So how good are your eating habits?  Do you eat while reading, watching TV, looking at your computer, talking over the phone, etc.?

Have you ever noticed when you multitask you can eat a lot without noticing what you are actually eating? Even when you have dinner with your friends or coworkers, as soon as the conversation starts, the control of how much you eat ends..

As a Holistic Health and Nutrition Coach and Counselor, I always remind my clients that if you eat while multitasking, you will give your brain the wrong signals. You can call this mindless eating.  If your brain is thinking of work, it isn’t thinking of eating and won’t tell your body to stop eating .

If you focus your mind on your eating you will:

• eat less,
• be full faster,
• digest your food properly,
• absorb all nutrients
• lose weight

Here are some healthy tips and ideas to help focus your brain for mindful eating:

• Take a couple of deep breathes to slow down before your meal.
• Bless your food, or at least give thanks – it will help you feel gratitude, which by itself a powerful stress relief technique to help your digestion.
• Try to enjoy what you eat by noticing the food, smelling and savoring it.
• Chew properly – it helps enzymes from your pancreas and other organs get into your stomach and small intestines.
• Eat slower to feel full faster.
• Have a quiet happy family dinner at least twice a week instead of eating on the go.
• Chant “Sat Nam” five times.( Sat Nam is a healing sound or meditation mantra).
• Say Bon Appetit before every meal even if you eat alone. It will help you set your mood for eating and enjoying the food.

Establish these stress free eating habits to maintain your weight more easily and feel and look fabulous, shall we?

Breathe, smile and be happy.

© Irina Wardas, HHC

Women’s Holistic Health and Nutrition Coach and Counselor

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Do you consider yourself a happy person? What if I tell you that you can add more joy and pleasure into your life just by practicing mindful eating?

How long does it take you to eat your breakfast or lunch? When was the last time you enjoyed your food while chewing properly? Our eating habits are our choices, and they can tell a lot about the person. To choose joy of eating, pleasure from food at least three times a day is a choice. To make our choice a healthy habit will take time and practice.

In order to have more joy and pleasure and less anger, frustration and anxiety in our lives we need to practice attentive eating at least once a day. It will help us reduce stress, speed up our metabolism and absorb more nutrients which is very beneficial for natural weight loss/weight management and overall health.

I would like to share with you the extract from the book The Yoga of Eating by Charles Eisenstein.

Tips to Practice Attentive Eating and Stress Relief Techniques for Natural Weight Loss

• Slow down your eating. Even you are absorbed in good times and conversations, reserve a tiny part of your awareness to see that each bite is fully chewed and swallowed before the next one enters your mouth.
• Before all meals. Observe a moment of silence or say a prayer of grace. This is actually a very powerful practice, and it takes less than a minute.
• Every day take one meal, perhaps breakfast, in silence , without the distraction of a newspaper or television. Devote that meal to just eating. Or if this too difficult, devote just five minutes of one meal.
• At every meal, let the first bite you take from every dish be with perfect attentiveness.
• During lulls in the conversation, or when someone is dominating the conversation you are not interested in, take the chance to patiently experience the pleasure of each mouthful.

Breathe, smile and be happy.

© Irina Wardas, HHC

Women’s Holistic Health, Nutrition Counselor and Coach

We all know that it is very important to pay attention not only to what we eat but also to when and how we eat. Unfortunately, most of the time people eat the way they do everything else – in a hurry.

Have you noticed that you can tell a lot about the person by watching their eating habits? What about you? Do you eat fast or slow? What time is your last meal? Do you eat at midnight? Do you cook at home? Do you eat mindfully or while multitasking?

Based on your daily routine, you might have a stressful eating habit which is likely a result of stressful lifestyle, which can bring you nothing but illnesses. On the other hand, if your meals are usually peaceful and at the right time, you are almost certainly a happy and healthy person. Are you?

If you are under stress, and often angry and frustrated, do you thing you would have stress free meals? Of course not! But do you remember what your grandma used to say? Don’t eat and talk, don’t eat if you are angry or upset. Why? Because if you are anxious, frustrated, in a hurry and means under stress, your body’s respond will be focused on  dealing with your stress overload not on food digestion.

As a result, you don’t assimilate food properly, don’t get nutrients you need, always feel hungry….  Sound familiar?

Let’s change that!

Here are some Do’s and Dont’s tips to slow down to enjoy your food for natural weight loss and as stress remedies:

• Don’t eat when you are in a rush, upset or irritated.
• Do: Drink a glass of water instead, calm down, take a walk and only then have your meal.
• Don’t eat if you are busy at your desk, while talking over the phone, watching TV, etc.
• Do: Get your work done first; eat in the kitchen not living room, cafeteria, outside in the park closer to nature.
• Don’t eat with your friends at the restaurant, coworkers in the cafeteria if you are struggling with weight gain.
• Do: Try to eat alone to control how much you eat, and not to be distracted so your food will be digested and you won’t feel hungry sooner than later.
• Don’t eat after 8 pm or later and of, course, avoid midnight snacks.
• Do: Try to adopt European style: the biggest meals are breakfast and lunch, not dinner.

Let us go back to basics and have meals during meal times, shall we?

Always breathe, smile and be happy.

© Irina Wardas, HHC

Women’s Holistic Health Coach and Counselor