Meditation is without a doubt the most important step you can do to lose weight. How can a sedentary activity help you lose weight? We all know that we need to eat less and exercise more: so why are there now 200 million Americans overweight? We are neglecting the most critical aspect of successful weight loss - our minds. If your mind/body were a business, your mind would be the CEO and your body would be the subordinate employee following orders. Meditation increases your self-awareness so you're more in sync with what you're doing. By bringing your body, mind and spirit into focus, meditation helps you achieve your weight loss goals. Instead of eating mindlessly, you become mindful of your actions which results in the 'domino effect' of increasing your minds ability to fine tune what your body really needs instead of what it wants. You may want to eat cake, but your body's needs would be better met with eating one of the 2 - 4 pieces of fruit recommended by the food guide pyramid. Practicing meditation on a daily basis can both eliminate cravings for foods that sabotage your health and increase your motivation to walk the path to wellness. After all, a journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step.

Losing weight is so much more than sweating, jumping up and down or lifting weights to burn calories and restricting what you eat. Until you make up your mind to do it, really DECIDE to do it, your attempts will be futile. Something magical happens when you meditate. Just like an aerobics instructor's heart gets stronger every time they teach a class, your mindset to lose weight gets stronger each time you meditate. You become the exclusive master of your mind and your body will dutifully obey rewarding you with a fuller, more functional life and slimmer, sexier body. Another benefit to meditating, especially when it's combined with stress releasing breathing techniques, is you learn to combat stress, instead of allowing stress to combat you. Stress is reaching epidemic proportions and so is overeating, the anti-stress response for tens of millions of people. Marcella Bakur Weiner, Ph.D., psychologist and adjunct professor at Marymount Manhattan College in New York says, "We have developed an automatic reflexive reaction: We feel stress—we turn to food. We eat and overeat without thinking about the choices we're making." Meditation is a means to give your brain a true vacation from anxious thoughts and achieve a heightened awareness by eliminating distractions that deter you from reaching the weight loss goals you truly desire.

When you meditate, you concentrate on your breathing while dismissing any distracting thoughts. This takes practice. After about 10 minutes a day of practice, you'l1 soon be able to get your mind off of food in any stressful situation. If you slow down enough to meditate, you'll find you'll want to eat healthy and exercise. As an added benefit you'll sleep better and reclaim energy that will direct you to rediscover the powerful vision of your healthy self within.

When you combine meditation, with breathing and positive visualization, you possess a powerful weight loss tool that's available to you 24/7 that's easy and effective at helping you achieve your goals. Consider any famous athlete, like the golfer, Tiger Woods whose ability to visualize exactly what he must do each time he swings his club is paramount to being the greatest golfer of our time. Prior to every game, Michael Jordon would visualize exactly what he needed to do with his feet and hands to become the legend that he did. This powerful combination is the missing link in your diet that will increase your ability to put your weight loss plan into action and encourage you to take charge of your life.