arlenesway.com.au Loose weight with Arlene Normand

To be successful in altering your lifestyle of eating and exercise you have to be in harmony. Living a balanced life ensures that each aspect of our lives – our body, mind, heart and soul are being nourished.

Caring for yourself puts you in a better place to care for others.

Balance your food. Base most of what you eat on ‘everyday’ foods – on nature’s whole plant foods, protein, oil, fresh or minimally processed as possible. Include whole grains, legumes, fresh fruit and vegetables. An occasional treat – such as chocolate or cake – is absolutely fine. It is all about balance after all! Watch the size of your portions.

A ‘wholistic’ balanced lifestyle integrates healthy eating, drinking fresh water, fresh air, plenty of exercise, rest, relaxation and sunshine with healthy and loving relationships and living a meaningful and purposeful life. In harmony, it helps us to care for our ‘whole’ being.

INCIDENTAL EATING

Oops how did that get into my mouth? Why do we eat subconsciously, and how we can unlearn this habit?

Have you ever found yourself at the bottom of a bag of chips with no recollection of how it happened? The same feeling as when you have driven home from work without the slightest idea of how you got there.

We live a surprising amount of our lives on auto-pilot. We don’t have to think about breathing and walking, and many of us can type, drive, ride a bike and apply lip gloss without calling on our conscious mind for guidance. This type of auto-pilot comes about when we become highly practised at something by doing it repeatedly.

Mostly our subconscious patterns serve us well. However, our subconscious habits make excellent slaves but very poor masters. Take eating, for example. Like any other habit, it can be done without thinking and can be either self-serving or self-sabotaging. Incidental eating is something we do on auto-pilot, when our conscious mind and all its comments on what we should be doing turns off, and our subconscious – with all its easy-going, hedonistic tendencies – turns on.

In the days when we had to think about food, select and prepare it, we were very conscious of what we ate. Now, with lifestyle changes and access to foods that do all the thinking and preparation for us, we think and know a lot less about what we eat. With bars and bite-sized foods at our fingertips, we barely even need to chew! Much of our eating is now incidental to actual meals. You may recognise these two forms of incidental eating:

1. Picking and grazing all day without actually planning, preparing or sitting to eat a meal. You may find yourself saying “I have hardly eaten all day”, but in fact you will have incidentally eaten a number of times. (Mothers take note!)

2. Mindlessly Eating foods even if you are not aware of whether or not you are enjoying them or finding them satisfying. (People who like crackers, nuts and confectionary beware!

So how do we know when our subconscious eating patterns are serving us poorly? Most of us, when we are in subconscious mode tend to go from the enjoyment of the first mouthful to “oh my god, I need to lie flat” and the ensuing guilty aftermath. Some of the more enlightened people I know have a “one-mouthful” rule when it comes to treats and food we are eating purely for enjoyment. Most of these people have a healthy BMI and seldom agonise about what they eat. So I believe they might be on to something.

The rules come down to self-awareness, portion control and planning:

1. Eat what you enjoy and do not deprive yourself when you know you are going to love it. Be hones about how much you will love it and don’t temp yourself with sub-standard treats.
2. Never buy things you don’t actually want to end up eating. If it is in arm’s reach it is ripe for the incidental picking.
3. Never upsize anything and always opt for the smaller versions of everything. Say goodbye to the jumbo pack and the mega bar. Family packs are for huge families, not for individuals. Don’t kid yourself; you will not save some for later. Do not say, once it is gone, it’s gone. Once it’s gone, it’s gone to your hips.
4. If the portion is too big then cut it down to size before you begin, and push the excess away on another plate. Do not under any circumstances stand near a buffet table at a party.
5. If you have a treat, have one mouthful – this allows you to taste and enjoy it without any guilt. It might be a good idea to ask yourself occasionally whether you really feel like that cheesecake or the handful of chips. The body – for all its other marvels – is unsophisticated in this respect. It treats all calories the same and gives us no special temporary-insanity exclusion clause when eating.

It is just like our mums used to say: It pays to engage your brain before you put your mouth into gear!