all the gifts you have received. This is important because offering thanks honors the giver as well as the gift. The Universe appreciates this and responds by giving you more. (more…)