Unlike traditional weight loss approaches centred around abstinence, many Britons achieve success by changing how they eat rather than what they eat.
Katie Lips, from Buckinghamshire, has maintained her 6st 1lb weight loss for nine years through mindful eating practices.
The key to her success was allowing herself to enjoy all her favourite foods while focusing on mindful techniques, she told GB News.
“I thought I had to starve myself to lose weight, but eating when I was hungry helped me never get too hungry or too full,” Katie explained.
Katie adopted mindful eating techniques
KATIE LIPS
Katie's mindful eating approach centred on specific techniques that transformed her relationship with food.
One of the main strategies, for example, involved chewing each mouthful 20 to 30 times in a bid to improve digestion and slow down the eating process.
The 49-year-old also incorporated deliberate pauses between bites to assess her fullness levels, often discovering she was satisfied halfway through a meal.
“I stopped eating just at the point I started to feel full as opposed to waiting until I felt stuffed,” she explained.
This not only improved her relationship with food but taught Katie to leave food on her plate when she was no longer hungry.
Her success equally challenged many preconceptions she had previously held about weight loss.
Rather than adhering to rigid meal schedules, for instance, Katie began tuning into her body’s natural hunger signals.
“I thought I had to eat three meals a day, at set meal time,” she noted. “However, as I started listening to my body, all that went out of the window.”
On some occasions, this meant Katie would end up eating six or more smaller meals throughout the day, she explained.
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Katie maintained her weight by overcoming ingrained beliefs about food
KATIE LIPS
This approach also helped the slimmer overcome ingrained beliefs about portion size.
“Once you learn to listen to your body and eat to nurture your body, weight becomes much easier to manage," Katie noted.
Katie has since continued to advocate for the way people eat beyond traditional dieting, sharing advice through the platform Eatiful to help others on their weight loss journey.
Her philosophy highlights that weight loss is a deeply psychological journey that shouldn’t be influenced by advertising or social pressure.
