Many people come to me asking for help losing weight. While acupuncture can help you control cravings and portion sizes, losing weight won’t happen over night. But here are a few simple tips you can try to get started:

1. Drink water and herbal tea ONLY. No juice, no soda, no diet soda, no alcohol, no vitamin water, etc.

2. Eat SLOWLY. Force yourself if you have to. Part of this is to breathe, pray, give thanks, stop for a second, whatever works for you, before you start eating to put yourself in the right frame of mind. Then when you eat, thoroughly chew your food. Savor every little bit of it. One trick is to try to eat with chopsticks.

3. Eat smaller portions. Eating slowly will help this because you’ll feel fuller faster, but be mindful of how much food is going into your body and how much is coming out. If one is significantly more than the other, chances are your body isn’t fully processing your food and could be storing a good deal of it.

Another problem people face is WHAT to eat. I think about this all the time myself. One helpful resource I’ve found is Whole Foods recipe finder:

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/

As many problems as I have with Whole Foods the store, I love some of these recipes. And they’re free! Check out the find/browse function and sort by category, special diet, or ingredient.

Losing weight is something we all can do, we just have to decide to put forth the effort to make it happen. It won’t come without change. Decide that you really want to lose those 15, 30, 50 pounds and put a plan in place to make it happen. Stay relaxed, stress free, happy and active, be conscious about your food choices, and you can make those pounds melt away.