Physical Hunger

The image above helps demonstrate the differences between to the two forms of hunger and by listening to our bodies we will be able to tell the two apart.

Physical Hunger

• Comes on gradually & can be postponed
• Can be satisfied with any type of food
• Once you're full you can stop eating
• Causes satisfaction, doesn't cause guilt

Emotional Hunger

• Comes on suddenly & feels urgent
• Causes specific craving, Pizza, chocolate, ice-cream etc
• Eat more than you normally would. Feel uncomfortably full
• Leaves you feeling guilty & cross with yourself

These are fantastic signs to look out for to help you clarify which type of hunger you are responding to. A really great tip is to only eat when we are physically hungry and register our self on the hunger scale between 3 and 7. Learn more about the hunger scale.

Paul McKenna in his book 'Hypnotic Gastric Band' has developed an visualisation exercise to help you re-tune you mind to recognise physical hunger:

1. Think of a time when you were really, really hungry - so hungry you felt faint and even a crust of stale bread would have tasted delicious. Remember that.
2. Now think of a time when you were absolutely stuffed - when you'd feasted and eaten so much you were in pain, even nauseous. remmember that.
3. Do this several times so you emphasize the difference between starving and stuffed.
4. OK, now relax. Those two feelings are the extremes. You never have to feel either of those awful feeling again. you never have o be hungry and you never need to feel that full.

A brilliant mindfulness exercise there from Paul McKenna, if you liked it I can only recommend you purchase his books 'Hypnotic Gastric Band' and 'I Can Make You Thin' because they are full of useful techniques and philosophies that will help you lose weight.

Kind regards
Mindful Mark

Be Brave and Make Some Changes

Making changes can be scary because we are in a rut and use to our current routine and lifestyle. It can take bravery to make a change. By recognising what life will be like if you did not make the change compared to your life if you did is a great way to get you motivated to take the required action.

A quote from the film 'We Bought a Zoo' helps come up with a solution for us to be brave enough to change and make difference to our lifes:

"You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery, and I promise you something great will come of it."
Source - moviequotesandmore.com

This advice helped his son in the movie ask a girl out because 20 seconds of bravery is achievable to make that change. The choice of having a better lifestyle for himself was worth that 20 seconds of insane bravery.

This is all you need to get started on your weight loss journey too. 20 seconds of courage and the changes have started.

We, at Mind Body Weight Loss, will be here to support you in any way we can, with regular updates, tips, advice, product suggestions and eNewsletters.

Take care and speak soon
Mindful Mark

5 Questions to Ask Yourself

I found these 5 questions to ask yourself before you eat on mizfits and they really do make you think.

1. Am I dehydrated?
2. Am I trying to overcome emotions with food?
3. Am I physically exhausted?
4. Am I eating to be polite?
5. Do I need to sustain my body?

These are really useful questions because if you are dehydrated drink water before eating anything, if it is emotional consumption deal with the emotions first, if you are tired do you need food or sleep is the decision to make, if it is to be polite you have to make a difficult decision to follow your path or please someone else. Finally question 5 is the crux of why we eat and perhaps the only reason we should eat and that is it going to help me live longer and healthier?

Take and I hope you found this post helpful.
Mindful Mark

Your Life, You are in Control

This is your life, You are in Control. This is so empowering you may see you life as story book unfolding before you. You may not like the story upto now, but the great thing about this story and indeed you life is that you decide how it unfolds. You can change each and every part of it from this moment on, including your weight loss. So lets read the quote again:

"Ctrl your portions and hunger
Alt your lifestyle and choices
Del Junk food and bad vibe"

So if you follow the weight loss advice in the above quote how do you think you story will change and unfold?

Take total ownership of finishing your story as you would like it to conclude and lets see together what amazing things will happen in your life.

Take care and speak soon.
Mindful Mark

Emotions and Weight Loss Technique

As we found out in our post Emotions and Weight Loss, Psychologists believe that emotion is the biggest block to losing weight. With this in mind Michael J Hadfield, in his book Lose Weight Without Diets, shares a great technique to start understand how your emotions are affecting you achieving your weight loss goals. You just need to get a notebook to record your feelings. This is how he suggests you do it:

Whenever you have the desire to eat when it is not mealtime…

• Make a note of what you are feeling on a scale
• 0…1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10
• And how bad, or good, it is.
• Then eat whatever you want
• 10 minutes later check how you feel
• Bloated…uncomfortable…not nice full…nice full…comfortable…nothing…empty

First of all just begin to notice whatever feelings or emotions are present whenever you get the urge to eat – especially when you are planning to snack and going through that mental should I, shouldn’t I, which we all know is going to end with you giving in to the urge, so why not save yourself the hassle and just eat.

Please let us know how you get on with this technique as we believe it has great potential in you achieving your Mind Body Weight Loss.

Kind regards

Mindful Mark

Emotions and Weight Loss

An interesting study asked Psychologists the biggest issue that stops people losing weight. The most popular answer was emotions.

emotions play a central role and may be the primary obstacle to weight loss.
Have you ever felt guilty after eating a cookie and then decided to eat the whole box, since you’d already blown your diet? Have you felt low and skipped exercise? Then you’ve experienced emotions interfering with your weight loss.
Source - psych central

So dealing with our mind is the key to weight loss and guilt seems be the key emotion we have to deal with. A post we did a little while back helps with this, it is called - Guilt and Weight Loss.

So lets get our mind in gear to lose weight - you can start with this free eReport about emotions from a guy who lost over 220lbs!

You can also sign up for our eNewletter or read post on this blog or visit our website for more information.

Speak soon

Mindful Mark

H.A.L.T Technique for Weight Loss

This H.A.L.T technique for weight loss provides a fantastic structure of how to listen to your body prior to eating.



Listen to the audio above to learn more about this technique and how it can help you lose weight and keep it off. Alternatively you can read the transcript on our MindBodyWeightLoss.info website

The basic premise of H.A.L.T is:

Eat when you are not HUNGRY.

Eat when you are not ANGRY.

Eat when you are not LONELY.

Eat when you are not TIRED. 

By managing your H.A.L.T you can understand what triggers you to eat more or eat unhealthily.

Kind regards

Mindful Mark

Mindful Weight Loss Tips

Mindfulness is fantastic ways to enjoy life in the moment and extend can help you lose weight here are some tips I have found recently which I would like to share with you:

Eat mindfully. Turn off the TV, put away the computer and mobile devices, even put away the book or newspaper. If you eat with any of these things (most people do), eating without them will seem boring. And yet, unless you do this, you are not truly appreciating your food. I like eating my oats (with nuts and berries — see my diet) mindfully, paying attention to each bite. It makes the food taste better, and I eat slowly and with gratefulness.
Leo Babauta

As you know we at Mind Body Weight Loss we love mindful and conscious eating and I love the way it is explained in the above quote.

Wash your bowl. When you’re done eating, wash your dish immediately. Do it while paying full attention to your washing, to the water and suds.
Leo Babauta

This extends upon the mindful eating and can continue in to the washing up, the process of mindfulness can also take place in the purchasing and preparing of the food with thanks for the people who worked to get the food to you.

Block one or more senses. Eat blindfolded, wear earplugs, shower with your eyes closed.
litemind.com

This one sounds like a different way to fully to experience the food you are eating because when one sense is muted the other become more aware and can raise your mindfulness consciousness of the food you are eating.

Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 1

We love these mind techniques for weight loss below and they are a great way to help you lose weight and keep it off, why not check them out and give them a go?

1. Be patient. Losing weight in any kind of healthy way is going to take time. Give yourself a break and relax, and the weight will come off.

Be patient and kind to yourself you deserve it as much as anyone else.

2. Don’t stress. Stressing about weight loss will likely only make it harder to lose.

This is very true. We recently found an interesting article that demonstrates a way we can change our language to reduce stress. Have a look and let is know how it works for you.

3. Be realistic Setting unrealistic goals for your weight loss isn’t healthy for your body or mind. Get your mind set on more realistic accomplishments and you’ll be happier and healthier.

We hear that any goal set should be smart - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic & Time Based.

4. Create a routine. Success with any weight loss program requires creating a routine and sticking to it in what you eat, when you work out and how you think about your progress.

They say it take 28 days to get in a routine after that it starts to become a habit. 1 month of conscious effort is required.

5. Listen to your body. It will tell you when you aren’t eating enough, you’re eating too much, or you’re pushing yourself too hard.

As we say about mindful and conscious eating, listen to your body to tell you when you are full or are hungry as it already knows the answers, but if you are distracted or stress it can be hard to hear its messages.

6. Use your imagination. Our imaginations are powerful things and you can use yours to picture your body and your life the way you really want it to be.

There is evidence to show that our bodies do not know the difference between what is imagined and what is real, it reacts the same to the action as it does to imagining the action.

7. Take it slow. You cannot expect to change your mindset or your body overnight. Take the process slow and steady for the best results.

We have all heard of quick change, but does it last? We at Mind Body Weight Loss feel that weight loss should be done once and not over and over. If this means losing weight at a slower pace but keeping it off forever that must be worth it.

8. Be honest with yourself. Being honest might be more difficult or more painful, but you cannot move forward in changing your body or how you think about it without facing some hard truths about yourself.

I always say to myself that honesty sets you free, it also gives an acceptance of exactly where you are in your life from which you will then have a solid foundation to build. It is much easier to build from a solid platform than it is from a soft sandy one. Honesty and acceptance gives us that solidity.

9. Find out what you truly want. The reality is that you might not be ready to lose weight or commit yourself to the work that it takes. Find out what you truly want in your life. Knowing that you really, really want to lose weight can be a huge factor in motivating you. Source - totallyzen.com

Knowing ones purpose is the key to a happy fulling life. Why not try a visualization of your life 10 years from now, imagine what you would like it to be like. Everything exactly how you want it. This will help show you where you want to go. Also you could read the book "Man's search for meaning" by Viktor Frankl who was a in a concentration camp and found that developing a purpose is what allow us to be happy and move forward with our life.

 We hope you found this post helpful and interesting, if so please sign up for our eNewsletter to receive lots of Weight Loss goodies as well as information, tips, techniques and offers.

Read more in this series:
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 2
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 3
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 4

Ask One Question to Lose Weight

Really? All I need to do is 'Ask One Question to Lose Weight'? I can understand the skepticism, however the further you look in to one persons story you can see that it really worked for him.

William Pratt had always struggled with his weight since he was a child, as an adult he weighed up to 30+ stones (424 lbs). When his dad passed he put on 100lbs and got very depressed, his wife encouraged him to see a therapist, which he did.

However it was not until his doctor asked him this question that everything started to open up for William.

"Tell me the one secret that you had never wanted anyone to know"

Now of course we don't need anyone to actually tell us this information, it is a question that perhaps you should ask yourself and answer it honestly.

It took William a couple of weeks to openly answer it, in the post he sent to the Huffington Post he explains his secret was that he was gay. From that point on he could start dealing with alot other emotional issues which he had and once he had done that the weight its self just started to fall off.

The reason he may have lost his weight after dealing with his emotional issues could be that emotional feelings and hunger are all experienced in the gut and can be difficult to distinguish apart. Once the emotions have been explored it is easier to recognize hunger and as such eat when hungry and not for emotional reasons.

A point a clarity here is that not everyone will have a big secret from their past that they need to get of their chest. However it is a good question perhaps to ask yourself to see if it takes you on a journey of fulfillment like it did for William.