Maya's Weight Loss Method - How does it Work?

In an age where information is just a click away, more and more people are beginning to see through the nonsense of fad diets, and trending supplements, bringing them to search for holistic, sustainable nutritional plans without the inflated marketing spin.

One weight loss method that has risen in popularity is Maya’s Method, a holistic program that focuses goes beyond just weight loss, prioritizing physical and mental health, and well-being.

In this article, we discuss Maya’s Method. We cover what it is, its core principles, how it works, its benefits, and how to get started.

What Is Maya's Method for Weight Loss?

Maya’s Method is a holistic approach to improving your health and wellbeing. It focuses on mindful eating, physical activity, mental health, and quality sleep. It focuses on improving relationships with food, prioritizing nutrient-dense foods, and savoring each bite listening to the body to determine fullness.

Origins and Philosophy of Maya's Method

Maya’s Method began on TikTok, where she would display how she lost 11kg (24 lbs) in 30 days. Her method focuses on mindful eating, fun recreational exercise, reducing stress, and forming healthy habits.

Her approach to mindful eating focuses on a balanced diet containing whole foods. Each meal contains balanced complex carbohydrates for fuel, protein to build muscle and improve satiety, and healthy fats to absorb vital nutrients. Meals are enjoyed and mindfully eaten to reduce overeating and establish a healthy relationship with food.

Exercise for Maya’s Method is about heavy weights and intense exercise sessions, they prioritize fun, enjoyable physical activity. Exercise such as walking outdoors, yoga, and dance.

A large component of Maya’s Method is its focus on mental health. Maya’s Method understands the impact of negative stress on hormones and emotions, leading to poor eating habits. Quality sleep, mindfulness, and meditation are encouraged to reduce stress and improve eating habits.

Core Principles of Maya's Method

Maya’s Method has two major core principles: self-awareness and mindful eating. Below, we discuss how they shape this program.

Self-Awareness as the Foundation

Weight loss traditionally focuses on overhauling exercise and nutrition. However, in a time where schedules are tight and time is limited, meal times and workouts feel like a daily box to tick.

We whip up a high-protein breakfast, pack a nutrient-dense lunch, and push through peak-hour traffic at the end of each workday to get our workout in at a crowded gym. While this may seem necessary to achieve results, there is often little time for self-awareness.

Maya’s Method is the opposite. It builds its foundation on self-awareness, and slowing the weight loss process. While it uses similar principles such as a calorie deficit, and eating whole foods, it encourages us to take our time and listen to our body.

Workouts such as yoga help us to become present, dance brings joy, and walking outdoors disengages us from daily stressors, releasing feel-good hormones dopamine and serotonin. These activities prioritize mental health and how we feel over grinding out another workout.

Mindful Eating Practice

Tight schedules and big training goals tend to make meal times clinical. While highly effective, calorie deficits, hitting macronutrient targets, and creating nutrient-dense diets can be disengaging, eating under time constraints makes meal times feel clinical.

Maya’s Method of self-awareness extends to mindful eating practices, aiming for us to be present with each meal. Mindfulness is process-oriented, rather than outcome-driven. When applied to eating, food portions are monitored less, however, savoring each bite, and chewing more can decrease hunger and food intake.

This can be challenging, as we unlearn lifelong eating habits. However, taking a moment to appreciate your food will not only help improve your relationship with it but also provide an opportunity to practice mindfulness and slow down.

This can help maintain our parasympathetic nervous system, improving digestive function.

Why Maya’s Method adds Water and Apple Cider Vinegar

Two components Maya’s Method uses adequate hydrates and apple cider vinegar. Below, we discuss the importance of each, and how they can improve weight loss.

How It Works

Hydration is a vital part of our health, with our body comprised of 75% water. It maintains many physiological processes including cognitive function, weight management, temperature control, and cellular health.

Boosting Digestion and Metabolism

Water has a profound effect on digestion and metabolism. Water supports the gut microbiome and processes food, fluids, and waste.

Staying hydrated and drinking water before eating can improve fullness, reducing food intake. Furthermore, it reduces the intake of beverages containing calories. Combined this reduces calorie intake, resulting in better weight maintenance.

Supporting Hydration and Detoxification

Adequate hydration supports the kidneys and their ability to maintain blood pressure and waste removal. They require water to filter waste from the bloodstream, which is then removed in urine. This promotes a natural detoxification process.

Benefits of Incorporating Apple Cider Vinegar

Apple cider vinegar can improve weight management. Below, we explain why the Maya’s Method encourages it and its effect.

Aiding in Weight Management

It has long been recommended for weight loss, but little evidence to support these claims. However, in recent years a positive association between consuming apple cider vinegar including reductions in weight, body mass index, waist/hip measurements, and body fat ratio.

Regulating Blood Sugar Levels

Apple cider vinegar has been shown to help regulate blood sugar and lipid profile. Apple cider vinegar contains acetic acid, which can help slow gastric emptying. This provides more time for glucose to be removed from the blood, stopping spikes in blood sugar which stabilizes energy levels, mood, and cognitive function, improving weight management.

Furthermore, its ability to regulate lipid profile (fat in blood levels) helps lower bad cholesterol and increase good. Good cholesterol also known as high-density lipoprotein (HDL) can help reduce cardiovascular disease while possessing antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, which enhance overall health.

Benefits of Maya's Method for Weight Loss

Maya’s Method is based on many evidence-based weight loss principles. Below, we highlight the benefits, and reasons you should consider trying this program.

Develops Healthy Relationship with Foods

Maya’s Method can help you develop a better relationship with food. Too often when we sit down for a meal we do so amid a whirlwind of work, errands, and family life. By the time it comes to eating, stress or fatigue is so high that we lack any real thought about what we are eating and how it's going down, as we inhale our food.

Maya’s Method aims to disrupt this and make mealtime about being mindful and present. Think about every meal, bite, and chew, focusing on the smell, flavor, and texture while listening to your body.

While this can sound ridiculous, consider its purpose. Firstly, it helps you appreciate your food and allows your body to register levels of satiety. Beyond this, it brings us into the present, offering a moment of peace to decompress from daily stressors.

Enhances Self-Awareness

Maya’s Method’s focus on mindfulness helps forge a strong base for self-awareness. While most diets are outcome-focused, Maya’s Method focuses on moment-to-moment interactions which improve holistic well-being.

From the approach to fun and engaging physical activity to meditation, and meal times, each facet is an opportunity to practice mindfulness, enhancing self-awareness. This can improve emotional reactivity, behavioral regulation, and psychological symptoms.

Reduces Stress

Maya’s Methods foundation of mindfulness can lead to lower levels of stress. The focal point of weight loss programs often revolves around intense workout programs, and restrictive diets which can often lead to stress.

Meanwhile, Maya’s Method understands that stress contributes to weight gain, aiming to target it directly. During heightened periods of stress, the stress hormone cortisol can lead to increased appetite. This can result in people reaching for comfort foods and redistributing fat tissue to the abdominal region which can lead to obesity.

While correct nutrition is a powerful tool in weight management, eating nutrient-dense whole foods during periods of elevated stress, appetite, and cravings will feel like fighting an uphill battle. Maya’s Method uses mindful eating, yoga, meditation, and nature walking to alleviate stress, making it easier to stick to a nutrition plan.

Improve Weight Management

Maya’s Method’s holistic approach is excellent for weight management. Based on consuming nutrient-dense whole food and mindful eating practices develop self-awareness, which is incredible for improving weight management.

Meals focus on complex carbohydrates, which provide energy and improve satiety. Protein increases muscle mass and fullness and healthy fats absorb vital nutrients and support hormones and the immune system. Combining this with decreased stress levels makes it excellent for maintaining a healthy weight.

Regulates Blood Sugar

Maya’s Method focuses on whole foods and apple cider vinegar is great for regulating blood sugar levels. Efficient absorption of glucose (blood sugar) is essential for energy. Our body produces insulin, moving from the bloodstream to the body, making energy.

However, when insulin is resistant due to lack of physical activity and excess body fat, insulin levels increase. If they remain high (hyperglycemia) for extended periods it can lead to kidney damage], eye problems, nerve damage, and cardiovascular disease.

Complex carbohydrates stabilize energy levels and improve insulin sensitivity, regulating blood sugar levels. Meanwhile, the acetic acid in apple cider vinegar slows gastric emptying, which allows more time for glucose to be removed from the blood, reducing blood sugar spikes, and stabilizing energy levels.

Improve Mental Health

Maya’s Method’s practice of mindfulness can help improve mental health. Depression is often associated with past events, while anxiety comes with the fear and uncertainty of the future.

Mindfulness practices such as meditation, yoga, mindful eating, and walks in nature help us focus on being present. It is associated with positive emotions, life satisfaction, emotional regulation, and decreased psychopathological symptoms such as irritability, anger, fear, distress, fatigue, and sleep disruptions.

How to Get Started with Maya's Method

Getting started with Maya’s Method is relatively straightforward, as it is designed around eating nutrient-dense foods and forms of exercise you love. We discuss different areas to help you get started.

Creating a Self-Awareness Journal

A great way to foster self-awareness and practice mindfulness is through keeping a self-awareness journal. Journals for self-awareness are incredible ways to reflect, process emotions, and discover who we are.

You can start by allocating 20 minutes each time, writing about experiences, or significant events. This can be written in a free writing format or using prompts (questions) which can get you into the flow of processing your thoughts and emotions.

Planning Balanced, Mindful Meals

Maya’s Method focuses on planning balanced meals and mindful eating. Nutrient-dense whole foods form the base of this diet, however, don’t be afraid to modify it to meet your dietary requirements and needs.

If you are looking for exact macronutrient requirements for vegetarian, vegan, paleo, or Mediterranean diets check out our breakdown here. These all encompass the key principles of whole foods while accommodating dietary preferences.

When it comes to meal time, slow down and savor each bite. Embrace the smell before taking your first bite. Then feel the texture, experience the flavors, and chew thoroughly for easy digestion. This will bring you into the present, helping you how your mind, body, and gut reacts to each bite while developing a positive relationship with food.

Building a Personalized Fitness Routine

Like all aspects of Maya’s Method, fitness routines are built around mindfulness, self-awareness, and reducing stress. In this space, yoga, dance, and nature walks are all recommended. However, it is understandable we all have different versions of peace, which is why we recommend choosing the exercise style of your choice while engaging in the mindfulness-based exercises listed above.

When developing your personalized routine, consider your times, schedule, and how each form of exercise can be beneficial throughout the week.

For example, if you know Mondays are stressful, add a mindfulness-based workout to your day. Walks are great for removing us from stressful environments and gently getting the body moving. Meanwhile, resistance training may be better suited for days you have been stuck in the seated position, while a meditation session is suitable at the end of the week to reduce stress before heading into the weekend.

If you are a beginner, we recommend adding one nature walk, a yoga session, and a resistance training session. These will give you a great balance of resistance exercises and mindfulness.

Recap: Maya's Method for Weight Loss

Maya’s Method is effective because it utilizes an evidence-based approach to exercise and nutrition. While many diet programs promote unproven supplements, restrictive diets, and vigorous exercise routines, Maya’s Method relies on tried and true principles of quality nutrition, regular exercise, and reducing stress levels.

Maya’s Method boasts incredible benefits including:

• Develop a healthy relationship with food
• Enhanced self-awareness
• Reduce stress
• Improve weight management
• Better blood sugar regulation
• Improve mental health

If you are considering trying Maya’s Method, focus on:

• Keep a self-awareness journal
• Practice mindful eating
• Eating nutrient-dense whole foods (within your dietary requirements)
• Build a personalized fitness routine based on mindfulness, walking, and resistance exercises.

Follow these steps and you will enhance self-awareness, energy levels, and weight management for greater well-being.