There are many types of meditation out there that serve different purposes. Here, I present to you 3 meditation techniques that you can use to reach your ideal weight. You can start using them today, during your commute (but not while you’re driving!), over morning coffee, or any other time you have a couple of minutes to spare.
3 Best Meditation Techniques To Help You Reach Your Ideal Weight:
- Breathing Meditation: helps with overeating
- Visualization: shapes the right mindset
- Mantra: creates better workouts and a positive mindset
1. Breathing Meditation: Meditation Technique for Ideal Weight That Helps With Overeating
One of the main reasons why people fail to reach their ideal weight is because they eat more than they need. Why is this so? Can’t we learn to stop on time?
There is a wise Native American proverb: “When they ask the white man if he is hungry, he looks at the clock.” This is so true! So many times I heard my friends say “It’s 2 PM – time to eat!” The problem is that through our life and cultural habits, we’ve lost touch with our body’s internal cues. Our bodies are telling us what they need. We just need to learn to listen.
So, find a comfortable place where you can sit undisturbed for 15 minutes or longer. Sit on the floor or a cushion with your eyes closed, back straight and legs crossed. Place your right hand in your left, with thumbs touching each other. Start becoming aware of your breaths. Take deep, unforced breaths in and out through the nose. Observe your breathing. Notice how your chest and your stomach are moving along. If any thoughts start occupying your mind, just wave them off and continue focusing on your breathing. It’s impossible to think about more things at the same time, so by thinking about your breathing only, you are casting aside any unwanted thoughts — especially if they’re about craving junk food or sweets!
Doing this meditation will calm you down and prepare you for mindful eating, so it’s a good idea to do it before a meal. Also, if you have a tendency to eat too fast or too mindlessly, remember to observe your breathing while eating. This will slow you down.
2. Visualizations: Meditation Technique for Ideal Weight That Shapes The Right Mindset
Start with the breathing meditation. Once you feel calm and aware, start visualizing yourself looking slim and hot. Don’t be shy to imagine yourself looking your best! Visualize every moment of the experience, act as if it’s already happening! Imagine yourself walking down the street, feeling fit and full of energy. Imagine the opposite sex eyeing you and your friends admiring your abs.
It all starts from the mind. Once you convince your mind this is true, it will be easy with the body. Athletes have used visualizations for ages and Harvard scientists have proved long ago why they are so effective. In short, when we imagine something happening, our brain structure literally starts to change to accommodate the new belief!
3. Mantras: Meditation Technique for Ideal Weight That Helps with Positive Thinking, Mindset and Having Better Workouts
(Helps with having better workouts and creating the right mindset)
Mantras are a powerful way to convince your mind of anything. Simply put, they are affirmative sentences about anything that you want to persuade your mind into.
Scientists say there’s over 60,000 thoughts that pass through your mind every day — and most of these thoughts are the same as those you had the day before. A lot of it is just negative self-talk — statements that prevent you from realizing your goals.
Examples of Negative Self-Talk and How to Correct It
- I can’t do this. I’m not strong/good enough.
- I was always fat, I can’t change that now.
- I’m never going to get those six packs.
You need to become aware of these toxic statements and replace them with constructive, positive beliefs. At first it will be difficult to believe in these new thoughts, but after a while you will succeed. And once you start believing, realizing it will be a piece of cake.
Again, start with the breathing meditation to calm down. When you’re ready, begin repeating your mantra. Focus on each word. It is important to phrase your mantra as if it’s already happening. For example: “Every day I do my best to look my best.”
A friend told me about a mantra she used while working out:
“I must, I must, I must increase my bust.” Every time she felt like she wanted to quit, she’d repeat this to herself. Find your own mantra. Meditate on it, think about it and repeat it during workouts.
Meditation is a great habit to cultivate daily. So, next time you have some free minutes, instead of checking your Gmail or Facebook, try any of these techniques and see what happens. I’m absolutely positive that if you just try meditating for a month, a couple of minutes in the morning and in the evening, the positive effects will spill over into other areas of your life!
Meditation Helps Us Understand Why the Extra Weight Is There in the First Place
It might seem strange to think that sitting alone with one’s thoughts can help lose those extra pounds, but we should agree that weight loss is not just a physical problem. Our extra weight is connected with our emotions, thoughts, habits and behaviors. By tapping into these, we can create a healthier relationship with food, our body weight and ourselves. Through regular meditation, we are able to look into the reasons why the extra weight is there in the first place. We get to inspect our own patterns of self-sabotage and notice when they come up so that next time we can respond to them better. So, if you want to lose weight and keep it that way, inner work is needed along with physical, outer work.
There are many reasons why we pile up those extra pounds. One is emotional eating, when we are struggling with psychological or emotional issues by turning to food to numb out our feelings and thoughts. Eating when you are stressed out, upset, lonely or bored are some of the reasons why people eat, known to many.
How Meditation Helps Us Lose Weight
- Meditation enables us to sit with any unpleasant emotions and instead of turning to food to avoid them, we get to understand why, when and how they show up.
- Many people eat due to loneliness. Well, meditation is known to rewire those parts of the brain that make us feel lonely.
- One of the ways in which meditation helps is by helping create a you that is confident, compassionate and loving towards yourself. This new you will not turn to comfort food when feeling unpleasant emotions. Instead, this new you will have a healthy relationship with food and find other ways to deal with painful emotions and events.
- Many studies have shown that although diet and exercise help lose weight, after the weight loss program ended, most people gained their weight back. On the other hand, those weight loss programs that included mindfulness meditation were more effective in keeping the weight off.
- A review of 14 studies showed that mindful meditation helps with emotional eating, binge eating and weight loss.
- Meditation helps us manage our cravings and addictions better.
- Meditation lowers cortisol. High cortisol levels are connected with obesity and storing belly fat. (Speaking of belly fat, take a look at these 7 best yoga poses to help you lose it.)
- Many eat because they feel anxious or stressed. Others feel anxious and stressed because they are trying to stick with their weight loss plan. In both cases, meditation helps reduce stress and anxiety. (But also breathing techniques do the same and sometimes it’s easier to start with them first- check out these yoga breathing exercises for anxiety, and while you’re at it, see how Yoga Nidra can help you with stress.)
- Meditation improves sleep, which in turn increases our metabolism.
- It helps us differentiate between physical and emotional hunger.
- Thanks to meditation, you get to explore the reasons why you turn to fast food when you are feeling upset or why you skip your workouts and feel guilty about it afterwards. You get to unlock any subconscious blockages that might have been hiding there since your childhood.
- By practicing meditation regularly, you are more likely to stick to your efforts to reach and maintain your ideal weight.
- Meditation helps you find peace with yourself, food and your physical appearance.
- Even if you do miss a few healthy meals or a few workouts, regular meditation will help you be more forgiving to yourself instead of going into a self-blaming downward spiral.
- Meditation creates a space for you to face yourself and any triggers, traumas or limiting beliefs that might sit at the root of your problems with managing weight.
Meditation Helps Us Reach Our Ideal Weight by Creating Healthier Coping Mechanisms
Meditation encourages us to replace overeating with healthier coping mechanisms. For example, instead of opening the fridge, next time we feel stressed we might take a short brisk walk, or play soothing music. We might drink more water, or plain and simple – focus on our breathing. You wouldn’t believe how far simple breathing exercises can take you! Presented here are 7 benefits of pranayama and why it’s worth your time. You can actually breathe through all those unsavory emotions instead of eating them away.
With meditation as a support, you will create a holistic and personalized approach to your weight loss regime.
Mindful Eating
Meditation helps us learn to eat mindfully and intuitively. Mindful eating is not about basing our dietary habits on physical results we are trying to achieve, but about the inner feeling that food gives us. It’s about staying present while we eat. It’s about eating and noticing how the food feels, and how the body reacts to it. When we eat mindfully, we engage all the senses, we notice the food’s texture and tastes and how the food we consume affects our moods and states. Eating intuitively means listening to our body’s inner cues, and not some dietary regime. If you base your nutrition on some outer results you are trying to achieve, you are not eating mindfully any more.
To eat mindfully, chew your food slowly. Notice and really enjoy each and every bite. Check in with yourself halfway through the meal to see if you are beginning to feel full. Listen to your body’s physical reactions. Pay attention to how your food smells. Make it a habit to smell your food before diving into the plate. Notice if the food you are consuming is making you feel sleepy, bloaty or still hungry. Leave any electronic devices away from the table, and focus on eating only.
Mindful Eating Slows Down the Entire Process of Preparing and Consuming Food
Mindful eating inspires us to slow down when we are preparing food. We learn to enjoy every little part of the food preparation process. We also become more observant of any triggers and dysfunctional habits we might have around food.
Observe if you are eating because you are physically hungry or because there is some other need you are trying to satiate. And if you do spot that need, abandon any judgment of yourself. Feeling guilt or shame is not what mindful eating is about. Remember to be kind to yourself, and to understand that this is a process. It took us so long to develop an unhealthy relationship with food, it will take some time to unlearn it as well. Be curious, inquisitive and observant about how you treat food, never judgmental.
Conclusion
Meditation and mindful eating are great practices for anyone looking to learn healthy ways to relate to food, weight and their body image. By including meditation in your weight loss plans, you will create a holistic and sustainable approach to being slim. You will become more loving, compassionate and forgiving to yourself, all of which is needed because every now and then you might fall, and you will need these inner resources to get back on the road to looking and feeling your best self. A healthy and constructive approach to reaching and keeping your ideal weight includes the whole of you – your feelings, emotions, thoughts, habits and behaviors, not just your body. It’s all interconnected, and the sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we will create a new, slimmer, happier and healthier version of ourselves.
Tatjana Glogovac, Senior Contributor At L’Aquila Active
Learn more about Tatjana by reading her bio below.
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