Using Your Intuition to Lose Weight
Does your body already know what to do? Are you listening?
In this series of articles, I will show you how to design your plan for weight loss success. As you evaluate the tips and pathways described, these will help you develop a plan that will work for you today, tomorrow, and in the foreseeable future.
If you adjust in ways you can live from this point forward, you will be more successful.
Using your intuition can help you lose weight.
In past articles, I took you through my journey of losing over 90 pounds and keeping it off for over 15 years in “An Unhealthy Weight can Kill just as Easily as Alcohol” and “What No One Tells You About Permanent Weight Loss.” In those articles, we went through the first step of permanent weight loss.
The next critical steps I discussed in “Secret first step to lasting weight loss” and “Take Control — Don’t Let Your Hunger Control You.”
Now let’s discuss using your intuition. Have you ever heard a “diet guru” say that? Listen to your own body?
Weight Loss Journey
I am not a diet guru; I am a Nurse Coach who has been through a significant weight loss journey myself. As a Nurse Coach, I can help you find your own path, and design your own healthy lifestyle that matches you, your preferences, your strengths, and your weaknesses — using what you already know about yourself, what has worked and what has not.
I ask you, why would you listen more to someone else? You know your body better than anyone.
The question is, do you know how to listen to it? More importantly, are you willing to listen to it?
Are you listening to what your body is telling you?
I guarantee you that if you are in an unhealthy state, your body is crying out or screaming at you to listen. What might those screams sound like? Hunger? No.
Your body might say, “I have too much sugar,” showing signs of diabetes or pre-diabetes. Maybe you have high blood pressure. Could it be your cholesterol levels?
Do you sleep well? Is your stress out of control? Do you take time for yourself? Do you move your body, rest, and nurture your mind?
I will give you an oversimplified example. I am not hungry in the morning. Not even the slightest. If you put breakfast in front of me before ten o’clock in the morning, I struggle to eat even a modest amount of it. Then I feel overfull and sluggish, and my mind is not as sharp.
I have been this way my whole life. My parents would force me to eat breakfast before school, claiming I would do better in class.
I stopped eating breakfast once I was old enough to decide for myself. I was more productive at work without an overfull belly. My whole life, people, experts, and researchers have told me that breakfast is “the most important meal of the day.”
I don’t eat breakfast, because I am not hungry in the morning.
Maybe it is for most people. Not for me; I took control of my life. Now, I do not eat breakfast because I am not hungry. Now I have more calories for later when I want to eat, and I feel more energized.
Think of some of the things you do because you are “supposed to,” not necessarily because your body is giving you signs that it needs those things.
Are there things you can reduce, either in volume or frequency, that are not that meaningful to you and would also get you one step closer to a healthier body?
Notice, I did not say “give up” or “eliminate.” There is always room for your favorite things in life. You may need to consume less at a given sitting or enjoy it less frequently to maintain a healthy body, but there is no food or drink that is “off limits.”
I am not suggesting that you deprive yourself, but maybe give yourself a reason to look forward to something. In an “absence makes the heart grow fonder” sort of way. I wouldn’t pick something you will miss terribly, just something that you would be just as happy with if you reduce how often you enjoy this one item.
Reach out for a free consultation.
With the Get Healthy & Stay Healthy System, you will incorporate the things that work for you and eliminate those that do not. Actual lifelong change is done one small step at a time.
