Live and eat mindfully

Living and eating mindfully means that you are using all of your physical and emotional senses to experience and enjoy the food choices you make. This helps to increase gratitude for food, which can improve the overall eating experience. Mindful eating encourages one to make choices that will be satisfying and nourishing to the body.

Gobbling down your dinner could lead to overeating, even if you don’t mean to. But eating slowly and savouring your food helps you feel more satisfied, so your body is more likely to register when you’re full. Try cutting out distractions, such as the telly or your phone, and sitting down at the table to eat, so you’re focused on your food.

It’s easy to feel negative, especially when you think you’ve messed up. But focusing on the bad won’t help you learn from your mistakes – it’ll just make you feel worse. Instead, try addressing what happened: for example, say you ate half a packet of biscuits at work. Instead of thinking ‘I ate half a pack of biscuits. I can’t do this; I give up,’ focus on what you can do to solve the problem. Try, ‘I ate half a pack of biscuits, so I’ll track them and plan a low SmartPoints® dinner using ZeroPoint™ foods. That way, I’ll be back on track.’ Simply changing how you approach the problem could help you feel more positive and motivated.

When you’re on a weight-loss journey, you might encounter negativity from others, including family and friends. Often it’s not intentional, but even someone saying, ‘Should you be eating that?’ could be enough to throw your day off track. Instead of beating yourself up, why not try discussing the programme with them? It could be that they really don’t know how your new healthy lifestyle works, so you could say, ‘Actually, the WW programme allows me to make healthy choices and treat myself when I fancy it – it’s great, isn’t it?’ That way, you won’t end up depriving yourself or feeling bad, and you might just help encourage loved ones, too!