The Slim Habit Blog

Losing weight can be a stressful process, so it can be useful if you can learn how to limit that stress. Knowing about how you breathe is an important tool to limiting stress.

Breathing is an automatic body function controlled in the brain stem. Its primary function is to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. We breathe in air to extract the oxygen, and we exhale carbon dioxide.

It’s important that you breathe properly and oxygenate your system. Your new exercise regime will be helping you to do this. But how often do you think about controlling your breathing? Ancient cultures used to put great store in breathing and ‘the breath’. In yoga, breath or prana is considered the vital life energy, and pranayama is the art of breath control.

Scientific studies have shown that correct breathing can help manage stress and stress-related conditions. When you’re under stress, your breathing pattern changes. You start to take short, shallow breaths. This empties too much carbon dioxide out of your blood, and distorts the balance of gasses. This has the effect of prolonging the feelings of anxiety. It also worsens the physical symptoms such as headaches, a tight feeling in the chest, fatigue, insomnia and a feeling of panic.

By deliberately taking slow, deep breaths, and breathing from your diaphragm, not your chest, you’ll help to reduce stress hormone levels, balance the gasses in your blood, and increase a feeling of calm and well-being.

Pay more attention to the way you breathe. You are undertaking many changes in your life right now, and you need to remain calm and focused. Breathing properly will help you do this.

If you want to lose weight permanently, the information on breathing is probably one of the most important weight loss tips you’ll ever learn. Losing weight has to be handled carefully if it is to be successful and if you are to achieve permanent weight loss.

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If you want to be successful at losing weight, you need to know about fats.

So much of our food today is processed in some way or other. Much of it is tasty and ‘moreish’. Food manufacturers have been very clever at putting temptation in our way, but this abundance has not gone hand in hand with health. A lot of the processed food we eat is detrimental to our health. Much of this is due to the ingredients added in the manufacturing process. One of the additives you should be most aware of is fats. Consume too many of the wrong fats, and weight loss will be impossible. You’ll also run the risk of raising your cholesterol and developing heart disease. 

Your body needs fat, but not a lot. Fats are essential for energy and promote cell growth. They also help your body absorb some nutrients and produce important hormones. But there are ‘good fats’ and ‘bad fats’. You need to be aware of two ‘bad fats’: saturated fat and trans fat. These are fats which are most commonly included in the processed foods we eat. Saturated fats are found mainly in margarines, cooking fats, sweets, chocolate, biscuits, ready meals, animal produce and dairy produce. Your diet needs to contain no more than 7% saturated fat.

Trans fats are produced when vegetable and fish oils are ‘hydrogenated’. These fats commonly appear in margarine and shortening. Trans fats are ‘bad’ fats and your diet should include only 1% of them because your body can’t digest them properly.

As your food awareness grows, look out for the fats on the labels of the food you buy, and avoid saturated and trans fat products as much as possible.

‘Low fat’ products are fine, but just be careful that extra sugar hasn’t been substituted for fat.

If you want to lose weight permanently here is a useful weight loss tip: know your fats. Permanent weight loss means that you must always be on guard when it come s to fats. Too much of the wrong type of fat and your weight loss program will not be successful.

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Do you know what’s going on in your mind? You might think you do, but are you sure? Every day you have about 60,000 thoughts. Are these random thoughts, or are they all part of a logical process? Sometimes our thinking is quite structured and logical, but actually, most of us allow our thoughts to run riot. One thought follows another, often with no rhyme or reason. We’re taken down alleys and cul-de-sacs, and then dumped unceremoniously as another thought zooms in and takes us off again into the unknown. This part of our internal dialogue, the ever-present conversation we have with ourselves. It’s called mind chatter.I

Is there anything wrong with mind chatter? There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with it, no – it happens – but it’s a symptom of out-of-control thinking which can be dangerous. Learning to slow down your thinking and to ‘notice’ your thoughts is an important skill to master. If you have no discipline in the way you think, you’ll end up being controlled by your thoughts.

 Uncontrolled thinking allows negative thoughts to have the upper hand. When this happens, you’re likely to spend a great deal of your time ‘awfulizing’, allowing negative thoughts to balloon and multiply in your mind. This isn’t helpful when you’re trying to change your life and learn new habits. Self-doubt is always tapping at the door, and you need to be able to keep it out.

If you want to be successful at losing weight, you need to learn to control your thoughts. Awfulizing about your weight or how well or badly you’re doing will not be helpful. The best way to lose weight is to not allow negative thoughts to rule. Permanent weight loss can really only be achieved if your mental attitude is strong and you control the way you think.

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