The importance of ‘calm’ in order to lose weight

Home » The importance of ‘calm’ in order to lose weight Published: 11th January 2019 This Article was Written by: Nik - Weight Loss Ninja

A lot of us, (myself included when I was 5 stone heavier), gain weight very often due to the fact that life takes control of us rather than the other way around.

There is no way of avoiding the fact that the world around us puts more and more pressure on each and every one of us as time goes on.

• We often benchmark ourselves based on mere snapshots of success in other people’s lives due to social media posts
• Technology advances so rapidly that we often feel that we have to keep on learning what the latest app can do
• Company bosses are under increasing amounts of pressure to adapt, and that pressure can often be passed further down the line to the wider team
• Is there even an argument to say that the more time we are looking down at a screen then it means that we are spending less time looking up and into the eyes of another person, and is that weakening our ability to relate with others? So might even relationships be changing as well?

These are just 3 or 4 observations out of millions of things that highlight the changes in modern-day life.

I don’t know about you, but when I was younger I’d often hear about this weird concept called meditation.

I thought wrongly that it was something reserved for people who just wanted peace and harmony. The stereo-typical tree-hugger to coin a phrase. People who I assumed had opted out of “normal’ life and were chasing some sort of utopia where everything was all just ‘perfect’.

How wrong was I?

Increasingly we now have scientific evidence to show the benefits of proactively setting out to calm our mind. Whilst in the past there was a major focus on achieving success at all costs, people are now realising that success comes about when life has a nice balance to it.

(and if you get a chance, you could watch this film which is all about the mind and how it can heal the body)

Stress, pressure, clouded-thinking, tense relationships etc. all contribute to acting in such a way that doesn’t bring us results as good as they could be. And this includes weight-gain as well.

For some of us we can focus too much on other elements in life, trying to control things in such a way as to just “get-by”, and that means that the focus on our health can suffer.

To lose weight we need focus. We need to take as much pressure out of parts of our life where we have full control in order to give us as good a chance as we can of sticking to our diet or our weight loss programme. (And even though the word diet is getting its own bad press currently in favour of “lifestyle changes”, the same argument prevails).

In order to stick on a diet or make changes to our lifestyle to lose weight, we need to divert mental resources in the same way as road-workers put traffic cones out to change the direction of the traffic. If the traffic represents our thoughts, then equally, we need to put metaphorical traffic cones down in our mind to take our thoughts and habits from following the usual route, (and going with the usual flow of traffic), and direct them instead down a different path.

But how?

Well, a great first step is to use meditation.

Here are three simple things that you can do right now that will take you no more than 60 seconds. As a suggestion, how about trying this out for the next minute and then see how you feel at the end:

1. Close your eyes (if you can safely) and try to tune out of the thoughts that will be flowing in, out and through your conscious mind.
2. Don’t worry if you can’t get rid of them completely. As with all things in life, meditation takes time to master and the more you do it, the easier you’ll be able to prevent these thoughts from entering your mind.
3. Breathing in from the stomach, not the chest, breath in for 6 seconds and then out for 6. Repeat for 30 seconds. Deep breathing really helps to regulate your hormones so there is some science behind this.
4. Now ask yourself the following question: “What 1 thing can I do within the next 5 minutes which will take me one step closer, (just one, simply step), one step closer to what I want”

And that’s it. Before reading on, if you can, could I suggest you try this now and then read the next question.

[HERE IS WHERE YOU DO THE BREATHING / REFLECTION EXERCISE]

[AND WITHIN THE NEXT 5 MINUTES, THIS IS ALSO WHERE YOU PERFORM THE ACTION YOU THOUGHT OF]

Here is the final question in this blog…

How do you now feel?

If you are either (or both) a tiny bit more relaxed and a tiny bit more aware of what you want and how you’ll take one, simple step closer to getting there, then this simple exercise shows what can be achieved if you were to repeat this daily.

And, the best bit about it? You’ve just done 60 seconds of basic meditation……..you “tree hugger” 🙂

(If you want more evidence with real-life stories of the power of “tuning-out” of normal life, here’s a great article I just read on the BBC News website. Here’s to your success