How to Incorporate Meditation into Your Weight Loss Program for Faster Weight Loss

Weight loss requires two physical disciplines, burning calories through exercise and eating less bad foods. So where does meditation fit in?

Your mind has been in control of your body throughout the weight gain process, you just haven't realized it. Stress, emotions and lack of self awareness instigate unconscious eating. Meditation lowers stress, centers your emotional state and raises your self awareness. These are the hidden keys of sustainable weight loss. Defeat mindless eating by adding meditation to your weight loss regimen.

Harness your emotional energy. The fact is stress and emotional swings are intimately connected to weight gain. Speaking technically for a moment, we have a hormone in our body called cortisol which is released during stress. It is extensively documented that cortisol creates an intense desire for high sugar and fatty foods.  Worse, cortisol organizes and deposits fat into the belly region. When you are eating comfort food, this is the process occurring behind the scenes. Meditation will bring balance to your emotional state, release stress and eventually curb emotional eating.

Give your mind a break. We take vacations to enjoy a break from the rigors of our day to day schedule and get a change of scenery. Do you realize that we never give our minds a break? We are churning out some 50,000 thoughts per day and studies show that the majority are not positive. Just close you eyes for a minute and watch the ensuing circus of thoughts running through your mind. If you hope to lose weight, you must gain control of these thoughts and relieve yourself from the tension and stress they cause. Again, eating is an anti-stress response in most people.

Build up your willpower. Your mind plays an integral role in goal achievement. It is the driver and you are the vehicle. All of our actions initiate in the mind. You first decide to take control of your diet, decide to start working out and decide to lose twenty pounds. Meditation increases thought control through self awareness. The more aware or "awake" you are, the less you will bend to impulses or even feel them.

Learn to utilize the power of imagery. All the top athletes speak of their ability to vividly imagine the result they want, the movement of their body and the perfect technique. Everything we do initiates in the mind, this is why the top performers in all fields use visualization. Meditation will provide you with the quiet time to imagine who you want to be and what you want to look like. The imagery is a command to your subconscious and your thoughts will begin to initiate action that will bring about the vision of yourself that you desire.

Getting started: Meditation takes very little time but is must done each day to get results. Try 10-15 minutes in the morning to start. You may have to wake up a little earlier to get this done without the distraction of children and other morning duties. You will notice that your mind is racing with thoughts when you first start. This is great, you become aware of how busy your mind is. Don't get discouraged, experienced meditation practitioners have a lot of thoughts as they meditate, but they observe them and don't analyze them. You will learn to treat all these thoughts as cars passing by as you observe from a window.

Some tips on technique: It is all about breathing. There are many audio tapes, books and mantras you can incorporate if you wish to later on. To start, just sit or lie down, focus on taking long, deep breaths with your eyes closed. Breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. You can imagine you are breathing in white light with great healing properties. Pay attention to every breath. You will become present by doing this and will slowly detach from your thoughts. As you gain more experience, you can extend the meditation time and enjoy it twice daily.