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Lose Weight By Napping

Lose Weight By Napping

Watch this video to Discover:

  • The many benefits of napping for your health, well-being, creativity and weight loss
  • How napping can help you overcome exhaustion, stress and even stave off junk food cravings
  • Quick tip on how to squeeze in a power nap anywhere and anytime in your day

Naps are one of those things that we secretly want to do, especially an afternoon nap. However, none of us ever really end up taking naps, because we feel like we’re not being very productive or because it just feels like too much of a luxury.

Yet, naps are actually one of the most important things that you can do for your health, overall well-being, for your creativity, fitness and even for weight loss.

Usually, when we think of weight loss, we think of burning calories or eating less, and it’s true, you’re not really doing either of those when you’re taking a nap.

But it turns out that one of the reasons we gain weight is because of stress and exhaustion. Stress activates a hormone, known as cortisol, that causes perpetual junk food cravings. Typically in the afternoons, we’re feeling both stressed out and tired. A nap can solve both of those problems. Just taking a 5 or 10 minute nap, around 3:00 or 4:00 pm, will help stave off junk food cravings and reduce the stress hormones that cause your body to hold on to weight.

What I suggest is to watch your patterns and observe your body and what it tries to communicate to you around that time, a.k.a afternoon slump. What you’ll notice is typically there is a certain time in the afternoon, somewhere between 2:30pm- 4:30pm when you’re feeling really tired, you’re not very productive and you start to crave junk food.

So if you start to feel tired around those times, see if you can take a 5 or 10 minute break to just close your eyes and take a little nap. If you can lie down that would be great, but if not, resting your eyes in the car in the parking lot, or on a park bench for just 5 to 10 minutes will really help relax your mind and body before you get up and get going again.

What you can also do during this time is listen to a visualization, visualization done correctly puts your brain in the alpha and the theta state, both of which will allow you to receive the rejuvenating effects of being in this deep relaxation mode.

It’s also great to have a healthy snack at the ready. The types of foods you want to prepare are foods that contain healthy fats such as avocados, coconut oil, ghee, butter, or chia seeds. These healthy fats combined with a healthy protein, like grass-fed free range animal protein mixed with some live greens, combined with a nap will work wonders for helping you change your body hormonally so that your not stressed out, don’t have junk food cravings and can make healhty food choices the rest of the day.

As you might already know, here at The Gabriel Method we’re always making visualization for specific aspects of weight loss. As a result, we have an afternoon recharge visualization that you can listen to and download for free right here. The visualization is about 7 minutes long and it will help you feel refreshed and recharged. Give napping and visualization a try and you’ll see how it will improve your productivity, creativity, energy levels and weight loss goals!

Workout Visulization

Download Visualization

Blog Archives

4 Simple Steps To A Great Night’s Sleep

4 Simple Steps To A Great Night’s Sleep

 

Watch this video to Discover:

  • How sleep affects overall health and body weight
  • The connection between obesity epidemic and sleep epidemic
  • Simple tips on how to achieve restful, nourishing sleep that can transform your life

As many of you know, back in 2004 I lost 220 pounds and I’ve been the same weight since. I’ve now dedicated my life to teaching the theory, art, and practice of permanent sustainable weight loss.

What I want to talk about today is how to get a proper night’s sleep to support weight loss and overall well being.

Sleep is so important for weight loss. When you’re not getting enough sleep it elevates your cortisol levels, which causes insulin resistance. Insulin is the fat making hormone. So when you have elevated levels of insulin, your body goes into perpetual fat making mode and after a period of time you begin to lose the ability to burn fat.

In my work and experience I’ve heard a lot of clients complain about not being able to fall at sleep at night or waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep. So here are some tips that can help you fall asleep easily and naturally.

Natural Remedies for Quality Sleep

1. Avoid Stimulation Before Bedtime:

If you can’t fall asleep at night, the first thing I want to suggest is that you develop a ritual at night to help get you into a relaxed state. Typically when we can’t fall asleep at night, or when we wake up in the middle of the night and we can’t fall back to sleep, we’re in our heads and our minds are highly stimulated.

I want to take you out of your head and out of your mind and out of your thought patterns and into a relaxed state. So before you go to sleep try not to look at any screens such as TVs, phones, laptops, or tablets for at least 2 hours prior to going to bed. When you’re stimulated and looking at screens you are in your mind and not in your body and it interrupts your brain’s ability to produce melatonins and melanocortins which are a group of hormones that facilitate and help you fall asleep at night.

2. Enjoy a Hot and Cold Shower or Bath

A bath or shower before bed is a great way to relax your body, especially if you change the temperature from hot to cold.

If you take a shower, make the water progressively warmer and warmer until it’s as hot as you can stand it, then start making it colder and colder until it’s so cold you can’t stand it. Go back and forth a few times from the hot to cold. This combination of hot water then cold water, acts as a pump for your lymphatic system and expands and contracts your blood vessels which brings your awareness and consciousness and all your energy into your body and out of your mind. Try it at least once and see for yourself. Once you’re out, you’ll feel tingly and super relaxed.

3. Stretch Your Body

Perform a mild stretch before bed. Try getting into child’s pose by kneeling on your knees and placing your hands in front of your head and touching your forehead to the ground or bed. Stay in this pose for about 20 seconds to a minute and just focus on your breathing.

4. Listen to the Gabriel Method Evening Visualization

Lie down on your bed and listen to our evening visualization because it’s specifically designed to put you into the alpha, theta and then the delta states of deep sleep. You don’t have to listen to what it’s saying, you can tune out and let your subconscious listen. This guided visualization has lots of positive suggestions about having a successful life and about losing weight so it’s a great visualization to listen to before bed. It’s okay if you fall asleep even if you haven’t completed the visualization, that’s the point 🙂

Free Evening Visualization

DOWNLOAD VISUALIZATION HERE

How to Fall Asleep After Waking Up

If you wake up in the middle of the night, I suggest you try doing the same stretch, child’s pose, hold this pose for 30 seconds to a minute and then sit up and meditate. If you don’t have any experience with meditating, you just want to sit up, try to have your back straight, close your eyes and imagine a ball of light in your navel rolling around and focus on breathing in and out of that ball of light.

Keep your tongue touching the roof of your mouth. Just breathe in and out and sit there for a while. What I find when I do this is one of two things happens. Either, I get a really great meditation which has some amazing benefits for weight loss, creativity, productivity, stress reduction and many other health benefits or I get really tired and fall right back to sleep. Either scenario is great.

If that doesn’t work, repeat all 4 steps above, just as you would before bed. But don’t simply lay there letting your mind become more and more active. Even though you’re tired, make the effort to get up and take these simple relaxing steps and you’ll transition back to sleep much easier.

Give these strategies a try and you’ll be well on your way to getting a natural, healthy, deep rejuvenating night’s sleep and maybe even a great meditation too.

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How to Lose Weight & Burn Fat While You Sleep

How to Lose Weight & Burn Fat While You Sleep

Those of you who are familiar with The Gabriel Method will be aware that one of the things we’re always talking about is hormones. Your body’s hormonal environment is crucial to how your body uses the food you eat.

It’s the hormonal influence on fat storage that makes all the difference. If more people understood the role of hormones in fat, we’d finally be able to kill the myth that losing weight is a “simple” matter of calories in vs. calories out.

The body just doesn’t work like a bank account where if you put in fewer calorie “dollars” and spend more calorie “dollars” you’ll end up with less in your “fat account.” If it were that simple, then diets, especially calorie restriction diets, would work, and as we say again and again they just don’t.

When you eat, your body has a choice. “What will I do with these calories? Will I use them up by making myself more alert and mentally and physically active, or will I store them for a rainy day in the form of fat?”

Your hormonal environment will dictate whether your body stores fat.

So while we’re talking hormones, let’s talk insulin. Insulin is a major fat storage hormone. If your insulin levels are chronically elevated, then that’s a pretty good sign that your F.A.T. programs are on.

Chronically elevated insulin levels will ensure that your body will store the food you eat as fat, AND also keep you chronically hungry for junk food. It’s a vicious cycle!

Fortunately, there is a way of taking control that’s relatively easy.

It’s all about timing…

According to The International Journal of Obesity, a recent study in Spain shows 400 different adults trying to lose weight. They’re all doing basically the same thing— eating about the same and exercising about the same. The only difference is that half of them ate their main meal before three o’clock; the other group after. The group eating before three o’clock lost 25 percent more weight than the the other group.

Why this makes perfect sense

It’s about the insulin levels in your body when you go to sleep. Insulin is (as we said) the fat-making hormone, and it has to be lowered long enough before your body can start to burn fat. This makes sleeping the perfect time to do this–that is if you haven’t eaten too much before you go to sleep.

If you eat too much before you go to sleep, your insulin levels elevate, your digestion slows down, and your body goes into fat-storage mode. In other words, you’re gaining weight while you sleep.

Luckily, the reverse is also true. If, your insulin levels are low enough when you go to bed, you’re going to burn fat—while you sleep!

You can actually eat the same amounts, but simply by eating it earlier you’re going to be losing instead of gaining weight. It’s not about the calories in, and the calories out. It’s about the effect of the hormones on the foods you’re digesting and the timing of when you eat.

Co-operate with your body so it can cooperate with you!

Once you understand the biochemistry of the situation, it’s a simple matter of shifting your hunger habits.

The best strategy is to eat more during the early part of the day, progressively eating less until you’re eating relatively little at night. Make sure you eat lots of nourishing foods, like big salads with fermented foods, healthy fats and quality proteins. Things we talk about in The Gabriel Method all the time as “The Big 3.”

This means eating your bigger meals in the late mornings and early afternoons and a lighter, earlier dinner.

It’s not about calories, you can eat the same number of calories, just eat them earlier. What will happen is your insulin levels get low enough during the night that you will end up burning fat all night as opposed to making fat all night. That’s because you’ve changed the hormonal environment of your body before you sleep to one that favors weight loss.

If you eat mostly at night, especially starchy, sugary foods, you’ll be elevating your insulin levels and then your body goes into fat making mode all night. In a lot of ways it’s as much about timing as anything.

By shifting your eating patterns to eating earlier, you’ll soon find that you’re hungrier in the morning and less so at night and this one change can make all the difference in the world.

This simple, but powerful change of lifestyle can help you burn fat instead of make fat while you sleep.

Have you experimented with eating at different times of the day? How did you feel?

We’d love to hear your thoughts and stories – so share with us by commenting below!

If you want to know which hormones are keeping you in fat-making mode check out our F.A.T. Trigger Quiz and discover exactly what you need to start switching your body into fat-burning mode.