I've lost 30 pounds this year and my #1 takeaway has been realizing I need to mind what I eat all day, from eyes open to going to sleep. For years I'd give up single things. No soda and juice. No desserts. No chips. No fries. And whatever I did it didn't make a dent, at least not for long. Which seemed totally impossible. I'd cut out thousands of calories!! And... nothing. Eventually, I realized it was like pushing down on a waterbed, I'd just end up eating the calories somewhere else. Automatically and without fail.
Maintaining good posture is easy: when you notice you are slumping, sit up straight. The hard part is noticing. What's going on at that moment when you start to slump? The exact moment when your head tilts down or your back starts to curve? Where is your mind right at that moment? How is it letting the slumping happen? I mean what the hell, who is minding the store here?
I feel like that's exactly where my mind was when I making a late-night snack, or grabbing another handful of chips, or digging into another piece of pizza. I was there for those moments but also not there. I honestly felt like a spectator. I'd look at the plate I fixed myself and say "boy I should not be eating this" and then sit down and eat it. Then after I'd say, "I should not have eaten that". Can I talk to a manager, no one seems to be in charge?
What I think finally worked is pushing the desire to lose weight down so deeply and so thoroughly into every fiber, so in those moments I was present, the "I" that I wanted to be was present. Once present the choice was actually easy. If I'm trying to lose weight, which I am, should I eat this handful of M&M's? No, no I should not. Done.
How to stay present? I did /r/Mindfulness meditation for several years, and I think mindfulness is what we are talking about. It's the opposite of mindlessness. But there are ways to increase mindfulness without meditation. They are just... a little weird.
When you have an itch, even an intense one, just observe it for a while. See what happens. Often it will go away. If it's unbearable then scratch it, but do this at least a few times a day.
If you doing anything rushed, like writing or shaving or cleaning or typing your password in wrong, once in a while do it really slow. Like impossibly slow. The other day I was tearing a perforated piece of paper slow enough I could hear one single "pop" after the other. One time I shaved so slow I could hear every whicker snap.
I've done the shaving thing only 2 or 3 times ever. The goal is to catch yourself doing something in an automatic way and intervene with some deliberate action. So it's best to do this for different ativities. Be aware, and then take some action that overrides the automatic.
When I'm on a mostly empty road but following someone too close sometimes I'll slow WAY down until they are far in front of me. I realize that following instinct is very automatic. After there's a gap I resume my exact same speed. It's just now I'm 5 seconds behind. It's way less stressful and safer, and I'll arrive a whole 5 seconds later than him.
When I finally put it together there was no "effort" it was just consistency with a light touch. If "I" was there, I'd make the right decision. If I was on automatic, I would not. So I just had to always be there.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/k0lmef/sit_up_straight_how_diet_is_like_posture/
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