Did you know there is no need to go without the food you enjoy eating? You can satisfy that yearning for food and still become a healthy weight without dieting. People break diets all the time because it’s just too hard to go without the foods they enjoy long term. Dieting is one of the hardest things to do.
A diet is a list of foods someone else tells you to eat, not only do they tell you what to eat, they tell you how much and how often. And you have to follow it strictly to achieve the outcome they promise you. Diets give you a temporary change. I don’t need to tell you that the results from diets just don’t last. A diet is a system that is designed to fail.
When you go without food for a period of time your body goes into selfprotection mode and stores fat for use later on. When you’re dieting you teach your body to do this and the end result is that at some point you end up weighing more than you did when you started.
Going without for a long period of time leads to eating more than you and your body wanted to eat in the first place. When you diet you ignore what you want to eat. You go without what you enjoy eating and you go without what you body feels like eating. Instead you eat foods you don’t enjoy (or get bored with because of the limited choice) and you eat them under sufferance.
When this gets too hard, you might have one or two things not on the diet. It might be a piece of chocolate, a biscuit, some fries or something else your body is craving. Because you’ve gone without, you find you can’t stop at just one piece or a small serve. Then before you know it, the whole block of chocolate, the whole packet of biscuits or fries is gone.
Have you noticed that when you binge like this it’s not on lettuce or celery sticks it’s on your favorite foods you’ve missed out on? The result of binging is you end up feeling like you’ve failed and feel guilty for doing the wrong thing.
There is a better way. Listening to your body’s needs is called mindful eating. Mindful eating teaches you how to eat the foods you love and enjoy without overindulging. To use mindful eating properly, it’s really important to let go of the emotion you may have around eating. Most people feel they should eat the “right” foods and feel guilty when they don’t. Practicing mindful eating means recognizing what you feel like eating rather than reaching for something out of habit or eating it just because it’s there. It also means that you get back in sync with your body and learn to work with it instead of against it.
People who diet usually crave foods they are forced to go without often for weeks at a time. When you practice mindful eating you can eat what you want when you want. It’s about learning to listen to and trust your body’s inbuilt desire for food. Doing this means that if you feel like chocolate you can eat chocolate because you want to and not feel guilty about it. When you eat what your body wants, you feel more satisfied and tend to eat less.
Follow these tips to put the enjoyment back into eating:
By working with your body to choose the foods you enjoy eating you will feel more satisfied, eat less and tend to eat foods that are healthier and more nourishing. Eating is something you do everyday, putting the enjoyment back into eating puts more enjoyment into your life.
18 April, 2015
Julie Lake is known as a highly successful and sought after coach, speaker, consultant & seminar leader to business owners and busy professional women, including the professional stay at home moms
She is an international coach and trainer who has worked with and impacted thousands of people over 10 years to support them in having the life they wished. Typically she empowers busy women to live in the flow of life, peel back the layers and to effect positive change while staying true to themselves.
She has traveled to 4 continents. She is a proud mother of 5 beautiful children and is happily married. She is passionate about living “happily ever after” and has a knack for working with women to help them to live the life they wish for. Julie works with women 1:1 and in intimate groups to empower their lives.
