Getting Started With the Mindful Diet Course

Post written by Leo Babauta.

Welcome to The Mindful Diet Course! I’m glad to have you here, and am excited about the changes we’re going to make together.

This course aims to help people to eat healthier through mindful eating, small habit changes, and conscious food choices. For many, this might mean weight loss (if you’re overweight), but for others this might just mean becoming healthier, feeling better, getting leaner, or even gaining weight if that’s needed.

It’s not an overnight weight-loss plan. Instead, it’s a lifestyle change, and included will be not just what and how much to eat, but methods that will help with lasting habit changes, address emotional eating issues, help with grocery shopping and meal planning, teach you simple healthy recipes, and more.

Why is It Called ‘The Mindful Diet’?

This course is really about healthy eating, but it uses the habit of eating mindfully to accomplish healthy eating changes.

Eating mindfully helps you to eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re sated. It helps you to deal with emotional eating issues, eating during social occasions, making conscious and healthy food choices, and changing your habits gradually and consciously. It helps you enjoy your food more, and to enjoy eating healthy foods.

It’s not a diet that tells you what to eat. You don’t have to eat vegetarian food, though if you’re interested in that I can help. You don’t have to eat any specific kind of food, though I do recommend real food and especially lots of delicious veggies.

What to Expect From the Materials

The materials in the course will be a combination of articles and videos from me on various healthy eating topics, articles and video interviews with guest experts, two live video webinars (one with me and another with Matt Frazier of No Meat Athlete), a forum where you can ask questions and encourage each other’s changes, and a habit tracker where you’re encouraged to log your habit change over the next two months (see below for more).

The materials will be found on the Sea Change Home Page, added throughout the first week or so of April, and you’ll be notified of updates via the Sea Change mailing list.

The webinars will be on the Zen Habits Ustream Channel, and you’re encouraged to register a free account with Ustream.tv before the first webinar. I will present the webinar with live video, and you can ask questions via the text chat feature in the webinar, which I’ll answer (Matt’s webinar will be the same format).

There is also a Sea Change member’s forum, where you can discuss the course material, your habit change, and other topics.

Two Habit Changes over Two Months

While it’s not absolutely required, I highly recommend you choose a habit change to make during April, and then another to make during May. You won’t get much out of this course if you just read about it — you have to put it into action.

Read more: Choosing A Mindful Diet Habit Change.

Pick one habit change a month, and log it via the Mindful Diet Habit Tracker. It’s important to try to log your change every day via the habit tracker, to give yourself a sense of accountability. It makes a huge difference, so try to log right after doing your habit.

Another powerful tool is the forum. If you can get active on the forum, asking questions, perhaps creating a personal journal in the journal section, helping others, answering questions, encouraging each other … it helps the habit to form and to stick.

In May, you’ll form your second healthy eating habit, and this is when you’ll really start seeing some differences in your health. Two lasting habits make a huge difference, and it’s really only after 4-6 weeks that you see changes in your body that other people will notice.

How to Get the Most Out of the Course

You’re paying for the course, and so you should do what you can to get the most out of it. If you read a few of the articles, put off action until later, you will be wasting your money.

But if you do the following actions, you’ll get a lot out of the course, and it will be a powerful tool:

• Read the articles that apply to you, carefully, and make notes to put them into action
• Get active on the forum, and ask questions, and ask for help supporting your habit change
• Commit to spending the next month changing one habit, and ask for help from those around you
• Track your habit every day on the habit tracker
• Attend the webinars live if possible, and ask questions

The Schedule for the Month

It might seem like a lot of material, but it will really be spread out over the month, and you don’t need to read or watch all of it. You can pick and choose the materials that seem to apply most to you.

Here’s what to expect in April:

1. A portion of the materials will be available on April 1 on the Sea Change Home Page
2. Most of the rest of the materials will be made available during the first week of April
3. You will be doing one habit change in April, logging the change via the habit tracker
4. Leo will hold a webinar on Wed. April 4 at 4pm Pacific/7pm Eastern
5. Other materials will be made available during the rest of the month, and you’ll get emails notifying you of new materials
6. You’ll get periodic reminders via email
7. Matt Frazier will hold a webinar on vegetarianism on April 24 at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern
8. You’ll choose a 2nd healthy eating habit to change during May