n this episode of miracles and wellness we talk about how Meditation can help you lose weight by having a regular mediation practice.
Helping you cope with stress eating and emotional eating.
How stress affects our weight loss and health
How mediation can help us manage our weight and our relationship with food.
Is diet and exercise really enough?
Join the 28 day free mediation challenge
Xo
Clarissa
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Transcript
Hey there, friends, hope your’e having a wonderful day. So today when I get into talking about stress, right? How stress affects us, um, and with weight loss and how meditation, just like an amazing tool to have in your toolkit. You know, I love my meditation’s for numerous reasons. Right. It just, it’s just something great to practice, even if you start out slow.
Okay. So when you think about it, when you’re on a weight loss journey, sometimes you see people lose, like all this. weight then they gain it back. And this comes from a number of factors, obviously, whether you are doing being too restrictive, which I do not recommend, you know, but even if that let’s say your on you’re eating well and you’re working out and you’re doing all these things, but if you don’t also address what’s going on internally, there is a chance that you’re going to gain the way back.
So just getting a hold on those triggers, right? Because at the end of the day, we’re all going to be stressed out. And one aspect or another but just being able to kind of hone in on that and just kind of know what to do or have an idea just so he can manage it before it gets out of control, because you know, that stress, it can, it can get you right.
You there’s a stress and anxiety, depression, just all of these things that can arise in our mental health. And sometimes people think it’s okay to ignore it. You know, people like, you know what everybody’s stressed out. It is what it is. But no, no. We want to kind of get a hold of that before it gets out of control.
And even on the opposite spectrum, sometimes people overeat or celebrate in a way when they’re happy or they get like something good. You know what I’m saying? So it’s like stress, eating, emotional, eating, all the things, just being able to have, you know, just some healthier coping mechanisms. Right. But we’re talking about stress.
Stress can keep you from losing. Right. And you can hold on to fat on your body. And then when you think about it, your the cortisol, which is a stress hormone is responsible for regulating your metabolism for one, and it releases it when it’s stressed out. So when you hear people talk about that fight or flight mode, so you’re going to wind up getting more hungry.
So it’s okay in a little bit, but if you’re in a constant state of stress, it’s just going to say heightened, right. And it wants to be more harmful. And then what does that do? Okay. It increases your appetite, right? It’s going to stimulate that fat. And those wants you to want you to eat those bad carbs is what happens.
So if you have like a sweet tooth, it’s going to kick a right on in, you’d be like, Hmm, what do I have to grab right now? So even if you’re at work you’re doing something you might run to the, um, snack machine, or if you’re at home, you got some snacks in there. You got for your kids. It’d be like, you know what they going to notice these chips
, mommy bought this. I’m going to go ahead and get this in right now so you can go eat it. And it can turn into a cycle is what can happen and not a good cycle. Okay. So you can be stressed out, then you wind up overeating and especially if you’re eating. Like, you know, the more refined sugars and all those other things.
So if you eat junk or processed foods, you’re not even really going to get full immediately. Cause your biases, me looking for those nutrients. So you want to eating even more of it. So you’re stressed, you overeat. And then what happens? You start feeling guilty or you start feeling shame and we don’t want that.
Okay. Look. Because that will just make you feel worse about yourself. Right? Because then if you start feeling guilty, so now you feel stressed out and then you feel sad and like, then you start beating yourself up. You’re like, why did I do that? You know, you start feeling bad, then you start blaming all these things and we don’t want that.
Okay. Ooh, that made me think about this book. Do you know who Brene brown is? She is amazing. She has a book called the power of vulnerability. If you haven’t read it, go pick it up. Or listened to it and audio books, whatever suits you best at the moment. But besides that look when you are in a heightened state of stress, okay.
Besides that, it’s going to. Make you gain weight, you can feel sluggish and fatigued. The, so if you’re feeling that shame, you might go into a state of depression because then you might be looking at yourself in a way. And ultimately we wants to love ourselves, love our body, just all the things I’m all about the love.
Maybe, you know, I’m all about the love. And so then where then also can lead to high blood pressure type two diabetes has all these things. It’s just not good for us. Cardiovascular disease. Just, it just affects us. So it should definitely be addressed. And so people should not try to like throw it on the back burner, like it’s okay.
Right. So allow yourself to take those breaks, baby. You do not need to be burnt out. Okay. I do not want you to burn out over here doing all these things. You need to do a wellness check, schedule it in, do whatever you need to do, make a daily practice of it. Okay. Because that mind body connection is. All right.
And we want to avoid, you does overeating and just eating for stress. Okay. Cause stress, emotional eating is a real thing, right? Because if those emotions are so strong, you try to figure out how to deal with it. So we want to try to incorporate meditation in there and there’s so many different techniques.
So just giving yourself that to do everyday, even if you start your day or in your day with it. Absolutely amazing. And if you’re in the middle of something, just close your eyes. If you’re not driving and, you know, just do some deep breathing right there and it will help you, it will help regulate your system.
Believe me, you know, never not everybody’s into meditation and that’s okay. But at least want you to try it and just try your best to incorporate it in and just find whichever way works best for you. Okay. And also it could help you relearn to have a healthy relationship with your food. Right? Does removing just any problematic feelings that you might be having around eating?
Cause sometimes we just develop these things and then just think about how food is put in our face. I mean, even on TV, you will see a commercial with somebody being sad and they eaten the cake. Like, why is that what they’re doing? Because he knows the advertising and they, and they just put it in your face.
Then you grow up thinking this when you spoke. I want you to realize that there’s other ways for us to deal with that, right? And you might be like, well, I’m too busy. I can’t do this. I can’t do that. No, you can because it’s for you, it’s for your life. And I want you to live and I want you to love yourself enough to do what you need to do.
Okay. And look, if you need to ask God to give you the strength to do it, then you need to do it. Be like, Hm, like Lord, please help me allow myself permission to just take care of myself in a way that’s going to be beneficial to. I just need 20 minutes to meditate or five of you just started now, but I want you to push yourself farther.
If you know, you can do five, I want you to shoot for 10. All right. Don’t just be like, okay, well, I’m just gonna do this and I need you to go farther because you know, you can, okay. Then when you know you’re going through meditation, you can focus on how you’re going to enjoy your food. Not rushing setting aside 20 minutes to eat mindfully, paying attention to what you’re eating, the texture.
She has everything just being in the moment, trying your best, not to rush time block in that, right. You watch when you’re doing your time, blocking your meditation time, blocking in some time for you to mindfully eat your food so that you’re not rushed. And when you are meditating, you can think about how he wants to enjoy your food, right.
And how you can work on either. When you are hungry, but not starving or right. When you like, say you have a hunger scale, you don’t want to wait to get all the way up to the top. Cause then you’re just going to eat it all. All right. And you’d be like, Ooh, Chad, then that itis kicks in. You know what I’m talking about?
So we don’t want that. So eat a little bit before you’re hungry and just enjoy in a liar yourself to be full. Look. If your grandmother told you, you had to finish all the food on your. I get it. You grew up like that, but you do not have to do that anymore. You can allow yourself to stop eating. You do not have to eat all the foods.
I know sometimes in the household, you’d be like, you need to finish all the food on your plate, but you don’t need to do that anymore. You need to give yourself permission to stop eating whenever you feel. Okay. But when you are stressed out and you’re eating, it’s harder to do that because you’re eating junk, you know, and you’re just in this heightened state of arousal and you just like, oh my gosh, I need to get rid of this feeling, but it’s not going to go away from you eating.
I’m not picking on grandma’s either. So my grandma listen to this. Don’t be mad at me. You, you just know what it is. I love you. Okay. And then that will also help you appreciate and love your body because you want to take care of your body. Have a good relationship with yourself. If you need to stare at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself I love you and look over your whole body and that’s what you do, and don’t feel silly about it.
You know, there is no shame in your body. Love yourself, right? So if you need to do that, go ahead. Because you want to have a healthy lunch with your food on your, and your body and yourself. So, and when you allow yourself to love yourself even more than you do to thank that, you need to do to show yourself love and eating overeating in doing this emotional eating is not the way.
Okay. But don’t feel guilty about it. We’re just going to work one day at a time, one step at a time, and just kind of, you know, tweaking that a little bit or right. Just. And then when we are meditating, right, you learn to pay attention to yourself more, right? Because you are sitting in silence and it’s okay.
If thoughts come into your mind, it’s all right. It can happen. You’re human, but you just can try to refocus, refocus on whatever it is. You can not think about anything you could do. Deep breathing. More, you could tell yourself some affirmations or if you be like, I love myself or I have a healthy relationship with food and you could keep repeating that to yourself.
So when go into your psyche, right? Cause we want to learn to respond to our internal cues. Right. And not just eat just to be eating. So when we are meditating, we’re more in tune with. You’re more aware, right? So your cause when mindfulness is all about being present in the moment non-judgmentally right.
So that goes back to right. Not having that shame when that guilt around yourself, right. Being mindful of your surroundings. And when you start getting in that meditation practice, you are more aware of what’s going on. So then you’re more able to pay attention to those internal cues as going up. Right.
So. When you have those feelings, you know, you won’t feel overwhelmed and you’ll have a healthier way to cope. So you could take a moment and go back to that place and be like, okay. I, I focused on this this morning during my meditation. Let me just take a deep breath. Right. And let me just re focus.
Because it’s very good for helping you focus, whether that is for your health or just stress levels of whatever that is, this somebody sticking you off, Hey, it happens. Right. Just be like, I’m not gonna let this person get to me right now. I’m just going to recenter myself and during your meditation’s feelings might come up.
Right. And that’s okay. Don’t be scared of them. Just try to process them and work through them. This is going to help you heal, right? Because of there is something that you stuffed in. Like say you’re always busy and you’re always in motion and you don’t sit still. You don’t have time to think about it or process it.
So if you’re sitting and you’re allowing the things to come up and you can work on whatever you’re ready to work on. Okay. So if something comes up and you’re like, whoa, that that’s an interesting feeling or a memory, you know, you can process whatever you can and let that go. Right. You can journal about it.
Journaling is absolutely amazing. And just write it. It doesn’t matter what you write, just let it all out. And then even if you feel a little off for 10 minutes, it will feel better in the future. Be like, wow, that feels really good. I feel like I got that off my chest and I didn’t even know that was down there.
Okay. And so it’ll be a healthy way for you to do it, whatever emotions that’s going on so that when you’re on this wait list, Whenever a trigger comes out. It’ll be easier for you to deal with, be like, I’m not gonna let that get to me. I got that. Cause you’re working through things. All right. I mean, there’s even studies that show that when people incorporate meditation and mindfulness practice into their weight loss journey, their results stick more.
I mean, whenever I’m working with people, I try to get them to meditate more and do visualization meditations and do different things. And it really helps. It definitely helps. And also, if you are meditating and something comes up and it’s heavy, look, you could talk to somebody. Look, if you need to talk to a therapist, you could talk to a therapist.
I mean, it’s, it’s okay. Do whatever you need to do to heal yourself. Right? Give yourself permission to heal, whatever that looks like for you. Okay. So don’t feel that you have to do it alone. And if you don’t know where to go ask God, ask God to point you in the right direction of wherever you need to go for where you are right now.
That could be anything that could be a close friend, a family member that could be a coach that could be a therapist, just knowing that there is definitely somebody out there. If it is beneficial to you to talk to somebody, and sometimes it’s easier for you to work through something with health. Right, because by nature, we want to be surrounded by other people and that’s okay.
Just make sure that it’s the right person. Just don’t talk to the first person you see, if the energy isn’t good. Just look, feel off that energy and do whatever is necessary because whenever we do do these meditations, right. Things will come up and it’s okay. Get it out, get it on paper. Boom. Get it on that paper.
But you know, meditations will also help you reduce cortisol. And we don’t want that because when it’s persistently high, it can lead to obesity. Right. So being able to sit in, observe our emotions without passing any judgment, right. Instead of resorting to whatever coping mechanism that is. Right. So whenever I talk about these things, I talk about food because.
This is what I, I love right about the health aspect, but don’t forget, you can take food out in replace. I with any other substance, just like somebody who quit smoking, right? Sometimes somebody might be like, well, I gained weight it’s because that the, whatever, the internal factor that was triggering them to smoke was never dealt with, or the person might like pick up food and eat accessibly it’s of the smoking.
So it’s the same. So at the end of the day, we always want to have a healthier way to cope because it’s just one thing or another, anything can be an addiction. Okay. So having a healthier way to cope. So we don’t overindulge in our food or whatever that is. Okay. Cause that emotional eating that stress eating is so real.
Okay. It is so real. Right. So it will help you remove the shame and the guilt, right. That comes along with emotional eating. So. Instead of you trying to Sue your feelings with the food, if you’re feeling stressed or, you know, that anxiety kicks in, it’ll help you feel calm, right? So that’s where like that debriefing comes in, it helps calm your, your nervous system down and you feel more relaxed and that’ll help you break that cycle.
Right. So it’ll help reduce that stress by removing the trigger in the first place. So becoming more aware of your feelings and it will help you increase your compassion towards yourself because you’re feeling more sensor and more in a state of love. Right? Self-love right. Um, same here. If you want to pray about it before you start meditating and just be like, God, show me whatever is blocking me.
Like what is going on? Can you help me get to the root of that and then start your meditation, right? Whenever you feel yourself, start again and rev. I’m not going get, um, it’s not, it’s not taking me down a day. Nope. Not going to do it. You just sit there. Right. And then, boom. So we’re going to work on breaking that cycle by doing that.
Okay. And then do you ever see sometimes whenever you are working out, but you can’t use your little belly fat, that can also come from stress, right? Because this, your belly, your abdomen area is where your fat stores go from the cortisol. Right? When it’s elevated in a C-reactive protein levels, it’s a sign of inflammation.
Which then again is the root of may diseases, including obesity, right? When you think about inflammation is the culprit for a lot of our illnesses, right? So, also stress, right? So you do not have to let stress get the best of you. All right. Especially if you are doing the thing with your nutrition and you know, you’re moving your body, you getting it in every day.
Be like, man, I’m on a roll. You don’t want stress to be your down. Uh, right. So just try your best to incorporate a meditation practice. Right. I believe in this so much. Right. And allow yourself to work through whatever is going on. Right. Cause there’s low. It’s like layers, right. Cause one day you might pull off this layer then it’s like, Ooh, there’s something else.
Oh, what’s this? What’s this it’s all right. It’s all right. Keep going. Look, all of us are a work in progress. Every last one of us. I don’t care who you are. Okay. I do not care. We all have a store. We all got things going on and life’s just not perfect. So don’t let it get to you. And also on that, just because I want people to just try to incorporate more of his meditation, I am doing a.
28 day meditation challenge, where you can get a different meditation everyday for 28 days. So for that, I just want you to go to Bitly forward to last 28 day calm at Lee forward slash 28 day calm. All right. So just go ahead and just do that and just add that into meditation practice, or just start, just say one day at a time.
All right. And I hope this was helpful. You too. You all right until next time. Bye.
Bye guys. Thank you so much for coming by and don’t forget to subscribe and leave a written review until next time light.
