with Weight Loss Coaching from Love Holistic Healing
Ciao!
Welcome to my first official blog post! I am so glad you are joining me on this journey to living, eating, and feeling better. Today, I want to talk about how you can slim down and gain energy by incorporating easy-to-do practices into your daily routine. If you are tired of diet pills, starvation cleanses, and eating tiny portions of terrible food only to gain all the weight back, this article is for you!
If you are struggling with weight loss and want expert advice for free,
As an Ayurveda expert and holistic health coach, I show you how to lose weight without diet or exercise. Sound too good to be true? These 7 tips for natural weight loss may sound like obvious self-care techniques that you have been told to do over and over again, but I promise that if you try them, even for as little as a week, you will feel and look better right away. (Hint: there is not one mention of “cardio” in here!) That’s right, see below for 7 tips to lose weight naturally and easily without any mention of the gym or eliminating your fave foods. Can I get an Amen?
1. Keep a Food Diary
Awareness is often the first step to holistic weight loss. When we aren’t aware of our habits or patterns we tend to repeat them. Keep a daily log of what you eat and, more importantly, how you felt before and after. We are often emotional eaters and we eat to feel better. But the next time we put on our skinny jeans and sigh when that little muffin top crests over the waistband, we may not feel as good as when we heaped that second helping of pasta onto our plate.
Try journaling for one week and look back at what you wrote down. You will see some patterns that may surprise you.
What can you change to feel better? What can you substitute? What can you do in more moderation, without eliminating the foods you love? Paying attention to these questions will guide you towards an easy way to lose weight naturally without having to count calories or chuck carbs. Because who wants to do that?
2. Meditate Daily
Meditation can be a hard concept for go-getters. "You want me to sit still and do nothing? But, I don’t have time for that, I have so much to do!" The truth is you don’t have time not to! Quieting your mind for even 15 minutes a day not only reduces anxiety, but it helps you lose weight naturally too. The reason is you become more aware of how your body feels and also of any emotions that may cause that late-night run to the cupboard where you keep the chips. (Guilty!) Despite what many people think, meditation is not hard, and it doesn’t require a fancy ashram or yoga practice, it can be done anywhere.
Simply find a quiet spot in your house, or try it in bed first thing in the morning if that is your only chance to be alone before your busy day begins. Focus on the sound of something with white noise that doesn’t elicit any emotion. This can be the hum of a ceiling fan, birds chirping outside, or the sound of your cat purring. Pretty soon you will zone out to the outside world and be able to focus on your internal world so that you can receive messages from your subconscious about how you really feel.
Bonus: Meditation is a huge mood booster and stress reliever too! All of which play into losing weight naturally.
3. Have a Positive Attitude About Eating
Studies show that when we think positively about our health goals, we lose weight! If you feel confident in your ability to follow through with healthy choices, you are more likely to do so. And if you aren’t feeling confident in your ability to commit to changes alone, working with a holistic wellness coach like me, can help you re-frame those negative thoughts into positives so you can get the results you desire.
On the other hand, negative thoughts can actually cause us to gain weight. When you punish yourself for eating that secret candy bar when no one was looking, or grabbing that ice cream out of the fridge late at night, it just leads to more binging and regret. Instead, learn to accept that there is nothing wrong with eating the foods you enjoy, just do it in moderation.
Instead of blaming yourself for going all out one night, try to balance it out with healthier choices the next day. It’s about that awareness of your daily choices and patterns again, which is why the food journal helps.
It helps to think positively about your goals, but don’t expect too much too soon. Tell yourself you are taking things one day at a time and strive to make healthy choices each day instead. You don't have to suffer through long-term food restriction and deprivation to see results. Good news right?
Losing weight naturally can be as simple as making smaller portions, trading out one high-carb snack for hummus and veggies, or even just avoiding fast food fixes. It doesn’t have to be torturous or full of sacrifice.
4. Transition to Eating Whole Foods
Overly processed foods and snacks make it easy to over indulge and binge of course. Non-organic foods also cause bloating and weight gain from our body’s inability to process the unnatural chemical additives. Switching to whole foods like salmon and veggies instead of pre-made meals can help you lose weight fast. Those premade freezer dinners may seem like time savers, but they are calorie-rich and of little nutritional value compared to cooking with organic whole foods.
And, I will let you in on the biggest myth of all — it doesn’t take much longer to cook a real meal on the stove than it does to pop that tray into the microwave. It’s better for your overall health too.
5. Get the Proper Amount of Sleep
We all know that we should be getting 8-10 hours of sleep, this isn’t news. What might be news is that Shape magazine even calls sleep the “No. 1 Most Important Thing for a Better Body.” That groggy feeling we get when we know we haven’t slept enough and we can’t concentrate also causes us to make poor decisions when it comes to food. Ever go to work tired and then wolf down all of those sugary treats lying around the office? That’s because your body is craving sugar due to the lower insulin levels you are experiencing from lack of sleep. Did a “ding” just go off in your head?
If you are not sleeping well you will always be fighting against your body to eat well too. Your brain is literally conditioned to crave the least nutritious, high calorie foods when you are sleep-deprived because it is not in a rested, rational, decision-making state. To put it simply, not enough sleep always = weight gain.
6. Lower Your Stress Level
We all know that stress is not good for our health, heart, or well-being. But did you know that when you’re stressed your body produces more of the hormone cortisol, which causes you to crave unhealthy foods? This is why we call it “comfort food” because grabbing that feel-good burger or mac ’n’ cheese bowl makes us feel warm, cared for, and comforted. Instead, we could look at what is causing stress in our lives in the first place and find a way to reduce it. Not all stress can be eliminated, of course. If you have a high-demand job or young children, I get it, stress is just there.
Look for little ways you can give yourself a break, even if it is for five minutes of alone time, or a walk around the block in fresh air to de-stress. Take it as seriously as you do your other commitments.
Schedule a once a week bubble bath just for you, or plan (gasp) fun time with your girlfriends on the weekend, so you have something to look forward to at the end of a stressful workweek. Every minute of self-care adds up. So does every food choice.
For example, the next time you are tempted to reach for that end of the day wine, maybe reach for a yoga mat instead. You get the same stress-relieving benefits without the extra calories. But by all means, enjoy a glass of wine every once in a while (I am Italian here!) just don’t make it a substitution for true stress relief. Alcohol is one of the biggest, underestimated factors in weight gain.
7. Know Your Body Type
In Ayurveda, there are three body types called “doshas” — Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Each "mind-body constitution” requires different foods to balance out its specific elements, and when you do you lose weight quickly, naturally, and easily. In my coaching new program I help you find out which of these three doshas you are. Then we go over what to eat to balance the unique needs and deficiencies of that body type. We bring all of the elements into balance and then not only do you feel better from the inside out, you lose weight naturally without even trying.
In my new weight loss program, I give you a whole food meal plan and recipes from my homeland of Italy as well as guidance and accountability. And I know you love a good Italian pasta dish, mashed potatoes, and tiramisu. Yep, you can eat all of that good stuff and still lose weight naturally! All the meals in my holistic health program are gluten-free and dairy-free, so it works for anyone. And I will be there every step along the way to guide you and hold you accountable! Ditch the diet mentality and trust a 5,000 year-old, holistic system instead!
You may have already noticed that each of these 7 tips for losing weight naturally affects each other too. For example, when you are stressed you don’t sleep well, and when you don’t reduce stress with self-care practices like meditation, it is easy to see how things snowball. We often turn to food when things feel out of control, overeating to feel better, and then restricting when we feel we have gone too far. And let’s be honest, this whole year feels out of control.
One thing we can control is our thoughts. We can choose to think positively and be hopeful about our weight loss journey and relationship to food. We can choose the types of food we bring into our home and try to buy more whole foods and less processed foods. We can make sure to sleep at least 8 hours a night and learn to understand our body types better so we can balance our needs. These are all ways to lose weight naturally without diet and exercise and easily accomplished if we incorporate these simple daily practices into our lives. But I also know, from my own personal experience, that it can be hard to commit to these often neglected lifestyle changes alone.
Need someone to hold you accountable to making better choices?
I will help you identify any roadblocks keeping you from reaching your weight loss goals and show you how to lose weight naturally, and painlessly while eating the foods you love!
Feel free to reach out to me here and let me know what you are struggling with too!
And remember to be kind to yourself,
Sara