Category: Weight Loss

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3 MINDFUL WEIGHT LOSS Secrets You Never Knew

I know the issue of weight loss isn’t for everyone but I’m  making an effort to avoid using the C and ‘L…down’ words as I figured you’ve read enough of that elsewhere.

We’ve had a macrocosmic shift which means there’s been a lot of microcosmic shifts i.e inner changes for everyone in the way that we work, play, think, feel and behave. And nowhere more than in eating habits.

After reading about the misery that so any people are experiencing, (not just from feeling isolated or homeschooling! ) but more around their increasing weight I thought it was time to share some weight loss tips.

These simple tips will help you to get back on track and help you to feel better

  1. As business guru Brian Tracy says “If You Fail To Plan You Plan To Fail” so have a light meal and sit down with a pen and paper.  Do this now, write out your breakfast, lunch and dinner menu for 14 days. It’s OK if you repeat certain meals.
  2. Be sure to include protein for breakfast, think nuts, cheese, meats. Lots of high fibre fruit and veg. You can eat celery, tomatoes, radishes, cucumber for breakfast with a couple of slices of cheese you know.
  3. Before each meal drink a large glass of room temperature water.
  4. NEVER SHOP on an empty stomach
  5. NEVER SHOP without a plan (that’s your list)

This should start to help you get on track again. There are many more tried and tested tips and suggestions Mindful Weight Loss can be practised by anyone.

If you want to join the Mindful Weight Loss course for an unbelievably great price, buddy up. Bring a friend and you both pay £49.50 bring three friends and you all pay £33 bring four … and you all pay £24.75 contact me now.  Although this is an exclusive offer just for my lovely Stresshacker subscribers  please  feel free to forward to your friends if  you’d like them to enjoy the offer too. 

It’s not even about being able to lose weight  so much much as the horrible beating up that most of us do about putting on a few pounds.  Trust me we will never get the best out of ourselves if we’re listening to  the negative head trash. A daily diet of criticism, judgement and blame bring feelings of frustration,guilt and shame. Stop that!

Self-love and kindness that’s the key

Start By Loving Yourself

For some the word mindfulness has begun to feature more largely in life. The slower pace (for some) has enabled us to become mindful and present in our daily activities such as walking, shopping and cooking.

If you haven’t got time to read catch up with one of 3 podcast episodes about mindful weight loss here https://anchor.fm/stresshacker/episodes/Mindfulness-special–Part-13-What-is-Mindfulness-efjbdv

This has got to be a good thing no? I wrote about different ways to apply mindful eating  here. https://www.thestresshacker.com/how-to-lose-weight-while-you-eat/  What about trying this though. How would it be if the next meal you prepare for yourself  was made like this.

First take a breath, consider the meal that  you’re making.  Secondly consciously, that means ONLY  thinking about what you’re doing in the moment, take out all the ingredients – even if it’s just a snack.

Thirdly set about preparing this meal in a loving way.  Approach this as if it is the last meal you will ever make for someone you love dearly. That could be your cat, child or lover, it could be someone from the past  or someone who has passed, find that person/pet and generate feelings of warmth and love that you have/had for them. Approach the making of that meal with the most loving feeling that you can pull up  in your heart and mind.

The entire time you’re preparing it, imagine sending thoughts of love. Wish them peace, protection, good health, joy. Wish them freedom from stress, anxiety or danger. Now imagine them sending that back to you… receive those feelings back from them, do your best to feel them. All the while making the meal.  That’s it!

This will be one of the tastiest meals you’ve ever eaten. Don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself.

Meanwhile you might want to see what the NHS recommend for weight control https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-weight/12-tips-to-help-you-lose-weight/

For general podcasts on mental health, mind and body topics you can catch my regular podcasts here https://anchor.fm/stresshacker

Oh and I almost forgot to mention I’ve got a small piece in Psychologies Magazine this month.

No More Anxiety
Anxiety, Thestresshacker and Psychologies Magazine

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What is Wellbeing? How can it work for you?

Wellbeing In A Week Course

Why is Wellbeing so important?

Wellbeing online course
WELLBEING AND HEALTH

Simply because it affects your overall health and happiness.

As a teacher and therapist of many years I see first hand how important wellbeing is for people to thrive. See what the World Health Organisation has to say about it.

I have learned that everyone has a story and none of us move through the journey of life unscathed. Some people suffer anxiety from past or current events and other’s live with emotional scars. And whilst some live with physical traumas, everyone has to deal with loss at some time in life.

It’s Not   Happens To You, It’s How You Deal With It.

My short course Wellbeing In A Week helps combat anxiety and stress.

It offers simple exercises and is packed full of opportunities to program positive thinking and wellbeing into your mind and body.

There are 5 main components to Wellbeing

1.Connection

Loneliness is an epidemic and there are many reasons for it, technology not being the least. People who feel lonely often talk about feeling isolated too. Whilst this isolation is actual, in that they may have stopped going out and connecting to others,  it can also show up as a  physical numbness,  an inability to feel.  In therapy we discover that  this usually forms part of a much bigger picture of grief.  Grief can come from all kinds of scenarios such as a childhood where parents are absent because of  divorce, death or just  ‘unavailable’ because of long working hours. Grief and isolation can also stem from periods of bullying at school or in the workplace.  The lonely person can feel cold, numb and shut-down.

The remedy is to  connect, learn to trust again and reach out for connection. Finding just one  person to talk to or discovering a small group that you could join. You can develop connection by taking up a  hobby. 

2. Be Active

It’s so important to stay fit and healthy. The stress hormone cortisol goes up when you feel lonely and this can compromise your immune system and affect your heart adversely. Psychologically this could be because ‘affairs of the heart’ will have you thinking in negative cycles spiralling into anxious and depressed thinking.  Serotonin, Oxytocin, dopamine and endorphins all help us to feel happy and most are released when doing things we love and enjoy … so find the exercise you love and boost your wellbeing.  So many people talk about a sense of ‘coming home’ for example, when they discover the joys of yoga. 

3. Keep Learning

Keeping your mind active by discovering something new learning something different from your usual daily routine will boost your wellbeing.  It could be something technical or a musical instrument or online courses that teach you how to think differently such as Wellbeing In A Week.

Wellbeing In A Week, online course, the stresshacker

Remember there’s always help at The Stresshacker to deal with things that threaten to derail you or negatively impact your wellbeing.

Take at peak at the shop here for resources to:

4. Give To Others

Yes! believe it or not giving to others makes us feel great! Develop an attitude of gratitude to boost your happy hormones. Think back, when was the last time you helped someone out? The last time you made a random act of kindness? If you can’t think of anything try doing something by the end of today to help someone out. You will be helping yourself too.

5. Mindful

Being mindful means being present in the moment here and now.

Try this exercise,  stop right now and centre yourself by observing 3 things that you can see, 3 things you can hear, 3 things you can feel without moving too much and 3 things you can smell and taste. 

How was that? How long did it take.  It was easy wasn’t it! And do you know what’s even easier? Go to ‘freebies’ section in The Stresshacker shop and download your free audio guides for mindfulness. Let me know how you like them.

Interestingly sometimes the smallest change in your routine, your thinking or habits can have a massive positive impact on your health and wellbeing. Investing in self-care is probably one of the most important things you can do to maintain a good sense of self and wellbeing.

Enjoy!

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How To Lose Weight While You Eat?

Rather smugly I thought I had swerved all the colds and flu’s quite successfully this year but finally a bug got me! After a recent unpleasant chest infection it’s been a joy to rediscover my taste buds and the pleasure of mindful eating once again.

So, how do you lose weight while you eat?

Lose Weight While You Eat? Mindful Weightloss - The Stresshacker - Sue SmithMindful eating isn’t just for yoga retreats and it’s not restricted simply to the actual eating of a meal either. You can start mindful eating anytime. From the moment you plan your next meal to the shopping, selection and preparation of a dish. All of it can be done mindfully.

The reality is we can only think of one thing at a time and when we so-call multi-task, we’re really just diluting the other thing(s) that we’re aiming to do. So have a shot at being mindful of your next meal.

Mindful Eating… here’s how:

Slow down. Breathe and focus your attention inward for a moment and ask yourself

“What do I want, what do I need to eat that is healthy and will satisfy all my taste buds?” 

Keep repeating this question slowly to yourself until the answers begin to bubble up. You can also add… “that is easy and quick to prepare” or… “ that will give me lots of energy and vitality”

Trust your mind and what it knows.

At a deeper level your mind is processing millions of bits of information every second, you absolutely have some good quality answers to these pertinent questions so trust your mind and it will serve you well.  As the thoughts surface you might find it’s often the first two or three ideas that are the most helpful.

Shopping for food:

Aim to spend a few moments really looking at the produce, touch it if possible, check in and sense if you’re choosing well for yourself or are you making a hasty choice because you’ve left it until you’re hungry? If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!

When preparing the food:

Think of cooking something simple like an omelette, take a moment to feel the eggs between your fingers, notice how it feels to break the shells, observe the colour of the yolk. Now spend a moment thinking about the chicken that laid it and the people involved in the food chain that brought it to you.

Notice the movement of your hand as you whisk the eggs  catching air into the mixture and how it feels to slowly pour it into the pan. Can you see the moment when the colour change?  Watch how it slides out of the pan onto the plate. Catch the aroma in your nostrils and as you breathe it in, does it create a reaction in your mouth or your stomach?

This might sound a bit time consuming but the fact is you’re probably thinking something whilst you’re cooking anyway, so why not think about what you’re doing to the exclusion of all else?

You might just notice something of importance to you.  You might decide to buy different eggs next time because the yolk looked too pale for example and the source of your eggs might be something for you to re-consider.

Eat peacefully:

Finally, when actually eating your meal even if it’s a just a sandwich, aim to do so peacefully, eat in silence, free from distractions, so no radio, TV, phone or computer.  Smell your food and notice any physiological reactions, such as the increase of saliva in your mouth before you start eating. As you take the first mouthful how does your gut react?

This may sound laborious but it’s just different, it actually increases the pleasure of eating and the possibility of weight loss!

After a silent meal during one of my yoga days a student told me “I noticed how fast I was eating and slowed myself down, usually I would have eaten a lot more but strangely I felt as if I’d had enough to eat even before I’d finished!”

According to the World Health Organisation in 2016 almost 40% of men and women were overweight. Along with a plethora of other reasons mindless eating has to play a part in this epidemic. It’s probably no surprise to know that many people start losing weight when eating mindfully. Give it a go and share your story with us here at thestresshacker.com to inspire others.

We’ve given thestresshacker homepage a new look and as part of launching that we’re offering a 25% discount to the unique online course Mindful Weight Loss the code NEWYOU will only be active until 1st May 2020 so grab yours while it lasts.

Thanks for reading.