Don't lose sleep over losing weight: Sri Sri

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Working out at the gym for long hours, training our taste buds to eat only healthy  food ­— you might have already tried all these and more to come back to good shape. Now, how about adding something that’s natural,  extremely easy, has no side effects and hardly takes 15-20 minutes of your day?

It’s meditation — a simple yet powerful technique. Wondering how something related to the mind can have anything to do with shedding pounds and kilos? Let’s see how meditation helps you lose weight naturally:

BMR, calories scales become kind:
If you are on a weight-control program, you might be keeping a regular check on your body’s basal metabolic rate (BMR). By knowing your BMR, you can reduce calorie intake, in turn reducing body weight. When you meditate, your body’s BMR reduces. This means the extra calories intake by your body reduces. Weight loss is, then, a natural outcome.

Your tummy happier with less food:
Have you noticed that the minute you stop working out for a few days, you immediately tend to put on a lot of weight? This is because you continue eating without burning as much.

Exercising at the gym simply increases your appetite but may not necessarily improve assimilation. By practicing yoga and meditation, assimilation improves and desire for calorie-rich food decreases.

So you feel hungry but are satisfied with lesser quantities of food. This has a more long-term effect on the body weight. Even if you are not able to exercise for some days, you won’t start gaining weight suddenly.

Restore your balance:
Excessive weight gain and weight loss are sometimes outcomes of hormonal imbalances in the body. Meditation helps restore that harmony in the system so that if you are overweight, you lose pounds and if you are underweight, you gain the ability to put on.

Doughnuts anyone?
Your craving for all kinds of food could be your biggest roadblock when it comes to losing weight. How easy is it to stop yourself from buying a doughnut each time you pass the bakery shop with the fine aromas floating around? With regular meditation, it can be slightly easier.

Meditation increases awareness so that you become more watchful of your food habits. The next time you stretch out to grab a packet of chips or chocolates, you are immediately aware that it’s not going to help you reduce weight and you can substitute them with healthy alternatives.

Also, over a period of time with regular meditation practice, you will find that your cravings have dropped. So you won’t be reaching for that bag of chips or cookies all that often.

Boost your commitment:
Have you noticed how easy it is to fall prey to the threats of your weight- loss program? Sleep, junk food, sweets — all of these have the power to make you drop out of your weight-control plan very easily. This is a check on your commitment where meditation can help. Daily meditation practice helps strengthen your intention to lose weight so that you become more committed to exercising, following a moderated diet and other healthy practices.

Meditation gives the strength to realize an intention.

Beat the stress and eat right
The next time you gorge on chocolates or anything junk, observe for a while why you are doing this? Are you stressed for some reason (at work or home)? Stress in the mind has a direct impact on the tendency to keep snacking at odd times.

This gives temporary relief from stress. Yet when you meditate, you release deeply stored stress in the system naturally. It’s a much healthier way to beat stress and also to stay in perfect shape.

Add hours to your clock:
If time is stopping you from working towards weight control, your all time solution ’meditation will help you find more time in the day’ — And to meditate, you only need 15-20 minutes a day.

That of course can be easy to squeeze out anytime of the day as per your convenience, isn’t it? After all, your body does deserve at least 20 minutes of your time.

And when your work efficiency increases with meditation, you can finish all your work in less time and also find more time to plan out your weight-loss strategy.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, founder, The Art of Living

Source: Indian Express

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