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What is an external barrier?

An external barrier is an outside influence that prevents us from achieving our goal.

Do you know which external barrier that people say is the number one reason they can’t lose weight?

If you said “Time”, you are right! When asked people say that with their hectic schedule – they simply don’t have the time to exercise or to eat healthy.

According to the dictionary the meaning of the words:

External: Being outside of something; acting or coming from without

Barrier: Anything that restrains or obstructs progress

At first glance we might think we have no control over external barriers. But the truth is with the proper tools and knowledge; any barrier can be overcome – If you are willing to do what it takes.

The most common external barriers to weight loss are Time, Lack of Support, Society and Money.

Time

In today’s society we tend to always be “running” somewhere. We seldom take time to stop and relax. Because we’re always in a hurry we chose to run through the fast food drive thru than to cook.

Let me ask you ….

How often do you miss your favorite TV show?
When’s the last time you missed something you truly enjoy?
When’s the last time you missed an important meeting or appointment?
If you’re truthful with yourself the answer is “probably not very often”.

If you stop and think about it, you WILL find the time for anything that you genuinely want to do.

The key is to make time to plan your day or week. The old saying “Fail to plan, Plan to fail” is very very true. You know your life better than anyone else does. Make losing weight a priority in your life and you will find the time.

When planning your week, schedule appointments with yourself for the following:

To exercise – this can be as simple as a 10 minute walk. Don’t fall into the trap that you have to exercise for 30 straight minutes. Studies show 3 10 minute sessions are just as effective.
To prepare your meal plan for the upcoming week, and to portion out your servings
To have some much needed “Alone Time”. Use your alone time for something special … a bubble bath, reading a book, a day at the spa …. What ever you enjoy.
Portion your food in serving sizes. The best time to do this is as soon as you get home from the store. When putting away your groceries, portion out veggies, crackers etc in baggies. This way when you’re in hurry and running out the door you can grab something healthy to eat on your way. Always keep fresh fruit handy, it’s one of the best “grab and go” foods you can find

To lose weight you don’t need to be a gourmet cook or spend hours in the kitchen. You can bake or barbeque steak, chicken, hamburgers etc and portion them out for dinners. That way during the week when you’re short on time, just reheat the meat, add a salad or frozen vegetables and some mashed potatoes or brown rice. In less than 15 minutes you can be sitting down to a great home cooked meal. You probably spend that much time in line at your favorite drive thru.

If you absolutely hate to cook, you have three options:

Buy prepackaged foods at the grocery store
Subscribe to a meal delivery service like Jenny Craig
Study all the nutrition information from your favorite fast food and sit down restaurants. Know what your options are and you can choose the healthiest options available.
Only eat foods you like. Become aware of what you are eating. Savor the food. Know you are eating to live. If you’re eating “just because it’s there” then stop. When you eat slowly and are aware of the actual process of eating, you’ll soon discover that you enjoy your food more and it takes less to satisfy you.

You’ll be surprised at how little effort is required to eat healthy when you have taken the time to plan and prepare.

Lack of Support

Losing weight can be extremely difficult if you’re trying to do it alone. It’s important to have people that understand what you’re going thru. Someone that you can talk to that will listen to your fears and concerns.

A good friend or spouse may be supportive. Sometimes their support can actually be barriers. Your spouse or friend may think that you will change if you lose the weight and might subconsciously sabotage your efforts.

Be sure your family and friends understand your goals and your reasons for wanting to lose weight. Tell them exactly what you need from them to be supportive.

Do you need gentle reassurance such as “I know you can do it”.
Do you need reminders “Isn’t it time that you take your walk?”
Do you need a bully “Is that on your diet? You shouldn’t be eating that!”
Know what is going to motivate you and what might set you back.

Do you prefer group support? Support groups like Weight Watchers or Tops may be helpful for you.

If you don’t like interacting in person or there are no support groups close to your home, then you may want to consider an online meeting. One of the best benefits of online meetings is that you can remain anonymous to a certain extent. It may be easier to open up to strangers. Also you can hang out, read and learn without the fear of being forced to participate. Studies show that online support groups are just as effective as live support groups.

Find a buddy. It’s always easier to exercise and stay on your weight loss plan when a spouse or friend is doing it with you.

Society

It seems that everything we do in our society is centered on food. If you’re hosting a celebration of any kind – birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, holidays etc, your main concern is probably “What will I serve?”

At work, anytime someone retires, gets promoted, has a birthday, or there’s any kind of holiday … What happens? You celebrate with food and have a potluck or a dinner party.

Our family and friends are always pushing food. “Have another plate of spaghetti”. “Have another piece of dessert.” etc. We want their acceptance – so what do we do? We eat.

Our family and friends do influence our weight. Keep this in mind and learn to tell them simply … “It is delicious but I simply can’t eat another bite.”

This is where planning comes in again. Eat a small salad or drink a can of V8 juice prior to going to these functions. This will help you to eat less.

If you’re in charge of the food or even if you’re just brining a dish, bring something you can eat. Fill up on the lower calorie foods and enjoy a taste of higher calorie foods. Allow yourself only one plate.

There are many methods available for trying to lose weight. Restrictive diets are among the best-publicized. These include calorie restriction, in an attempt to take in less energy than you expend, as well as diets that restrict food by type, such as low-fat, low-carbohydrate and low-sugar diets.

In addition to using restrictive diets, some people also attempt to significantly increase their activity. This has a similar effect to that of a calorie-restricting diet, but it increases the amount of energy spent rather than decreasing what goes in. Increased activity tends to require greater schedule and lifestyle changes than simply changing your eating habits, but it comes with added benefits such as increased strength and better cardiovascular health.

Last, and potentially more profitable for the weight loss industry, are devices, supplements and other products intended to produce weight loss. These include diet pills, natural weight loss supplements containing acai, African mango and a range of other substances, plus belts and other devices. The basic principle behind some of these products has been shown to help with reduction when it’s combined with other mainstream methods, but the majority of diet pills and other products don’t do much to help. They can even be harmful to your health.

Weight Loss Effectiveness
With more than 50 percent of the population paying attention to weight, you’d expect the pounds to be coming off. Most people, however, are experiencing little to no weight change. Some people even find that their weight goes up after they attempt to reduce. Depending on the study, statistics show that between 30 and 60 percent of dieters not only regain all the weight they lose while dieting, they actually become even heavier than they were before they started the diet. These patterns hold true across a wide spectrum of weight-loss techniques. Only about 10 percent of all dieters are able to maintain their loss after several years, no matter how much weight was lost during the dieting period.

Out of people who do lose weight effectively, the most viable target is a loss of about 10 percent of their highest weight. That’s the number recommended by the National Institutes of Health for people who are obese or overweight. Losing more than this can be difficult and is rarely effective.

Many people attribute this lack of effectiveness to poor willpower on the part of the dieter, but recent research has shown that the problem is more complex than this. A 2011 study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that losing weight changes the way the body produces hormones associated with metabolism. This means that people who attempt to reduce are hungrier and suffer from higher appetite levels than they did before the loss. This lasts for at least one year after weight loss, making it far more difficult for someone who has dieted to maintain a lower weight than it is for someone who has never undergone a weight loss program.

Dangers of Dieting
It’s not just poor rates of effectiveness that make weight loss a complicated subject. Trying to get rid of fat can also be dangerous. This problem is greater with extreme diets that promise to take off a lot of weight very quickly. These diets can encourage loss of muscle instead of fat. They also increase the risk of heart disease, a slowed metabolism, and other health problems. Liquid diets, extreme calorie deprivation, and fad diets that eliminate whole categories of food are the most dangerous, but any kind of diet can be hazardous to your health if you repeatedly lose and gain weight, or “yo-yo.”

Diet pills can cause serious health problems, too. These weight loss supplements are usually made to be taken for only a short period of time and often contain large amounts of caffeine and other stimulants. This type of diet pill can increase anxiety and irritability, produce insomnia and other sleep problems, and even cause cardiovascular problems in people with existing heart weakness. Fat blockers can produce intestinal discomfort and other digestive problems. They can also produce malnutrition by blocking the body’s ability to absorb important vitamins and minerals. Diet pills that work as appetite suppressants can raise your heart rate and blood pressure. Even herbal weight loss supplements can have unpleasant side effects, especially in people who are allergic to some of their ingredients.

Weight Isn’t Everything
These questions about health and effectiveness are often met with the assertion that fatness is fundamentally unhealthy, so everyone should try to lose weight. In fact, while there are several diseases and conditions associated with higher weight, they aren’t necessarily a direct result of it. While fat people are much more likely to suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure and other metabolic problems, the correlation reduces significantly if those fat people are active and eat a good diet. Thin, sedentary people are actually at greater risk than people who are fat but otherwise in good physical condition. You may be fat and unhealthy, but your weight isn’t the biggest factor. However, that doesn’t mean that weight loss isn’t effective.

Who Should Reduce?
Studies show that if you have diabetes, pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol, your condition will probably improve if you lose about 10 percent of your body weight. Losing more weight than this doesn’t seem to provide additional benefit, though it could help you wear smaller clothes. If you have any of these conditions, it’s important to be careful how you lose the weight and to do it only in conjunction with good diet and regular exercise. These seem to be the most important parts of staying healthy, no matter how much weight you carry.

The Healthiest Option
What the diet industry doesn’t want you to know is that most diet pills, weight loss supplements, and diet programs don’t work very well and can even hurt your health more than being fat. If you’re interested in being truly healthy, your best option for weight loss is to look at your activity level and the nutritional content of your diet. Work on making fresh vegetables at least half of your diet and take up moderate exercise at about a half hour per day. That’s what the U.S. government recommends for optimum health.

If you do decide to reduce your caloric intake, use a balanced diet that doesn’t cut out any important food groups, and look for weight loss of no more than one to two pounds per week. This rate is more likely to produce permanent loss without serious health side effects because it’s so slow that your body has the ability to adjust more effectively. You may not be able to drop a dress size in a month, but you’ll feel better and stay a whole lot healthier in the long run.

Numerous effective, safe, natural weight loss systems are around that give sound diet and exercise advice and perhaps also give recommendations on natural weight loss aids. All of the good programs (and for that matter, even some of the bad ones) have their share of supporters and successful weight loss stories. But if there are good weight loss systems out there, what causes so many people to fail in their attempts to lose weight? How is it that some people get dramatic success in losing weight, yet the majority of others using the plan just can’t seem to make it work?

The key difference is follow-through. It doesn’t matter how effective a weight loss program may be if you don’t follow-through on it for the long-term. Most people start a weight loss program with good intentions and they may even be highly motivated at first, but the majority get off track quickly – usually within a week or two – and never really get any momentum on their natural weight loss plan.

So what happens? Why does someone who has finally convinced him or herself that now is the time and they are going to do whatever it takes to lose weight and nothing is going to get in the way of accomplishing their weight loss goals, lose their motivation so quickly?

Actually, a lot of things can happen. Temptations arise. Other people can interfere. They run out of time and/or energy to eat right and exercise. Or, maybe they simply lose sight of the reasons they decided to try to lose weight in the first place.

One key to staying focused is to frequently think about your weight loss goals and what losing weight will mean to you. Most people don’t just decide they want to lose weight. There’s almost always some underlying motivation to try lose weight. Maybe it’s because they’re worried about their health. Maybe it’s because they can’t find clothes they like that fit them. Maybe it’s because they want to find a romantic partner and think that it will be easier if they look better. Maybe they’re tired of people calling them fat and making jokes about their weight. There are probably as many reasons for wanting to lose weight as there are people who want to lose weight. The more clear you can get as to your real motivating factors to lose weight, the greater your chances are to stay motivated, floow-through, and be successful.

By focusing on the reason you want to lose weight on a consistent basis, you will tend to stay more motivated. I recommend writing down your underlying reason(s) for wanting to lose weight, but writing it in a way that it will boost your motivation. The most effective way for most people is to write yourself a negative to avoid and the associated positive to go after. For example, if you would like to wear nice clothes, but you have a lot of difficulty finding clothes you want to wear in your size, you could write something along the lines of, “I am highly motivated to do the things necessary to lose my excess weight so that I will not be restricted to wearing large-size clothing.”. I am thrilled to be getting my weight to where I can wear stylish, sexy clothes!”

Once you have your written motivation statement(s), place it someplace you’ll see it several times per day. Make sure to stop an read it each time you see it and really take the time to think about what you are reading – don’t just read the words, FEEL them!

As was discussed earlier, there are a lot of things that can get you off-track from your weight loss program, and there are many techniques for dealing with each of these influences. By figuring out what really motivates you to lose weight, and then making sure to remind yourself of your motivating factor(s) frequently, you’ll be better equipped to handle ALL of the interfering factors that might tend to prevent you from following-through. Natural weight loss is within your reach if you can get your mind working with you to achieve your goals!

We all need motivation to make changes in our lives. But some motivations can have short-term effects whilst other motivations can have long-lasting, life changing effects. This article takes a very quick look at how we can cut to the core of making the long-lasting, life changing decisions easier.

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Why do you want to lose weight? Do you want to make someone else happy? Your kids, your husband? The only way to lose weight in the long-term is to lose weight for you.

While some or most of this article might sound like pointless new-age psycho-babble, at its core are valid, solid ways of changing your life. Do not give in, it may well be a life changing experience.

Whilst these are all valid reasons for losing weight they may actually be the reasons why so many people fail to lose weight or lose weight but then put it all back on with a little extra just for desert. In order to understand long term weight loss we need to look at the nitty-gritty at how the mind works and how we become, and remain motivated, to do something.

When we want to change something about ourselves we need to look deep. Not just “Because the doc said I need to lose a few pounds” deep or “I want to look nice when I lie by the pool” deep. We need to look at where we are now, where we want to be and the difference between the two. That is where the deepness lies.

Ok, let’s take any weight measurements out of the equation and look at body size and shape. We might imagine ourselves to look a long way from the way we want to look. But how does that make us feel? Pretty miserable right. But that’s where your change begins – connect with the feelings caused by the difference between the two you’s. The discrepancy between the you now and the person you want to be is the reality and sometimes the reality hurts! The difference between where we are and where we need to get to needs to be bridged.

You need to imagine what it would feel like to be the person you want to be. Stop for a second and think about it. Close your eyes. Really think about it. Think about the person you want to change for. Because this is only a short article I will give you the answer you need to come up with.

The only person you want to change for is you. There are just so many reasons you could have come up with for changing. Kids, husbands, wives, parents, friends, pets, teams – the list is endless.

The only person you need to change for is you. If this sounds too selfish and self-centred for you then I’m sorry. However, the chance of you changing long-term for anybody other than yourself are minimal. If you think about it another way, what would make the person you are changing for happy? Would they be happier to see YOU happy or would they be happier watching you trying to make THEM happy? So if we want to change we have to look at ourselves and see ourselves as we really are. We need to look to the person we want to be. From then on the person you want to be is going to be the person you are.

If you want to lose weight you need to do it for yourself, no-one else. Not only do you get to be the person you want to be but everybody else gets the benefit of basking in the glow of your happiness and success.

Are you interested in formulating an exercise plan that will assist you to remain trim and help you to get thin? Studies regularly show that there are two basic types of exercise that are both extremely efficient and successful. Of course, it stands to reason that you must be motivated in the first place, and that is why therapeutic hypnosis can help solve your problems.

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If you’re like most people, you are interested in creating an exercise system that will assist you to remain healthy and slim. It may shock you to find out that research studies usually demonstrate that only two core kinds of exercise are useful — which suggests that you can’t just choose any type of exercise to become trim.

Due to the fact that so many people have trouble with the motivation to exercise, performing the most efficient kinds of exercise is imperative, since the less time you spend exercising – and the less time you waste on low efficiency exercise – the more likely it is that you will persist in your exercise routine and therefore achieve your personal weight and strength target.

Our first type of exercise which has been regularly proven to aid people to lose weight and get trim is progressive resistance. In brief, progressive resistance is one type of strength training. It functions by progressively ramping up the pounds lifted, the number of sets, and number of repetitions performed. As a result, your muscles are never strained or subjected to damage – instead, they slowly and steadily strengthen without any setbacks.

Our second type of exercise that has been scientifically studied is cardiovascular training. This is any type of exercise that gets the heart rate up to 60 – 85 percent of its maximum rate. Some kinds of cardio training may involve jogging, jumping rope, aerobics, or treadmill, among other types of exercise, but it is your choice.

Although progressive resistance and cardio training by themselves have been found to be very efficient forms of exercise, scientists now know that performing both of these types of exercise is the best bet for success. If you combine both progressive resistance and cardio training, you will increase the strength of your muscle groups and increase overall endurance. According to a recent scientific study, exercisers who used both cardio and progressive resistance during a two month time period lost 45 percent more weight than exercisers who did cardio training or progressive resistance alone.

Just as important as the type of exercise you perform is, the way in which you exercise is also important. It probably will be unsurprising that being consistent is the name of the game. Exercising inconsistently may strain your muscles and will probably not aid you to build strength and endurance. In addition, it is unlikely to improve your whole-body health. According to most scientists, the best regime is to exercise for forty minutes to an hour three to five times per week.

Unfortunately, it turns out that for a significantly sized subset of the population, getting sufficient exercise is not as easy as attending the health club a few times every week or listening to what scientists claim. For this group of people, the motivation to exercise is the primary issue – this group of people simply doesn’t have the motivation to go to the gym. Actually, they might resist any and all exercise, to the point of severe anxiety.

Nobody knows what percentage of the population suffers from problems with the motivation to exercise, but scientists say that up to 20 to 40 percent of people claim that they “hate” or “dread” exercise. An even larger percentage of people might have more mild problems with the motivation to exercise, finding that even though it is simple enough to commit themselves to an exercise regime for a week or two, motivation eventually degrades, leaving them where they were initially – unhealthy and heavy.

If you are one of these people who struggles with the motivation to exercise, the good news is that there are some easy strategies to deal with the struggle. In a recent research study, volunteers who needed to start an exercise program were provided with a brief learning program that aided them to decide on the right kinds of exercise, were provided with a therapist who specialized in exercise motivation, and were given a brief course in hypnosis. After six months, they were asked to evaluate their progress. It turns out that over 85 percent of the participants had adhered to an exercise program throughout the whole six months. Even better, they generally lost an average of fifteen more pounds than the control group.

If you have an interest in this study, it might make sense to look into locating a motivational therapist, habit control therapist, or therapist who deals with hypnotherapy. These therapists are provided with special training in helping people to transcend anxieties, build the motivation to exercise, and reinforce the creation of good habits. One more choice for exercise motivation is self-hypnosis – which is a simple and inexpensive process that often helps people take control of their own inborn abilities to be motivated.

Hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis are risk-free ways of increasing motivation that have been proven to provide success in the case of exercise motivation. Hypnosis works by using hypnotic relaxation to enhance the powers of the unconscious mind to influence the modification of behavior and habit development. Hypnotherapy is a good choice for the exercise adverse because it can help increase the drive to get trim and lose weight easily and effectively.

Are you tired of the yo yo effect? These simple 5 steps can help you KEEP the weight off once you do lose it

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Why do some dieters suffer the endless frustration of losing and then gaining weight again and again, while others lose weight and keep it off forever?

And we know you don’t want to be the latter group?

Here are 5 very simple tips successful dieters implement – and you can easily adapt these good habits yourself.

1.) You know that old conventional wisdom that goes “The scale doesn’t matter when you’re dieting”? For a long time experts scorned the idea of frequent weigh ins, pointing out that the scale can be inaccurate because of fluctuations caused by water weight. Remember, muscle weighs more than fat. So if you’re exercising you may be gaining muscle and that will throw the scale off.

However, it turns out that weighing yourself every day is actually an excellent motivator for dieters. A study in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine found that dieters who weighed themselves every day lost the most weight, and kept it off more successfully, compared to a group of dieters who did not weigh themselves regularly.

2.) Keep a log of everything you eat. When you log everything you eat you will feel MUCH more guilty when you cheat because you have to see it and read it.

3.) Do at least 1 15 minute activity everyday. ANYTHING. Walk your dog, go jogging, do tae bo. Most of us work at desks and sit at home all day – then do it at least three times a week. You will lose weight quicker and this is one of the big contributors of keeping the weight off.

4.) Plan ahead. If you are going out to dinner with friends or to a holiday office party or even to the movies, what are you going to do when hunger pangs hit? Eat something before you go and decide BEFORE you get to the party or movies.

5.) Schedule the occasional indulgence. Most weight loss experts suggest and encourage a cheating day. When you get to eat some pizza, brownie or some ice cream at some time in the week your chances of ditching your plan is much less likely. This can also be a day when you throw in some more activity.

For those of you out there who believe that you can only lose weight through fasting, you cannot be more wrong! Facts have shown that it is not how much you eat but actually what you eat that results in weight gain in most people. If you decide to eat correctly, you will surely be eating your way to weight loss naturally.

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In the developed world today, a whole lot of people seem to be struggling with a particular challenge common to them all and that is the issue of how to lose weight so as to live a healthier life. In the same vein, a good number of the people concerned tend to believe that the only way to lose that excess fat is by starving themselves or fasting. Nothing can be further than the truth in this case. It has been proven by the experts that one can achieve weight loss naturally through correct dieting.

In order to lose weight naturally, the main thing one has to keep in mind and practice is to eat wisely, take enough water and do some regular exercise. This combination of actions will surely help you get rid of that unwanted fat as well as give you a fitter and sexier physique.

It is pertinent at this stage to note that when I talk of losing weight naturally through correct dieting, I am not talking about some very strict diet but simple ones that can be found in some cook books such as the Metabolic Cooking. I am also not talking about a particular diet for the whole day but an intelligent mix of recommended diets that will end up giving you a healthier body through weight loss.

I suppose that at this stage some of you out will want to know exactly how to eat wise and reap the benefits of losing weight naturally in the shortest possible time. It is not rocket science but simply doing what is right as already suggested. For an example, the diet experts claim that our ability to shed fats is eighty percent correct dieting and twenty percent how much exercise we give to our body. This also means that you need to steer clear of that attractive and sweet junk foodstuff you have been destroying your system with only to go back to the gym to try to burn the fat you got from wrong dieting practice.

Another important aspect of correct dieting is the issue of the water intake level. It is a fact that taking a good amount of water on a daily basis helps in ensuring a clean body system. As a matter of fact, the experts have made it abundantly clear that in order to keep our body system in a clean condition we need to take as much as sixty ounces of water daily. This is much better than the sugary drinks that many people use to replace water in their diet. It is recommended by medical experts that every adult should drink at least eight glasses of water in order to enjoy a healthier life devoid of obesity.

In summary therefore, anyone who wishes to enjoy the benefits weight loss simply needs to combine a correct diet with a good water intake and do some exercise. That also means such a person needs to as well avoid taking junk food and replace that with the consumption of lots of fruit and vegetables. When fruits are added to your meals, it is easier for you to ward off the cravings for sweet since you are ingesting natural sugar instead of the artificial one. You are advised to take fruits such as oranges and or apples in between your meals as a means of eating your way to weight loss and good health.

You can begin to lose weight by reducing your stress level. Here’s how!

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There may be many reasons why you engage in the behavior of overeating. Overeating helps some people gain a sense of control over their lives. Other people overeat when they are stressed or upset. Think about the times that you have had a binge eating session? What was the motivation behind it? Do you turn to food when you are upset or have a stressful day? Do you find a sense of comfort in the food that you eat? If stress is a major factor in your eating habits, finding ways to help reduce stress can help you lose weight.

1. Find a Support System

Having people that you can rely on is a great way to start reducing stress. Call on your friends or family when you are in a stressful situation. They can be a great source of advice or just a shoulder to cry on. Sometimes going out with work friends after a long stressful day can work wonders to melt the stress that you feel. We all need to rely on our friends and family at some point. Being able to talk about your stress is a health alternative to overeating.

2. Post Positive Mantras

Think about the negative comments you make about yourself when you are feeling stressed. Most people struggle with negative self-talk at sometime in their lives. Begin to challenge your old ways of thinking. Replace those old thoughts with positive thoughts that will help you push through stressful times. If a long stressful day at work leaves you thinking that you are “no good at my job”, change your thoughts. Think about how hard you worked today. You put in your all and achieved a goal you had set. Whatever your new thoughts are going to be, post them around your house. This will help you stay focused on them even when you are headed for a stress out moment. Thinking positively can help curb overeating.

3. Find Time to Relax

It is important that you take a few minutes everyday for relaxtion. There are many different things you can do in order to relax. If you had a busy day at work and spent the evening running errands, take a long soak in a tub. If you find yourself working late one night, close your office door and read a chapter in a book. On the weekends, go for a walk around a nature trail. The activity can last five minutes or five hours; the important thing is to take some time to relax.

4. Meditate or Journal

Another great way to reduce stress is to be alone with your thoughts. This can help you sort out what is going on in your life in a healthy way. One way to do this is to meditate. Another way is to write in a journal. Writing in a journal is a great way to begin organizing your thoughts about the stresses in your life. Dealing with your stress in this productive way makes it less likely that you will overeat.

5. Listen to Your Body

Stop beating yourself up for overeating. Move forward into a new way of thinking about eating and food. By listening to your body, you will learn when your body is telling you it is full or hungry. Know the signals that your body gives off in order to begin recognizing the difference between hunger and emotional eating. You can pull through this struggle and be on your way towards a natural weight loss.