Healthy Living in Connecticut Blog

Hello my name is Ryan Mazurkivich and I just wanted to take a minute to introduce myself to the group. I am a Consulting Hypnotist and I will be blogging here about the mental and emotional aspects of food, our choices and relationships with food, setting achievable goals and having the right mindset for success.

So it all starts with a "thought"... Have you ever wondered why some people succeed and others fail? Ask anyone who has achieved a great success in their life and you'll hear from their conversation that they think differently than others that struggle. Their mental approach is basically that there is no failure only feedback.

The final results are in and I'm the biggest loser of the bunch for the Northwestern YMCA's Fall Corporate Wellness Challenge... First time in my life being a loser helped me to win something!

I won the challenge by losing just shy of 30lbs in 8 weeks. The week following the end of the challenge I broke the 30lb mark and I am still losing. Currently I have 50 more pounds to lose to reach my goal.  Seeing my goal is set for the end of march I am on schedule to reach that goal in the time allotted.

It's fun to look back on how far I came. Here's another picture I found, along with a recent picture. I have no idea what my weight was on the left, but I'm sure I was over 300 there!

If I can lose the weight, anyone can. It took me a while to figure out the best approach to lose the weight, but the most practical way is exercise and eating right! I never lost weight until I started to eat better!

Americans should eat healthier, that's a given. But for all the many good reasons there are to eat healthy, many of the low income families cannot afford the better foods.

Take organic food as an example. Why is organic food twice as expensive as the regular counterpart? It seems like they should actually be cheaper than the "bad" non-organic food because the farmers aren't using the pesticides on the organic foods. Pesticides must cost money, right? So, it got me curious, why would the non-organic food cost less?

Elisha Bonaparte was morbidly obese and in bad shape. In fact, his diabetes landed him in the hospital as his organs were shutting down. Once in the hospital, he made a decision to live a healthier life and lose weight.

Elisha decided to join the Greater Waterbury YMCA and started his own exercise program. He's lost over 100 pounds, and the great thing is that he did it on his own, without surgery! He is now off insulin and other medications. He plans to keep at it and live a healthy life free of the debilitating illnesses he once had.