Mindful eating is an accessible practice that can help you lead a healthier lifestyle. It doesn’t involve making strict rules about what you can and cannot eat; rather, it focuses on engaging all your senses during the experience of eating.
Eating mindfully encourages you to pay attention to your body’s hunger and satiety cues, leading to less food consumption than if you were eating on autopilot.
Take a Deep Breath
Deep breathing techniques can provide much-needed reassurance by counteracting the fight-or-flight response. When we experience stress, our heart rate speeds up, palms sweat and breaths become shallow and irregular.
Our sympathetic nervous system, the part of the autonomic nervous system that controls our fight-or-flight response, is activated.
Thankfully, our parasympathetic nervous system regulates our rest-and-digest responses, helping us to relax.
That means our brains can detect when we’re no longer under threat and respond by slowing our heart rates and lowering blood pressure.
When you feel overwhelmed by the day’s demands or the prospect of going back to work the following morning, take a few deep breaths. Making this part of your daily routine will not only benefit you in the short-term but also in the long run. Start with just a few minutes at first and gradually increase it over time for maximum benefit.
Focus on the Environment
It is well-known that environmental influences significantly impact health and wellness. Spending time outdoors can improve focus, promote feelings of serenity, and foster positive thinking about one’s life. Studies have also demonstrated that even watching nature videos may offer similar advantages.
However, it’s worth highlighting that while spending time outdoors may provide benefits, this is not always a surefire way to create lasting changes in one’s life. For instance, Carrico and Raimi’s meta-analysis of spillover studies found no evidence that people who walked outdoors or reduced their meat consumption had greater intentions to make positive changes elsewhere (Nature Sustainability, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2019).
Therefore, it’s wise to assess the scope, neglectedness and solveability of an issue before investing time or resources. Doing so will give you a better idea of its impact and whether pursuing it is worthwhile. For more information, join our webinar on April 28th!
Focus on Your Body
Though the mind is certainly important in managing our daily lives, it’s also essential that we pay close attention to what’s going on inside of our bodies. Physical illness and a lack of energy can have an adverse effect on mental wellbeing; thus, taking good care of yourself physically will enable you to lead a happy, healthy lifestyle.
To achieve optimal wellness, prioritize spending time focusing on your body during meditation or an exercise routine. Not only will this make you feel better physically and mentally, but it may even enable you to reach some of your more ambitious objectives.
Starting today, here is an exercise that will have you smiling from ear to ear while simultaneously helping you appreciate all that your body has to offer. I hope you will give it a try and let me know how it goes! Good luck! Stay tuned for more mindfulness-related articles in the near future.
