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

Hunger Scale

The hunger scale can help you learn to listen to your body and its messages. The body know what it needs to be healthy we just need to listen and not be distracted. The hunger scale is a great way to start listening to your body.

You can listen to the audio above or read the transcript on our website.

If you like what you hear you can listen to many more weight loss audio file on our SoundCloud page.

Food is Fuel

I have just found this Fuel is Food metaphor to help you lose weight and I really had to share it with you!

"You wouldn't starve your car of fuel and expect it to run efficiently would you?

Successful weight loss is not about starving, it about fueling your body with the healthy, low calorie food it needs to help you lose weight."

This fits in with what we at Mind Body Weight Loss feel is the best weight loss tip ever!

Take care and speak soon.
Mindful Mark

Hunger and Emotions - Eating When You Are hungry

Because hunger and emotions are experienced in the stomach area of the body sometime it can be hard to tell the difference. The importance of Eating when You are Hungry is highlighted because if you eat because of your emotions you are much more likely to put weight on. What this post is aim to to is share a few of pointers of how you recognise your hunger and act upon it.

1. Eat regular healthy meals this way you won't have extreme feelings of hunger
2. Use a hunger scale, this helps set in a conscious way exactly how hungry you are, this is great way to tell the difference between emotions and hunger
3. Consciously eat being fully aware of the tastes, textures, smells and the messages your body is sending. One great way to experience eating consciously is to try the 'Eating a Raisin Experiment'
4. Be kind to yourself and make your life easier, for example checking your hunger scale to see if it above 5 prior to any food shopping trip.

I hope you have found this post helpful and remember to ask yourself next time you think you are hungry. How hungry am I on the hunger scale.

Take care and happy weight loss.

Mind Body Weight Loss Tips

Always stop eating while you’re still a little hungry to make sure you don’t stuff yourself.

Learn to tell physical hunger from emotional hunger to help you eat only when you’re really hungry.

Don’t compare yourself to other people. Some people lose weight faster than others. Your only competition is with yourself.

Don’t starve yourself as this can have a bad effect on your metabolism.

Don’t eat in front of the TV. This is mindless eating and you will never be aware of how much you really eat.

Don’t eat when you’re stressed out or bored. It can lead to overeating.

Eat fresh food, not processed or pre-made dishes.

Exercise the Hara Hachi Bu principle and never eat until you’re totally full. Always eat until you’re about 80% full.

This list, are in our opinion at Mind Body Weight Loss, the best from along list of 70 other weight loss tips but as you can see above we do believe that getting your mind in shape is the best way to get your body in shape too. So please explore the links within the list above to learn more.

Kind regards
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

Eating In Front of Mirror to Lose Weight

This really interesting weight loss tip of Eat in Front of The Mirror to Lose Weight has some psychological Mind Body research to back it up.

The joint research between Arizona State University and Erasmus University in Rotterdam concluded that viewing yourself eating encourages us to eat less.

During their experiments, the researchers placed a mirror in front of participants and found that those eating in front of a mirror consumed less food. The researchers believe that this is because seeing ourselves eat makes us more aware of our bodies and that we do not want to watch ourselves overeat.
Source - Huffington Post

This is really interesting and was back by a nudging experiment which was shown on the BBC one show (I have looked to find it for you but can't find it at the moment) that had two bowls, one with fruit and one with chocolate. The first time the experiment was set up most people ate Chocolate. The second time they set up the experiment and a different group of people came to choose between the bowls more of them chose fruit. The only difference between the two set ups was on the second set up they had a mirror behind the bowls so the person choosing could see a reflection of themselves when selecting. When the experiment is repeated it gets the same results. Here is a slightly different method to encourage eating Fruit instead of Chocolate but you can get the idea from the video how similar it is.

My suggestion from this is to have a mirror in front of you when you eat, a mirror on your fridge door and a blue light on the inside and see how this effects your weight loss and portion control.

Take care

Mindful Mark

Golden Weight Loss Rules from Paul McKenna

These Golden Weight Loss Rules from Paul McKenna are great, you can hear what we at Mind Body Weight Loss have to say about these 4 rules below.



Or read the transcript for the above audio at our website.

Paul McKenna is an expert on Weight Loss and has developed these 4 Weight Loss Rules:

GOLDEN RULE 1: When you are hungry, EAT!

GOLDEN RULE 2: Eat what you want, not what you think you should.

GOLDEN RULE 3: Whenever you eat, do it CONSCIOUSLY.

GOLDEN RULE 4: When you THINK you are full, STOP eating!

As I am sure you are aware some of the above weight loss rule are think that we have talked about at Mind Body Weight Loss for some time, especially the Consciously Eating and Listening to you body to stop eating when you are full, however it is always good to see that they are carried and recognised by other experts in the Weight Loss field.

Paul McKenna is British Hypnotherapist who is passionate about helping people. He has written two book on the topic of weight loss "I can make you thin" and "Hypnotic Gastric Band" both books are extremely interesting and powerful helping change the way we think about losing weight.

Hypnotic Gastric Band

The Hypnotic Gastric Band is a process where a person chooses to be hypnotized in to believing they have had an actual Gastric Band fitted. The people who created this have stated that this is upto 75% successful and are in the process of sourcing academic research to confirm, deny or even enhance their claims. This said hypnosis is known to be extremely successful:

Analysis of 18 studies comparing a cognitive behavioral therapy such as relaxation training, guided imagery, self monitoring, or goal setting with the same therapy supplemented by hypnosis.
Those who received the hypnosis lost more weight than 90 percent of those not receiving hypnosis and maintained the weight loss two years after the treatment ended.
Source weightlosshypnosispro.com

What is the Hypnotic Gastric Band

The Hypnotic Gastric Band is where you have hypnotherapy sessions which enable you to believe you have had a Gastric Band Fitted in an operation, like a virtual operation.

The operation itself is where a small piece of plastic is attached to the top of the stomach to make it small enabling the person to become fuller quickly.

Paul Mckenna explains it like this:

"Your body also communicates with your brain through the nervous system. When your stomach fills, its wall is stretched and nerves react and send signals to the brain.

These systems get thrown out of balance by overeating. The body starts to believe there must be an important reason why its signals are being ignored, and assumes the overeating is a deliberate preparation for a famine. So all the extra food is converted to fat, which is basically stored energy.

When your hypnotic gastric band is fitted, it stops that overeating, and as you move towards a healthy weight your normal responses to your hormonal and nervous signals are restored"
Source -  thesun.co.uk

Success Stories with the Hypno Gastric Band

Daughter lose 6 stone in weight when her Hypnotherapist Mum fits a Hypnotic Gastric Band

Louise turn to Hypnosis as a last hope after attempting many diets. The Hypnotic Gastric Band helped her lose nearly 2 and half stone.

Lauren, a busy full time mum lost 2 stone 10lb using the Hypnotic Gastric Band, even though she had a passion for fast food dinners and snacks. She stated "I used to get really peckish between meals and snack on crisps and chocolate and drink lots of sugary, fizzy drinks – but I just don’t get those same urges any more. My portions have got a lot smaller and I’ve stopped craving fatty meals"

How you can get a Hypnotic Gastric Band

There are a variety of ways you can do this:

• Find a hypnotherapist in your area to see if they have this service. 
• Visit Hypnoband.com,
• Google Hypno gastric band
• Get the book - Hypnotic Gastric Band by Paul McKenna

We hope you found this post helpful, if so please sign up to our newsletter in the top right of this page, if you have not already done so. We can then send you lots of free weight loss goodies.

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.