Being Overweight and Meditation
In the last few years, the number of people who are overweight or who suffer from obesity has increased dramatically all over the world. In many Western countries, 4 out of 10 men and 3 to 4 out of 10 women are too heavy. This means that millions of people suffer from a weight problem. If you have Obesity, even at a young age, you run a greater risk of getting diseases like heart problems, diabetes, and joint ailments. This risk increases as you grow older. Scientific research has demonstrated that losing as little as 5% of your weight already decreases your chances of getting ill. Even a slight reduction in weight means a decreased chance of getting diseases.
A person gets heavier when the amount of energy that he gets with the food that he consumes is bigger than the amount of energy he uses. Fat in our food plays a big part in this. Most people in the West eat too much. For people who are overweight, fat is their greatest enemy. Fat is present in many products and produces more calories than protein or carbohydrates. This means that if you want to control your weight, you must reduce the amount of fat in your food. Losing weight is not easy. To treat a weight problem with success, most require a very thorough treatment. We have summed up a number of important steps:
- Step 1: Feel responsible for your weight.
- Step 2: You yourself are the most important aspect in your struggle against being overweight.
- Step 3: See to it that your aims are realistic. Avoid frustrations.
- Step 4: Eat healthy food and change your eating habits.
- Step 5: Do not expect miracles, but go for a long term solution.
- Step 6: Do not be too strict on yourself!
Your family doctor, your dietician, and many other sources of information like the internet can give you a lot of information about an integrated approach to your weight problem in which food, motivation, and perhaps medication together with a support programme can play a part. In this integrated approach, the techniques of Meditation can also help in reaching your goal.
Meditating and being Overweight
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Meditation helps you to become more conscious of yourself, your actions, and your habits. You get more vital, healthier, and your mind becomes clearer. These can give you reasons not to eat bad foods in too large quantities, by smoking, or by doing other things. People who are overweight may count on it that after some time, Meditation will get them back to their normal weight and give them a healthier eating pattern. The main cause of this is that as a result of Meditating, people start to live more consciously and to look at their own behaviour more critically. Meditation gives people a strong desire to take better care of themselves because during their Meditations and in their daily lives, they feel the bad effects of an unhealthy lifestyle more keenly.
Many people are not aware of this, but often the desire to eat too much is the result of the desire to cope with stress and daily problems. Food and chewing food have an immediate effect on the processes and the activities that go on in our mind. The mere activity of chewing with your jaws may produce endorphins that reduce pain. Stress also causes feelings of hunger and in itself, it has a fattening effect. Chronic stress produces the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. Cortisol may cause an increase in the fat reserves and adrenaline has a strong effect on the thyroid gland, which can lead to feelings of hunger. The shame caused by being overweight can easily worsen the problem and then forms an additional source of stess. Meditation cannot only interrupt the stress reaction, but it can also teach you how to deal with stress and how to avoid it. If you think that in your case, stress has a great influence on your weight, we certainly advise you to try the Meditation technique for a prolonged period of time. Read our Stress article to learn more about stress and the terrific influence of Meditation on it. The bottom line is that most people who meditate have no problems with their body weight. People who meditate regularly live more in accordance with their nature and automatically develop a normal and well-balanced eating pattern. They prefer being healthy and taking good care of themselves by following a strict diet that they must follow by means of their will power.
According to Suzanne Andrews of BellaOnline.com, a healthy mind, body and spirit cannot function properly with an abundance of stress invading the mind/body. When you are in a stressful situation, your mind goes into what is called a fight or flight mode, signaling your body to secrete the hormone cortisol. This hormone not only increases your heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration, but also may make you crave carbohydrates and resort to 'emotional eating'. This is where Meditation can aid you in your quest for a healthy body. Notice that I did not say thin, for we are living in a world obsessed with unobtainable thinness which is not necessarily healthy. However, being in a healthy body fat range for your age, height, and weight is the most desirable for optimum health. This is where Yoga/Meditation can help you lose weight. By taking the time to practice Yoga daily, you are able to focus on yourself, quiet your mind, and take the time for what is truly important to your well- being. If you slow down enough to eat healthy, get enough sleep and work out, the weight loss will speed up. True, life's daily demands can leave little time to focus on yourself, but know that you are important enough to deserve a little time to recharge and discover the power that lay deep within. By quieting your thoughts for just minutes a day, you will feel clearer and more in touch with your internal motivational mindset to lose wieght. Yoga can help you achieve the healthy lifestyle that you deserve!
Which Meditation Techniques must I do?
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When you are going to meditate and you want to lose weight, the most important thing is of course to be highly motivated. "What you bring is what you get" and it is important to start with the strongest possible motivation. Your chance of success is greatest if you really want to lose weight instead of having to lose weight. Wanting something means making a choice and you make a choice when you are determined to reach a goal. If you have to do something, you are forced to make a sacrifice and this fact makes it very hard to succeed. So: try not to make your Meditation adventure as a form of self-torture and do it because you like to do it.
In principle, all Meditations for beginners and all Concentration Meditations are very suitable for people who are overweight. Follow the process of anyone who wants to start meditating and tell yourself that you give meditating a chance for a period of at least one or two months. Surf to our section Concentration Meditations and start right away!
Insight Meditations can help you to get a better insight into cause-and-effect relationships and help you to develop an even better insight, which can help you to change eating patterns. For beginners, Insight Meditations are a little more difficult than Concentration Meditations. Read Insight Meditations to learn more about this subject.
Try our Eating Meditations to learn how to eat with full concentration. Compare this way of eating with what you do when you just eat or take sweets. Do you really eat to eat? Do you eat thoughtlessly? Do you know what you eat and how great the difference is between eating something with 100% concentration and eating thoughtlessly?
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