Mindful Monday: A New Series

Hello :) I am happy to say that as of last week I've practically finished my nutrition degree (except for one sneaky subject next year) and now have plenty of time for blogging! In terms of what I'll do with my life for the next little while I'm just thinking about the short-term, which includes hopefully getting a job during the week to save some pennies for my Europe trip in November! At this stage I'm not sure what kind of work I'd like to do with my degree, but I'm sure that will sort itself out ...

A perfect rose from our front garden ...

A topic I have been thinking about lately, is the topic of mindfulness. You see, during the semester I completed a nutrition research subject where we each chose a topic of interest from a list, and conducted a literature review on the matter- collating different journal articles and writing about our finds and potential significance. Well I scanned the list and found a topic looking at the mindful eating approach for overweight / obese women, and really enjoyed researching and understanding the psychological components of obesity.

My research found that perhaps knowing how to lose weight (i.e. eating well and exercising regularly) is not the only key to long-term weight loss, but part of a holistic approach, which incorporates behavioural and cognitive training too. It is said that when we cultivate a greater acceptance and awareness of the present moment, automatic thoughts can be replaced by healthier and more conscious responses.

Mindfulness can be described in many ways, and is usually described as paying close and conscious attention to the present moment, eating with intent and understanding how our different emotions can affect consequential thoughts and behaviour. It's funny, after researching the topic I keep seeing it mentioned in blogposts, newspaper articles and in magazines ... so I've taken this as a sign to understand more about this topic, and begin a new series on this blog called Mindful Monday.

A pretty bunch of radishes straight from the farmer.

I'm no expert on the matter, so I thought a weekly blogpost would prompt me to learn more about this. Mindfulness is quite a broad topic and can include things like yoga, meditation, learning where your food comes from, slowing down, disconnecting, setting an intention etc. To kick things off this week I thought I'd share some other links that I've noticed which talk about this topic. And of course, I would love your thoughts .... is mindfulness something you think about? Has practicing yoga or meditation allowed you to become more mindful? ...

- A little article about mindfulness in the workplace (here)
- Jacqui Lewis, a vedic meditation teacher wrote a great piece on mindful eating (here)
- Heidi, one of my favourite bloggers has a series called my mindful kitchen, where she talks about her experiences of working on a farm and connecting with local producers. It's brilliant! See (here)

Taking a break from study last week with a lovely lunch and some sexy crocs ...

Hannah x