What Is Mindful Eating?

Mindful eating is a simple method of becoming hyper-focused on the present moment, and being aware of your senses while eating food. It can help manage eating habits, and make people feel better about their body.

The purpose is not counting calories, or tracking macros (carbohydrates, fat, or protein), and mindful eating has little to do with weight loss, although it is proven to help with losing weight. The intention is to help individuals understand and enjoy the food they eat, and remove stresses associated with overeating unhealthy foods. Mindful eating can be a fun way to make meal times social, or a time to reflect and savour the moment as a solo experience.

Benefits of Mindful Eating

There is much research associated with the benefits of mindful eating, most notably the pioneering works of Jon Kabat-Zinn (leader of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School). The mindful eating method...

You know that feeling, an intense urge to eat a sugary, salty, or fatty type of food. Just thinking about it makes you feel excited.

There are no hunger pangs, rumbly tummy, or fatigue, which are the natural hunger signs. Only an urge to fulfill a desire. These desires are called cravings, and they can pop up at any minute.

What Are Cravings?

Food cravings are a strong desire to eat sugary, salty, or fatty types of food, which often seem uncontrollable, leaving you unsatisfied until you get what you want. 

Over 90% of the world's population experiences food cravings, and we all experience them differently.

Studies have shown that men and women crave different kinds of food.

Men are more likely to crave savory foods like meat, fish, and eggs. If men do crave sweets, they typically go for sugar-sweetened beverages. 

However, women crave mostly sweet foods like chocolate, cakes, and ice cream. The same studies have shown that women more frequently report experiencing cravings...

You may have heard the buzz around implementing probiotics and prebiotics into your daily routine for better gut health. If you have been wondering whether or not this is something you should be doing, this article will provide you with the information you know if they are right for you.

What are Probiotics and Prebiotics?

Probiotics are “live microorganisms, which when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host.” Put simply: Probiotics are good bacteria (and sometimes yeasts) that offer health benefits.

So how do probiotics work?

The main job of probiotics, or good bacteria, is to maintain a healthy balance in your body. Think about maintaining your body in neutral. When you are sick, bad bacteria invades your body and increases in number. This makes you feel out of balance or sick. Now the good bacteria work hard to fight off the bad bacteria to bring back the balance within your body and make you feel better again – Well...

Do you feel like you are constantly weighing yourself? Maybe one or even two times a day to see if anything has changed?

Thousands of women weigh themselves everyday to see if they are making progress or losing weight quickly enough.

If this sounds like you, ask yourself these two questions.

1. "What power is this giving me?"

2. "What power does this have over me?"

Getting on the scale everyday, or sometimes more than that, means that you are questioning yourself and your capabilities, or maybe that you just don't fully trust yourself.

At The Limitless Lifestyle Academy we believe that the KEY to weight loss, is to NOT FOCUS on weight loss.

Instead, we believe that focusing on empowering yourself to make the best choices everyday to live a better, happier life filled with energy and self confidence should be the goal. Once you do this, you will achieve your goal weight because YOU are the boss, not the scale. You are fully capable of losing the weight and...

One of the main issues that a lot of us women encounter with our journey in menopause is weight gain, especially around our stomachs. This can be extremely frustrating! Especially if you feel like you haven’t changed anything about your diet and exercise, but are still putting on weight.

In this article, we will be filling you in on how a sneaky player called insulin resistance could be causing your weight gain and what you can do to prevent or reverse it starting now!

So, what is Insulin Resistance?

We did an article about this last month, but here is a recap.

When we eat carbs or sugars it gets broken down into glucose and causes our blood sugar levels to rise. When they rise, a hormone called insulin is secreted from your pancreas and acts like a key to tell the cells to open their doors and take in the glucose from your bloodstream so they can use it as fuel and your blood sugar can come back to normal. This is a necessary process and in no way a...

Why Exercise?

We all know that exercise is good for you. It has so many benefits, aside from losing weight. Exercise combats health conditions and diseases, including but not limited to: metabolic syndrome, heart disease, many types of cancer, and type 2 diabetes. Exercise also boosts your mood and improves your mood. Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you feeling happier, more relaxed, and less anxious. It also improves sleep, helping you fall asleep faster and sleep deeper. To see and take advantage of many of the benefits, you need to make a long-term commitment to exercise and to staying active. This may be difficult for many, perhaps because they have not found an exercise routine that works for them that they enjoy!

Change How You Feel About Exercise

When exercise feels like a chore or is used as punishment, it’s tough to stay committed. No one likes doing chores; exercise starts to drain your energy and interest in the exercise program...

Meet Heather

Heather came to Sphericality in April 2019, when she won a free membership at a tricky tray auction at her daughter's school. She was not always one to exercise; after having her three kids, she needed to regain herself and her health. She was also working on losing weight on her own and was looking for a place to exercise!

Now, she loves working out in an environment like a studio as opposed to a crowded gym. She likes that we are genuinely a judgment-free zone with the added support of the instructors and members. For her, it's more than working out: it's the variety of classes, programs like Food Camp, and the access to virtual classes (to name a few).

Heather knows that exercise is a good thing for her to do, physically, mentally, and emotionally. It's something she does for her; it puts her in the right mindset for the day, feeling great after class.

Before coming to Sphericality, Heather had multiple different gym memberships over 14 years. She would start...

Metabolic health and wellness, in general, involve many moving pieces; everything has to be working together. As we discussed in our main article, it takes all six lifestyle essentials to manage your metabolic health. Our Super Star, Lauren, implements all lifestyle essentials into her routines. Sometimes it comes naturally to her, while other times, she has to work a little harder on it. Learn how Lauren uses balanced nutrition, optimized exercise, stress/sleep management, mindset/vision, education, and community as she 'pro-ages' and manages her metabolic health.

Meet Lauren

Lauren joined Sphericality and then The Limitless Lifestyle Academy because she wanted to hear herself the best chance to find herself in a healthy place as she approached her 50's. It was essential to her to have the energy and strength to keep up with her teenage kids and be fit for herself as she got older.

"It's hard to pinpoint one favorite part of the programs because it's all so great. The instructors...

Insulin Resistance, I'm sure you've heard this term before! It might have been on that commercial, blaming people's inability to lose weight on their insulin resistance. This is partly true! Losing weight when you're insulin resistant is very hard to do, but it's not as simple as that and cannot be fixed with a pill like the commercial makes it seem.

How We Use Insulin

Before we talk about insulin resistance, we need to talk about insulin sensitivity and how our body uses insulin.

1. Minimize insulin release. This occurs when your body is highly sensitive to insulin. Only a small amount of insulin is necessary to effectively and efficiently clear glucose from your blood to its storage sites. This is great news because your body has a tough time burning fat in the presence of insulin. The less insulin you have floating around, the better.

2. Quick and efficient blood sugar clearance. Again, this will occur when your body is highly sensitive to insulin.

3. Maximize glycogen uptake....