Are Your Efforts to Burn Belly Fat Being Sabotaged?

Are you trying to burn belly fat, but your efforts are not meeting with much success? Perhaps you’re eating all the right things… but just WAY TOO MUCH!

If you overeat, you may have more in common with drug abusers than you think. Researchers from the University of Florida School of Medicine found the same brain pathways activated by drug use also engage when people overeat. Just like drug addicts, overeaters experience an emotional “high” when they binge, followed by a “crash” later that triggers them to seek relief in yet another episode of overeating.

The study drives home the point that losing weight and keeping it off isn’t just about what you eat or how you exercise—it’s also about confronting and changing the way you think about and approach food.

Unlike a drug addict, you can’t fix the addiction by eliminating food from your life! Instead, you have to face the harder challenge of learning to develop a healthy relationship with food. That’s why you are here! You can do it!

With The MARI Method, we help reinforce your correct thoughts about food by the use of visual images and affirmations set to music. By using these Mind Movies, we help you “re-train” you brain to think correctly about food.

When you start thinking of your body as the temple that it is, you’ll make caring for your body a priority. You’ll enjoy giving your body delicious, nutritious foods. You’ll feel pride as your body grows stronger, because you realize you are taking good care of God’s temple.

Serving Sizes

If you are eating eating a low glycemic diet, but still not losing weight, the problem may be how much you are eating. So, the first thing we are going to talk about is choosing the correct serving size.

When eating at home:

When eating at home, we tend to put too much food on too-big plates. So, I’m encouraging you to weigh and measure your food at home for at least one week. Get to know what a normal serving size actually looks like!

Here are some tips for controlling serving sizes at home:

o Buy an inexpensive food scale.

o Keep a ¼ cup and ½ cup measuring cup handy.

o Spend time learning what a normal serving of some of your favorite foods actually looks like. Read labels to learn what is considered a “serving size”, then measure that amount out..

o Purchase food in pre-measured sizes (3 oz tuna, 1 oz. sliced cheese)

o Pre-measure your snacks using small zip-lock bags.

o If scales are not available, use your hand to determine portion size:

o protein the size and thickness of your palm
o Two servings of “good carbs”, each the size of your whole hand.

o Keep raw vegetables ready at all times!

o Keep crunchy apples around. Eat one about 30 minutes before dinner.

o Make casseroles in individual-sized baking dishes so you won’t be tempted to eat more than one!

o Serve meals on salad plates or vintage dinnerware (dinner plates used to be much smaller than they are today)

o Eat and chew slowly. Learn to stop eating before you feel full (It takes 20 minutes for the stomach to tell the brain that it is full!).

o Remember, you do NOT have to clean your plate!

o Think you’re hungry? Try sipping a cup of hot tea instead of reaching for a snack!

If you want to burn belly fat wherever you are, be sure to look for tomorrow’s post where we’ll discuss ways to select correct portion sizes when you’re away from home.