How To Start Eating And Exercising Mindfully by Jennifer Hay

1. Go to your personal place of meditation.

2. Begin eating but with all of your five senses, i.e. asking yourself what the food looks like, feels like when inside your mouth, tastes and smells like and what you hear when you chew and bite it.

3. Turn now to your emotions and how your eating makes you feel inside. Are you feeling pangs of guilt, anger, joy, sadness, judgement or even disgust?

4. Start to look at what you are thinking, such as "my food tastes good and is doing my body some good", or "I'm feeling really proud to be eating this salad" or maybe even "I feel so guilty for indulging in too much chocolate".

5. Gently come out of your mindful experience and go back to your normal daily activities.

The reason behind this exercise is for you to develop the habit of becoming aware of that what you are feeling and thinking while eating, as this really is the key to success in laying the foundations of a healthier lifestyle. By following the above steps, you would be experiencing what you are consuming for what it actually is. For example, if you were eating a bag of fries, they would be a mixture of potatoes, vegetable oil, salt and dextrose, plus other ingredients. Your feelings and thoughts, therefore, attached to these ingredients may be of failure and guilt and the belief that this kind of eating would ruin your chances of developing a healthier and more attractive body, thus allowing you to make healthier choices in the future.

Fortunately, the more you practice the above exercise, the more it should work in your favour. Whether you choose to dedicate some time to mindful eating every day or once per week (whatever suits your lifestyle is best), over time, you should come to see that your relationship with food changes for the better. For example, you may find yourself eating more of the right foods, can identify your emotional triggers with relative ease and become the master of what you are eating rather than the slave to your desires and that unconscious 'automatic' eating becomes a thing of the past.

As important as eating the right foods is; equally, you need to exercise sufficiently and regularly enough if you want to achieve a better body. To create an effective fitness plan, however, you need to look at any behaviour patterns you may need to change with regards to exercise. This would involve any background situations that bring about this behaviour, things that may trigger you to behave in the way that you do and most importantly, the action you need to take to change all of this.

Should you find yourself always comparing your body to the bodies of other people you go to the same gym as, then this behaviour can lead to a sense of inadequacy and perhaps result in you not working out as often as you should. Furthermore, if you find yourself comparing your body with other people's bodies regularly, it is essential that you ask yourself as to what the situation behind this may be. For example, do you feel like this only when working out or while on social media? You also need to look for the trigger too, i.e. do you only feel the need to compare when you are on the treadmill working out next to a girl whom you think has a better figure than yourself? Having looked then at these three factors, i.e. the behaviour, situation and trigger, it will enable you to take the relevant action needed to change your health and fitness regime for the better. Some healthy self-talk can be most beneficial here, such as suggesting to yourself that you will remain focused on you and not other people while working out and that the correct exercises and diet will help you to reach your personal health and fitness goals.

Sincerely, this way of thinking should really boost your self-confidence levels and thus help you to achieve the body you have always wanted.

In addition to the above, reminding yourself at the start of each day that you are good enough and will achieve your goals can only be beneficial, as should celebrating the small wins, even if it is a 1lb per week weight loss, is the way to go!