Permanent Weight loss Through Mind Control

What’s on your mind? Is it really food that you are hungry for?

Dieting or restricting what you eat are inferior ideas and will hurt you in the long run. A more prudent approach is to find out the real reasons you eat and overeat.

People from all walks of life who are suffering from problems associated with being overweight share a common theme: they eat for other reasons apart from hunger. When they’re stressed, bored, tired or upset, they turn to food. The simpler approach, as health experts and dieticians consistently advocate, is to eat with the mind and not the stomach. Let your mind control what you eat and when. If you are dictated to by your emotions then you will quickly find yourself guilty of overeating or eating the wrong foods.

Hunger vs Appetite

The first step is to differentiate between ‘hunger’ and ‘appetite’. That is, the difference between physical need and emotional need. While ‘hunger’ is the physical need for food, ‘appetite’ is the emotional desire to eat food. The desire to eat is most often influenced by our emotions, habits, lifestyle, culture, memories, as well as the sight, smell and taste of food. So, if one can learn to eat when they are actually hungry, and not just because their appetite tells them to, then there will be a dramatic reduction in food intake. But how does one go about recognising the difference between eating for physical hunger and eating for other reasons, especially when the difference can be subtle?

First of all, there must be a paradigm shift to the way you approach eating. Emphasis must be placed, on the ‘why’ you eat and not on the ‘what’ you should be eating. This is the missing link to long-term weight management and improvements in eating habits. Put simply, learn to eat primarily for physical hunger rather than emotional reasons.  Focusing on the inner murmurs of your body and learning to be very honest about what we are actually hungry for is the only approach to take if you want maintain weight loss.

In order to successfully make this step you must quieten the mind and listen to what it is you are hungry for. Nine times out of ten it will not be food. It may be affection or self-esteem; perhaps you don’t really like your job or the career path you have chosen or you may be trapped in an unfulfilling relationship; or it might be as simple as eating to allay a state of mind such as boredom or tiredness.

Once you are clear on what’s forcing you to plug the gap with food, the next step is bringing awareness to your thought patterns. The average human has approximately 60,000 thoughts per day and many of them – around 95 per cent – are the same thoughts we had yesterday and the day before. Yet most people are aware of less than 5 per cent of their thoughts and the impact these thoughts have on their actions. Thoughts shape your attitude, how you feel and what you do.

The equation is simple, you need to observe your thoughts and how they link to emotion and how these emotions force you to eat. In short, as you are observing your throughs and emotions, the idea is not to reprimand yourself for thinking in a negative way, but simply notice certain thoughts and beliefs occurring. The more you are aware of your thoughts, assumptions and beliefs, as well as the extent to which you are influenced by them, the more you can take responsibility and shift your internal paradigm to take control of your feelings and how they connect with food, offering an alternative solution to fulfil the need and trying this long enough to forge new habits.

This is why mediation is such as successful way to overcome this problem and bring awareness to your thoughts, emotions and the eating habits. If you want more information on simple ways to mediate see this wonderful post. If you want to learn to meditate with a simple 3-minute, 3-step meditation method that calms your mind, even if you struggle to sit still, then I’m sure you will find this information useful.

While the hardest part is to retrain your mind,  experts say that on average it takes approximately 50 days to form a new habit that will can permanently transform your life. People are not used to dealing with food and hunger on a cognitive level, but this is what needs to be done in order to revolutionise your life. One can liken this to ‘thinking yourself to health or a great body’ because you’re rationalising what you eat, when and why. This means being mindful of the food and the reasons you are eating as the first step of controlling your mind and your body.

A simple list of strategies to help you put these insights into practice:

1. Recognise when you are truly hungry as opposed to wanting food from some habitual pattern or to satisfy an emotional need. If you can tune in enough, try to recognise what that emotional need is and work out a way to fulfil this desire directly via a healthy means – through walking, taking to a friend or pursuing a hobby. Always remember if you have eaten within the last 2 hours, it is probably not genuine hunger, but some other need masquerading as so.

2. Manage stress. We look for comfort when we are stressed. The goal is to lower stress with healthful strategies, including regular exercise and adequate sleep, rather than seeking comfort in food. Meditation is always a good strategy. Bringing a sense of control around the mind, even if you merely attempt to do so, can deflect your focus of food and your immediate needs long enough for you to gain strength against the urge to eat.

In this way, you should make a list of strategies to help you deal with stress and vary what you do and when. Some strategies that have worked for others are: listening to music; movement – walking, exercise or dancing; pursuing a hobby and meditation. In some cases, upon recognising your stress induced desire for food, take three very deep breaths and you will emerge with a renewed sense of strength.

3. Practice mindful eating. What is mindful eating, you say? Mindful eating is not a diet. Mindful eating is about the way we eat, not what we eat. Mindful eating, put simply, is the opposite of mindless eating.

It is about slowing down and focusing your attention and awareness on the present moment to help disconnect from habitual and harmful behaviours.

A lot of us may not be aware of the reasons we engage in mindless eating. Some common contributors can be: not recognising the difference between hungry and non-hungry eating; not stopping to listen to what your body signals are telling you; confusing hunger and thirst; eating too fast; eating in response to emotions

Mindless eating is common because from a very early age we are trained to eat in response to external cues (time of day, availability of certain foods, for comfort, to alleviate boredom, out of habit, to clear our plate, as a reward) rather than in response to hunger. On the other hand, the mindful eating approach employs strategies which encourage awareness of the senses while eating to bring you into the present moment. These strategies include: keeping a mindful journal, slowing down while eating, focusing on eating (not watching television or reading), and mindful food shopping and preparation.

4. Many things can activate our desire to eat. Knowing your motivations for why you eat will make you conscious of your triggers, and you can begin to change your patterns. Keeping a food journal can help you identify eating triggers. This can help you notice when you eat and what you are doing or thinking when you have a craving, helping you to identify the source of your overeating. This method of controlling what you eat can open you up to deeper patterns of thought and sources of problems which compel you to eat.

Most importantly, before you even pick up the food to eat, take a couple of deep breaths – in through the nose and out through the mouth – and just allow the body and mind to settle. Then decide if you really want to eat for physical hunger. If and when it’s time to eat, make the effort to sit and savour every mouthful. This will help increase awareness of the sensations, feelings and thoughts connected with food and to helpful create a profile around your eating habits.

5. Meditation.

Remember you are not only what you eat but also why you eat.

I hope this information will inspire you to begin your journey towards reclaiming your health and life.