Mindful Eating to break those unhealthy habits

Sometimes it is hard to break old habits. Especially if your daily routine is full on busy. Often, we just grab a bite on the run without thinking of the health ramifications. If you’re looking to lose weight and get healthy you may need to change your eating habits. Here are a few tips to help.

Plan your food ahead

Firstly, make a plan and prep your meals. These days we are living in a high-speed, grab-and-go society, where you’re running around and just grab anything to eat along the way. This is where we start to make unhealthier choices as they are often the easiest choice. However, having no focus on how and what you eat leads to unhealthy habits. If you plan and prep your meals, they will be ready to go when you are. This will help you eat healthier.

When to eat

You need to stop and think about what you are eating, and also when you are eating. Are you actually hungry or not? Also, recognising if you are full or not is important. Don’t keep eating just because it is there. Once you are half full stop eating. Healthy eating is half food, quarter liquid and the rest air for digestion. Keep your portions smaller to stop overeating. We also need to try and slow eating down and focus on chewing properly. If you rush through your meals, it will make you feel less satiated. When you rush and have no focus your body is consuming the food with your sympathetic nervous system switched on. This makes it more likely for your body to store most of it as fat and it creates the potential for indigestion. Your stress hormones raise your blood sugar making it likely that you will want to eat a sugary snack later on.

Eating mindfully

Eating mindfully is one way to help you with good eating habits. Eating mindfully is when you engage all your senses and pay attention to your food. This attention needs to start not just when you start eating but through the whole process. Start from buying the food to preparing and then your eating. It will help you recognise triggers for being hungry for both emotional and physical hunger. This means you can then curb your eating and only eat when you are actually physically hungry.

Shopping mindfully

Shopping mindfully happens easier when you write a shopping list to help you avoid buying things you don’t need. You need to identify and acknowledge your cravings when shopping. Make a conscious decision not to buy the foods you simply crave as usually these are not very nutritious.

Eating mindfully

Sit at a table or away from your desk at work and stop doing what you were doing beforehand. Don’t eat on the run. Clear a space, free of mess, and lay down some cutlery. Make time to eat and enjoy it. It’s best if you’re relaxed before you eat. This is so that your body can shift your nervous system and allow it to work better. This will help your body extract maximum nutrition from your meal. Posture is also important, so sit up tall as bad posture can send stress signals to your nervous system.

You also need to remove all distractions. Put down the phone, and turn off the TV. Be fully present while eating, and focus on enjoying the food. Eat slowly and savour your meal. This will help you maintain a healthy digestive system. Chew your food until it loses all texture before you swallow it and let your mouth rest before taking another bite. You need to listen to your body and know when to stop eating.

How to take action now

If you need help to get started with changing your eating habits, need to lose weight or have allergies, sensitivities, inflammation or other issues eating certain foods check out our website at  www.stressfreehealthmanagement.com as we can set you on the right track. Our trained naturopaths, hypnotherapists, nutritionists and sensitivity testers can help with inflammation tests, menus, hypnotherapy for weight loss and to manage your allergies and much more. Call or message now. (Pic thanks to Brodie from Burst)

Aromatherapy and weight loss

Are you one of those people who have tried everything out there to lose weight and have not found something that works for you? Well, this might be just what you are looking for.

Along with changes to your lifestyle, eating habits and your approach to food, Aromatherapy can play a part in helping you to lose weight. Research has been done with aromatherapy, putting your sense of smell into action to help suppress your appetite.

If you inhale a strong spicy or food-related fragrance for at least five minutes before you eat you can suppress your appetite. The problem is, that if you inhale that fragrance for less than five minutes before eating you will actually increase your appetite.

Suppressing Your Appetite

To help you suppress your appetite create an aromatherapy blend that you can put on a tissue. Place the tissue in a shirt pocket or in your bra. If you are someone that tends to graze or snack throughout the day this will help keep that at bay. You only need three drops of each aromatherapy oils you choose to use. Use up to 3 oils at a time on the one tissue, and inhale it as required.

Best oils to choose

Some of the oils that have the most effect on appetite suppression include Grapefruit, Vanilla, Benzoin, Peppermint, Cinnamon, Clove, Fennel, Lemon, Marjoram, Orange, Mandarin, Ginger and Black Pepper. If you find oils that remind you of the foods you like to eat it will make them more effective. For me I like the sweet stuff, such as lollies, biscuits and chocolate, so I would use oils such as Vanilla, Cinnamon, Grapefruit or Orange on my tissue. Using this along with a healthy diet and exercise will help you see results.

Losing centimetres and reducing Cellulite 

If you are looking to reduce your centimetres and cellulite then these aromatherapy oils can help you with that as well. Use up to three of these essential oils - Rosemary, Grapefruit, Juniper, Angelica, Cypress, Lemon, Bergamot in 20mls of a carrier oil such as sweet almond oil. Massage yourself in the areas you want to focus on such as your legs, hips and thighs. Massage vigorously using plenty of percussion movements, like hacking and cupping. If you do this daily you will see inch loss in about six weeks. If you find you have an increased urge to urinate it means the blend is working. Remember to drink plenty of water to help your body remove any toxins.

Motivation

Sometimes finding the energy to actually show up at the gym is one of the hardest parts of dieting. The essential oils Frankincense, Grapefruit, Juniper, Ginger, Peppermint will help to improve your state of mind and get you moving.

Emotional Eating

If you comfort eat, meaning you reward yourself with food when things go well, eat if you are bored or stop eating if you are very unhappy, then you emotionally eat. If you know you do this, then you need to tackle these habits too. Try any of the following essential oils to help you break any habits you have developed as a result of emotional eating. Lemongrass, Melissa, Frankincense, May Chang, Geranium, Palmarosa, Juniper, Cypress, Sandalwood.

This clinic uses essential oils to assist our clients. We can mix you up a blend that suits you and post it to you. Easy payment system and it will get to you in a week or so. Give us a call or email us on https://www.stressfreemanagement.com.au/ to purchase an oil.

The importance of your Liver

The liver is the largest internal organ in your body and it is something you cannot live without. Your liver has important jobs to do and one of these is to help remove toxins and harmful substances. However, when it comes to the liver it can be very difficult to tell how well it is working. The reason for this is it doesn’t have the capabilities to skip beats like your heart or produce a cough to let you know that it is not working properly until it falls to around 10% capacity of its normal working abilities.

Roles your liver plays

Your liver is made up of two main lobes which are located beneath your diaphragm and on top of your stomach, your right kidney, and your intestines. When your liver is healthy it produces bile which helps remove waste and break down fats. It helps to regulate the levels of protein, sugar, and fat entering your bloodstream and it cleans drugs and alcohol from your blood. The liver also processes the nutrients absorbed by your intestines during digestion, helps to ensure your blood clots when you hurt yourself by producing proteins, cholesterol and clotting factors. It also regulates a lot of your hormones and neutralises free radicals.

The impact of being overweight on your liver

There is new research that suggests that the liver may age faster than the rest of your body if there is excess weight around your waist. This research showed that for a 10-unit increase in BMI the physiological age of the liver increased by 3.3 years. They also found that this increase in years on your liver cannot be reversed by losing weight. Alcohol is also harmful to your liver but there is something that can cause more damage and that is fructose, the most damaging form of sugar when it comes to your liver. This is found in some form in nearly every processed food in your supermarket. Your liver needs to 100% break down the fructose unlike glucose which only needs to be partially broken down before the body uses it. Fructose is metabolised straight into fat which then gets stored in your liver and other internal organs and tissues as body fat. This can lead to mitochondrial malfunction. Fructose produces toxins and free radicals when it is metabolised which can lead to liver inflammation.

Fructose isn’t the only thing that harm your liver though. There are toxins in your home, water, and the air. These are the chemicals in plastics like phthalates and BPA/BPS, flame-retardants, and formaldehyde. These could be in your furniture, carpeting and vinyl floor coverings, building materials, paint, mattresses, vinyl shower curtains, children’s toys, plastic water bottles and containers and scented beauty products.

Time to detox

The good thing is that you can detox your liver from all these harmful substances. There are many

great ways to detox the liver however you need to talk to a naturopath or nutritionist before you do this because if you do it the wrong way you will actually increase the toxins in your body. To ensure your liver detoxes you need to make sure your bowel is functioning properly and you are going to the toilet on a regular basis. If not then the detox, whatever you use, will only go into your bowel and then cycle back into your liver making your body even more toxic. This is a very simplistic explanation of how it works but you need to be aware of this. So don’t rush off to the shop to buy a detox that could be wrong for you. Speak to a trained professional about it. Here at our clinic we carefully investigate your digestive processes before we find a detox that is right for you. Give us a call or email us today to book either an online or face to face session so we can get things moving for you in the right direction.

Knee replacements – are they worth it?

Knee replacements are often recommended for people suffering with osteoarthritis, joint disease or serious injuries from earlier in life. Knee issues can cause excruciating pain so often specialists recommend a replacement as a way to free up the patient from continually popping the pain killers.

Symptoms of arthritis, or a serious injury in the knee are swelling, pain, and deformity of the knee. This can seriously affect your quality of life and cause some restrictions on you day to day activities. It can cause problems doing tasks such as getting in and out of the car, climbing up the stairs, and sitting or walking for extended periods of time leading to frustration but not necessarily surgery.

There are other treatments that can be tried before resorting to surgery. Some of these treatments include physiotherapy, pain medications and anti-inflammatories, also weight loss helps as the risk of osteoarthritis is twice as high if you’re overweight.

The operation

If you do require surgery, the good news is that the replacements have continued to improve over the years. Not only in how they are made but also the way they are inserted into the knee which decreases the recovery time. The metal and plastic bits, the way they are fixed to the bone, the techniques used, the technology to put them in and even rehab afterwards has improved over the years. However if you can delay surgery for as long as possible that one expense and inconvenience will last you the rest of your life also saving you future pain.

The knee replacement procedure is done by making small cuts into the leg, allowing the surgeon to then either replace the whole knee with prostheses or only part of the knee. The procedure is performed under a general or local anaesthetic.

Recovery

Recovery from the operation can vary from person to person but can take anything from 6 weeks before you are feeling up to being up and about to 12months. Medication will be given to keep pain at a manageable level, and your pain should decrease in the first few days after surgery. Many doctors get patients up within 4–6 hours after the operation and within 3 or 4 days they can usually go home.

Other options

If you are feeling hesitant about having knee surgery why not try some natural options first? Reducing your inflammation with the help of a naturopath at our clinic, correct diet and supplements, losing weight, reiki or other energy healing and exercise. Quite often these can help you avoid an operation. Give us a call to find out how we can help.

Aussies and weight gain – there is a solution

Did you know that over half of us Aussies are overweight, despite the fact many of us eat lots of sugar free, fat free, light diet food and drinks. This is because, even though the food is labelled diet it doesn’t always mean it’s a healthy choice.

Low kilojoule meals are one example. These meals are great when it comes to portion control but they are full of carbohydrates such as white flour, rice potatoes and often full of sugar. These white refined carbohydrates can cause overeating as they lack fibre and are digested quickly leaving you feeling hungry sooner than high fibre, slow release carbohydrates such as brown pasta, sweet potato and brown rice. 

Another meal that can cause overeating because it leaves you feeling unfulfilled are protein shakes and meal replacement shakes. These shakes may help you lose some weight in the beginning but they are impossible to sustain for a long period of time and keep the weight off.

Low carb labels don’t always mean low kilojoules or that it is a healthy choice, as well as the low-fat labels. Be careful to what you are buying because these ‘diet’ products are usually full of sugar or artificial sugar which are both bad for your health, not to mention the high salt content. You need to pay attention to the nutrition labels on the back of the packet rather than the big labels on the front of a product that are marketed to sell.

For best results for not only weight loss but a healthier body is to eat a well-balanced diet of whole grains, vegetables, fruit and proteins such as lean meat, chicken, pork and fish. Also eating proper portion sizes is needed because even if you are eating the right things eating too much can contribute to weight gain. We also need to stay active and exercise. Drinking enough water is also important. It is recommended to drink up to two litres of water a day.

Your diet may not be the only reason you are gaining weight, other things that can contribute to weight gain include thyroid and/or hormone problems, digestive issues such as not going to empty your bowels every day and metabolic syndrome. If you are struggling with your weight the you may want to get your health checked out. Consult a nutritionist to ask about foods as that is what they are trained to help you with and a hypnotherapist for help with diet portions and to control your cravings.