I bet you have been taught to believe that to be fit and manage weight effortlessly you need a good nutrition (eating the right healthy foods), exercising and
filling in the gap with the right supplements.
While this is true to an extent, there’s more to the
equation. What we eat is only half the story of good nutrition; the other half
is our persona as eaters: how we eat, our beliefs about food, our levels of
stress, relaxation, awareness, and the inner stories that we tell ourselves all
have a powerful effect on our metabolism and weight.
So the good news is you can radically transform your health
and achieve your optimal weight without changing anything you eat,
but by changing you, the eater.
Consider these lesser known "secrets" of mindful eating that may be the missing link in your weight loss efforts:
Consider these lesser known "secrets" of mindful eating that may be the missing link in your weight loss efforts:
When stressed, we literally change our calorie burning
capacity. When our stress levels go through the roof, our adrenals and pancreas
start pumping more cortisol and insulin, two hormones that literally signal the body to store fat.
You could be following the best weight loss diet in the world and eating the most nutrient dense foods, but if you’re a frazzled mess, the power of your mind is sabotaging your weight loss efforts.
I see many women who participate in Mindful Eating Program program that come in with impossible to follow reduced calorie diets,
overly intense exercise programs, gulping tasteless shakes, and eating
"medical food" that tastes like cardboard, all of which can actually
create the kind of stress physiology
that ensures your weight will stay put.
Can you recall what happened the last time you unconsciously
consumed a meal after a heated argument with your partner or your kids?
The food likely just sat there like a ton of stones and you
suffered symptoms such as heartburn, cramping, gas and digestive upset, right?
This is because during stress the body automatically shifts
into the fight-or-flight mode, a brilliant safety mechanism that's evolved to
support us during life-threatening events; All the body’s metabolic energy is
directed towards survival and your
digestive system shuts down.
You could be eating the healthiest food on the planet, but if you aren’t eating under the optimum state of digestion, your body can't use those nutrients.
Ready for change?
How about relaxing into weight loss?
Ever noticed how you've gone on a vacation, eaten more than usual and yet lost weight? That’s because on
vacation many of us do something that is highly unusual for us. We
relax. We move from chronic sympathetic dominance (stress reaction) to a parasympathetic state (relaxation
response).
Physiologic relaxation response is the state where we actually
create our optimal calorie-burning metabolism. In fact, Dr. Herbert Benson has
defined the Relaxation Response as something you have access to as easily as
shifting into that fight-or-flight mode (which many of us can do quite easily);
he's written about it eloquently in his timeless book of the same name.
When in relaxation state our frame of mind changes our metabolism to such a degree that we can eat more, yet lose weight.
How to activate relation response:
- Learn to smile more
- Ease into life
- Breathe more deeply
When you sit down to eat:
- Take three slow, deep belly breaths to relax and calm the body before you start eating.
- Followed by eating mindfully.
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