3 Surprising Ways to Rethink Your Weight Loss
You’ve tried losing weight and it’s just not working. It seems so simple, just eat less and exercise more. So, what’s the problem?
If it was that easy, there wouldn’t be anyone struggling with food or weight issues.
Stress is usually at the root of the problem, but it can show up in ways you might not be fully conscious of, like a sneak attack on your efforts to lose weight. Stress can play a major role in weight gain and we have a harder time cultivating healthier habits under stress. Stress causes hormone level imbalances and emotional troubles that we don’t directly connect to weight gain.
Here are ways stress can cause problems and 3 unique actions you can take to repair the damage stress can cause.
1. Feed your soul, then feed your body.
Trying to just “lose weight” is too hard. All the focus is on what’s wrong. You could be trying so hard, focusing on how bad you feel about your weight, it only makes it harder to do what you need to do to lose the weight. If you’re like me, then you procrastinate, you get down on yourself for being lazy, but it’s just the ego working to keep you stuck again.
Maybe you don’t need more motivation, maybe you need something kinder - the RIGHT motivation.
You have your own reasons for wanting to lose weight. So, what are they? Most emotional needs can’t be satisfied by whatever your weight is. Instead, focus on what you want to feel. What are the root feelings of what you want? What’s the real reason you want to lose weight? How will you feel once you’ve lost the weight? Healthier? More love? Prouder? Stronger? Courageous? Sexier?
Then proactively give yourself that feeling through music, affirmations, writing about that feeling to define it or anything that gets you into that emotional state. Get into it. If it’s too big of a leap, think of something you are grateful for, even if it’s tiny. Just inch your way a bit better and celebrate your win. Do this as often as possible.
Point is, proactively feed your soul, your heart, then feed your body from a good place. This gets to those hazy, abstract feelings of need out into your consciousness so you can work with them instead of eating them.
2. Improve your microbiome.
Your quality of life depends on the quality of your microbiome, your gut flora. Seriously. Your microbiome can help you get more nutrition out of your food and it’s an important part of your immune system. A healthy microbiome can boost your health in too many ways to count. As we’ve been hearing about for years now, we depend on our gut flora for digestion.
Gut flora can get out of balance by eating sugar, by stress and even by being around certain chemicals and disinfectants. Try sauerkraut, fresh fruits and veggies, and good quality supplements. As always, music or anything to lower the stress helps everything. Try NLP, tapping (the EFT technique - I guess tap dancing would work too), or herbs like Bacopa monnieri, chamomile, shatavari and motherwort.
3. Invest in rest.
Sleepiness causes the body stress, which increases hunger in response. Trying to lose weight without enough sleep is setting yourself up for failure.
Plenty of sleep naturally helps us balance our hormones, regulate our metabolism, and we feel better.
When you consistently have a good sleep life, you feel good, you have more energy, and you make better choices.
What does nighttime mean to you?
Everyone has trouble sleeping at some point. What do you do when you can’t sleep? What else can you do to try to sleep better? Do you like your bed and your bedding, or do you fight it? Or do you tolerate it? If your bed doesn’t relax you, either invest in a new bed or find a way to make friends with it. Lavender flowers are always good for the bedroom. A few drops of clary sage essential oil in a diffuser or just a drop on a corner of your bed is super relaxing. Journaling can help too, or reading something uplifting.
If after trying everything you still can’t sleep, sit, watch the timeless moon that watches over all beings, and lovingly tend to your heart. Not everything stops at night. If you are up with the moon, enjoy it. Fighting it won’t help you sleep. At night, we can think about things without having to do things, which is the opposite of the daytime mad rush, doing without much contemplation. There is more space at night.
To lose weight, sometimes it takes a shift in perspective to get things moving again. Set your course to strength and power with self-love and compassion.
Thanks for being here <3
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References:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29927688/
https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/article/176/2/253/5835885#206459377
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/89/11/5762/2844744
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4651462/
