Intermittent Fasting and Meditation Remedies for Weight Management
When Willpower Doesn’t Work and Life Gets in the way
The stresses of our burdens and busy lifestyles often make it seem like we don’t have time to prepare wholesome food, let alone eat right. Our bad eating habits are programmed into us. That may explain why people spend up to hundreds of dollars a month on commercial diet systems and still don’t find long-term success. So how can we accomplish the discipline, wisdom, and love in order to meet our goals every day?
This will involve inner work of becoming more mindful during the day, intentionally slowing down, especially while preparing meals, eating, and moving. This will help you start becoming more aware of any unhealthy habits and triggers that don’t serve your weight loss goals. One way to formally approach this inner work that only takes a few minutes a day is through meditation.
Meditation Helps With Weight Loss
According to the experts, the body is a reflection of what’s going on inside the mind. If our focus is on losing weight without doing inner work, we avoid the emotional and mental beings we are, and that prevents us from understanding why the weight is showing up in the first place. People who lose weight using meditation confront their thoughts, feelings, love for self and how they perceive themselves. They’re willing to dig up possible emotional triggers and past traumas that might have led to an unhealthy relationship with food.
Meditation involves sitting, lying, or walking in a quiet place, focusing attention on a word, a breath, or something else, and being open to witness what you learn. Sitting quietly allows us to sift through our thoughts, challenge our limiting beliefs and raise our standards of what we want for their mind and body. A relaxed state allows us to ask questions about our health and the habits that hinder and promote it. We can get to the truth of why we grab fast food or skip our morning workout. We can confront childhood programming and habits that are still with us. We can understand why weight loss has been an issue in the past and stick to a weight loss program to get to and keep your ideal weight. We may also find subconscious blocks that keep us from healthy change, such as fears from childhood that result in self-sabotage.
If this sounds like a useful way to do the inner work, there many ways to learn meditation. As one who has meditated for many years since college days, I can assure you it is easy, harmless and useful. There are numerous books on the subject and plenty of simple online instructions and resources, classes and groups too. If meditation and mindfulness are not your things, there are other ways to regularly take some time, do the inner work you need to support the hard work of eating right and exercising.
We Choose What We Eat
According to Food Business News, one recent USDA study found that if we’re eating 2,000 calories from dawn till dusk, we should be able to consume all the vegetables and fruit you need for $2.50 a day. The USDA also concluded that after comparing 20 different fruits and vegetables with 20 different snack foods, healthy fruits and vegetables actually cost less than the snack foods. The healthier food may require us to wash it, cut it up and store it in a cool place but the rewards are monumental.
What we eat is extremely important and if our intention is to shed stored weight, then eliminating processed foods is one of the quickest ways to change our eating habits. Many years ago when I had high blood pressure I decided to cut our caffeine and salt from my diet. Something miraculous happened. First, my blood pressure dropped to normal. A few years later I prepared a stir-fry with veggies, almonds, scallops, and whole grain rice. After a couple of bites, my friend was pouring on the extra soy sauce. My food had all the salt it needed. Extra soy sauce made it unbearable to me. I began to notice that most processed foods, which I rarely ate, tasted very salty. My system had acclimated to less salt and I realized I was healthier for it. I wouldn’t think of putting extra salt on anything now (well, maybe a soft pretzel now and then!)
If your intention is to enjoy a healthy diet you can start with good, unbiased, free information from a place like the USDA. Look at what they have to say about healthy eating patterns, with suggestions that will make you hungry for healthy food. Then, in order to put it into action, put it on paper. State your intentions on paper. Sketch out some dinner ideas for the week. Make a shopping list. Stick to it. Take the time to prepare the food. The food preparation time will slow down your frantic pace and give you time to love what you are doing and think. Store leftovers for lunches.
What about cravings for unhealthy foods? According to an article in Scientific American, in some cases, cravings are sometimes a sign of dietary needs or hormonal imbalances. A good holistic health practitioner can look at blood work numbers and see if all of your organs are doing what they are designed to do. If they are not, sometimes vitamin supplements can help rebalance the body’s natural systems that can alleviate cravings.
Does this mean you can never eat another hot dog? Another french fry? Another high fructose corn syrup soft drink? Absolutely not. But if you approach every serving of every meal with the intention that it is an opportunity to feed yourself only good food, and then do that habitually, your body will repay you. You will be establishing new patterns and your mind and body will rewire itself. You will make progress in shedding pounds, finding balance and you will feel healthier and more productive.
Curb How Much We Eat
Most nutritionists suggest limiting Calorie intake to 2,000 Calories a day. This might be hard to do if you were an athlete or did heavy manual labor and needed 4,000 Calories a day to offset your workouts for a while. Eating 2,000 Calories a day with a balanced diet will mean intentionally planning, buying good food, preparing it, and enjoying it. But just as your dynamic brain rewires itself in response to new learning, your other organs get used to better eating too.
What if I get hungry? When we reduce our intake, especially if we are choosing to decrease carbohydrates such as pasta, potatoes or extra protein, at first it may take some getting used to. An extra helping of healthy foods can satiate hunger just as well or better than junk foods. When I am hungry and I am maxed out on Calories I will have a glass of V8 or sometimes have some air-popped popcorn without any toppings, of course. My taste has evolved to love the taste of pure popcorn without any of the evils of additives.
Maintaining a Healthy Body Weight Through Fasting
As this is written, the latest research shows that intermittent fasting may hold appeal to help us live healthier lives. Fasting follows the eating pattern our ancestors had as hunter-gatherers since more often than not food was scarcer than it is today. One way to do intermittent fasting, according to Mark Mattson, a neuroscientist with Johns Hopkins, is to eat a balanced diet within a narrow six to eight-hour window during each day. The second way is known as 5:2 intermittent fasting, which requires that people only eat one moderate-sized meal on two days each week. Fasting has benefits including stabilizing blood sugar and increasing resistance to stress as it suppresses inflamation. It can decrease blood pressure and cholesterol while it improves the resting heart rate and brain functions.
Does fasting result in getting hungry? According to nutritionists, it does at first, but before long blood sugar stabilizes the body gets used to the new pattern. While fasting may make you healthier and maintain a healthy weight it is not considered to be a weight-loss tool, and should be avoided by the very young, older people, and those who already have low body weight. And be sure to get approval from your medical doctor before you try this on your own.
Remember Your Positive Affirmations
Making and keeping a new eating plan is only as good as the discipline, wisdom, and love of your intentions of self-care. Some people post their menu on their fridge every week. Some find having a diet support group or an informal wellness group helps them to eat healthier. I have known people who go to the extreme of having stomach staples to force themselves to eat less. Others find that it is supportive to trade off cooking and doing dishes with their partners, provided they are supportive.
Above all, remember your positive self-affirmations, confirming that you have the discipline, wisdom, and love to control what you put in your body and then follow through. Once you have made a plan to eat well and within your Calorie goal, you are ready to take the next step and exercise in order to balance the intake with the output.
