Sometimes in order to lose weight we need to contract space. Contracting space can mean feeling satisfied with less. To make yourself “YogaFit,” you must learn to eat less and be satisfied with less. With food LESS TRULY IS MORE.
One of the best example’s of this is s reducing the desires of your stomach and appetite and simply getting used to less. The best way to do this is to break your meals into halts or thirds and eat small frequent meals. Make sure you eat slowly and leave the table hungry. Your body will start to get used to less and less food. Frequency then becomes more important than quantity. Stomach-shrinking is a subject often debated by health experts. But it is possible to reduce the size of your stomach safely and without surgery, simply by changing your eating habits.
Many overweight people are turning to surgical procedures such as laparoscopic or gastric stomach bands.
Here’s the good news: experts have found that the size of the stomach can be shrunk naturally in just three to four weeks without resorting to surgery. Here are some tips for how to shrink your stomach:
Eat Breakfast
One of the simplest ways to control hunger is to eat breakfast regularly. When you go all night without food and skip breakfast, your hunger climbs to more extreme levels.
Eat Vegetables and Whole Grains
A common way for you to control hunger is by eating high fiber foods. Vegetables such as spinach, mushrooms and broccoli provide a high level of nutrition. They also fill you up and are low in calories.
Eat Slowly
In general, eating slowly is a good strategy when you are trying to lose weight. Your body needs time, between 20 and 30 minutes, to send a signal to your brain that you are full. When you eat too fast, you run the risk of overeating. Eating slowly and truly enjoying your food will prevent you from eating too much.
Drink Water
When you drink enough water, you generally feel full more often and feel less hungry. Drink the recommended eight glasses of water daily and see if this prevents your desire to eat as often.
Get Enough Sleep
Studies show that when you do not sleep enough, your body sees an increase in the ghrelin hormone, which increases your appetite. You simultaneously experience a decrease in the leptin hormone, making it harder to feel full from portion sizes that you would normally consider adequate. This change in your physiology makes it difficult to control hunger.
Don’t Emotionally Eat
One way to control hunger is to pay attention to what your body is telling you.
Use smaller plates
A full plate sends the signal that you’re eating a full meal and a partially full plate looks like a skimpy meal, regardless of the actual quantity of food.
The same amount of food looks like more on a smaller plate Using smaller plates and filling them up is a proven way to eat less without noticing.
Serve yourself 20% less
The mindless margin is about 20% of any given meal. In other words, you can eat 80% of the food you'd normally eat and probably not notice, so long as no one points it out to youying.
Don’t eat in front of the TV
Remember, distracted eating is overeating.
Keep snacks out of the building
Study after study have shown that people eat a lot more when is food visible rather than put away where it can’t be seen, even if they know it is there. To avoid extra snacking keep tempting food yet, out of the house.
Chew thoroughly
Slow down, chew each bite (counting your chews can help develop the habit) and watch as you fill up faster on fewer calories.
Don’t eat from the package
Your stomach can’t count. When you can’t see how much you’re eating you’re more than a little likely to lose track and consume double or even triple the amount you'd eat if you took the time to serve yourself a proper portion.
Beth Shaw is the President of YogaFit, the world’s largest yoga training school. Her third book, YogaLean, will be released this fall, and offers a holistic approach to eating healthy, losing weight, and keeping it off.