The biggest shift is to let go of the dieting or deprivation mindset and learn to trust your body’s instinctual wisdom. This means learning to listen to its cues of hunger and feelings of fullness. It also means tuning into your body’s reactions to the foods you eat.
People are always surprised that when they really start to pay attention to the foods they eat, they find that certain foods aren’t as appealing or as tasty as they once thought. Some find that foods they thought they really enjoyed actually leave them feeling unwell the next day, and once they make this connection, these foods begin to lose their appeal.
For example, one woman loved rich creamy food and ate a lot of it. With the mindfulness work, she made the connection that this type of food left her feeling queasy the next day and was contributing to an overall sense of sluggishness. Once she cut back on these foods, her sense of aliveness returned and she felt so much better that she had no real desire for them anymore.
Another issue that has to be eliminated is the black and white thinking that most dieters engage in. Black and white thinkers have two modes of operating, either dieting or overeating. One needs to move beyond that thinking and find the middle ground, this is where success happens.Once people start to make these mindset shifts, they find that weight loss begins to occur naturally and they are no longer struggling.
Successful weight loss is really about learning how to live, think, and eat in a way that is sustainable for life. It’s not something that has an ending. As long as you’re alive, you will need to manage and take care of your health. You notice I said health, not weight. That’s because this really needs to be about living a healthy life, not just losing some weight so that you can look better and then go back to your old ways.
And that’s the greatest secret of the naturally thin. How you do food is how you do life!®
Ready to let go of self-defeating patterns around food and weight and learn a new way that’s sustainable for life?
