The Ultimate Weight Loss Guide: Mindful Eating
Welcome back! (If you are coming from Part One of this Weight Loss Guide)
If you haven’t read Part One (Creating Healthy Habits), click here to read it.
If you’d rather skip it and jump straight into this post, that’s cool too :).
Anyways, In Part One we talked about the importance of healthy habits and how to create them to improve your weight loss success and quality of life!
In my ebook Envision Yourself Thin, I speak to a few KEY strategies that allow for sustainable weight loss (and effortless weight maintenance once you’ve achieved your ideal weight and body).
Mindful Eating (or as I like to call it “Attentive Eating”) is one of those KEY strategies.
In this post, you’ll learn what attentive eating is, how it can help you achieve weight loss/maintenance success and practical steps towards using Attentive Eating in your life!
Sit back and prepare to have your mind blown!
Okay… it’s not THAT awesome… but it’s close :)
Attentive Eating 101
Most people spend their day in constant distraction. Every moment is spent thinking about what they plan to do next. This lack of “presence” is the root cause of people’s struggle with mindless eating.
Think about it, when is the last time you sat down for a meal and really enjoyed it?
No television, no screaming kids, no thinking about work?
When we eat distracted, we can easily begin to develop many harmful eating habits such as overeating, unhealthy eating and eating too quickly. All three of these things can lead to adverse health outcomes as well (with weight gain and digestive issues leading the charge).
The goal with Attentive Eating is that you eliminate these negative eating patterns so that losing weight and maintaining a healthy body become second nature. It’s all about creating a unity between your body and mind.
Our bodies have the natural desire to be thin and healthy; we just have to relearn the proper way to eat and appreciate food.
How to Eat “Attentively.”
There are dozens of ways that you can become more present and mindful during your meals, but the following is one that I think is the most powerful at inducing change to your mentality towards eating.
Don’t eat to max capacity
One of the biggest issues I’ve dealt with while trying to lose and maintain my weight is becoming aware of my natural hunger signals.
Most people have two “gears” when it comes to hunger. They are either starving or stuffed.
There are many reasons people struggle with hunger signals, but some of the biggies are:
- Eating processed, non-nutritious foods (white bread, twinkies, etc.)
- Unrealistic perception of portion sizes (thanks to commercials and the Big “M”)
Combine those two reasons above and you create a fat-forming monster!
To fix your intuition with hunger, you’ll need to address these two problems.
Firstly, you’ll need to limit processed food and start eating what your body actually wants.
Foods that your body wants are things like fruit, vegetables, nuts, legumes, sprouted grains, and organic/ hormone-free meats ( a.k.a. whole foods).
Before you get all fussy, I’m not saying to completely eliminate the delicious processed foods you love eating from your diet. On the contrary, I think that small indulgences from time to time are completely fine (who would want to live in a world without pie?).
The goal is to have moderation in your diet.
I typically prescribe an 80/20 or 90/10 approach to diet with 80–90 percent of your diet coming from healthy whole foods and 10–20 percent coming from foods that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside…
Don’t think of eating whole foods as being an unpleasant experience. In fact, the longer and more consistently you eat whole foods, the better they’ll start to taste, and you’ll likely end up enjoying them!
I use to hate salad, but now a delicious, healthy spring mix salad with avocado is one of my favorite dishes to whip up!
Having problems creating healthy recipes?
Luckily, my good friend Emily Ness (blogger over atcookinguphappiness.com) created this epic cookbook for cooking unbelievably tasty meals… the recipes even include calories and macros!
Click Here to learn More about it!
Once you’ve begun eating healthier, you’ll need to move onto the next issue people face which is unrealistic perceptions of portion sizes.
Media constantly bombards us with images of super-sized meals and extra large triple gulp beverages. This has been one of the main drivers behind the rise in obesity and many health complications we face in America.
This skewed perception has lead to people eating way more calories than their bodies actually need…
For example, most nutritionists agree that the average woman needs 2000 calories a day and the average man needs 2400 calories. It’s been reported that we are actually eating upwards of 3,000 calories, and some reports upwards of 3,700 calories! (source)
Food companies have become experts at disguising serving sizes on nutrition labels too…
For example, most people would see this cookie from Starbucks and assume the “120 calories” on the label is for the whole thing. More often than not, packaged food like cookies and muffins include 2–3 servings per package.
Seriously… if this doesn’t make you angry than I don’t know what will. How can they get away with considering a portion size a THIRD of a cookie??? Who eats a THIRD of a cookie!?!?!
But I digress…
As you can see, eating processed foods and a skewed idea of portion sizes has led many to experience unnecessary weight gain and health complications.
Luckily, there are ways to replace these harmful habits and mindsets with helpful ones. Eating less and becoming more aware of natural hunger signals by using the two suggestions above is one way of doing this!
Conclusion
This is only one way to become a more “Attentive Eater”. In my new book Envision Yourself Thin, I go into greater detail about how to become a more mindful eater and include many more actionable steps.
Originally published at www.envisionbeingthin.com on April 28, 2016.
