Lose Weight without dieting www.bronwendeklerk.com
The Secret to Losing Weight Today I want to share a little secret with you. If you re reading this you have probably become despondent with dieting. Maybe you ve put on all the weight that you d lost on your last diet, plus some more. Or maybe you ve never been able to lose any weight because you feel you just can t face dieting and diet food. Here s the good news - you can lose weight without dieting. I ve done it, and so have h u n d r e d s o f o t h e r women. I always used to believe that you could only lose weight through deprivation and restrictive eating. After gaining and losing that same 10-20kg year after year, and developing an eating disorder, I eventually lost hope. I felt I was the failure because I just couldn t maintain any of these diets. Eventually the yo-yo cycle stopped, but I just continued to gain weight. I felt I had no self-control around food. I ate when I was sad, when I was frustrated, when I was angry and even when I was happy. There was a food for every emotion. Now here s an interesting statistic: 95% of people with eating problems don t have clinically classified eating disorders. These unclassified eating problems being, emotional eaters, compulsive dieters, compulsive overeaters. When I heard the next statistic, it made me feel a bit better about myself - 98% of people who lose weight on a diet, gain it back in a year. 98% of people can t be the problem! I d say that dieting is definitely the problem here!
While knowledge of this might make us feel better about ourselves, which is a good start, it doesn't help solve the problem. How do we stop dieting AND still lose weight and find peace with food and eating? There is a very simple way that s accessible to us all, but before I tell you what it is, let s look a little deeper into weight problems. It s only when we are aware of what is creating our problem that we can make the necessary changes to do something about it How do we put on weight? There are many reasons for putting on weight. Some people have been introduced to bad food choices from a young age and haven t learnt healthy eating habits. Some people have never learnt to listen to their body s needs - when it is hungry, when it is full. Some people eat emotionally - when they re angry, sad, happy. My reason for putting on weight was that I started dieting at a very young age. The deprivation of the dieting led to cravings, cravings led to binging and overeating. Eventually I became so out of touch with my body and its needs. My vision of a healthy weight also became distorted. I m sure you ve heard of the energy balance equation for weight gain: energy in > energy out = weight gain (food) (exercise) So the solution, based on this simple mathematical equation sounds easy - eat less, exercise more, lose weight. Why is it so difficult to do then? If it s so obvious, why does anybody have any weight problems. The biggest problem is that most people don t look at their deeper reasons for overeating or not exercising. What are your deeper attachments to overeating or eating unhealthy foods? What are your aversions to exercise or being more active?
If you become aware of the reasons you consistently overeat, you might be in a better position to change those habits. Remember, over-eating every now and again won t make you gain weight. Doing so consistently over a long period of time will. The converse is also true: not overeating over a long period of time will help you to lose weight. Why is dieting so bad? Most of us are born with an innate ability to know what our bodies need and when. With time we slowly lose this. One of the ways we lose touch with our bodies is through dieting. Most diets advocate eating certain foods, cutting out other foods and eating at certain times. This often forces you to go against what your body needs, eat at times when you are not physically hungry or to feel deprived after cutting out foods you like for a long period of time. The more you do this, the more out of touch with your body you become and the less likely you are to know when you are hungry, when you are full and what foods to eat to nourish your body. The truth is that your body has different needs on different days and in different seasons. If you are going to follow a raw-food diet in the middle of a cold winter, your body is going to feel cold on the inside and probably start craving warm baked foods. If this craving overtakes your will-power, you might find yourself binging uncontrollably on warm buttered bread, then feeling deflated and angry with yourself for breaking your diet. Food has an energetic quality, just as your body does. If you don t balance your body s energy with the energy of your food and environment, you won t feel good. By food energy, I m not referring to calories, I m referring to its qualities to warm, cool, invigorate or calm. Dieting can make you feel worse about yourself because you start to judge yourself by how well you follow the rules of the diet. When you break the diet,
you feel like a failure and this might make you eat more, with more poor food choices, than you did before. Eventually you become judgemental of all food, seeing it as good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. You judge this food according to what the diet says, and not what your body is telling you. If, like me, you have been on multiple diets, you will know this cycle all too well. You will know how it feels each time you put your hopes into a new diet to help you gain control of your weight and then feel a failure and more out of touch with your body each time you can t maintain the diet. You lose control and put on all the lost weight Until you find the next diet. And so the yo-yo diet cycle continues. Lose Weight Eating the Foods you Love If you ve been dieting for many years, you have probably come to believe that the only way you can lose weight is to cut out most of the foods that you love eating. The very thought of this may make you feel defeated before you even start the diet. If you get as far as starting the diet, you might start getting overwhelming cravings for your favourite foods that eventually cause you to binge on all your restricted foods. It has actually been proven that our thoughts about the foods we eat directly impact how our bodies digest it. So if you re stressed that the food you are eating is going to make you fat, it probably will make you put on weight! Moderation is key. You can eat any food once in a while and not put on weight. The interesting thing is that if you allow yourself to eat any food, it actually diffuses the desire to eat it all the time or to overeat on it when you do have it. You know you can have it whenever you feel like it, so chances are better that you ll wait until you actually do feel like it, to eat it.
The more you listen to your body, the more you will know when you feel like, or your body really needs, a certain food. So how do you get to this point? How do you get to eat the foods you love, without losing control, and still lose weight? Now s the time that I let you in on my little secret. The secret to how I finally overcame my food-weight-diet obsession. The secret to losing 20kg and keeping it off more than 20 years later. The secret to finding peace with food and your body is Mindful Eating. What is mindful eating? Mindful eating is about being aware of your eating experience. Being aware of your food choices, your reasons for eating and knowing when to stop eating. It s also about being conscious of where your food is coming from, where and how it was made. Mindful eating also includes becoming aware of your own thoughts and actions and how they relate to food and eating. If you look at a child s eating, you will realise that we are all mindful eaters naturally, until we get forced to eat certain foods at certain times, whether we re hungry or not. I used mindful eating to lose all my excess weight many years ago, before I even knew the ter m mindful eating. I simply started to listen to my body, my hungry and full signals. I started to note when I was using food for comfort and when I was eating to over-full. I also stopped judging - myself and my food. I became aware of how often that critical voice was taunting me, telling me what I should and shouldn t eat, telling me I was fat and ugly, stressing me out, making me eat more
There are many different tools used in mindful eating. Some might work for you, others not. The overall principles remain the same though, no matter which of the techniques you decide to use. Mindful Eating Practice Let me introduce you a mindful eating practice you can start putting into place. Don t try and change everything at once. All habit changes take time. It s better if you choose one new practice at a time, once that practice is feeling more natural to you, try adding the next one. There are many mindful eating practices which I cover in my workshops and courses, but here is one for you to try. Being present for your meal - try this for at least one meal a day. Focus just on the act of eating. Block out all d i s t r a c t i o n s - t a l k i n g, television, driving, working. Become aware of the aroma of your food, breathe it in. Feel the texture of each mouthful as it enters your mouth, as you slowly chew each mouthful. Notice how the flavour changes as you chew it. Feel the sensations as you swallow the food. How does it feel as it goes down your throat? How does it settle in your stomach? Do this for the whole meal. Notice as the food stops tasting as good as it did in the beginning. This means you re probably getting full. Try and stop eating when this happens. At the end of your meal, take a moment to feel gratitude for your meal before you carry on with your day.
Listen to Your Body The essence of mindful eating is to help you to listen to your body. Your body wants to be healthy. It wants to stay strong and balanced. One of the first ways you can start listening to your body is to become aware of your physical hunger. What does this feel like to you? Before you eat anything, ask yourself if you are eating because you are hungry. Here are some body signals of physical hunger: Your stomach feels empty; You might start to feel a little light headed or dizzy; You could feel a little shaky; If you don t eat straight away, these sensations might go away, but then return again with more intensity. When you start to feel hungry, some of the sensations might be because your body is starting to use its reserves, i.e. your fat stores, to get its energy. If you are trying to lose weight, this is not a bad thing. There is no need to panic because you are hungry. Just observe the sensations. The next way to listen to your body is to become aware of your full signals. You need to observe when your body has had enough to eat. This is often when the food you are eating stops tasting as good. Observe this. Once you are eating because you are hungry and stopping because you are full, you can start observing what foods your body is needing when you do eat. This is different to food cravings. Its more about knowing how to nourish your body, whereas cravings are often desires that aren t rooted in nourishing your body. Cravings, in fact, are often for foods that are not good for our bodies. As an example, sugar or chocolate cravings. The more of these foods we eat, the more we want. As you get more in tune with your body, you ll be able to distinguish between cravings and what your body s cells actually need. And the
more you listen to your body, its hungry and full signals, and satisfy it with foods that nourish it, the less likely you are to overeat. Learn to Eat. Mindfully. Many of us might find it easy to eat mindfully when we are having a good day, but what about when we re feeling a bit emotional or stressed? What about when we are in difficult social situations? There are many different tools and exercises we learn to use on the Eat. Mindfully. workshops to help us to eat mindfully. These are based on the very successful MB-EAT program, which has been proven to successfully assist people in overcoming emotional eating and binge eating. The Eat. Mindfully. workshop will help you to: Become aware of why you choose certain foods; Understand your triggers to eating and overeating; Choose foods specific to what your body needs; Understand your hungry and full signals; Learn how gain maximum enjoyment from less food; Gain acceptance of your body and yourself; Improve body awareness; Understand your emotional experiences, beginning with food-related experiences and expanding to the whole self.
Free Yourself from Food & Diet Obsession My wish for you is that you find freedom from food and diet obsession. I want you to be at peace with your body and to trust it to guide you to health and a happy weight. I want you to free up all that time that you spend worrying about your weight and your eating and start spending it on something more meaningful. Maybe a hobby that you ve always put off doing or travelling somewhere exciting. Anything that you might have put off doing until you d lost weight or felt better about yourself. If you feel it s time to stop chasing after that next diet that is going to give you your perfect body. If you want to start gaining trust in your own inner wisdom to guide you with your eating, visit my website to find out more about my Eat. Mindfully. workshops. I look forward to working with you! www.bronwendeklerk.com xbronwen Photography by Deryck van Steenderen