“Don’t Eat Less, Eat Right!” When you are trying to lose weight and get healthy in general, instead of cutting down on food, give more importance to eating right. It’s a fact that even if you are eating the healthiest of foods, if you don’t eat them mindfully, you would not achieve successful weight loss. You might have heard a lot about portion control and calorie deficit with regards to weight loss, but without mindful eating, those practices would be ineffective. One of the primary reasons why most weight loss diets fail to yield any results is because people often eat mindlessly. We cannot stress enough about the way eating mindfully can help you lose weight by being aware of the food that you are consuming and eating it without any distraction. Paying complete attention to the taste, look, smell, and the way it makes you feel is a part of mindful eating and that’s why, in this post, we have listed out 9 mindful eating hacks to eat right and lose weight.
Mindful eating is not a magic tool that would instantly make you shed extra pounds, but it does play an important role in helping you cut down calories by promoting healthy eating. It makes you more conscious about the kind of food you choose to eat, the quantity you are consuming, preventing overeating, and helping you make the right kind of food choices. It makes you more aware of cues from the satiety hormone “leptin” on when to stop eating the moment you are full. Mindful eating is not part of a new fad diet, it has always been the correct practice to eat food, just that we conveniently gave up the practice due to lack of time and other factors.
Since we have laid out the importance of eating mindfully, in this post, we have listed out 9 mindful eating hacks to eat right and lose weight.
9 Mindful Eating Hacks to Eat Right and Lose Weight:
1. Eat without Distractions: One of the prerequisites of mindful eating – eat without any distractions, which means switch off the TV, keep away the phone, and eat in peace so that once the satiety hormone kicks in, you can keep away the fork and spoon to avoid consuming extra calories.
2. Chew Slowly: Through research, it has been established that it the brain about 20 minutes to receive signal from the brain that the tummy is full and it’s okay to stop eating now because the energy needs have been met. If you are gulping down food, without chewing morsels, you are more likely to miss this very important signal, and before you realize, you would have overeaten by a considerable degree. To eat mindfully, chew slowly, relishing each bite, and making the whole digestive process easier that way.
3. Whenever you feel like snacking, drink a glass of water. This practice will prevent unnecessary snacking and the need to binge on unhealthy and high-calorie snacks.
4. Take One Bite at a Time: Taking from the above points, take one bite at a time, enjoy the quality and texture of the food, chew it properly, and only then proceed for the next bite. You would be surprised how less you can eat this way.
5. Eat with the Opposite Hand: An effective hack that would save you many calories, eat with the hand you use less or your non-dominant hand. When you eat with the opposite hand, it would make the hand-mouth coordination a little harder, and you would automatically eat mindfully and cut down the calorie intake drastically.
6. Eat with a Fork instead of a Spoon: Eating with a small fork can help you eat lesser, researchers say, and that’s because most people assume eating with spoons makes them consume fewer calories and they tend to overeat, and that’s why eating with a fork (particularly dessert) is a good way to be aware of the amount of food you are consuming.
7. Eat Textured Food: Opting for whole foods, with a bit of texture, helps us to stay connected to the kind of food we are consuming. On the other hand, with liquid calories such as fruit juices or soft untextured food such as mashed potatoes, it’s extremely difficult to keep track of calories.
8. Stick to Meal and Snack Timings: It’s always a great idea to create meal and snack timings and stick to them to avoid unnecessary snacking through the day. Check out weekly weight loss diets on Rati Beauty app for more details.
9. Detach Emotions from Food: Eat only when you are hungry, not when you are bored or under stress, or to find comfort. Detach food from emotions to get rid of stress eating and to prevent weight gain. Read about 14 Tips to Control Stress Eating to Lose Weight.
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