reduce stress

What Your Food Cravings Are Trying To Tell you!

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food cravings

Food cravings can occur for a variety of reasons including emotional ones.  Perhaps you are dissatisfied with a relationship, stressed, bored, or lonely?  Maybe your unhappy with your job and you have uncomfortable emotions/situations?  Regardless of what your emotional trigger is, you find yourself looking for solution.  Instant gratification, and for many, they seek balance through food.

It can provide you with a temporary form of relief.  A kind of escape when you are under pressure.  However, many of us feel even worse and guilty after eating.  This is why using food as a way to fulfill areas of our lives that are unsatisfied is not a solution.  The result is often the same and the effect temporary.  The emotions return and it leads to an unhealthy cycle.

Food Cravings & Triggers

It is important to identify your emotional eating triggers.  What situations, places or feelings make you reach for the comfort of food?  Is it Emotions (Anger, fear, sadness, anxiety, loneliness, shame…)?  Boredom or feelings of emptiness?  Perhaps social influences, stress or fatigue?  Really take the time to understand what may be triggering your cravings.  For further information, click here to discover Top Tips To Manage Your Emotions.

Healthy Plates

Well-balanced meals with fiber, protein and healthy fats are more likely to keep you satisfied.  Protein requires more work for the body to digest and fibers keep your blood sugar levels in check.  Hence why those macronutrients will make you feel full longer.  Click here to read everything you need to know about macronutrients.

Diets

If you are eating less than usual or if you are on a diet and cutting out on an entire food group, you may have more frequent feelings of hunger.  According to research from the University of Toronto, restrained eaters are more likely to experience cravings and to overeat the “forbidden” food when given the chance.  Due to this reason, it is important to not deprive yourself and enjoy your favorite foods in controlled portions.  Click here to learn How To Find The Best Diet For You.

Stay Hydrated

Mild dehydration can affect your metabolism, the rate at which you burn calories and compromise your health.  Drinking water increase the body’s ability to digest food and convert it into energy.  Furthermore, staying hydrated helps to reduce cravings and may help regulate the amount eaten.

Mindfulness

Eating while you are also doing other things (watching TV, playing with your phone etc.) does not allow you to enjoy your food.  Your mind is not focus on what you are doing/eating.  Therefore you will not feel satisfied and will continue eating even when you are no longer hungry.

Eating more mindfully can help you to focus on your food and the pleasure of the meal.  Try these simple strategies;

  • Take time to sit down at the table
  • Eat your meals with no distractions
  • Allow yourself at least 20 minutes per meal
  • Take small bites and chew them well
  • Put your utensils down between bites

Stress

Stress can play a large role in hunger cravings and it can cause some people to crave foods that are sugary or more calorie-dense.  Breathing exercises, walking, meditation and yoga can help the body to refocus and calm the mind.  Click here for 5 Natural Solutions For Coping With Stress!

Hormones

Menstruation, pregnancy or menopause makes testosterone and estrogen levels fluctuate. Therefore it may cause unique cravings.  Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable emotions. Allow yourself to have all kinds of feelings.  Cravings are not the core problem.

If you have negative emotions you can take steps to control cravings such as keeping a food diary.  Also, try to distract yourself, take a walk, snack healthy, DO NOT DEPRIVE YOURSELF and most important of all; Get support.

If self-help does not help you to control emotional eating or your cravings, consider talking with a health professional.  Click here for information on Unraveling Emotional Cravings.

Top Tips To Manage Your Emotions

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For most people the holidays are a time to take a break from the hustle of every day life and a time to spend with family and friends.  It is a time that people observe special religious festivities and a time of gift giving and merriment.  A great many of us will make new year’s resolutions to either give up something that is detrimental to our health or add something to our regimen.  Like something that will help cope with things like depression and anxiety and bring us closer to health and happiness.

But now it’s January.  You’ve just realized you have overeaten, overdrank, overspent, and indulged in a great many behaviours that you normally wouldn’t have if it was any other time of the year.

When it comes to spending habits in Canada, one in three Canadians said they ended up spending more than they meant to last year.  (1) It’s easy to fall into despair, disarray as well as frustration and fear as a result of our actions during the holidays.

According to motivational speaker Tony Robins, “Gratitude is the solution to anger and fear.”  (2) In other words, you one cannot hold feelings of anger/fear and gratitude simultaneously.  This is good news if we are searching for methods to cope with the aftermath of the holidays when all festivities have concluded, all the gifts are opened, and perhaps some anxiety about our credit card bills start to arrive making us ever so reluctant to pay a visit to our post office box.

For more on Tony Robbins, click here for THE 5-STEP PLAN TO AN EXTRAORDINARY YEAR.

How To Manage Your Emotions

Here are some tips you can use to manage your emotions and transform your state of being into a healthy and positive state.  This exercise is the HeartMath Institute’s Heart-Focused Breathing® Technique and I would like to share it with the reader as it is entirely possible to calm both our nervous system and our overactive mind.  In other words, attempt to turn down the frantic fight or flight sympathetic nervous system and turn up the parasympathetic system.

Over activity of the sympathetic nervous system will cause our breathing and heart rate to increase as well as release stress hormones like cortisol into our bloodstream to help prepare us for a fight or flight scenario.  This is innately programmed into our nervous system as a protective mechanism. By calming the sympathetics and shifting to the parasympathetics, which control our resting, relaxation and digestive responses, we can put ourselves in a state of ease. The good news is that we can do it relatively easily with this simple exercise.  Click here to read about A Scientific Validation Of Your Emotions.

Step by Step Instructions:

Start with sitting in a quiet place, in an upright posture and begin breathing through your nose and exhale out through your mouth.

Focus:

Focus your attention on your heart area, and breathe a little deeper than normal, in for 5 or 6 seconds and out 5 or 6 seconds.

Breathing:

Imagine breathing through your heart.  Picture yourself slowly breathing in and out through your heart area.

Remember that you are not breathing from upper chest region that uses more accessory muscles and body part and is usually the pattern of breathing of someone suffering form anxiety or anxious state but rather from the heart.  There is a difference.  If this is difficult to visualize try diaphragmatic breathing where your belly expands as you draw oxygen in.  It’s ok if it looks funny and makes the belly look larger than usual.  Nobody is watching remember you’re alone?  Hehe.

Feeling:

Activate a positive feeling as you maintain your heart focus and breathing. Recall a time you felt good inside and try to re-experience the feeling. Remember a special place or the love you feel for a close friend, relative or treasured pet. The key is focus on something you really appreciate.

Conversely, you can attempt a more meditative method and practice NOT thinking about anything other than your breath.  I’ve found both methods effective.  The key is to make sure your exhale is slightly longer than your inhale.

Practice this for at least 5 minutes and observe your mood change in short matter of time.  Click here for 4 Tips to an Abundant, Joy Filled Life

Yes folks, it is literally that easy.  You are in complete control of your mood and emotions.  The mind is a powerful entity and each of us has the capacity to alter our state of well-being should we choose to.  Harness the feelings of gratitude and appreciation.  Appreciate yourself and others.  Be grateful that you are alive.  My wish for you is that this exercise will help you reduce emotional stress and improve your health.  Blessings to you all.

Reference:
https://globalnews.ca/news/4671068/2018-black-friday-canada-holiday-spending/
https://medium.com/thrive-global/tony-robbins-gratitude-is-the-solution-to-anger-and-fear-c3fa819825c
E-mail newsletter: Heart Math Institute, A 3 step exercise to better health.

Meditation isn’t Supposed to be Frustrating!

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I don’t know about you, but whenever I sit down to meditate, I have instant anxiety! I have got a to-do list that is growing by the minute, I have so many balls in the air that I feel like if I take my eye off of one just long enough to take my first meditative breath, they are all going to come crashing down.

Which is EXACTLY why I need to meditate!!!

So I am going to start meditating more regularly, and actively trying to turn off the panic that rushes toward me whenever I take a mini-break for myself to recharge.

I encourage you to join me in daily meditation!

Because really, what better way can we spend just 5 minutes than bettering ourselves!!

Meditation is an excellent way to reduce stress and improve your focus (once you get past the panic!! just kidding.)

It is particularly important for people who feel daily stress and find themselves in a routine that they can’t quite keep up with. It is an excellent way to quiet your mind and clear your thoughts of trivial issues to make room for more meaningful ideas to surface.

The best part is, you can carve out time for meditation any time you’d like throughout the day. Some people prefer to meditation first thing in the morning, to set the tone for their day, while others prefer to take a break over lunch, and find a quiet spot to meditate mid-day. It can also be quite nice to spend some time in the evenings meditating before you get ready for bed. This can be very helpful in turning off the days’ thoughts, aiding restful sleep, and calming your mind.

Here are some tips to make your meditation productive and enjoyable:

1. Find a comfortable place to relax. If sitting cross legged on the floor doesn’t do it for you, find a comfy chair. Make sure you are warm enough, because as you are not moving and potentially calming your heart rate, you may feel chilled. Throw on a warm sweater.

2. Make your new comfy spot a place that is relatively quiet. Especially for beginners, it is so easy to get distracted by others talking or moving about. If you can have a quiet room with a door that can close, even better!

3. It’s okay if you have racing thoughts. Part of the whole point is to take some time separating yourself from those racing thoughts to position yourself to be able to just observe them. Rather than connecting with them and feeling like the pressure of whatever you are thinking about, simply take the vantage point of looking down upon your thoughts and watching them float by. With no attachment, you can hover above them and not be affected by them.

4. What are you supposed to think about?? Well, nothing and everything! A great way to just let thoughts come and go is to focus on your breath. Be still and be one with each inhalation and exhalation. Notice how your breath feels inside your body. Notice the pause you take between inhaling and exhaling. That is really how you are in life while meditating – embrace the pause!! Feel the rhythm of your breath and imagine it is like the ocean waves. In and out, powerful and strong. Feel the gratitude that comes with feeling this moment of just being alive!

5. Guided meditations are a very nice option to listen to a recorded voice that will guide you along a visualization meditation. There are many on YouTube that you can enjoy that also have beautiful music accompanying your visualized journey.

Most importantly, the best tip is to try to meditate daily. The more consistent you become with your practice, the more you will look forward to this time you spend benefiting your whole being.

Just remember, an athlete doesn’t just work out when they’ve gotten out of shape – they work out every day to be their best self. It’s the same with meditation – we can’t just meditate when we feel stressed already – it should be part of our daily schedule.