“6 reasons destroying your practice: overeating, physical and mental overstraining, garrulity, too strict rules compliance (limiting food to fruits only or bathe in cold water only, any rule coming from mind, not confirmed by the body and awareness), instability of mind and spending long time among people who don’t share your aspiration.”

Swatmarama, Hatha Yoga Pradipika

Talking about things that hinder our practice, one should carefully evaluate own obstacles. Sit for a moment and tell yourself, why you are doing yoga. Having a goal is important; we get too defocused without motivation. In Buddhism practitioners use “preliminary practices”, grounded on development of deep motivation to go ahead and practice.

Be fully aware of your goals and take a glance over your daily life, what stops you from practicing regularly. Swatmarama emphasizes common obstacles that make our practice less effective. Let’s go deeper and see what every reason means to us personally. In this post I will cover the first one, Overeating.

Overeating

“You are what you eat”

You should start enjoying the feeling of an empty stomach. Traditional yoga texts advise us to practice in 3-6 hours after the meal (you can drink a glass of milk, juice or a cup of tea and eat some honey if you feel too hungry). In order to do yoga, we need awareness, attention and a mind clear from thoughts. It is not a secret that having a meal makes the energies of your body go down to the area of stomach and if you eat heavy food, you become lazy, sleepy and your priorities get changed (and you think.. “why do I need to practice right now, after all?” J).

Overeating as a constant habit makes you less aware in daily life and the senses of your body turn less acute.

With overeating your digestion works longer and more energy is spent on it. You get defocused and absent-minded easily.

Overeating aggravates gastrointestinal illnesses, leads to overweight which ends up with dissatisfaction, sicknesses and negative emotions.

Talking about practice, overeating deadens inner feelings and consciousness. Your practice may become much less effective.

Definitely overeating is one of obstacles on the yoga way (and the healthy lifestyle in general).

How do we overcome it? Overeating can be a hard habit to deal with.

General advice is to fill ½ of your stomach with food, ¼ with water and leave ¼ empty for gastric juice during every meal. But when you try, this advice appears so hard to do if your self-discipline isn’t very strong! We are used to eating as a stress relief and as a habit. We automatically eat in front of a computer or TV. Many of us dreams of junk food even knowing it is bad for our health. This all is very sad.. And on the other hand, food and diet is a great area of self-improvement, great challenge which can become a part of your practice.

How to stop overeating and start practicing

Think this over and if you have an overeating problem, try to narrow down your motivation. Tell yourself “I am what I eat”, “I want to feel free from my eating habit, I want to stop suffering because of this”. Form strong thought in your mind, - this is the most important on the way to healthy eating. Don’t let these words be just words, - let them go deeper through your heart, be emotional. Feel the power of suffering lying under overeating.

Buy or download several books about healthy food, they will support you in tough moments while the habit hasn’t gone away yet. Please pay attention to books you are buying, there are too many nowadays that can harm. I wouldn’t recommend any books about “How to lose weight in 2 weeks” and “Best diets”, - these are not long-term and you will end up with more problems then you have had before trying. I highly recommend reading about Macrobiotics nutrition system (Several books available from George Osawa), Aurveda nutrition principles, and recommendations from Yoga teachers found in traditional and modern yoga books. These systems have come a long way of decades and centuries and showed results while you can never be sure about new banana diet you see on the book shelf.

Eat at the same time every day. Do not eat between meals. This may be the hardest task to do, but it brings best results. I promise you that in 3-4 days of such regime you will feel much better, lighter and deeper. And you will not feel the urge to eat something a.s.a.p. any more. If eating 3 times a day is too hard for you, make it 4-5 times but with less food and same schedule.

Drink a little bit more. You will need to compensate the process of eating for your mind, at least in the beginning. Make a special tea and enjoy it in a different atmosphere every time you want to overeat or eat before your scheduled meal. Don’t drink too much though, remember that adult people need around 3 liters per day, there’s no need to overload your kidneys. Some traditional texts recommend drinking before the meal and no earlier then some 30 minutes after the meal.

Write about your successes and failures in a private or shared paper diary/blog. This will help you become more aware of the process and give you some support of community. It really helps.

Think more and be aware of your actions. Every time you want to overeat or eat between meals, just think on it, convince yourself about your motivation, don’t make a single step-back. Pull off eating till the meal time comes by taking up some task, practice or reading.

Smile to yourself often and be thankful, enjoy your new states.

Try not to eat 3-4 hours before sleep. It can be hard to do at once, but you can start with small period and increase it with practice. You will 100% feel the difference of your morning and sleep when you stop eating in the late evening.

I hope these small ideas will help you to give up a habit of overeating and make nutrition healthier. This week I plan to share few separate articles with deeper advices on this important topic.

I would be grateful if you could share your experiences and feedback : )

May all beings be happy, may all beings be free..

Many thanks for awesome common pictures to kk, frischmilch Flickr people.

More recommended reading:

ZenHabits Motivation Guide, - many ideas that work