Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 2

This section of Mind Techniques for Weight Loss focuses on how your mindset can help with weight loss.

1. Always be accountable. There is no one else who is responsible for you losing weight. You have to be accountable for what you eat and how often you work out.

When taking total responsibility for your own action you can feel empowered as you are the master of your own destiny. By taking responsibility you accept that something is not working and you change it to make it better next time. By being accountable you do not look for others to fix you, you pledge to fix yourself by learning new skills and being responsible to action the knowledge for your greater good.

2. Break the cycle of excuses. We all make excuses to try to justify our behavior, but these kinds of excuses aren’t doing you any favors when it comes to weight loss. Force yourself to accept your failures and work to improve them.

One good way of breaking the excuse cycle is to ask this question - "What could I have done differently to get better results" No excuses just focusing on the future and getting better results. This reminded me of something I read in a book about Buddhism a little while back, which said something along the lines of - "Feeling guilty is pointless, you can not go back and change the past, accept you have done wrong and pledge not to do it the future" Perhaps guilt and excuses are linked together.

3. Deal with your emotions. For many people, food is an emotional thing and a coping mechanism for other things that aren’t right in their lives. If you want to change your mindset about your body, you’ll first have to deal with these powerful emotions.

We have touched on this quite a few times at Mind Body Weight Loss, dealing with your emotions is so important because emotions and hunger are both felt in the stomach area and can get confused. We also looked at Louise L Hay and her Mirror Work in helping us deal with our emotions.

4. Make the decision to be thinner. Sometimes all it takes is a firm resolution to make a change in your life. If you want to lose weight, make the choice to do so and let your actions follow suit.

Make a decision of where you want to go, a good way to do this is a simple meditation or visualization where you imagine yourself ten years in the future looking back at yourself now. The first time your look back you didn't make a decision and you are the same weight you are now, notice how you are feeling. Then follow the process again, from yourself in ten years time but your ideal weight and the weight you have been for nine of the last ten years. Notice how you are feeling. And finally compare the 2 feelings, this should help you make your decision.

5. Take responsibility. No one is forcing food down your throat or keeping you from the gym. Once you realize that and can take responsibility for your own actions regarding your health and fitness, you’ll be one step closer to meeting your goals.

Very similar to point 2 because accountability and responsibility overlap.

6. Think clearly. Weight loss, body image and personal health can be emotionally charged issues. When you think about these things it is important to separate them as best you can from your emotions and make logical, thoughtful decisions about what is best. For instance, our emotions might tell us we need a piece of cake after a hard day, but our logical thinking would tell us it will only make you feel worse about yourself.

I recently heard a fantastic technique to help you 'think clearly', especially when there is a conflict between emotion and logic as described in point 6. Say you are tempted by a piece of cake, but you do not want it because you will bad afterward, try this exercise: Sit down, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, now imagine the slice of cake in front of you, take a bite of imagine the taste and texture in your mouth, chew it and swallow it, now repeat this until the whole slice is gone, now take another slice and imagine the whole process of imagining the taste, texture, chewing and swallowing again until this slice has gone too. Now note how imagining this cake has made you feel, feel every bit of this feeling right through to the end. Now open your eyes and make the decision and take all responsibility for it.

7. Change your programming. Many of us have programmed our brains to think we are fat, unhealthy and will never look or feel like we want to. Thinking this way is often a self-fulfilling prophecy, but by changing your mental programming, you’ll change what you’re capable of in weight loss.

All I can say here is; if you want to learn how to reprogram your mind we suggest reading 'You can heal your life' by Louise L Hay in her book she guides you through how to change a negative view of oneself in to a positive view, using affirmations.

8. Stay positive. There is no upside to negative thinking when it comes to losing weight. Staying positive will help you feel better about yourself, keep you motivated and reduce stress — all of which will help you lose more weight.

As mentioned above affirmations are fantastic ways to stay positive, the two most popular ones I use are: 'I trust in the process of life to bring me my highest good' and 'Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better'

9. Train your mind to think in your best interest. If you want to lose weight, focus on replacing your unhealthy thoughts with healthy ones. After a while, you will think less unhealthy thoughts and be a step ahead in reaching your goals.
Source - totallyzen.com

The point of replacing unhealthy thoughts with healthy ones is a gem and reminds me of a David Wolfe Quote "The best strategy we have got is to just add in good stuff and eventually it will crowd out the bad stuff. It’s so simple and deactivates the mental neurosis we have about diets and what we have to eat". So the best way a thought or food is to not stop negative thought but to keep adding positivity (Food, Thought and Actions) until it over takes and eventually eliminates the negativity all together.

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Read More of this series:
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 1
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 3
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 4