🌻Anti-Grazing Strategies: Nurture Yourself With a Bit of ‘Me-Time’🌻

I am always looking for ways to keep myself from grazing my way through my kitchen and pantry. Over the past year, I have worked on many Anti-Grazing Techniques. Self-Care is one of my main ways to distract myself when the need to feed strikes. Stealing a few moments to nurture my mind, body, or spirit is a necessary part of my personal weight loss journey. Today is the first day of Spring & it seems fitting to chat about personal growth.

So, following my self-care logic, if you don’t carve out any ‘me time’, how can you properly nurture yourself? Living life ‘beyond the scale’ involves looking to things other than food for personal happiness and satisfaction. Seeds need fertilizer and fresh soil to grow, and just like seeds, we must attend to our own needs or we cannot continue to progress in our ever-evolving, lifestyle change.

🌺When is the last time you made time for yourself? 🌺
Make sure that you carve out time each day, or at the very least, each week, for yourself.

🌻Sooooo….What should you do during that time?
Here are a few ideas & please feel free to add your own ideas in the comments section:

1. ⏱Take 5 minutes of Quiet to use for meditation, prayer, a cat-nap, or just sit in complete silence. It may not seem like much, but try to sit still for 5 minutes….it is harder than it sounds!
2. 📚Read for 10 minutes. What to read? Read something that makes you happy. 1 chapter of a book. Set aside 10 minutes to read through a favorite magazine, blog, or an actual newspaper. Just read something just for you that doesn’t involve list-making, planning, or work.
3. 💇💅Take some time to beautify…this applies to the guys, too! Go get a haircut or just get your hair done. Go get those highlights you have been wanting to try. Go get that manicure or pedicure you have been putting off. Make an appointment right now and put it in your calendar.
4. ☺️Take time to relax…this is an obvious ‘me-time’ activity, but go get a massage or ask a friend for one or just go to the mall and sit in one of those massage chairs at Brookstone.
5. 🤗Stretch! Take extra time to stretch at the gym. Download a stretch video. Look at Pinterest for stretching exercises. Take a relaxing yoga class. You’ll feel so fabulous afterwards.
6. 💡Go to an extra Weight Watchers meeting. Yep. Maybe it has been a rough week and maybe an extra Weight Watchers meeting is just the thing you need to do for YOU this week. Online Only? Maybe just try out a meeting for a change of pace. Not doing Weight Watchers? Maybe spend a little extra time looking over what you are personally doing for health & fitness this week. See if you can come up with some new ideas to take your current routine to the next level.
7. 🚶🚶‍♀️Pump up your normal walk by taking a walk in a NEW place…a garden, a different neighborhood…a change of scenery is good for your soul.
8. 🎨Get Creative: Color…Doodle…Draw…Build…Create SOMETHING because flexing your creative muscles nurtures your brain, your heart, and your mind…it is also an excellent anti-grazing technique.
9. 🤹‍♀️Play! If you have kids, it is easy, but even if you don’t, go to a video arcade or an amusement park. Just go do something that keeps you young at heart.
10. 🎭Indulge in some local culture…a museum, a show, an arts festival. Just make the effort to go somewhere that will stimulate your mind, not your appetite.
11. 🏀 Play a sport or go see a sporting event. Your mind will enjoy the distraction of the game and your body, obviously would enjoy the exercise or even the excitement.

Whatever you choose to do to nurture yourself should be non-food related. We do use food to nurture, but marching forward into Spring refreshed & renewed can be enhanced by taking a bit of ‘me-time’. Coming up with your list of how to nurture yourself can be part of your own anti-grazing strategy or just a way to be kind to yourself.

🌻What do you do when you have a bit of ‘me-time’?🌻