Mistake #2
Mistake number two has nothing to do with dieting or exercise. As I explained with mistake number one, diets don’t work or enhance your mindset to lose weight and maintain a healthy way of life effectively.
But there is one key thing you can change that will help you and that is change your…
Eating habits
“Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex.” Norman Vincent Peale
Here are my top 6 tips for how you can make simple changes to you eating habits that will support you in losing weight and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
1 Change the types of food you eat. Enhance the quality of the foods you, eat less process food and start eating more and more natural, raw, wholesome, nutritious, water rich foods. Don’t look at what you can’t have look at what you can have and see what variety of foods you can add to your clean, lean healthy living.
2 Slow down- one bad habit that has crept into our fast paced modern living, is that most of us eat too fast. So slow down and take your time to actually taste and enjoy your food. Place your utensils down or if its food you hold in your hand place it down. As you allow yourself to focus on each mouthful of food and really enjoy the flavour and taste it has to offer. It’s often quoted that it takes about 20 minutes for our food to register, so eating too fast can often mean we are eating too much, as we override our bodies natural signals that let us know when we are hungry or satisfied.
3 Chew your food thoroughly – combine with number two slowing down, ensure you chew your food thoroughly. Proper digestion and the fuelling process begins in your mouth and you must remember your tummy doesn’t have teeth, so chew your food thoroughly as you enjoy each mouthful of delicious food. This naturally causes you to slow down and also help with digestion. Next time you eat become aware of how fast you eat and how poorly you chew your food, and slow down and take your time to chew!
4 Leave food – allow yourself to leave food on your plate. This is probably one of the single biggest habits and behaviours the majority my clients have had over the years – The clean plate syndrome. This has usually been past down from generation to generation from war times, or earlier years when food was scarce, or maybe times were hard.
But the fact is in western world the habit of clearing your plate and feeling the need to eat everything in front of you, is no longer appropriate or valid. There is an abundance of food all around us now, and so much food is wasted before it gets to our plates, whatever little you leave isn’t going to make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things.
But if you are conscious of waste and would like to do your bit to help, just be mindful of how you can reduce waste, maybe cook less to begin with or recycle where possible and use food already cooked or prepared for different meal.
Either way get into the habit of leaving an amount of food on your plate, it doesn’t really matter what it is, or even how much. But each time you leave some food you are re-programming and conditioning yourself that it’s ok to leave food on your plate, helping to let go of some outdated habits and beliefs about food that no longer serve you.
5 Portion Control – take some time to asses you portion control especially if you do have trouble leaving food on your plate, it may be that you can help yourself simply by reducing the portion size to begin with. Even if you’re ok with leaving food on your plate, check out your portion sizes, it maybe something you can change.
Often our life can change, maybe we become less active, yet we still eat as much as we used to when we were more active, like the professional or even amateur sportsman who retires or stops playing, yet they still keep consuming as much as when they were actively playing.
6 Going back to basics – Go back to basics and eat for fuel, for nourishment and nutrition. Too often we eat for other reasons than real genuine hunger, we can find ourselves eating in response to emotions, they can be positive or negative emotions, you may find that you eat out of habit, when you are happy, celebrating, but also when we are bored, stressed or unhappy. You need to learn and become aware of the difference between real physical hunger and false emotional, psychological hunger.
Next up is mistake number #3, this is the missing piece for most people seeking to lose weight.
If you missed Weight Loss mistake number #1 catch up now.