If diets and workouts aren’t helping you lose weight, try this

How do we eat food generally? Mostly, we either eat food while watching TV or engaged in conversations or are busy with our gadgets scrolling through social media. How many times can we recall what we ate or how much we ate or the taste of the food? There are times we complain about over-eating or intermittent binging despite trying to lose weight faster. If you stop for a moment and think, how is it possible for us to eat more than we want to? Why are our strict diets and high-intensity workouts going in vain?

The reason is simple! We eat unconsciously. If you observe, eating is one of our oldest and deepest habits. This habit is so deeply ingrained in us that most of the times we eat, our consciousness is not present. Our mind is elsewhere and that is why we often over eat or don’t remember how much or when we ate.

HealthShots spoke to Neeraj Malik, Hypnotherapist, Energy Healer and Emotional Wellness Coach, who explained why we are unable to lose weight faster despite all the diets and workout.

“Energy flows where focus goes and when we are trying to focus on too many things at one time, our energy is distributed. That leads to lack of satisfaction in everything we do. Have you noticed that despite most of the things we do, we are not happy doing them. We are mostly jumping from one thing to another. And hence we leave many things unfinished or in between resulting in an experience of being inadequate or procrastination. Same goes with our eating habits. We tend to overeat with our energies scattered all over the place,” explains Malik.

Why doesn’t mindfulness come to us naturally?

Since our childhood, we have seen adults multitask. Multitasking is considered an art to be mastered. A child learns how to eat, speak, dance, talk, walk by imitating people around him. This is how children learn. Being monkey descendants, this comes to us naturally – Monkey See, Monkey Do!

When we see people juggling and managing multiple things at one time, we feel left out and we start copying without thinking. With the current lifestyle, when there are always so many things to be done and time is less, it occurs to us that this is the right way to live life.

Malik says, “For this reason, Buddhist monks do not do anything else when they eat. Their complete focus, their consciousness and complete attention is on the food. It is said that if you chew your food 32 times before swallowing it, not only does it help with proper digestion; you will never end up overeating. It brings our consciousness back to the food. When we are distracted while eating – which most of us are, the food is not processed properly and is converted into unwanted fat.”

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Why is it difficult to lose weight faster without mindfulness?

Let’s understand why we gain those extra pounds in the first place. Our taste buds are very sensitive. As soon as the food touches our tongue, varieties of juices are secreted in the body by the brain to process and digest the food. Hence, when our focus is somewhere else, our energies are distributed and the brain is distracted from the process of digestion as a result we overeat and the food is not processed by the body as it should have been.

Malik explains, “You see, our weight loss is also a function of the mind. Healthy mind is equal to a healthy body. And our mind, instead of being in the present moment, is mostly jumping between the past and the future and emotions are triggered – like anger, guilt, anxiety, stress, worry and fear. These emotions are energy moving through the body and the negative energy currents impact the movement of the gut and the contents within, thereby impacting the digestive system.”

Can being more mindful help lose weight faster?

When we eat mindfully, instead of allowing our thoughts (from the past and the future) to impact our energy flow, we keep our mind focused on the eating – what we eat, how we eat, the speed at which we eat and the taste of the food. This allows our brain to release the right chemicals for digestion. Our body functions at the optimum level to extract maximum nutrition from the food and eliminate the waste and unwanted fat. This makes us lose weight faster and easily. Mindful eating helps you to reduce binging and even brings down exhaustion, increases our metabolism and keeps our energies focused on digestion.

If mindful eating is practiced over a period, not only you will be able to shed those extra kilos but also the overall wellness of the body. It will reflect positively in other areas of your life as well.