Amazon Listing is UP!

Next week I will be starting a contest for people who want to tell their friends about this book, or even easier, send an e-mail to their friends with the link to Amazon. First prize is a free book, a free half hour of personal one-on-one phone coaching with me, author of Stop Overeating Today!, and a $25 Itunes gift card.

Keep reading to get contest details next week!

I'm on Author Central!

Amazon has this nifty application called Author Central, a place for authors to post their photo, biography, and blogs. While I will always be blogging on here, I will be RSS'ing (is that a verb yet?) onto my Author Central blog. It's cool, check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Camille-Packer-McConnell/e/B002J0FE5U/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_T1_0

While you're at it, you can see my link on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0984153705

Notice my page looks a little bare? That's where you can help. After reading my book, I would really appreciate if you could take 2 minutes to review it on Amazon. Thanks for your support!

Angel vs. Devil

It’s the old scenario with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. You want to listen to the angel, but the devil prods, “you’ll feel better if you eat this cake” or “just a few more bites won’t hurt!” You know you are full and if you eat more you will regret it later, but your mouth is watering and your eyes are bigger than your stomach. What to do???

Order by the August 10th and get my book Stop Overeating Today! for $12.99 and see for yourself the 33 tips to make empowering and healthy decisions.

If that’s not enough incentive for you, order by August 10th and receive 3 more tips on how to stop overeating and implement the book effectively FREE.

Want to find out more? Check out 3 of the book’s 33 tips here!

Do you eat when you're hungry or when the fullness fix wears off?

This is what it comes down to. Do you eat only when you are hungry, or do you eat when you are no longer full? Your answer to that questions will help you see if you are using food as fuel to get more energy or if you are using food for comfort.

Maybe you don't get what I mean. There is a difference between being hungry and no longer being full. You get full right when you've finished your meal (hopefully not overly full). You are satisfied at that point. Let's say you eat something every three hours. Between being full and the next three hours, you're not going to be very hungry, but you won't have that perfectly satisfied full feeling the entire time either. It will wane until you are hungry again.

So what I'm saying is that there is being completely satisfied and full, there is being neither full nor hungry, and there is being hungry. At which point you eat again indicates whether or not you have a healthy relationship with food.

Some people with overeating tendencies want to have that full feeling the whole day. That's how I used to be. I thought about food all the time. (What will I eat next to get full?) It was definitely a problem. To me, eating wasn't about giving myself the necessary energy to keep moving and thinking healthily. It was to help me feel full in other ways that really had nothing to do with food. I was also eating to fend off negative emotions like anxiety, stress, and fear.

So, what about you? Is food your fuel for energy or is it your fix for other things? If you are an emotional eater that relies on having that full feeling all day long, you may want to start reading my book at Tip # 9 How to Avoid Emotional Eating or Tip #2, Lower Your Stress Levels. There's nothing more liberating than to be around food that used to be your weakness and feel no emotional connection to it at all.

Drugs vs. Self-Control

There's an article in the New York Times about research comparing monkeys who ate 30% less calories than another group of monkeys. The group that took in fewer calories showed these results: longer lifespan and less diabetes, cancer, and cholesterol problems.

So that's good news, right? At least we know what we can do if we want to live longer and healthier. What percentage of your daily calories currently includes food you ate when you were already comfortably full? Do you stop to listen to your body to find out when it's full, or do you typically just eat the portions in front of you? Learning to restrain yourself could add years to your life, which is encouraging.

But here's the part about drugs vs. self-control. The article suggests that since most people can't stick to a diet of 30% less calories than they are used to, they are going to develop a drug that can create the same results as eating less.

First of all, that's sad that there's an assumption people won't do what's best for them. Not that I disagree. Most people won't stop overeating. So let's just skip self-control as even an option and go straight to more drugs as a solution? (Because it worked so well for Michael Jackson and thousands of others with drug dependencies). Secondly, is it realistic that a drug can substitute for healthy eating? Seriously, drugs can't solve everything. We don't want to become a nation of drug dependent overeaters.

Here's the article link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/science/10aging.html?_r=1.

2 Most Common Situations People Overeat - And What You Can Do About It!!!

3 More Tips to Stop Overeating

It's too late to make the book Stop Overeating Today! 36 Tips That Will Change Your Life. Besides, that sounds awkward. 33 is much better.

Anyway, here are 3 more I just came up with. The second tip goes right along with the book, so it won't be applicable until you actually have the book in your hands. I included it today because it help you see how easy the book is to apply once you have it.

1. Put your fork down between every bite. Just try it once and notice the difference.

2. Mix it up and have fun with the tips in the book. The nice thing about these tips is that you don’t have to execute them in any certain way to find success. It’s not like a tennis game where you need to focus on several different factors all at once like footwork, the racket’s angle, follow through, and the direction your hips and shoulders are facing. You don’t need to remember five tips at once to find success. You can just focus on one tip one day and try another one the next day. They are easy to use, apply, and reuse, but there is no requirements to do them a certain way to be successful.

3. Stop weighing yourself every day. Hide your scale. If you are too concerned with losing weight, you will add stress to the eating experience and may end up eating too much. Just focus on feeling your best and eating intuitively. You don’t need to rank yourself based on numbers you see. If you have certain expectations to lose a certain amount of weight by a certain time and you fall short, you may get discouraged and overeat as a result. Stop playing the numbers game. It’s more important to eat healthy and be active than it is to reach a certain number on a scale.

Why the Little Things Matter

Has this every happened to you? While eating you get full with just a little bit of food left over. It seems silly to put it back in the fridge and you figure it's only a tiny bit, so you might as well finish it off. But unfortunately, it pushes you just over the edge into feeling too full. Darn! You've lost your happy place.

What's the big deal with that? The "too full" feeling will only last a few minutes. But if you're like me, you will get in the habit of tuning out your body's full signal and you'll start overeating more and more. Once you stop eating intuitively (paying attention to your body's cues about being hungry and full - Tip # 5 in the book Stop Overeating Today!) it's easy to just focus on cleaning your plate and to tune out your body.

So that's why the little bit of food left over matters. The last few chips in the bottom of the bag, the rest of the cereal, those last few bites of dinner you don't really want but you feel bad throwing away and silly putting back.

It's okay to throw it away or put it back in the fridge. Once you stop listening to your body, it's really easy to do it agai.

Bored with the same old same old snacks?

I came across across a really helpful news article today that offers fun ideas for snacks under 200 calories. It also points out the obvious fact that snacking prevents overeating at meals. It seems so obvious that it's silly to bring it up, but I mentioned it in my book too. Why? Sometimes all people need is someone to point out the obvious to them. We get off track and don't know how to get back on. We could tell someone else who is off track how to get back on, but can't seem to figure it out for ourselves.

This article also says not to graze on snacks. Good advice. There's a tip in my upcoming book, Stop Overeating Today!, that gives a creative spin on how to stop grazing. Because anyone can point out the obvious. If you want to stop grazing, then stop already. But it's easier said than done and sometimes we all need a creative new solution to nip our bad habits in the bud. That's exactly what my book does.

Another good tip in this article is to eat snacks with protein. Great tip! It's also found in the book, although it's inside one of the tips and is not a tip by itself. But haven't you noticed you will eat less if you start your meal or snack off with a little protein? Have you ever heard of Lindora? It's a fabulously successful weight loss center here in Southern California and they teach their patients to start meals off with protein as well.

I cheer this article for telling people to stay away from processed snacks and to stick to whole foods instead. Because there are plenty of 100 calorie cookie and brownie snacks you could stuff in your shopping cart, but can you actually pronounce half the ingredients in those things anyway?

Ok, so which snack idea is your favorite that you're going to try first? Here's the link to the article: http://www.examiner.com/x-12564-Boston-Healthy-Living-Examiner~y2009m7d7-Get-Snackin Not bad, huh? I'm a fan of the snacks that include chocolate. Why not?

Check it out now!! I've got a video about the book on YouTube

So you want tips to help you stop overeating when you're stressed, on special occasions, or every day?

Watch the video to find out how my book is different from all the rest and to preview one of the exclusive tips in Stop Overeating Today! 33 Tips That Will Change Your Life.

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3V916RfM1Y

Or you can check it out on my Facebook page, on my website, or on my Myspace Blog.
Thanks for watching - the more views, the more people will be able to find out about a book that can change their lives.

What Everybody Ought to Know About Oxidative Stress

I have never heard of this. Oxidative stress. If you eat too much in one sitting, your body gets oxidative stress. I'm quoting from an article:

"Many diseases, including cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s , Parkinson’s, diabetes, cancer, arthritis and inflammatory conditions, and ageing are associated with oxidative stress.

The bottom line is: do not overeat and, if you do, at least try to avoid excess intakes of fats and carbohydrates at single sittings."

Yikes! Here's the rest of the article written by dietician Ann Till. Before you read it, I have to warn you. Ann Till is probably English because they talk a lot about grams instead of pounds. So unless you are a metric whiz, the numbers won't mean much. But you'll still get the main idea: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=74604.

Has anyone ever heard of this before?