I wanted to post this few days ago but with so much going on with my coursework I don’t get chance to check my social media accounts.
What was my goal at the beginning of this challenge?
- Regain healthy relationship with food, stop binging and be more in control during my meals.
- Stop counting calories, carbs or anything related
- Ditch the diet mentality and finding solutions to “food police” voices for example: “I can’t have that, it has got to many calories”
- Shifting focus into inner health rather than just weight.
What I did to achieve that?
Ditching diet mentality and ignoring all the diet advice out there was the first step and one of the best ones I could do to improve my health. Honestly!
Every day and with every meal ,if I could, i tried to stay present by observing my meals from start to finish and asked myself few question to connect with my senses:
- How warm or cold is the food?
- Is it easy to bite into or do i need to break it down by chewing?
- Do I crave certain textures? (Think crunchy, chewy, etc.)
- How do i feel about the texture of that food?
- What colors I can see on my plate?
These questions are needed just to help me stay present and stop me from thinking about my next task to do😉
Practicing this every day helped me to connect with my body more and made me much more relaxed around food. The desire for “fit” food fade-away and I started to have those huge cravings for dates and nuts which long ago they were “forbidden” because of “diet talk”....you know....high cal or sugar! Also, finally my love for vegetables came back too😳
I eat everything but slowly and with full awareness. Slowing down helps me notice quick that my hunger is going away quick and I often live food on the plate because I feel fullness. That is a victory to me!
I was growing up in the family who supports “don’t leave your food on the plate” so unlearning that type of behavior is absolutely huge achievement!
Next big thing.... Mindfullness. Rather than spending time figure it out what I need to cook tomorrow to fit my macros I just practiced meditation, EVERY DAY 20 min.
This helped me ease my anxiety and worries a lot!!
During meditation I discovered another powerful tool to connect with inner self: Self-compassion❤️
Meditation in more compassion way helped me to deal with negative self talk and I had much better picture of how o should be moving forward to achieve what I really want in my life.
Exercising. I discovered that walking is like chocolate for me, so joyful and needed almost every day! Reduced my gym days to 2 days because 3 days feels like I am on some sort of regime again!
I moved more during this challenge than ever before! Probably because I ate more food than in the past but I could argue with that to be honest. I think I just had more energy saved from not planning as much as I used to!
My mind is no longer occupied with food or food recipes to make and I really like it that way.
Many more things happened but this post is getting to long so I will just stop here😉
I checked my measurements few days ago and here are the numbers:
Weight loss 7,5kg! (About 16lb)
Waist - 5cm
Belly -6cm
Hips-7cm
Thighs- 4cm
I am absolutely amazed! I could never achieve that before, unless I would count calories or similar!
I am in love with mindfulness and psychology of eating at the moment and continue to learn every day.
If you are tired of dieting or need help finding out what’s really good for you with more holistic approach I recommend starting with anything related to mindfulness. You might surprise yourself😉