Pampering yourself to weight loss

Do you reward yourself with food or manage negative emotions with food?

If you do, you aren't alone but being one of the millions of people who are emotional eaters won't help you lose weight and lead a happier, healthier life.

What may do though is learning how to pamper yourself. In this article we discuss how pampering can help with weight loss and give you ten simple and inexpensive ways to pamper yourself that we suggest everyone try.

How can pampering yourself help you lose weight?

Learning to pamper ourselves in a range of different ways can help us lose weight by giving us an alternative to managing our emotions and pampering ourselves solely with food.

For example, if we usually reward ourselves for a hard days work with a couple of glasses of red wine and a family block of chocolate or a meal out with the family at our favourite all-you-can-eat restaurant, the chances are we could benefit from getting into the habit of rewarding ourselves in other ways.

But it's not just rewarding ourselves with food that can be destructive.

Many of us also overeat and eat the wrong types of foods when we are tired, stressed, busy, unhappy, lack energy, are bored, etc, and learning healthy ways to pamper ourselves can help us deal with each of these much better and more healthily than with food.

Ten simple and inexpensive ways to pamper yourself

Here are our favourite top ten ways to pamper yourself:

1. Soak in a soothing and relaxing aromatherapy bath

Soaking in an aromatherapy bath with oils and bath salts purchased from your local health food store or aromatherapist is one of the best and most inexpensive ways we can pamper ourselves.

By adding fragrant oils like Roman Chamomile, Geranium, Lavender, Mandarin with Epsom salts or bath salts to a hot bath anyone can ease away the cares of the day and set themselves up for a wonderful night of relaxation and sleep.

If you have access to a spa bath, alternate aromatherapy baths with spa baths which are great at massaging tired muscles and rejuvenating our whole body.

2. Visit a day spa

Visiting a day spa may be a little more expensive than an aromatherapy bath at home, but as a once a month treat is hard to beat.

As well as providing something really special to look forward to, day spa visits can be shared with family and friends and they provide access to a range of treats such as hydrotherapy, relaxation massage, mud baths, facials as well as a range of other skin and body care services which can be packaged together and enjoyed under one roof.

3. Have a massage

Having a regular massage can help relax and rejuvenate tired and sore muscles, help us recover from injury and help us feel relaxed and refreshed.

In addition to its relaxation and rejuvenation properties, there are research studies that suggest that massage is able to burst the fat capsule in subcutaneous tissue so that the fat exudes and becomes absorbed. In this way massage may directly help in fat loss.

4. Have a workout

Pampering yourself with exercise may seem odd to some people but for those of us with weight loss goals, what could be better at helping us lose weight than treating ourselves to a workout instead of a super supreme pizza!

"How can we include exercise in our list of pampering techniques?" I hear you ask.

And the answer is, easy!

Exercise has a kind of 'tough love' pampering affect on our body, mind and spirit.

Regular exercise provides us with more energy, helps us relax and sleep better, helps us cope and deal with stress, helps us to burn excess calories and also helps us regulate hunger.

Mixing up our workouts to include things like walks, bike rides, jogs, swims, gym sessions, yoga classes, Pilates classes, kickboxing sessions or outdoor sessions with a personal trainer can give us the variety we need to stay motivated and give us the best possible all-round fitness.

5. Have a beauty treatment

If we eat because we don't feel good about ourselves there is something we can do about that.

One thing to do is have a beauty treatment at a local beauty salon that will make us look and feel our best.

Having our hair or nails done, having a facial, manicure or pedicure, or even visiting a solarium or tanning salon can be enough to improve the way we feel and take our mind off food for a while.

6. Sleep

Getting plenty of good quality sleep is critically important to leading a happy, healthy life and there is a growing body of scientific evidence that suggests that sleep plays a very important role in helping us to regulate our body weight, maintain a healthy body weight and lose weight.

When we sleep our body produces a number of hormones which helps us control our appetite.

When we lack quality sleep, we are much more likely to crave high carbohydrate and calorie dense foods.

Are you getting enough sleep?

7. Take a mini break at a health retreat

How long has it been since you had a holiday?

More and more of us are finding it increasingly difficult to get away on holidays for extended periods of time.

This makes taking mini-breaks very important and if we can combine activity as well as relaxation in these breaks, such as those experienced at a health retreat, all the better.

Health retreats are a great option for a mini-break because they are places where we can start to learn and practice new healthy eating and exercise habits which we can take back home with us.

As well as offering healthy, tasty food and a range of activities to participate in, Health Retreats also offer an array of relaxation options.

8. See a show or go to the movies

Regularly going to the movies is a great way to reward yourself – just don't make choc-top ice creams, potato chips, chocolate bars and large cups of soft-drinks an integral part of your enjoyment.

9. Drink a cup of green tea

For those times when you're tempted to eat a piece of chocolate, a donut or something equally laden with calories, drink a cup of green tea instead.

Many research studies have shown that drinking green tea can have a positive effect on our body weight as well as on our general health.

These studies indicate that green tea helps us shed unwanted kilos by helping to:

• Increase our metabolism (burn more calories/kilojoules throughout the day).
• Increase our body's ability to burn fat (fat oxidation).

As well as helping us to lose weight, green tea is believed to have many other health benefits.

Among the most impressive of these, green tea is said to help reduce our risk of developing many forms of cancer, lower cholesterol levels, help reduce the risk and treat rheumatoid arthritis and reduce the risk of experiencing cardiovascular disease.

In order to enjoy these health benefits and others, researchers recommend drinking green tea on a regular basis.

10. Go for picnics

OK, picnics involve food and eating, but there's something special about picnics.

In addition to getting out and about in the fresh air, the best picnics involve a bit of effort on our part walking to the ideal picnic spot while carrying all our picnic gear, so they involve a bit of exercise too.

The best picnics are also those that offer us a wide range of healthy food options like vegetable and fruit salads, cold meats, sandwiches and the like and limit high-sugar and high-fat foods.

Whether your picnics aid or hinder your weight loss goal is completely under your control so make the right choices, have them regularly and you'll never look back.

Conclusion.

Do you reward yourself with food or manage negative emotions with food?

If you do, you aren't alone but being one of the millions of people who are emotional eaters won't help you lose weight and lead a happier, healthier life.

What may do though is learning how to pamper yourself. In this article we discussed how pampering can help with weight loss and gave you ten simple and inexpensive ways to pamper yourself that we suggest everyone try.

Good luck with your weight loss and thanks for visiting weightloss.com.au.

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