Eat Slowly

There really is something worth investigating about eating slowly, the naturally lightest person I know is also the slowest eater I know, he chews his food, putting his cutlery down to give him to time to savor the food.

The theory behind eating slow is that it gives the body time to deliver messages to the brain to state that you are full, it also gives you change to fully be aware of the food you are eating. You can then decide if it appropriate for you. Sometimes we eat food so quickly that we do not give ourselves time to realise if this is the correct food at the correct time for us.

If you would like to try this method why not use the suggested technique of chewing your food 20 times between each mouthful.

Please comment below or email us to let us know how you get on because along with eating consciously this method makes a huge difference to your weight loss.

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.

Correct Your Mind

What a lovely quote by Lao Tzu, it really does show that proper planning and structure of your mind can help you achieve your goals, for me this was extended upon by something Gandhi said:

"Carefully watch your thoughts, for they become your words.
Manage and watch your words, for they will become your actions.
Consider and judge your actions, for they have become your habits.
Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they shall become your values.
Understand and embrace your values, for they become your destiny.”

So very poignant and show how we can achieve anything just carefully watching our thoughts and correcting our minds.

We at Mind Body Weight Loss believe that everything starts from the mind which is why we share lots of tips, information an product information to help you get correct your mind to give you the best change of achieving your weight loss goals.

Take care
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.

Good Food to Eat for Weight Loss

Michael Pollan the author of Food Rules has some fantastic tips for Good Food to Eat for Weight Loss, some of which I am going share with you below:

"Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."
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"Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry."
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"Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients."
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"Avoid foods you see advertised on television."
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"Eat only foods that will eventually rot."
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All of his points are best summed in Michaels most famous tip :

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
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If you would like to learn more about each of these tips please check out the amazing book called 'Food Rules'. It will really make you think and can make a fantastic different to your health and as a result your weight.

Take care and speak soon.

Can Do Craig

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

Thinking That Will Make You Thinner - Part 4

This final part of how 'Thinking Will Make You Thinner' will conclude the 16 new thought patterns which can help you not only lose weight but hopefully keep it off forever!

1. This is just 1 day out of my 365 day year – I can cope with it. tomorrow will be easier.

Chunking anything in to smaller sections is a great way to achieve bigger goals. Focus on completing each minute and the hours, days, months and years will take care of themselves. In the book the 'Inner Game of Tennis' it is suggested that a player should 100% concentrate on winning each point. If they do this successfully the games, sets and match will take care of itself.

2. If I don’t take care of my weight and health – there are a lot of doctor’s and others who will gladly take my money to do it for me.

I love this thought, we need to take total responsibility for our health and if we don't nobody else will. By us taking total owner ship of our health we can manage the food we eat and help us live a longer more healthy life enabling us to spend more time with our family because we don't die as early as we would have had we not taken care of our health.

3. I never tell myself I am quitting – I only say: ” I’m taking a break, or vacation day today.   It stops me from thinking it is all over.  I acknowledge it is just a temporary break. Then I do not have to feel guilty over it.

We have done a couple of posts on this recently that cover this exact point the first is 'Weight Loss Motivation - Don't Quit' and the other is 'Guilt and Weight Loss'.

4. When I get to my goal weight – I am treating myself to a spa! and pretend I am “Oprah for a day” (:  She is only the richest woman in America ( at least as of this writing)    Won’t you feel rich when you are at your goal weight and feeling your best?

Setting a reward for achieving any goal is great way on motivating yourself so what is your reward going to be?

We hope you found this final part of how 'Thinking That Will Make You Thinner' helpful please checkout other in this series:

Thinking That Will Make You Thinner - Part 1
Thinking That Will Make You Thinner - Part 2
Thinking That Will Make You Thinner - Part 3

Take care and speak soon.

Mindful Mark

The source of these thoughts for weight loss come from our friends at conquersugarcravings.com.

Thinking That Will Make You Thinner - Part 3

Here in our third part of thinking that will make you thinner we have 4 more weight loss types of thinking to help you achieve your weight loss goals.

1. If I eat this S L O W ,  I will really T A S T E it….and enjoy it for what it is – and NOT need more.

This is what is known as mindful eating and we at Mind Body Weight Loss have written a few blog posts about this topic, two which may help you are; 'Mindful Eating' on our blog and 'How To Eat Consciously' which is on our website.

2. You can eat whatever you want at tonight’s party – as long as you have exercised the right to do so!

There is a trade off in this thinking that you need to earn your right to party, I am not sure this is wise thinking. And something you should not need to do if you follow what we at Mind Body Weight Loss believe to be the best weight loss strategy out there.

3. I know I can do this – if I really WANT to.

Belief is everything, if you know you can lose weight you are much more likely to do so. This research carried out on hotel maids support this.

4. What can I do today to make me feel good about myself?

What a fantastic question to ask our self, it empowers us to take control of our life and goals. One of the best ways to do this is with positive affirmations.

We hope you found this third part of how 'Thinking That Will Make You Thinner' helpful please checkout other in this series:

Thinking That Will Make You Thinner - Part 1
Thinking That Will Make You Thinner - Part 2
Thinking That Will Make You Thinner - Part 4

Take care and speak soon.

Mindful Mark

The source of these thoughts for weight loss come from our friends at conquersugarcravings.com.

Watch Your Weight Loss

I really like this picture above as it demonstrates what can happen from just a thought. The power of a thought is not just a quote it is embedded deep in Philosophy, Self Help and Religion:

As the Buddha said "All that we are is the result of what we have thought" and the quote in the picture above demonstrates this. The good thing is the past is over and right here, right now we can change our thoughts to be what ever we want them to be. We did posts on how to do this called Affirmations For Weight Loss.

So lets change the words in the picture slightly to apply it only to weight loss:

Watch your Weight Loss Thoughts for they become your Weight Loss Words.

Watch your Weight Loss Words for they become your Weight Loss Actions.

Watch your Weight Loss Actions for they become your Weight Loss Habits.

Watch your Weight Loss Habits for they become your Weight Loss Character.

Watch your Weight Loss Character for they become your Weight Loss Destiny.

Seeing it written like this helps us see the power of our thoughts to enable us to achieve our weight loss (or any other) goals.


Wishing you a great day.

Mindful Mark

I Want Weight Loss or Just Weight Loss?

This week I found a fascinating graphic which really resonated with me. I found it on a website called zenpencils.com this site has illustrates famous quotes in to comic strip which always make me think.

This quote and comic strip was about the Buddha and less is more. Take a look:

Now we can replace the word 'happiness' with 'weight loss', 'wealth' or anything else we wish to attain. The point is nothing should get in the way of us achieving our goals and this includes our ego and desires.

This theory was discussed by Joseph Murphy in his great book The Power of Your Subconscious Mind he suggests that when you notice yourself having any negative thoughts or doubts about achieving your goal you should repeat the you goal over and over to yourself to focus your mind and body back on to its purpose. Now he does not suggest an affirmation, he suggests, like the Buddha in the picture above, that you repeat just the word; For example 'Weight Loss" if you want to lose weight, "Wealth" if you want to get rich, "Health" if you want to get better and of course Happiness" if you wish to attain happiness.

The thinking behind this is that by just taking your focus to what you want to achieve there are no distraction for the brain in knowing what you want so it can easily drive you towards the direction you want to head. I guess it is a little like putting directions in the SatNav you give the place name and that is it you complicate it with road names and land marks.

I hope you found this blog post helpful, if so why not sign up for our eNewsletter to get free weight loss goodies, offers and lots weight loss information to help you not only lose weight but to keep it off.

Take care and speak soon.

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 4

These Mind Techniques for Weight Loss look at food and our relationship to it.

1. Think yourself out of bad habits. Bad habits with food don’t have to take down your weight loss goals. Instead, use the power of your mind to fight these bad habits. It will take some doing but you can overcome them.

The best two ways we can think of to help you out of bad habits are: 1 - Positive affirmations and 2 - Start adding more good habits whilst doing the bad habit until the bad is overpowered by the good habit.

2. Look at food differently. Food isn’t your enemy or your friend — it’s neutral. Learn to look at food as a source of nourishment rather than a reward or a way to deal with emotions.

Probably best summed up as 'Eat to Live' rather than 'Live to Eat', we can see food as our friend because without food and nutrients we will die. So even unhealthy food will keep us alive longer than no food at all. Though unhealthy food will not keep you alive as long as healthy food.

3. Picture what food is doing for your body. When you look at what you’re eating, picture what that food can do for your body and how the nutrients will help you feel.

Good point imagine and expect the food you are eating will benefit you in the way it suggests. (Please note if it does not suggest health benefits then the food probably does not have any.

4. Allow yourself to eat when you’re hungry. Losing weight should never mean starving yourself. Listen to your body and feed yourself when your body tells you it’s hungry. Just make sure it’s actually hunger and not boredom or thirst you’re giving into. Likewise, stop eating when you are full.

Listen to your body and know the difference between hunger and emotions. Your body communicates to you, if you listen it will guide you in the best direction for the healthiest life. Let me extend on a couple of examples which back this up. When pregnant women get odd cravings the food they crave normally contain the nutrients they are lacking. The next example is of a friend who has low iron, when she craves spinach and chocolate (both high in iron), she checks her iron levels, every time check get this craving she now knows because she listens. So listen to your body, it will guide you.

5. Eat foods you crave. You can have foods you crave while you’re trying to lose weight if you can do so in moderation. Keeping things totally off limits could cause you to binge.

Point 4 is similar to 5, however this point does highlight that totally avoiding things you like is the wrong way to go because you and your mind will focus on it more.

6. Be conscious. Always be aware of what you’re eating. Eating mindlessly while watching TV can lead to a lot of unwanted and unneeded calories.
Source - totallyzen.com

We at Mind Body Weight Loss love the concept of mindful or conscious eating it just makes so much sense to focus on and appreciate your food. Two Posts we have done on this recently are: 'How to Eat Consciously' and 'The Five Contemplations While Eating'.

If you have not already done so, please sign up to eNewsletter for some fantastic Free Weight Loss Goodies, Information, Advice and Tips.

Read more in this series:
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 1
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 2
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 3

Weight Loss Review With Mindful Mark and Can Do Craig

Check out Mindful Mark and my review of the last week at Mind Body Weight Loss. We talk about our posts, what we have learnt, and how you can get in touch with any information you would like us to research for future posts.



We would love to hear any comments you have about our this blog and our Mind Body Weight Loss Website. Also let us know what you would like to see in you ideal weight loss product.

The Five Contemplations While Eating

As my name would suggest I enjoy Mindfulness and can see the benefits of how mindfully eating can help weight loss. We have discussed in the past how to eat consciously exploring how to fully experience food and not being distracted by a book or TV. Thus enabling you to hear when you body is full and to stop eating.

With mindfulness being such an important part of buddhism I thought it would nice to see what it had to say about it. I came across this gem called:

The Five Contemplations While Eating

1. This food is the gift of the whole universe: the earth, the sky, numerous living beings, and much hard, loving work.
2. May we eat with mindfulness and gratitude so as to be worthy to receive it.
3. May we recognize and transform our unwholesome mental formations, especially our greed, and learn to eat with moderation.
4. May we keep our compassion alive by eating in such a way that we reduce the suffering of living beings, preserve our planet, and reverse the process of global warming.
5. We accept this food so that we may nurture our sister- hood and brotherhood, strengthen our community, and nourish our ideal of serving all living beings.

Source - Savor

I think you will agree with me by fully appreciating the journey our food has taken to our plates enables us to become aware that we can consciously select the best food for our body to become as healthy as possible.

Here is a Buddhist "Grace" which can help with The Five Contemplations before preparing or eating food.

Where does the food come from?
It is shameful to accept it with low virtue.
After discarding all greed,
And considering it as a remedy to support the body,
I accept the food to achieve the Way.

If you would like to read more about 'The Five Contemplations' you can at our website