Using 4 Key Mindset Shifts to shift that weight for good

When it comes to losing weight the healthy way, your mindset can play a big part in whether you are going to be successful. Approaching weight loss from the wrong perspective is one of the biggest reasons why so many people fail with diets and eating plans. And on the flip side, getting your mindset right can be a game changer for successfully losing weight.

Here are some mindset shifts that could help you to supercharge your weight loss and keep the pounds off!

1. Think About Why You’re Doing It

 Why you want to lose weight can make a lot of difference. Basing your reasons on being happier or looking good are a lot more likely to fail as there’s no saying that losing weight will actually make you feel good about yourself or bring you happiness.

Instead of choosing these reasons as your basis for weight loss, look at things differently. Think of your weight loss as part of a journey to becoming healthier and not just a means to getting to an end target. It’s a great opportunity to introduce healthy habits into your life that set the scene for both improving your health and losing weight into the bargain. When your ultimate goal is to live a longer and healthier life, weight loss will probably happen as a nice extra bonus as a result of these new habits.

2. Don’t Go For Broke

 Trying to do too much too soon with your weight loss can work against you and this is one of the reasons why fad diets and drastically reducing your calorie intake aren’t successful in the long term. You might lose some weight to begin with, but chances are, this will quickly tail off and depending on your mindset and eating habits, you might even start gaining more weight.

When it comes to weight loss, slow and steady tends to do a lot better than trying to lose weight as quickly as possible.

You’re a lot more likely to succeed if you go for smaller shifts that add up to bigger lifestyle changes. If you do them every day, they’ll soon become habits. This is more of a long game and you probably won’t see results straight away but there’s a better chance of actually achieving your weight loss goals compared to focusing on one big goal that could fail.

You want your healthy choices to feel natural and not like a chore or as though you’re depriving yourself and this is where healthy habits can really come into their own.

3. Breaking the Food-Emotions Cycle

One of the factors that can make it hard to lose weight involves emotional eating. We often eat when we’re not really hungry and because we’re feeling certain emotions. Breaking the link between your food and your emotions is a key mindset shift to master if you want to lose weight and keep it off.

Moving away from emotional eating helps you to react to genuine hunger cues so you’ll eat to fuel your body and not in line with how you’re feeling. Mindful eating is a great way to get back in touch with your body’s hunger signals, but it can be a big challenge to master, especially if you’re used to emotional eating. Finding ways to address your emotions that don’t involve food can make a huge difference in being able to lose weight naturally.

4. Visualizing Weight Loss Success

Visualization can be a powerful technique for weight loss, especially if it’s combined with positive self-talk. How does visualization work? The theory is that it helps to rewire pathways in the brain, so it can be great for breaking habits and learning new ones.

To get the most from it, visualize yourself at your ideal weight, with your body fat transforming into a much more positive form of energy. Keep this mental image in mind as much as possible.

You can use positive affirmations and self-talk to highlight to yourself how you’ll feel when you get to this point. Don’t forget to focus on how you’ll feel with your health, fitness and wellbeing and not just how much better you’ll feel about being thinner.

Even though this is going to happen in the future, keep your self-talk in the present tense and not the future to make visualization a more effective mindset shift. Tell yourself that you have the power to change your body through the power of your mind as the finishing touch.

Doing this every day can be a lot more effective than you might think.

Start making a plan for your life long goals for your health, not just the short-term ones.

Looking to make some positive changes in your life to reach your weight loss goals? The “28 Day Healthy Habits Kickstart” may be just the help you need!

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10 Reasons Why You Can’t Shift Stubborn Belly Fat

A little bit of abdominal fat isn’t such a bad thing. It helps to protect your vital organs, after all!

It’s a fine balancing act though as storing too much fat around your abdomen can be dangerous and has been linked to some pretty nasty health problems. We’re talking heart disease, diabetes and even cancer, to name just a few of the things that it may set the scene for. Scary, right?

Some of the culprits are fairly obvious, especially if you’re eating a lot of processed foods and not doing much exercise. There can be some surprising reasons behind belly fat though and these can come into play even if you think you’re living a healthy lifestyle. Here are some of the factors that can make you more likely to store fat in your abdominal area.

Factor #1 – You’re Eating Too Much Sugar and Trans Fats

If you eat a diet that contains a lot of sugar, you’ll probably be struggling to shift belly fat. According to studies, there is a definite link between the two. This can be largely due to the fructose content in processed foods.

Trans fats are another big no-no if you want to avoid belly fat. These are pretty much the worst type of fat you can eat as they promote inflammation and according to studies on animals, they also encourage more fat to be stored on and around your abdomen.

Factor #2 – Your Alcohol Intake

You’ve no doubt heard of a “beer belly” and this is something that can affect women too. Depending on how much you drink, it could be the culprit for stubborn belly fat. Some studies have shown that alcohol can make it harder to burn fat by slowing down metabolism for up to 6 hours after consuming it. It also makes it more likely that the extra calories it brings to the party are stored on and around the abdomen.

Factor #3 – You’re Eating a Low Protein Diet

If you want to stay trim, it’s really important to get enough protein in your diet. Protein helps you to feel more satiated and can mean that you consume less calories. People who eat a lot of protein tend to have very little in the way of belly fat.

Low protein diets are more likely to result in belly fat, according to studies.

Factor #4 – You Don’t Eat Enough Fiber

If your diet is low in fiber, you can be more likely to store belly fat. Observational studies show that getting plenty of soluble fiber reduces the chances of this. In one particular study that involved over 1,100 men and women, every extra 10g of soluble fiber led to a 32% decrease in how much belly fat was stored. This has a lot to do with the fact that low fiber increases your appetite and belly fat.

Factor #5 – You’re Scared of Eating Fat

Fat has had a bad rep and this can put you off eating it. While it’s true that you don’t need a lot of the unhealthier fats, good fats can help you to lose weight and keep belly fat to a minimum.

Monounsaturated fats are one of the good fats and are important for satiety. They’ll help you to feel fuller for longer so you’re less likely to make unhealthy food choices that increase your potential for storing belly fat.

Sources of monounsaturated fat include: avocados, almonds, cashews and peanuts. cooking oils made from plants or seeds like canola, olive, peanut, soybean, rice bran, sesame and sunflower oils.

Factor #6 – You Have Too Much “Bad” Bacteria in Your Gut

Gut bacteria play several important roles in your health, such as communicating with your immune system and producing certain vitamins. Your gut bacteria can also affect how different foods are digested and produce chemicals that help make you feel full. As a result, they can affect your weight.

Two groups of beneficial bacteria are dominant in the human gut, the Bacteroidetes and the Firmicutes. According to research, an imbalance of gut bacteria can have an effect on your weight and how much fat you store on your abdomen.

Obese patients have a lesser diversity and richness in the bacterial component of gut microbiota than normal-weight subjects. Obese individuals have shown to present increased Firmicutes and decreased Bacteroidetes in feces, regardless of diet intake.

Firmicutes are instrumental in increasing fat absorption. An abundance of Firmicutes in the gut is influenced by diet: people eating normally had more Firmicutes bacteria compared to people that were denied food for several days.

Factor #7 – You’re Stressed

Under a lot of stress? It could be one of the reasons why you’re storing belly fat. The stress hormone, cortisol, can lead to weight gain, especially in the abdominal area. Rather than going on your body across the board, cortisol often encourages extra calories to be stored as abdominal fat.

Factor #8 – You Don’t Sleep Well

If you spend a lot of time tossing and turning in the average night, there’s a much higher chance that you’ll store belly fat. Poor sleep is linked to weight gain in general and according to some studies, it also predisposes you to abdominal weight gain in particular.

A large-scale study of more than 68,000 women found that those who were sleeping less than 5 hours per night gained a lot more weight compared to those who slept 7 hours or more.

Factor #9 – You Don’t Get Enough Magnesium

Getting enough magnesium in your diet can lower your blood sugar and insulin levels. That’s not too surprising when you consider that this mighty mineral is involved in over 300 chemical reactions in your body! Some of these reactions have an effect on your body’s ability to burn fat so it can have an indirect impact on your weight.

Factor #10 – Your Exercise Isn’t Intense Enough

Not all exercise is equal when it comes to busting belly fat and keeping it off, especially if your workouts aren’t intense enough. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a good option but anything that involves reasonably intense exercise several times per week should help.

References:

Is alcohol consumption a risk factor for weight gain and obesity?  Crit Rev Clin Lab Sci. 2005;42(3):197-227.     https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16047538
Quality protein intake is inversely related with abdominal fat.  Nutr Metab (Lond). 2012 Jan 27;9(1):5. doi: 10.1186/1743-7075-9-5.    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22284338
Microbial ecology: human gut microbes associated with obesity.  Nature. 2006 Dec 21;444(7122):1022-3.   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17183309
Clinical Nutrition Experimental  Volume 20 August 2018, Pages 60-64  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352939318300162#bib25
Association between reduced sleep and weight gain in women. Am J Epidemiol. 2006 Nov 15;164(10):947-54. Epub 2006 Aug 16.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16914506

In Health & Happiness
Dr. Tara Clapp, ND