PREFACE: The Home page you have just read, is the content of the booklet you will receive when you order the justBstill bracelet. On this website, justBstill parts 1-3 are the expanded content of the booklet that includes the research of the justBstill Healthy Lifestyle method. The booklet verbage is in red, and the expanded content is the research used to define the justBstill Healthy Lifestyle method. Most books can be summarized into several paragraphs, yet most books have you, the reader, read on and on to the point of ad nauseum!
How many weight loss books do you own? Have you ever bought a book, flipped through it then put it down? Stop buying diet books! Diets don’t work, and unread books are wasting your money. Wearing the justBstill bracelet is like carrying a lifestyle book around with you daily. Can you carry a diet book with you? The only book you should carry with you is a journal to record your food intake and mindful eating moments.
Becoming healthy is a multi-faceted process, just like the beads on the justBstill bracelet. I have broken down the steps here into 3 parts. Try one part at a time. Too many steps at once will cause you to become stressed. And you know what that means!
PART ONE
You just made a choice to travel down the path of new beginnings and a healthier life. I'm Shirley Kessel, and I created the just B still bracelet to help women quiet their minds and realize their weight-loss goals for good.
It’s time to get real about the obesity epidemic in our country. Right now you have a choice about how you will continue to live your life. 2/3 of Americans are overweight! Heart disease is the #1 killer in our country. Stress and obesity are directly related to heart disease; stress causes overeating. What are the consequences of this continued lifestyle you have chosen for yourself? What impact will wearing a lifestyle bracelet have on your life?
Stillness is the missing link to a healthier lifestyle. Decide what justBstill means to you. Once you define justBstill for yourself, you can use the methods on this website to guide you. My friend Sue says, being still means:
"Sit, Think, Imagine, Loving Life."
Read on, and keep an open mind and heart.
AT THIS MOMENT YOU have a choice: which person are you going to be?
Scenario 1: You hop onto your bike, and ride into town; you stop at the farmer’s market to pick up produce for dinner. There you see an old friend, and decide to meet for tennis and lunch next week. You compare notes on the beautiful Art Show on display at the new gallery in town.
Scenario 2: You get into your car; slowly you close the door because your arthritis is causing you a lot of pain today. You move the seat back since you are 190 pounds, and your belly doesn’t quite clear the steering wheel. You drive to the pharmacy, pick up your prescriptions for your arthritis, diabetes and high cholesterol. You see an old friend, and you both complain about your doctor’s visits and how much pain you feel just getting through the day.
Who will you be? You actually have a CHOICE, but You will need to learn a new skill:
LIVING IN THE PRESENT MOMENT...aka...justBstill:
Most of us spend our day busily running from home to work, back to home and then start over again the next day. You do many things without thinking twice: you shower and get ready for work, eat breakfast while driving to work (or skip breakfast altogether), all the while thinking ahead about what you have to do for the day: meetings, return phone calls and emails. Then you grab a quick lunch, and eat
while working. Two hours later you feel hungry again.
You go to the vending machine for a mid afternoon pick
me up. By the time you get home, you are starving and
exhausted. ANYTHING looks good enough to eat right now, so you dive into a bag of potato chips, and watch the evening news. What’s wrong with this picture? Most of what we do is with little attention to the present moment. Not paying attention to the NOW is what is causing our society to be stressed, and there is a relationship between stress and heart disease. Not going to happen to you, you say? Well consider this: heart disease kills twice as many women than ALL cancers COMBINED.
How many times are you going to lose weight, gain it back and then start the process again? That is in fact, what 90% of overweight people do. There are new weight loss books that come out every week, and the public is still waiting for the magic bullet that will reduce weight that do not involve portion control, or walking on a treadmill. WAKE UP America, this is not realistic. Waiting for the next best exercise gadget, diet or pill to come along, for someone to help you get out of your rut, isn’t going to happen. You are responsible for your actions, and you can do it, if you open your mind, heart and learn to justBstill™: aware, conscious and mindful of what you are doing at each moment, everyday. Then learn to breathe during these mindful moments.
As a mother of three girls, I first realized the challenges associated
with weight loss when my own daughter struggled with being overweight.
It’s hard to believe that I, a mother who is a dietitian, who has eaten healthy her whole life, could have an overweight child. I DID. And that is why I understand the challenges people face everyday to live a healthy lifestyle. My own daughter came to me and asked me to help her lose weight. I never pushed her to lose weight as I am too aware of the ramifications food obsession can lead to: compulsive eating, anorexia, bulimia, to name a few. My daughter slowly changed her food choices with my supervision. Guess what? She was able to retrain her taste buds. This is what slow gradual changes lead to. She actually craves fruits and vegetables now. Prior to that, the only fruit she ate was fruit roll ups!
Since then, I have met countless women who continue to diet
and temporarily lose weight only to gain it right back within a year.
I worked for one of the largest commercial weight loss companies in the world, and the missing link to all these programs is: weight loss begins in your mind. The national programs tell you how, what, when, and where to eat. They do not ask you: “WHY do you overeat in the first place?”
While working with my physician husband, I began a weight-loss group focused on addressing the three components to losing weight successfully:
Healthy Eating.
Exercising.
And most importantly, YOUR MIND.
I teach a group of overweight women and we meet every week . They wear a justBstill™ bracelet with instruction on how and why using the justBstill philosophy will help them lose weight: slowly and without counting calories. Furthermore, they are given lessons on healthy eating and exercise. Guess what? They are slowly losing weight, and have made significant changes to their lifestyles, as well as with their own families.
Women: you are the nutritional gatekeeper to the home. Your actions will determine whether your family thrives or fails during this obesity epidemic. You must make time for YOURSELF each and everyday to recharge your physical and emotional being. If you do, you will bring the light of your restored being into the home. If you don't? Well, the consequences could be deadly. The kids in this generation are the first ever in the history of mankind, to have a shorter life expectancy than you, their parents.
While many of us may understand the importance of eating smaller portions or exercising regularly, we aren't often told that overeating is all in our heads. Well, I'm here to tell you...it is. By quieting our minds and making mindful choices about food,we can lose weight and keep it off.
“Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny”.
Frank Outlaw
How many times have you looked in the mirror and say to yourself, “I’m fat” or “I hate my thighs” or hips or whatever? Did you know by doing this you are actually growing the brain cells that will continue to play these tapes/negative thoughts over and over? You can learn to change these thoughts into positive ones and thereby lose weight. Yes, by retraining your brain you can achieve weight loss. Not only can you retrain your brain to purge your negative thoughts, but you can also retrain your brain and taste buds (to crave healthy food) and possibly to enjoy exercise. In order to do this, you will need to learn and follow the justBstill method on this website. Use it everyday, but make slow, gradual changes to your life. One facet at a time! Once you have mastered a new skill, you can move to the next. Do not try everything in unison. You will become overwhelmed, frustrated and STRESSED...And you know what that means!
Your chatterbox brain is not who you are. By quieting your mind, and learning to justBstill™, you are retraining your brain at how you use food. Food is nourishment and sustenance for your body. Food is not to be used as panacea for stress, tiredness, irritability or loneliness. By using the justBstill™ method, you are learning to meditate consciously throughout the day. This will bring mindfulness to your eating. Meditation and mindfulness are basically the same.
"Any condition that's caused or worsened by stress can be alleviated through meditation", says cardiologist Herbert Benson, MD, well known for three decades of research into the health effects of meditation. He is the founder of the Mind/Body Institute at Harvard Medical School's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
"The relaxation response [from meditation] helps decrease metabolism, lowers blood pressure, and improves heart rate, breathing, and brain waves," Benson says. "Tension and tightness seep from muscles as the body receives a quiet message to relax."
There's scientific evidence showing how meditation works. In people who are meditating, brain scans called MRI have shown an increase in activity in areas that control metabolism and heart rate. Other studies on Buddhist monks have shown that meditation produces long-lasting changes in the brain activity in areas involved in attention, working memory, learning, and conscious perception.
"The soothing power of repetition is at the heart of meditation. Focusing on the breath, ignoring thoughts, and repeating a word or phrase—a mantra—creates the biological response of relaxation," says Stan Chapman, PhD, a psychologist in the Center for Pain Medicine at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta.
"Meditation is not difficult to learn," Chapman says. "You don't need to see a therapist 40 times to learn it. But like tennis, it's a skill. You need to practice. In time, people develop the ability to produce these meditative, very relaxed states very quickly. When they meditate several times during the day, they become more relaxed during the entire day."
Meditation Changes Brain in Good Ways
Monks who practiced Buddhist meditation had evidence of significantly greater brain activity, called gamma wave activity, in areas associated with learning and happiness compared with those who didn't practice meditation, according to a recent study. Gamma waves involve mental processes including attention, memory, learning and conscious perception. The monks also showed higher activity in areas associated with positive emotions, like happiness.
"There's no doubt from the standpoint of research and my own clinical experience that meditation can reduce both the experience of pain and help people manage stress resulting from having pain," Chapman says.
"Meditation is a therapy offered in all comprehensive pain centers," he says.
How do you know if meditation is "working"—if your body is actually getting that relaxation response?
" If you get feelings of warmth, heaviness, and calm when you meditate, it mean that you've gone deep enough," says Chapman. "If you just can't reach that level, enroll in a class," he suggests. "Sometimes it helps to have someone guide you, to help you know when you're making progress."
If meditation just doesn't seem to work, move on to another relaxation method, Benson advises. "Any practice that can evoke the relaxation response is of benefit, be it meditation, yoga, breathing, or repetitive prayer. There is no reason to believe that one is better than the other. The key is repetition, but the repetition can be a word, sound, mantra, prayer, breathing, or movement
Source: Meditation Balances the Body's Systems By Jeanie Lerche Davis WebMD Feature
So, by quieting your mind, you are reducing the stress that you bring to the table during eating. Reducing stress is a pre-cursoror to mindfulness, and mindful eating.
This bracelet is a tool to remind women of their weight loss goals and bring awareness to how their mind is impacting their food choices and eating habits. It is designed to make us pause. If we can just B still for a few moments a day, we can clear our minds and clean up our waistline.
What does justBstill mean? Why will wearing a bracelet help me to lose weight? 2 very good questions, and there are a multitude of answers. First of all, the justBstill™ method is easy to understand, but can be difficult implement. Why? Because you must learn to retrain your brain and start living in the present moment. We are a society of multitaskers. We eat in our cars, while at the kitchen sink, while working. Multitasking has been shown to shrink the prefrontal cortex of our brain. Multitasking can also mean that your brain does not perceive eating while doing something else at the same time.
Problem:
You + Unhappiness + Multitasking + Mindless Eating+ Stress = Overeating + Obesity
What is the solution?
Just Breathe + BE aware (mindful + conscious) –ego = justBstill™
Let’s break down this equation:
YOU (are not your thoughts)
Because most of us are pre programmed to live in the past and future moments, we are rarely present in most activities. The justBstill method involves retraining your brain and tastebuds. We are also a society of yo-yo dieters. What can you do? For starters you can wake up and you can learn to be still. In other words, awaken to a new reality that weight loss is in your head, and diets will almost always fail you. By wearing the justBstill bracelet, you will learn a 4 step process that will dramatically change the way you look at life and realize you can lose weight and keep it off simply by listening to internal cues. But first, a little brain background on how to change your thoughts…
”All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve are a direct result of his own thoughts."
James Allen
How does your brain work? Why do negative thoughts impact your overeating?
It is our brain chatterbox, the voice in our head that tells us “I am”…this is the portion of our brain that is our EGO.
“I am….an ugly fat person” or
“I am too busy to lose weight or eat healthy”.
“I have always been fat, so fat I will stay”, or
“I lost 5 pounds! Yay! Now I can slack off a little and enjoy more _______”.
That is your chatterbox brain, your monkey mind, the little voice in your head that is sending you the constant negative message. To understand more about brain chatterbox and ego, you can read: “My Stroke of Insight” By Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor or “The Power of Now”, By Eckhart Tolle.
So, by wearing this bracelet, you are actually taking all the information you can gather from this website, and carrying it with you. By doing this, you are inspired to do the work that will make you healthy. How many times have you bought a diet book, read it, then put it on a shelf? You can’t carry it around, so you set it down and forget it. Wear this bracelet everyday, justBstill, and you will lose weight and start a new life.
“The present is what slips by us while we’re pondering the past and worrying about the future.”
Ziggy
To learn more about the just B still philosophy and how to use the justBstill™ l bracelet, please read on. And congratulations again on taking this significant step toward healthier living!
“Congratulations”! When you hear this word it is usually about a positive occurrence in your life, so what do you say in return? “Thank you”! This is a significant puzzle piece of weight loss: congratulate yourself by repeating it along with your affirmations. Then give thanks to the Universe: keep a gratitude journal or write about grateful moments in your food/mood journal. Thank your body and heart for keeping you healthy. Thank yourself for your dedication to keeping on the healthy path. Write it down to solidify your actions. To explore this philosophy further, read the book, The Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude, by Sarah Breathnach.
About the just B still Philosophy:
There is more to losing weight than just eating healthy. The keys to losing weight and keeping it off are in your head.Your active mind – that chatterbox in your head that sends you all sorts of negative messages about yourself – is causing you to overeat, eat mindlessly and eat when you are:
Stressed.
Tired.
Irritable.
Lonely.
The last “L” is for Life - what is going on in your life that is causing you to overeat?
Using the justBstill™ method, there is no place for these feelings at the table.
Instead we want to still ourselves, our bodies and our minds before we eat.
We want to just B: Breathe; and BE still : be aware, and be conscious.
When you still your mind and just B, you start to become aware of your thoughts and feelings before, during and after eating. This can help you overcome emotional eating and resist the urge
to overeat, binge or do something you will regret later.
Unhappiness + Multitasking + Mindless Eating+ Stress= WHY I OVEREAT. When you are emotionally hungry, STOP and do this: Look at your clear beads, and get clear about your feelings and goals. Ask yourself, “Why do I continue to overeat?” Wake up! it’s time to get real about asking yourself the tough, deep down emotional feelings that are causing you to be unconscious, mindless, and not allowing you to be in the present moment of right now. What is happening right now that is causing me to crave_______? Do I really need _______ right now to make myself better/happy/stress free, etc?
Record these thoughts in a food/mood journal. As you become aware of when you are eating mindlessly you may begin to see a pattern. Is it at the end of the work day? After a fight with a loved one or co-worker?
You can try these strategies to avoid a binge: Write the word "STILL" on several sticky notes. Put these sticky notes around your environment (house, work, etc) where you know you will go for food. Before putting your hand to your mouth, ask yourself the STILL question: Am I Stressed Tired, Irritable or Lonely? Then justBstill. Close you eyes, take 3 - 4 breaths. Open your eyes, and BE. Be conscious of this moment. Ask yourself again: am I Stressed, Tired, Irritable or Lonely? If you answered no, then thank yourself for being in this moment. Reward yourself for not bingeing. Allow yourself a simple pleasure of gratitude by doing an activity that brings joy, but does not involve food. Record this in your journal and please record it on my forum!
In Eckart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now, he tells us why our actions and our pain is caused by our ego. “As you grow up, you form a mental image of who you are, based on your personal and cultural conditioning. We may call this phantom self the ego. It consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through continuous thinking. The term ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here it means a false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind.”
“To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it — who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfillment there. It says: ‘One day, when this, that or the other happens, I am going to be okay, happy, at peace.” — Eckhart Tolle
“Once you work on what’s eating you, you won’t want to eat so much.”
Oprah
2. Get rid of your EGO: “Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy”. Your ego is the reflection of what others see in you, how you view yourself it is not the real being of who you are. Your ego is the annoying voice in your head that tells you are lazy, useless and that you will never be a thin model on the cover of a fashion magazine. ……so now ask yourself, “What can I do to be in the present moment?” One answer that may come to mind is to just B – just breathe and be still, meditate, to relieve stress and bring back your awareness to right now. Use a mantra to drown out the chatterbox in your head. Repeating a series of words will ground you and drown out other thoughts coming into your head. Prayer is also a form of meditation.
If breathing is not the answer that comes to mind right now, try exercise. Exercise has been shown to relieve stress better than massage.
“Essentially, we are stressed mentally, which doesn't require a physical response. We are stepping on the gas and the brake at the same time, producing fatigue, tension, stress, and over time, chronic diseases like heart disease.” says C. Eugene Walker, a professor of psychology at the University of Oklahoma, and author of Learn to Relax: Proven Techniques for Reducing Stress, Tension, and Anxiety—and Promoting Peak Performance.
“Basically, when we exercise, we get back to what our bodies were designed to do,” says Walker. “We increase our heart rate, take in more oxygen, our blood circulates better and faster.” Exercise can mean anything from vacuuming to running marathons, but which kind is best for reducing stress?
“All exercise is good, but aerobic exercise is the best when it comes to stress reduction because it does increase oxygen circulation and generally uses the body more effectively and efficiently," says Walker. "Aerobic exercise also produces endorphins, which is a natural chemical similar to morphine that is released in the brain during strenuous exercise.”
Endorphins produce a feeling of happiness, thereby reducing stress.
“For maximal endorphin benefit, you should be doing at least 30 minutes of exercise three to four times a week at 60 percent to 80 percent percent of your maximum heart rate,” says Todd Durkin, a spokesman for the American Council on Exercise.
Afterwards ask yourself, “Am I in the present moment?” Record your mood before and after this binge-prevention activity we call exercise.
3. I CAN DO THIS! Remind yourself of your goals and affirmations. Ask yourself, “Why do I want to live a healthier life?” Do you want to lose weight to fit into your closet full of "thin" clothes? Do you want to live a long life? Once you decide, make this goal your intention.
There are about 14 beads on your bracelet, try to say your affirmations aloud at least 14 times a day. Why should you do this? The mind believes what we tell it, AND by using the Law of Attraction, you can send these messages out into the Universe. What you resonate will come back to you. If you are sending out the vibe, “I’m fat and will always be that way”, then guess what, you will. If on the other hand you ask yourself “What can I do this week to eat healthy?” you will probably get an answer like, “eat vegetables at every meal this week”. Tell your brain this message, and it will comply.
Hold your beads while repeating your affirmations because this will increase the focus of your attention and intention. The banter of the negative chatter you have been repeating to yourself for years will lose its ability to interfere with your long term goals. A word about goals: you need short, medium and long term goals to live a healthy lifestyle. …... This means you will need to start a food/mood journal. Using a journal will help you more than any weight loss book you have ever read.
The answers to your questions are already within you. The heart of the matter is in your own heart, not your mind. Look at the heart on your bracelet. This is what gives you life, not your negative thoughts.
4. I DESERVE THIS: ihearthealthyeating- for my heart & soul. If you have tried the 3 steps and still have the urge to eat, then you should eat what you are craving within reason, just do it MINDFULLY. Mindful eating will allow your stomach to signal your brain more effectively that you are full, and enable you to eat less. Another part of mindful eating is keeping a food/mood journal. When you record the foods you have eaten, you are aiding your mindful eating.
A study involving 1,685 middle-aged men and women over six months found those who kept such a diary just about every day lost about twice as much weight as those who did not. "It helps the participants see where the extra calories are coming from, and then develop more specific plans to deal with those situations," says Victor Stevens of Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research in Portland Stevens, who helped lead the study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The technique also helps hold dieters accountable for what they are eating, Stevens said.
WHY DOES STRESS CAUSE WEIGHT GAIN?
Our brains and stomach work in unison to signal each other when you are full. The problem is most of us have lost touch with our internal cues when this is happening. May of us overeat beyond the point of fullness.
In times of stress, people often turn to harmful habits to reduce their stress, such as cigarette smoking, overeating, use of drugs or over-use of alcohol. All of these factors put you at additional risk for heart disease and stroke.
Stress and anger are a part of life. However, the body's reaction to uncontrolled stress and anger is a risk factor for heart disease. When the body senses danger, it releases epinephrine, a hormone that makes the heart beat faster and the body ready for action. People who are stressed all the time, also secrete a hormone called cortisol. This hormone raises blood pressure and causes the body to retain fluids. Together, these circulating hormones place more stress on your heart. Cortisol also causes insulin resistance which means you can increase your risk for diabetes.
When you are stressed, your muscles tense up, including those that control breathing. Your breathing becomes shallower and the rate increases as the body attempts to get more oxygen. To reduce this stress response, learn to justBstill. A great book to read: 1001 Ways To Relax, By Mike George.
Yoga is another way to learn to justBstill. I cannot say enough about the benefits of practicing yoga. It is the cousin to the justBstill™ philosophy.