scale_zero © by dsearls
A new year often means a new diet.
Diets are always challenging but they can be particularly problematic for highly sensitive people.
Why?
Because overstimulation, stress and difficulties with other people can overwhelm our best intentions.
Can We Make Dieting Easier For Highly Sensitive People?
There are many approaches to dieting but two stand out:
- reduced calorie diets. These diets generally take your existing diet down a notch. Depending on your current eating plan, it may be less of what you are currently eating. It may involve a change of foods. There are many dieting services like Weight Watchers and Nutrisystem among others that find ways to reduce calories without changing your food lifestyle.
- meal replacement diets. Meal replacement diets came into vogue as technology entered the food business. Once company that pioneered their use is Medifast. Meal replacements can have a high amount of nutrition for a modest amount of calories. They are dense nutrition meant to replace 1-2 meals a day.
Either of these approaches can help you lose weight but there is more to it.
What Is Weight Loss Discomfort?
One of the reasons that people have difficulty with diets, is that their bodies feel the withdrawal of food. It can be frightening.
Because of calorie restriction, no matter what your method, you body will most likely digest what you do eat fairly quickly – certainly faster than when you were eating more. So you will feel ups and down from sugar imbalances.
Whatever our current diet, we have found a way to create sugar stability in our bodies, even if it means we weigh more than we would like.
When we start a diet, we disturb that equilibrium and that causes discomfort.
Your equilibrium changes can also change your moods, make you feel weaker and make it harder to handle stress.
All of these factors can make a successful weight loss diet seem like an impossible achievement.
How To Manage Bood Sugar Levels On A Weight Loss Diet
There are herbs for managing blood sugar levels.
One of the best is gymnema silvestre which is THE Ayurvedic herb used for managing sugar levels. It will stabilize you blood sugar levels while you are reducing your weight.
It wil make the dieting experience much more pleasurable.
Other Ways To Make Dieting Easier
There are a number of other herbs that can help make dieting easier:
- ashwaghandha and brahmi are two great herbs for helping with stress. It has antioxident and anti-inflammatory properties. It can help you manage your stress levels easier when you are dieting.
- vidanga and trikatu are two herbs that improves digestion
- triphala is a great herb for balancing the entire body gently over time.
Making Dieting Work When You Are Highly Sensitive
Being highly sensitive can make health challenges greater but that does not mean that getting in shape is impossible. A solid diet plan, a sensible pace of work and rest, and herbal support can put achieving a heathy weight within reach.
Go for it!
About the Author
Maria Hill is the webmaster for HSP Health and HSP Health Blog. She is a long time meditator, reiki master, student of alternative health and Ayurveda. Maria is an abstract painter at Infinite Shape and also very interested in animal and human rights and the environment. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or the HSP Health Google+ page.
The HSP Health Blog promotes the health of highly sensitive people. We focus on the many challenges of being a highly sensitive person including the causes and characteristics of high sensitivity, and the identity challenges of being different and invalidated.
While I am by no means an expert on weight and diets, I have learned a few things. After years of “dieting” for those extra 20 pounds I finally assessed my triggers. I tend to eat when overwhelmed. Many people believe that carrying extra weight is like a defense barrier. Those two things can be interrelated for HSPs, and neither work well as a means to help the body naturally find a weight that is optimal for us as an individual. Like Maria, I found Ayurveda, and discovered that when I eat what my body needs to balance my doshas, my weight pretty naturally finds the zone where I feel my best. Over the years I’ve become more sensitive to seasonal changes, as Ayurveda describes, and changing diets with the season makes a difference. Also, doshas have weight. I once dropped 12 pounds during a 7 day panchakarma treatment! I was eating. It was all the imbalances being gently pulled out. Extra weight can be due to so many things – including eating processed foods that contain all kinds of things that either the body can’t process or is quite literally are engineered to be addictive. I’ve found if I make food choices for well-being and balance, the weight just sort of manages itself.
Thanks, Deb for your insights and for stopping by.
I think you make a good point about how imbalances can be a source of weight. For HSPs it can be particularly difficult since stress eating as well as less than ideal food can multiply those imbalances. What a wonderful story about the effects of panchakarma! I have not done it, but I would like to some day.
I have been using John Douillard’s detox program which is highly effective as well. He has also written the bok, The Three Season Diet, which you may be aware of.
It is great to hear that an HSP is successfully using Ayurveda. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Maria
Maria recently posted…Keys To Sticking With A Weight Loss Diet
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