What most women don’t know is that when your body is relaxed, hormonal pathways turn up your body’s fat-burning capability and turn down your appetite.

The result is weight loss that feel effortless thanks to the metabolic power of pleasure.

This approach to slimming down is sane, healthy, natural, feminine  — and even fun.

The operative word is pleasure! It feels good. It feels right.

This feminine approach connects you with the natural wisdom of your female body.

As you do, you’ll discover how your struggles with food begin to subside when you focus, not on how your body is failing you, but on how to listen to the voice of your body that’s been telling you all along exactly what it needs.

You’ll wonder why we all didn’t learn this about our bodies long ago, and you’ll want to share the experience of your new pleasurable lifestyle and its coinciding weight loss with the girls and women you know and love who are struggling too.

Here’s how to get started next time you eat:

1. Make the environment as pleasurable for yourself as possible. Pull away from the computer, sit comfortably, clear the table to create a pleasant eating space. Do whatever else will make the environment calming and more conducive to you having an enjoyable, satisfying experience.
2. Before you eat, take 3 to 5 deep belly breaths to relax your body and mind. Use the power of conscious breathing to bring you into the present moment, back from thoughts of the future or the past, to your direct experience of eating with your food.
3. With each bite you take, aim to extract as much pleasure from the food as possible. Instead of your food being like background music that gets drowned out by your conversations, with others or yourself, bring it to the foreground and pour you attention into finding and experiencing the pleasure that it offers.
4. Once the pleasure starts to wane and your energy starts to drop, stop eating. As Geneen Roth says, “it’s when pleasure ends that overeating begins.” As you notice that the food is no longer truly delighting you, and that your energy has peaked and started to drop, it’s your sign to stop eating. Move the plate away to avoid temptation. Pack it up for leftovers, or donate it to the trash or compost bin. Leave the table with your energy high, seeking out all the other simple or complex pleasures other than food that life has to offer you.

Implementing these 4 steps, you’re going to feel more relaxed, you’ll digest better, you’ll prevent eating to the point of being stuffed, and you’ll enhance your body’s calorie burning powers.

That’s the beauty of pleasure, plain and simple.

Thanks for reading, and leave me a comment letting me know which of the 4 steps you are going to focus on first.

With love,
xo Jena

P.S. If you’d like the support of me as your personal coach at a small fraction of the cost of my VIP coaching, my Pleasure Circle program may be for you. Your investment is less than $100 per month and your return is direct access to me and the support of a small band of women also walking this revolutionary path.

Our calls are on the first Wednesday of every month at either 1pm ET | 10am PT or 4pm ET | 1pm PT — you choose depending on your schedule.

Click here to reserve your spot in this exclusive group coaching program.

Are you ready to give slimming down your best shot?
And are you ready to step out of “the box?”

The box: noun [/thuh·boks/] 1. The conventional way things are done. 2. Incessant calorie-counting and standing on a scale. 3. Deprivation, over-eating and deprivation (in that order).

Yeck. Good.

Now come with me. Let’s jump outside that box.

See, I’ve got a little secret that I want to share with you –
an exhilarating secret that most fitness experts will never let you in on.
Not in a million years.

They actually don’t even know about it.

I don’t mean to tease you (or maybe I do) but rumor has it that the “P” Factor, the fat-burning breakthrough in weight loss, has a few unusual characteristics.

#1: It’s not related to increasing the number of reps you do with your weights.
#2: It’s not related to decreasing your BMI (Body Mass Index), BPM (Beats per Minute), or your BBM (Blackberry Messenger).
#3: It is related to how you eat.

But, sshhh. Come close.
Lean in, so I can whisper it in your ear.

The “P” Factor, the component that brings your body to its peak metabolic rate a.k.a. maximum fat-burning mode, is:

(drumroll)

The Pleasure Factor!

Whoa. What? Crap. What on earth is that?

It means factoring in, including, and even prioritizing Pleasure in your life.

But…
Doesn’t Pleasure have a reputation for being, you know, a bad girl?
Untrustworthy?
Frivolous and trite?
A waste of time?

Sigh, well, yes. Yes it does.

But before you lunge back into “the box” and dismiss the powerful effect that Pleasure factors into your weight loss, let’s take a look at the science of it.

The Science of Pleasure

At any given moment your body is in either one of two states: the stress mode, or the relaxation mode.

When you are in the stress mode, your body is focused on survival.
It behaves as though it’s in life-threatening danger, and acts as if it has to fight for its survival.

Blood rushes away from the center of your body (where digestion and fat burning take place);
And goes to your legs, for rapid fleeing;
To your arms, for fighting ability;
And to your mind, for quick decision-making.

Hmph.

So, when you are in stress mode, be it because of a single unpleasant event (the cat just vomited all over your new couch), or because of low-level constant stress (you find yourself anything less than radiantly beautiful, you dislike your body, you’re doing exercise you dislike, etc.) you are secreting more insulin and cortisol.

These two powerful chemicals, if produced day in and day out, will signal the body to hang on to body fat, and to not build muscle.

Yikes. So what about the relaxation mode? Once Pleasure factored into your life, then what ?

Pleasure, as it turns out… is a catalyst… for the relaxation mode.
Pleasure causes relaxation.

All of existence–which naturally goes towards pleasure–functions optimally in this state.

Functioning optimally means your body is at its maximum fat burning mode, and ideal fat storing mode. In other words,  you’re not hoarding fat cells like they’re going out of style–the effect that stress has on the body.

Feeling pleasure, inducing relaxation in our bodies while we eat means we’re inviting the production of our good friend, CCK.

CCK, or cholecystokinin (/cho·le·cys·to·ki·nin/], is a substance that helps you metabolize, or digest fat. 
It stimulates the liver, the gall bladder and fat digestion. 
In essence, it stimulates your friendly neighborhood digestive system.

Oh, and did I mention it suppresses hunger, and thereby keeps you from overeating?

Yawza! The human body and the “P” Factor, what a glorious thing.

So, if you want your body to look and function at your best, you can use the evolutionary pursuit of Pleasure to your advantage.

The “P” Factor Advantage in Your Weight-Loss Journey

How can you even begin to factor Pleasure into your busy life you are wondering?
You may not have had it consistently for years.
Decades.
You may not even remember feeling it outside of rare glimpses!

Most of us (or maybe all of us) were not taught by our mothers, aunts or teachers to take good care of ourselves first, to do more of what we enjoy, not only because would it be fun, but because it creates the conditions for your body to naturally reach and maintain ideal its weight and shape.

Let me rephrase that:
Pleasure makes weight loss p-p-permanent!

(So many great words start with the letter “P.”)

Anyhow, if you haven’t learned it yet, and most people haven’t, fitness experts included–when you’re actively seeking Pleasure, your body automatically moves towards its healthiest, most rockin’, ideal weight and shape.

Sound too good to be true?
I can tell you, there’s no such thing.
If you don’t believe me, give it a little try yourself!

Give It A Little Try

Next time you eat, think of how you want your closest friend, youngest daughter, sweetest granny or greatest auntie to eat.

Do you want them to eat too fast?
While watching TV?
Without seeing, smelling or tasting their food?

Or do you want them to eat on beautiful dishes, with nice silverware, carefully enjoying and tasting what they are nourishing their bodies with?
Also, maybe you can ask yourself:

How do I start to live life in a way that is a little more relaxed?
How can I still love and forgive myself through the challenges of my life’s journey?

Let your answers guide how you approach your eating experience and invite relaxation and pleasure to permeate your experience as much as you can.

Leave me a comment with your response so we can pool our wisdom and inspiration.

So there you have it, your action steps. I promise you, put them into play and delight in the outcome.

Remember, self-love and acceptance are pleasurable – they spark the feelings of relaxation that put us into the physiologic state where we calorie burn the best.

See you in the comments below.

With love and support,
xo Jena

P.S. If you’d like a reboot to your system, and get a solid, in-person training on how to apply my pleasurable approach to your life, join me for a July 4th getaway at Pleasure Camp at the Omega Institute. It’s a 5-day retreat in a real live “Pleasure Campus.” It’s a lush natural environment with great food, and yoga, tai chi, ecstatic dance and much more at your disposal. The program is going to be my most cutting-edge work ever and I’m SUPER excited to bring it to you.

Pleasure Camp at Omega is approximately 2 months away so it’s a good time to check your calendar and reserve the dates. Registration is open and you can learn more by clicking here.

P.P.S. In addition to the “P Factor” there’s also the “D Factor.”

There’s a “D” Inventory that can help you tip-toe towards factoring in more Pleasure.

It’s also very scientific.

But I can’t tell you all my secrets at once, can I?  I’ll save that for another day.

Until then one last thing about learning about the “P” Factor.
The more you have at it, the juicier life gets and the more your female body feels and looks exactly the way you want it to.

Have you ever felt toxic from over-eating?

I remember as clear as day all the sugar headaches I used to get.

They varied between a dull ache and a stabbing pain depending on how much sugar I’d devoured.

If you know that sugar is literally poisonous to the body in high enough doses, you’ll be relieved to know there are many other foods that have the opposite effect — foods that are healing, balancing, detoxifying and supportive to the body, and promoting of natural, pleasurable slimming.

This week’s video blog takes you out to lunch to experience those foods.

I’m taking you to an incredible restaurant that serves the health foods you can use as medicine to slim down, that you too can create in your kitchen. None are that complicated, but they are very delicious.

I transformed my relationship with food from perceiving food as my #1 enemy to understanding how to use food as medicine or what I now call *therapeutic eating*.

I always thought food would be a source of pain and it was to my delight when I discovered it as a source of healing and balance.

Healthy foods that are dense in nutrients, really do make you feel better, and that, my dear, is pleasurable fact indeed.

All of the foods in this video will help bring vitality to your body to assist your natural slimming down, PLUS there’s a special ritual at the end which also offers pleasure to numerous senses.

And while you’re here, what types of new foods does this motivate you to try out? Leave a comment with your inspiration.

Thanks for watching and being part of this movement,

Love,
xo Jena

P.S. How does a week of healthy food, cooked by someone else, served up to you in a vibrant natural environment as you learn to apply and live by the principles and strategies I teach for slimming down pleasurably?

Join me this July 1 – 6, 2012, for Pleasure Camp, live at the Omega Institute.

It’s a week to permanently lighten up from all kinds of burdens that have been holding you back and literally weighing down your body, so when you return home you are literally lighter–in body, mind and spirit.

How I know it will be permanent is when slimming is done *pleasurably,* your body has nothing to rebel against — no punishment or deprivation to fight or resist — and so the change sticks.

I’ve seen it again and again. The pleasurable way is the lasting way.

Screw punishing bootcamp, come check out Pleasure Camp. Registration is now open. Click here to read all about it and reserve your spot.

Why is it so hard to take time and relax?

Let’s face it. It’s easy to bury yourself in being busy. Our lives are brimming with things to be done, commitments to keep, and responsibilities to uphold.

Before you know it, you are at the mercy of your to-do list. And half the things on it aren’t even that important to you!

But you trudge onward, because people are counting on you. You are a woman who moves things forward. You are the strong one. The dependable one. The one who makes magic happen for those around you.

Now, I don’t know about you, but for me I can take all that way too seriously.

And if I operate from that place for too long, it starts to wear me threadbare.

Maybe you can relate?

The thing that no one tells you about being a high-achiever is that you can’t be like that ALL the time.

It’s simply not sustainable.

Which is why, for hundreds of years, smart women and men have taken retreat.

They take leave of their duties, leave their homes and loved ones, and travel to a place where they can rest, rejuvenate, and refuel themselves.

And if that’s stirring up your retreat lust, then I want to know what you’re doing the first week of July.

Because I’m going on retreat. And I would love it if you came, too.

Join me for Weight Loss Pleasure Camp – Live at Omega >>

Imagine 5 whole days in surrounded by leafy trees and cool blue lakes. Imagine someone ELSE cooking delicious, nourishing meals for you (and doing the dishes!). Imagine dancing and laughing and talking (and maybe shedding a few tears) with a group of women you feel like you’ve known forever. Imagine the focus of your day being on learning and growing… discovering how pleasure can work in your life to help you lose weight AND feel really, really good in your skin.

There’s no need to imagine it—it already exists. All you need to do is say YES to taking retreat.

Take your retreat with me this year at Omega (and lose weight!)

You care so much about the people in your life. You really believe in your work. You are used to getting things done and achieving anything you set your mind to. But the one thing that keeps eluding you is a how to lose weight once and for all. So the days roll on into weeks, and the weeks roll into months, and maybe the months roll into years. You keep telling yourself that maybe this is just how it’s going to be for you. Maybe you just aren’t someone who will EVER love her shape or feel fit, sleek, and sexy.

Well, beautiful, that’s not true.

You CAN lose weight. Even if everything you’ve tried up until this moment hasn’t worked. I know it sounds crazy, but pleasure works.

Don’t give up. Give in. And take retreat with me this summer at Omega, so I can show you how to use pleasure to lose weight and gain so much more.

Click here to get the full scoop.

Bye for now,
xo Jena

P.S. Registration is now open for Weight Loss Pleasure Camp live at Omega, July 1-6, 2012. Spaces are limited, so if you are ready to lose the weight and finally have the fit, slender and fabulous body you have always wanted, register now. I don’t want you to miss out.

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight and keep it off, you know it can be a bit of a conundrum. And if you’ve done just a little scientific homework, you’ve likely discovered the show-stopping fact that over 98% of people who lose weight via dieting gain it back within about a year. For this reason, it doesn’t take a nutritional Einstein to figure out that what we’ve been doing to banish body fat simply doesn’t work. So if you count yourself amongst the weight loss refugees who feel as if there’s nowhere to go, it’s time for some good news. It’s time for less hype and more light – the kind of light that uplifts us and guides us through what has been some very dark weight loss terrain. I’d like to offer you a specific piece of weight loss wisdom that has the potential to change everything for you:

If you truly wish to lose weight, you have to own it first.

No kidding. Most people attack their excess weight, and do their best to starve it away, exercise it into oblivion, beat it with a stick, hate on it, judge it, and shame it into submission. If this has been your approach, then welcome to the 98% failure club. From the perspective of simple, elegant clinical nutrition and mind body neuroscience – the stress of self-attacking our own body tissue creates a powerful and consistent stress chemistry. This means chronically elevated cortisol and insulin – two hormones that in excess will signal the body to store weight, store fat, and not build muscle. In other words, weight loss strategies born from and fueled by self- hate are metabolically destined failures.

So instead of hating your body into weight loss, it’s time to love it into the shape shift that you long for. And loving the body means, first and foremost, having a holy moment where you accept it as it is. Own it, embrace it, hold it like a cherished child, welcome it like your beloved soul mate – all of which will gently nudge your body into the physiologic relaxation response, which is the ideal state of day-in day-out calorie burning. Think about it: if you wanted to lose $100, you’d need to have $100 first. Ownership is a prerequisite for loss.

The real weight loss program, the kind I’ve seen over the years that truly yields success and inner peace with clients and students is this: relax into your weight loss journey. Call a cease-fire on the fight against self. Stop promising that you’ll love yourself for real when you have the perfect body. Is that what you’d tell your little infant who has a bunch of baby fat

– “Sorry, I won’t love you until you have more muscle and less flab.”  Sounds terrible doesn’t it? Yet that’s how so many of us communicate with self.

“Owning our weight” by the way, means listening to it and using it as a doorway to understand the wisdom of the body. It means hearing and decoding the deeper messages that excess weight may be holding for us. Every disease, symptom, unwanted habit, or extra pound of weight is the brilliant wisdom of Life speaking through the hidden language of the body. It’s time to stop attacking the messenger and instead, make more room for her at the table. This may sound like a counter-intuitive approach to weight loss, yet it’s the only strategy I’ve found in over 30 years of clinical work that has any hope of yielding a real, lasting, loving and humane result. And it’s the kind of approach we teach at the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. It’s time for a new paradigm when it comes to weight, body and self. It’s time to make the shift from the old and outdated way of weight loss into a world where we can love ourselves into the change we want. Welcome to the light at the end of the weight loss tunnel.

Guest blog by Marc David



Marc David is the Founder & Director of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, a leading visionary, teacher and consultant in Nutritional Psychology, and the author of the classic and best-selling works Nourishing Wisdom, The Slow Down Diet, and Mind Body Nutrition. He has held senior consulting positions at Canyon Ranch Resorts, the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, the Johnson & Johnson Corporation, and the Disney Company.  The Institute for the Psychology of Eating is the world’s only teaching organization dedicated to a forward thinking, positive, holistic approach to nutritional psychology. IPE is unique and revolutionary in its approach – teaching students and professionals how to effectively work with the most common eating challenges of our times. Learn more at www.psychologyofeating.com and be sure to get their FREE audio gift.

Marc David and Jena la Flamme are the co-creators of the Weight Loss Pleasure Camp home-study program. Click here to learn more.

“I always thought pleasure was somehow bad, something I wasn’t meant to be having,” my workshop participant, Martine, told me.

I understood immediately — I was also raised to consider pleasure a greater reason for guilt than pride.

“But now,” she went on, “you’ve shown me a whole other side to pleasure. I’ve realized it’s not shallow or selfish, as I was led to believe. On the contrary, I’ve learned that moving towards pleasure, rather than being shallow, is deep and soulful. It’s so far from self-centered, it is actually a giving act where everybody benefits.”

In this era of revolution, where people around the world have been taking to the streets demanding change, from the Middle East to our own Occupy Wall Street in NYC, I’m going to suggest another revolutionary occupation — for you to occupy your pleasure.

Pleasure is sadly misunderstood. While yoga has become mainstream and garnered a positive rap for connecting you to your higher self, pleasure’s reputation is the opposite — that it’ll drag you down to your lower self.

Reclaiming the Divine Pleasure

This widespread myth, that pleasure is at odds with higher values, is simply not true. Although, in recent times, pleasure has had what I’d call a “shitty PR campaign,” it hasn’t always held such a low status. Before the current attitudes towards pleasure took hold, and the sensual became snubbed as profane, pleasure was widely recognized for its connection to the sacred.

In her acclaimed book Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess, Starhawk documents the beliefs and practices of Earth-based religion. She writes of the pagan philosophy that, “all pleasure, harm it none, is in worship of the divine.”

In those times, acts of pleasure, harm they none, were considered no less than prayer. Physically blissful acts, where you were enraptured in the senses were seen as honoring the source of all sensation. Appreciation for the feeling of aliveness imparted by pleasure indicated an appreciation for the sacredness of life itself.

Because Earth-based religions, rather than envisioning divinity to be ruling over the Earth, envision the Earth itself as divine, they also consider our bodies–an out-cropping from the Earth — to be equally sacred.

Imagine how it would change your day if, instead of your body’s desires for pleasure being tinged with guilt or shame, you were raised to think of them as a sacred offering or gift.

Imagine if all delights to your senses — music, texture, laughter, food, conversation, touch, sensuality, eroticism — were untainted by negative associations and instead were understood as praise for the majesty of life itself.

Would that change what you felt you had permission to enjoy, desire or take pleasure from? I bet it would.

Liberated from implications of shame, pleasure is returned to its natural state of innocence. When freed of the burden of being morally questionable, pleasure starts to really show its true colors as an intelligent guiding force.

The Science of Pleasure

Biology 101 tells us that all organisms, all life forms small or large, from the simplest single-celled amoeba to the complex human animal, share the trait of instinctively moving away from pain and moving towards pleasure.

For an amoeba, the experience of pain may equal death. To the best of its ability, even without arms or legs, the amoeba will back away from the threat of death, innately motivated to seek the safety of pleasure instead.

We human animals are highly sophisticated amoebas — shamelessly moving towards pleasure and away from pain has been central to our evolutionary path.

And to be clear, we should not confuse pleasure with addiction. I distinguish between true pleasure and counterfeit pleasure with this question:

Will this act give me pleasure right now, an hour from now, a day from now, a week from now, a month from now, and a year from now?

When the answer is yes, then this act of true pleasure undeniably spreads positive ripples across your life. Using this true pleasure filter question as a compass in life promises for a richly fulfilling existence. On the other hand, devote your life to counterfeit pleasure and you’ll have a whole other story.

True pleasure has a built-in intelligence that knows when you are satisfied, when you’ve had enough, and when it’s time to stop.

As soon as you start paying attention to pleasure you discover that eating too much, drinking too much, smoking too much, shopping too much, or doing too much of anything that you thought was pleasurable, doesn’t actually feel like pleasure anymore.

And let’s not forget the spiritual connection. The key to experiencing true pleasure is being present–one of the most widespread spiritual maxims. When it comes to the experience of pleasure, being present is an absolute prerequisite. Without your presence, pleasure is purely conceptual. Thinking something feels good is very different from feeling good right here, right now.

The direct experience of pleasure requires you to occupy your body. If you’re not directing your attention and your consciousness to your tongue when you eat, your fingers when you caress, or your lips when you are kissed, then you are absent from your body, and by virtue, unavailable for true pleasure.

Occupy This Moment and Seize Your Power

As the author of Women, Food and God, Geneen Roth writes, “it’s when pleasure ends that overeating begins.”

When you refuse to listen to the parts of yourself that are clamoring to say, “hey, I’m actually not hungry anymore,” or “I’ve had enough to drink now,” or “what I truly need is some deep breaths and a moment to relax,” you’re doing the opposite of occupying your pleasure — you are abandoning it.

When you ignore the voice of your intuition that’s always talking to you, it starts to scream and yell. When mild symptoms like being bloated or having a hangover don’t get the message across to you, your body will resort to more serious measures–such as weight gain or panic attacks — to get your attention.

Until you occupy your pleasure, by feeling what you feel in this moment, and listening to the voice telling you not only what you need, but how much and when enough is enough, you will live forever with a body in conflict. The conflict arises because a fundamental instinct being ignored.

Once you understand pleasure as a positive force in your life, and make occupying your pleasure a priority, you will discover your incredible power: you are creating it.

Truly occupying your pleasure means having a relationship to pleasure where you do not just sit around and hope it will magically descend upon you, you engage with pleasure as a choice.

As Regena Thomashaeur, author of Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts, and founder of the school by the same name says, “pleasure is the highest form of responsibility.”

By definition, to be in pleasure means that you are not caught up in a “poor me” victim story. Instead, you are holding yourself accountable. This means having the awareness that, as much as you feel like a character in your own life story, experiencing ups and downs beyond your control, you are also the author of this story and it is up to you how the chapters will unfold.

Being accountable means owning that when you are not having a good time, it’s not because of circumstances created by someone else, it’s because of you. The beauty of this approach is it gives you the chance to do things differently.

“The pursuit of pleasure requires a willingness to reach for the good, no matter what the circumstances,” states Thomashaeur, revealing one of the seldom appreciated aspects of the art of pleasure.

For example, rather than bitching that your sex life is a disappointment, or your mother ruined your body image when you were a teenager, a commitment to pleasure will force you to bring imagination and creativity to the table instead of despair. You’ll ask yourself, “how can I be cause in the matter, instead of a victim of circumstance?”

How You Can Be Guided by Your Pleasure

My client Barb, entrepreneur, wife and mother of two was indeed in despair when she sought me out to be her weight loss coach. Her body image was in shreds and for long stretches of the day, self-loathing voices would hijack her mind, distracting her from being fully engaged in her life, whether personally or professionally. She wanted to lose weight but felt powerless to do so as any attempt at food restriction would backfire, triggering her to eat compulsively all the more.

My first move as her coach was to have her attend more to her pleasure. To her delight, as she took a leap of faith and rather than trying to control her body or her cravings, she took my advice and started seeking to savor more pleasure in her daily experiences in life.

As she worked through the voices in her head that said she shouldn’t be having pleasure–because it was too indulgent, not appropriate with kids around, too much to handle for her husband, and not responsible enough for her business — she finally surrendered to pleasure as an intelligent guiding force and her life bloomed.

She made a point to truly enjoy food without guilt, to only do exercise that gave her enjoyment, to dress in a way that made her feel beautiful, and to take more risks sensually with her husband. To her surprise and delight, as she made pleasure a priority, her food compulsions and then her excess weight, simply melted away.

By occupying her pleasure, she got to the root of years (if not decades!) of struggle, and emerged feeling radiant and empowered. Her self-esteem and level of joy sky-rocketed. Her life reflected that she’d made pleasure a choice.

Your unique struggles may take a different flavor to Barb’s, but my challenge to you is the same. Occupying your pleasure will revolutionize your life, but it can only be done by you. Let your innocent impulse and curiosity for pleasure tap you into the power of this unstoppable force of nature and connect you with this sacred act that, by bringing you into presence with your senses, brings you into presence with the pulse of life itself.

Ever been frustrated that you were *doing everything right* in terms of food and exercise and yet you were STILL not losing weight?

Infuriating, isn’t it?

It’s a common experience, and it is so disheartening that it raises the “why bother?” question, tempting you to let your diligent efforts fall away for lack of evidence of reward.

If you find yourself in this scenario, chances are what’s missing is the counter-intuitive yet essential ingredient — pleasure.

Fortunately this week’s video is here to remedy that problem…

Most people don’t realize this, but there’s a metabolic difference between eating healthily and feeling deprived and resentful about it, versus eating healthily without feeling forced into it and truly enjoying every bite.

The difference is this: the deprived resentful version creates a low level stress state in your body which causes it to resist slimming down.

The non-resentful version generates a state that gives your body a metabolic boost signaling it’s OK to let go of no longer needed stores of fat.

In case it’s not obvious, it’s the version with more pleasure that’s better for you.

Same thing goes for fitness.

Most people don’t realize if you’re going through the motions of exercising, but you’re bored or resentful or feeling obligated, that you’re cheating your body of a large part of the benefit, and that you’re at risk of not getting the results you want.

On the other hand, the more seconds, minutes, and hours you log being present with the living, breathing creature that is your female body, engaged in movement you’re actually curious about, the more slimming down will be, as the saying goes, a piece of cake.

This week’s video brings you an example of how to upgrade from a (yawn) dull or even worse, mind-numbing workout to an inspirational, motivational, pleasurable embodiment practice that will sculpt your body as it soothes your mind.

Plus you’ll get to meet one of my favorite fitness instructors on the planet and experience her “Shrink Session” first hand.

Check out the video, try it out yourself, and leave me a comment,

Love,
Jena

P.S. The next occasion you have to work with me live is at my Pleasure Camp at Omega Institute on July 1 – 6, 2012. It’s a 5-day retreat at Omega’s gorgeous “Pleasure Campus” in Rhinebeck, NY, with beautiful nature, delicious healthy food, yoga, tai chi, saunas, ecstatic dancing, incredible people and more. Click here to learn all about it and access a free pre-Camp training call.

Love,
Jena xo

You’ve made it to Friday. Well done.

“How’s your animal?” as I like to say, meaning how’s your body?

Are you exhausted, worn out, squeezed dry to the bone by the weight of the week, no pun intended?

It’s customary to let loose on Friday night and I’m wondering what’s your technique for doing so.

In case you’re curious what I’m up to, this week’s video blog reveals all… well, most ;P

Even if the culture tells you Friday night is the time to “get wasted” and you have up until now been known to do that with food and/or alcohol, there’s no time the present to start a new ritual.

What if you had a ritual than gave you the same benefits of over-eating or drinking — embodiment, sensation, relaxation and pleasure — without any of the dreaded draw backs — bloating, weight gain, hangovers and many more?

What if your deepest pleasure could be your trust-worthy guide and you didn’t second guess that voice for anyone?

I’m curious where that would lead you, how it would set the tone for your weekend and how that in turn would set the mood for your food and exercise choices in the week to come, and so on…

So leave me a comment with your ideal nourishing, pleasurable Friday night ritual that would enhance not setback your journey to a slimmer, more balanced you.

Enjoy this week’s video.

And have a beautiful weekend,

Love,
xo Jena

P.S. There’s a spot left for you in Pleasure Circle, my group coaching program that costs less than $100 a month. Other than being in my live-programs or being a VIP coaching client it’s the only way to get direct consistent access to me as your personal mentor in your pleasurable slimming process. Click here for more info and to register to grab your spot before it’s gone.

Ever heard the expression, “you can’t solve a problem on the level it’s occurring?”

Counter-intuitive though it may sound, charging directly for your goals isn’t always the most effective way to get what you want.

An oblique or side-ways approach often works much better.

For example, corporations that have “making money” as their top priority will often make *less* money than competing companies that emphasize innovation or customer service as their top goals instead. Pretty amazing…

The same thing applies to changing your body.

Striving for the perfect digits on your weighing scales — or the perfect number of calories on your plate — can have the dangerous side-effect of distracting you from what’s really important for slimming down.

This week’s video blog is here to get you back to 3 fundamental slimming secrets that will create the conditions from which a slimmer you will naturally emerge.

If you’ve ever eaten because you’re lonely, or scarfed down a cake without *really* taking your pleasure from it, or if you experience an almost ever-aching hunger that won’t leave your body no matter what you do, this video training is a must.

Plus you’ll get to meet my good friend Tonya Leigh, creator of “French Kissing Life,” a true pleasure in an of itself.

If your thoughts are provoked, please leave me a comment below with your feedback, and share this with your community.

As always, thanks for reading, watching, and commenting.

With love and support,
Jena

P.S. Pleasure Immersion 2012 is about to kick off on Feb 25. If you’d like the support of a dedicated mentor and sisterhood to make this the year you leave your body and food struggles behind you for good then this program has been designed for you. Click here for more information and to register.

Although it’s now more politically correct to say release weight rather than lose weight, due to the negative connotation with the word “lose,” I still appreciate the term, crass though it may sound, for what it states in black and white–you’re going to lose something.

And while it’s really easy to lose money, lose track of time, or lose papers on a messy desk–at least it is for me–weight is one of those pernicious areas that defies the idea that losing something is easy. Weight’s got the bad reputation for being hard to shake.

To break that bad rep, and to show you how the act of slimming can actually be pleasurable, on this week’s video blog I emphasize the importance of going deeper into the matter to reveal what at first might not be obvious.

When you go deeper into appreciation of the idea that, yes, something will be lost, something will be left behind, the path of wanting to shed pounds becomes more dimensional than a calorie-counter can comprehend, and becomes about the whole of your being.

That’s why I call this the feminine strategies for weight loss, because like the proverbial Mother Earth–who includes all, and excludes none–this approach looks to take all the parts of you that are influencing whether you lose weight or not into consideration, creating a naturally holistic solution.

One thing I can promise you–the parts of yourself you‘ll discover on this journey of going deeper will give you needed clues on how to have a fantastic life and lose weight in the process.

I know you’ll enjoy this video on approaching slimming in a way that probes much further than skin deep.

Leave me a comment in the comment section below with what this idea stirs up for you.

Love,
xo Jena

P.S. If you’re in or around NYC next Wednesday, February 1 at 7pm, and you’d like a free ticket to my workshop called “The Permission Slip for Pleasurable Weight Loss,” then let me show you how.

This event will break down the steps for you, on both a practical and mindset level and catalyze, as the title suggests, permission to have what you want.

This event will fill to capacity so get your name on the list to nab your spot. If old habits have been holding you back, this powerful live event for women will give you permission to forge powerfully and pleasurably ahead. Click here to reserve your complementary seat.