13 Mindfulness Practices for Losing Weight
13 Mindfulness Practices for Losing Weight
You will find numerous tips and tricks to losing weight but only some of them will work while others will not. Because of this, you will need to do more than scratch the surface and go deep down into what will actually help you shed off those unwanted fats. Mindfulness is the latest in the fitness community and it isn’t just some fad. It helps you lose weight by getting into the core of the matter which is your relationship with food. In essence, mindfulness is really that practice of focusing your awareness towards the here and now. When it comes to your wellness, this translates to better sleep, stress-free days, and most importantly, a sound relationship with food that you can have for the long-term.
As such, mindfulness is a real eating practice where you are not only enabled to shape your body but your philosophies around eating as well.
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Mindful eating to the core
To practice mindful eating the right way, it is important to know what it is really about. Beachbody Nutrition Manager, Krista Haynes, RD defines mindful eating as the practice of being in the moment as you eat. In this sense, mindful eating is also called intuitive eating as you give your focus and full attention to the eating experience alone and nothing else. You will notice how your food tastes like, its smell and looks, and how it appeals to your emotions. When you don’t practice mindful eating, you simply eat, rush through it, and end up eating more without appreciating the food in front of you.
Clinical psychologist, Josh Klapow, PhD is a co-host of the radio show called, “The Web”. Klapow adds how mindful eating is all about recognizing how eating can be a bit complex as a process but can also be made highly fulfilling. To illustrate it more clearly, Klapow wants you to think about mindful eating as very much like mindful existence where you take a minute to smell the flowers and immerse yourself in the beauty of nature. While doing that, you can choose to multi-task and check your mobile, or take your time, even just for a few minutes to breathe it all in with deep appreciation and flood your senses with everything that is intrinsically beautiful. Mindful eating is much the same way. You eat and enjoy every bit of it – deliberately, slowly, and beautifully.
How mindful eating can help you lose weight
If you take a look at it very closely, mindfulness when applied to eating is more of an approach than a cure for weight loss. As a tool, it is meant to kick off healthy eating and thus, sustainable weight loss. When you start being aware of what you are consuming for your body, you will become more conscious about your choice of foods. You will tend to choose what is more nourishing and what will make your body healthier instead of just what seems to be very delicious or satisfying. Haynes talks about the shift of your focus from counting calories and other numbers into how foods are making you feeling. She describes how mindful eating is going to widen your understanding and realize that eating is providing your body with energy and nourishment instead of a passive activity that you need to just get over and done with.
In addition, mindfulness also requires limiting the distractions that you typically succumb to while eating. Think working while eating, Netflix on marathon, endless social media scrolling, and all the other distractions that you may not even consider as a distraction in the first place. When you are less distracted, you can focus on what you choose to eat and how much. The opposite is true when you eat distracted. You will tend to overeat, make unhealthy choices, and will miss signs of fullness or physical discomfort that are keys to weight loss.
As you practice mindful eating, you will start eliminating these distractions and you will be more in tuned with what your body is telling you. Beachbody Nutrition Manager, Paige Bente, MS, RD espouses that mindfulness can help you lose weight while your relationship with food improves. Interestingly, you will be able to avoid that deprivation-binge cycle that brought you in this place of unhealthiness and wanting to lose weight.
Mindful eating strategies
You can harness the power that lies in mindful eating and start choosing healthier foods, losing weight, and enjoying your relationship with food, devoid of any self-judgment or guilt.
- Serve your portions out
When you can’t see your food, you can’t eat them mindfully. Avoid eating straight out of the box or the bag. Otherwise, you will tend to overeat, keep reaching for more, and finish the whole thing before you know it. You will never see how much you have already had or notice that you are already full. It will be hard for you to appreciate your food fully when it is hidden from your view. To be able to eat mindfully, plate your food and serve only the portions that are healthy for you to facilitate weight loss. Enjoy every bite and be very satisfied with what’s in front of you.
- Before you eat, ask why you are eating
This may sound absurd but out of habit, you may be eating for the wrong reasons. This is why, you need to pause and ask yourself why you feel like eating right now. Understanding the whys as to why you’re eating is a big part of practicing mindful eating. And so before you enjoy that brunch or reach for your favorite snack, first asses how your body is feeling or what’s it telling you. Check if you are feeling thirsty, tired, or lightheaded. Can you hear your stomach gurgling? Also check your environment. Maybe you are feeling bored or is just too lazy to finish work. Klapow explains that most of the time, you eat without being fully aware of what you’re doing. So take time to pause before you eat and make it more purposeful.
- Chew and savor every bite
In this fast-paced world, eating mindfully can be a luxury. But if your goal is to stay fit and healthy, eating should be an activity that you take time to do. Rushing all the time does not really reflect a well-balanced life for you. In the long run, you will notice how your body will react with an illness that will bring you to your senses. Before it’s too late, practice mindful eating by chewing each bite thoroughly and savoring it. This also implies that you do not wait until you are extremely hungry before you decide to grab a bite. You have probably noticed how you would inadvertently slurp out of extreme hunger and you rush to finish your plate.
Apparently, this habit is going to hinder proper digestion while you miss out on the flavors and complex textures of the dishes in front of you. But if you chew your food thoroughly, your experience will be one of ecstasy what with all the saltiness, sweetness, or sourness engulfing your taste buds. Savoring your food is an inexpensive luxury that you should not deprive yourself. While you slow down the eating process, you actually get more healthiness with every bite. As such, do not just wolf down your food. Have one small bite, chew it completely, and enjoy it before you swallow it.
- Down some water before you eat
Sometimes, you tend to eat too much when your stomach is empty and you have to fill up a huge space in order to feel full. What if, you can feel full even before you start eating? Drinking water before meals is a highly-recommended practice for mindful eating. Preliminary research reveals how doing so may prevent overeating and help you stay hydrated at the same time. Making a ritual out of drinking water before eating can stir your senses, energize you, and bring you to the present moment. Klapow adds that by adapting this strategy, you can cut off the automatic eating cycle as you slow down and relax your mind before you enjoy your meals. It allows for more focus and concentration on the beautiful process of eating that is to come.
- Go for smaller plates
Conditioning is a critical part of weight loss and when you can control your environment, you can also take control of a lot of factors that affect how much you eat. Between a big plate and a small plate, the smaller one is always the smarter choice because it can look full even you just put smaller portions of food. When you eat on a big plate, you tend to fill it up with more food and end up consuming all of them as well. Visually, you will tend to crave for less when you also see less. Smaller plates are great with portion control. Should you find yourself in eat-all-you-can buffets, use this mindful eating strategy so you can stay on track.
- Make it colorful and flavorful
The goal of mindful eating is to make the process very naturally enticing for you. In this case, you would need to say goodbye to highly processed, instant foods. Instead, pick foods that are fresh, vibrant, and colorful both for your snacks and meals at the right portions. As you make a habit out of mindful eating, you will notice how you will develop a better appreciation and taste for whole foods that are naturally healthy. You will notice even the subtlest of food flavors as you eat deliberately and take small bites. Haynes points out that gradually, it will entice you to choose carrots and its natural sweetness over a high-sugar treat or sugary dessert. You will also put less dressing or cheese on your veggies because you will seek the natural flavors of the vegetables. You will not only lose weight as you eat mindfully, but you will also live a healthier lifestyle.
- Forget about the Clean Plate Club
It is not really known as to who founded the Clean Plate Club but you probably grew up practicing their beliefs and finished everything on your plate or get grounded by your parents. You could not just leave the table unless you finished it all up and not a morsel left behind. Now that you’re an adult who’s going to practice mindful eating, you may need to give this a second thought. You can choose to cancel your membership from the club and rethink your options. For one, if you are eating out, you can consider packing your leftovers to go. You do not have to finish all your food for the sake of having a clean plate. If you want to, you can even leave a few bites as soon as you feel full. It may sound like you are wasting food but over stuffing yourself isn’t helpful either. You can avoid this scenario by setting your portions right the first time or when you set food on your plate. But if you can’t help it, there is really no need for you to eat your plate clean of all food.
- Free yourself from distractions
It is easy to get distracted while you are eating. However, you may not be aware that you are eating distractedly when you are used to eating and doing something else. For instance, you may be used to eating while working and to practice mindfulness, you have to avoid eating at your desk or in front of your computer or mobile phone. You have to switch the TV off and put away all magazines or books that you might be tempted to look at while eating. If you are fond of listening to podcasts or to music while munching on your breakfast, you may need to ditch this to give way to mindful eating. Research has it that the sound you make when you eat your food significantly affects the amount of food that you consume.
You can hear the “crunch” with each bite, it is likely that you will eat less as you are made aware of the sounds that you make while eating. However, when you drown that noise with louder distractions, then you will tend to eat more. Klapow likens this mindful eating practice to meditation. It will be very difficult to meditate when you can hear all the noise around you or when your mind is full of other things besides the food in front of you. As such, when you eat and you are distracted or your attention is somewhere else, you won’t be able to enjoy your food or sense the satiety signals that your body is sending you. Research confirms how eating distractedly can lead to overeating while mindful eating can facilitate your much-desired weight loss.
- Sit and eat
For some people, they can’t eat unless they’re sitting down but for many others eating while driving somewhere or walking to work is a common scenario. As such, practicing mindfulness can be a challenge to those who are not so used to having to pause and stop anything else that they are doing and just focus on eating. This is especially true when you are very busy and do not really have the time to sit down. If you want to lose weight successfully however, mindful eating has to be done the right way. You have to be fully present in the “now” to be able to appreciate your food and live your best life yet. An essential part of the practice of mindfulness is doing just one thing at any given time. Do yourself a favor and enjoy meal time – you deserve it.
Respecting time for yourself in this way will energize you to work on your tasks and complete them as scheduled. On the other hand, rushing about and doing everything like your work is your life is only going to make you feel stressed and you can end up overeating your way to sickness. So sit down, enjoy your food, and love every moment of it.
- Pause before getting a second helping
When there’s a lot of delicious food in front of you, it’s easy to get tempted and devour all of them. Thankfully, mindful eating will give you that wake-up call and help you see clearer as to what is healthy and unhealthy as a practice. This is especially true when you are trying to lose weight and do not want to lose track of your goals. Thing is, when you are already full, it takes about 20 minutes for the signal to travel from your brain to your gut. Twenty minutes is a lot of time to get a second helping – maybe even a third one. But now that you are aware about this fact and have decided to be more mindful, remind yourself to take a deep breath before getting a second helping. Klapow points out that taking this break will allow time for the food that you have eaten to be processed in your body. So think twice about going for a second round. Better yet, set your mind for only one round so you do not crave for more. Make this conscious choice ahead and pause in case you feel tempted to load up more food on your plate.
- Tea it away
The urge to snack can come at you even if you’re not really hungry. Klapow tells how most urges to eat are actually just an urge for some oral sensation satisfaction. So what you are craving for is not food but the ritual of indulging in anything. As such, you do not have to give in to them right away. Should you find yourself with such cravings though, deal with it strategically by making a cup of tea. If you haven’t yet, go ahead and explore the soothing world of tea. Green or black tea is great when you are looking for that boost of caffeine. Unsweetened hibiscus or peppermint is best when you prefer a strong flavor. Rooibos tea with ginger, fresh lemon, and apple cider is a perfect combination as well. And don’t forget, you have to boil the water and steep the tea so the process can cancel out your urge to snack. Sit back, relax, sip on your tea and make a beautiful habit out of mindfulness.
- Practice the vow of silence from time to time
Have you ever tried eating in silence? Probably not, and that is why it is worth exploring. Mindfulness is all about focusing on the present and what better way to do it than to be able to do something just one thing at a time. When you are having your meals, try eating and not talking. Once in a while, try to eat your meals in utter silence. When it is quiet, the mind has a tendency to wander around. But this is natural and you can acknowledge these thoughts. What you have to do after though is to gently lead your mind back to what you are currently doing which is eating. Be aware of the food that is right there in front of you – the colors, smells, flavors, consistency, taste, and all the other wonderful sensations that you usually just take for granted. This is especially ideal when you are eating by yourself, with a partner, or a few friends who would like to experience mindful eating with you. If you are with family however and conversing while sharing a meal is part of your tradition, then you can probably have just the first 5-10 minutes of silence. It could be good for a change and can set the tone for mindfulness and gratefulness through the rest of your meal.
- Keep your cravings in check
Another important factor that you have to focus on as you practice mindfulness is your cravings. In this case, Bente suggests that you use a journal to keep track of your cravings and how you are feeling each time they come to you. Take note of when they usually occur and where you’re at when you give in to them. As you become conscious of them, Klapow says that it will empower you to make a choice whether you will indulge in them or not. If you choose not to, then you can check what is it about your feelings that you need to deal with or which part of your environment you can adjust so that you don’t let your cravings get the better of you. The end goal is to be able to eat more mindfully. For instance, if you find that eating lunch while working on your computer typically ends with an uncomfortable stuffiness, then you can try trading 30 minutes of that multi-tasking mode for half an hour of mindful eating in silence and self-care.
Are you ready to lose weight, build muscle, or feel more fit? Join Beachbody On Demand, and get unlimited access to Beachbody’s world-famous programs, including 80 Day Obsession, Liift 4, 21 Day FIX®, Body Beast, Insanity, TurboFire, PiYo, P90X®, 21 Day Fix Extreme, T25 and 100’s more. Don’t miss out on your chance for amazing results. Sign up today!
