Work your mind for weight loss

We at Mind Body Weight Loss have always believed that if you work deal with your mind first you will not lose weight quicker but you will also keep the weight off. Arnold Schwarzenegger is so right with his quote and belief:

"The mind always fails first, not the body. The secret is to make your mind work for you, not against you."

With this in mind it shows the importance of addressing the mind when it comes to your weight loss. It may seems difficult to do but really it is not as the quite a few products that will help you do this. these include:

• The Gabriel Method
• The Fat Loss Code
• Weight Loss Attitude
• Weight Loss Hypnosis Pro

Why not check them out?

Don't Wait, Be Proud

Each journey starts with a single step so be proud of each step you take toward your weight loss goal.

"Don't wait until you reach your goal to be proud of yourself.
Be proud of each step you take toward reaching that goal."

So today let make a little step in the right direction and keep take lots of little steps until we reach our goals. Put all your focus on your daily small step and do it to the best of your ability and do this every day and all of a sudden you will be at your weight loss goal.

The best example of this is from tennis, each player are told to focus 100% on winning each point. Do this and each game, set and match will take care of themselves. It is so true, the good player don't get distracted by the bigger picture they just concentrate on what they can do here and now and let every thing else take care of it's self from this point of power.

One thing you could do from your point of power is get our 3 FREE ebooks and our eNewsletters

Take care
Mindful Mark

The Power Is Now

I hope you find this image as motivational as I did when I first saw it. For me it says The Power Is Now. You can only action change from this moment, not from the past and not from the future.

So why not do a meditation where you imagine yourself in a years time looking back to you at this moment in time. What would the you in a years time tell you to do right now?

It is a different way to think but can really help you get fantatstic weight loss results.

Take care and speak soon.
Mindful Mark

p.s If you need motivation whilst on the go you can get great weight loss tips direct to your mobile phone.

Affirmations for Motivation and Change

Below are 10 affirmations to get you empowered about your weight loss. If you connect with any of the below affirmations why not write them down 10 times and repeat it over and over until it becomes your belief.

1. I am the architect of my life; I build its foundation and choose its contents.
2. My body is healthy; my mind is brilliant; my soul is tranquil.
3. I possess the qualities needed to be extremely successful
4. My ability to conquer my challenges is limitless; my potential to succeed is infinite.
5. My thoughts are filled with positivity and my life is plentiful with prosperity.
6. Today, I abandon my old habits and take up new, more positive ones.
7. Everything that is happening now is happening for my ultimate good.
8. My future is an ideal projection of what I envision now.
9. I radiate beauty, charm, and grace.
10. My obstacles are moving out of my way; my path is carved towards greatness.

We found these 10 affirmations on the huffington post website they have 25 more affirmations which you can check out if you wish.

Take care and speak soon.

Mindful Mark

Zen Weight Loss Tips - Part 4

Hello welcome to our final part of Zen Weight Loss Tips.

Create a routine for what you eat – for a month, do not think of food as something to be enjoyed, think of it as fuel.

All I can say to this is Eat to live rather than Live to eat.

Take the stairs. Walk or bike ride that short distance instead of driving.

Such good advice look in to way we can do more day to day natural movement.

Everything in moderation. If you really want French fries and a hamburger, or ice cream, or a cookie… it’s OK to indulge a little occasionally. Key word is occasionally. Better to indulge a little, than to binge later.

This is so true what ever you may deny you body it may crave it. Moderation is the key but keep adding in the healthy stuff to your food routine and you will great, to learn more about this visit this post.


If you would like to learn more you can check out the other parts in this series:
Zen Weight Loss Tips - Part 1
Zen Weight Loss Tips - Part 2
Zen Weight Loss Tips - Part 3

You can also visit zenhabits.net to learn more about all of these tips.

Take Care and Speak Soon.
Mindful Mark

Zen Weight Loss Tips - Part 3

Welcome the third part of Zen Weight Loss Tips we hope you are find this series of post helpful.

This section focuses on Healthy eating.

Water water water. It kick-starts your metabolism. Stop drinking soda.

This is such great advice, I think I read somewhere that we are made up of 90% water so drinking it can only be a good thing. Also check out this post which explains what fizzy drinks does to your body it may stop you drinking them, like it did me.

Be mindful of what you are eating. Keep a food journal or diary. Seeing it in writing always gives it weight and helps reveal patterns or triggers.

Eating consciously is a fantastic way to lose weight, with no distractions you can listen to when you are full. Learn how to eat consciously from this post.

 Eat mostly raw fruits, veggies and nuts.

Such a great tip which we at Mind Body Weight Loss love and have a post called 'Eat Less CRAP, Eat More FOOD' which explains more

Cut out sugar.

In the documentary 'Hungry for Change' sugar was compared to cocaine because the sugar plant like the coca plant is good for you. It is just the refining of both products which make them harmful to us as living beings.  Also check out the post title 'Sugar and Obesity' which also has an interesting excerpt from a radio show which explain Sugar and its effect on your body further.

Positive change is easier than negative change. Instead of thinking of foods that are “bad” and that you feel like you need to cut out, think about all the new recipes and foods you will get to try if you start experimenting with more vegetables, more beans, more spices, etc.

Positive change is so much better which why like the Zen Weight Loss Tip above we feel that adding and focusing on healthier foods is a much better way to lose weight. As this blog post called 'Best Weight Loss Tip, Ever! ' helps demonstrate.

If you would like to learn more you can check out the other parts in this series:
Zen Weight Loss Tips - Part 1
Zen Weight Loss Tips - Part 2
Zen Weight Loss Tips - Part 4

Take care and speak soon.
Mindful Mark

Keys to Unlock Your Weight Loss

Please listen to this audio below sharing some keys to unlock your weight loss.



It shares different ways which can have a huge impact of the way you could lose weight. If you would prefer to read the transcript, you can do so at the Mind Body Weight Loss website.

Take care.

from
Mindful Mark

Weight Loss Mental Strategies

The Weight Loss Mental Strategies can help you move towards your weight loss goals, They were developed by Pamela Peeke, MD for her book 'Fit to Live'.

Picture Yourself Thin.

As Dr Peeke says "To break old habits, you need to see yourself in a positive light,"

This is a great strategy and over on our website we have a fantastic tool to help with this which lets you upload a picture of yourself and adapt the image so you can look at your ideal weight. This is a great tool to help you visualise yourself thin, why not give it a go.

Have Realistic Expectations.

One great suggestion here is to have a goal to aim for Dr Peeke suggests looking 12 months ahead and ask yourself how much you would like to have lost. If the answer is 12lbs you then know you have to lose 1lb a month. You then analyse to see if this is realistic.

Set Small Goals.

A little like the goal above break it in to small steps, one small goal could be to add an extra piece of healthy food to each days food routine. This would then fit in with what we at Mind Body Weight Loss feel is the Best Weight Loss Tip Ever!

Cynthia Sass, MS from the American Dietetic Association states: "We all know that change is hard and it is especially difficult if you try to make too many changes, so start small and gradually make lifestyle improvements"

Get Support.

One way you can do this is to sign up to our eNewsletter to receive 3 Free eBooks and regular weight loss news and tips from Can Do Craig and Mindful Mark your Mind Body Weight Loss Support Team. Just an idea ;-)

Ditch Old Habits.

In our post about NLP and how it can help, it was concluded that NLP is a fantastic tool at helping us change our habits. You can learn more in our post called: 'Now NLP Helps Weight Loss'

You can also learn more about Mental strategies in Dr Pamelas book called 'Fit to Live' or you can look at the WebMD site for more on Weight Loss Strategies.

We hope you found this post helpful.

Kind regards
Mindful Mark

How NLP Helps Weight Loss

This post help you learn how NLP helps with Weight Loss. Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) was developed as tool that any one can use to help the get their mind in shape for new patterns and behaviours. It was created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970 who realised that if one person can acheive something a model can be created for somebody else to achieve the same goal. NLP helps people to do this by understanding each persons best style of communication, either Auditory, Kinesthetic and Visual. This way NLP can help remove limiting beliefs and help you develop new behaviours that help you lose weight.

Please listen to this audio for which can be helpful in aiding your understand further.


If you are interested in NLP and would like further information on products that use and can help you lose weight you checkout ‘The Weight Loss Attitude‘ uses NLP  and ‘Weight Loss Hypnosis Pro‘ which uses some NLP techniques along with Hypnosis.

Take Care and Speak Soon
Mindful Mark

Quote that Shows The Importance of Food

Following on from the post on the 'Importance of Food' I have just found this quote which helps demonstrate it further.

"Homicide is 0.8% of deaths. Diet-related death is over 60%. But no one talks about it."
Jamie Oliver Click to Tweet

So as we have said before, by eating the correct food and diet we can extend our life and spend more time with the ones we love. We can do this by following some of the tips from food expert Michael Pollan. The best part of eating healthy to extend our life is that we lose weight as a side benefit. It is abit of a Win-Win if you ask me.

Speak soon
Can Do Craig

Emotions and Weight Loss Technique

As we found out in our post Emotions and Weight Loss, Psychologists believe that emotion is the biggest block to losing weight. With this in mind Michael J Hadfield, in his book Lose Weight Without Diets, shares a great technique to start understand how your emotions are affecting you achieving your weight loss goals. You just need to get a notebook to record your feelings. This is how he suggests you do it:

Whenever you have the desire to eat when it is not mealtime…

• Make a note of what you are feeling on a scale
• 0…1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10
• And how bad, or good, it is.
• Then eat whatever you want
• 10 minutes later check how you feel
• Bloated…uncomfortable…not nice full…nice full…comfortable…nothing…empty

First of all just begin to notice whatever feelings or emotions are present whenever you get the urge to eat – especially when you are planning to snack and going through that mental should I, shouldn’t I, which we all know is going to end with you giving in to the urge, so why not save yourself the hassle and just eat.

Please let us know how you get on with this technique as we believe it has great potential in you achieving your Mind Body Weight Loss.

Kind regards

Mindful Mark

Behaviours That Stop You Losing Weight

David Meine a qualified hypnotherapist and author of 'Think: Use Your Mind to Shrink Your Waistline' believes there are 10 behaviors that keep people from losing weight and/or getting healthy.

1. Not consistently getting a good night’s sleep
2. Not dealing with stress appropriately
3. Not being able to visualize having your ideal body shape
4. Allowing sabotage from yourself and others
5. Not drinking enough water
6. Eating too infrequently
7. Eating quickly
8. Eating until (or past) full
9. Eating and drinking too much sugar
10. Lacking the motivation to create a healthy body shape through consistent exercise.

These are really helpful suggestions for behaviours to change and we have various post on host you can change these behaviours. By clicking the links above you can see our post which will help you change the behaviour and work towards your weight loss goal.

Take care and speak soon.

Mindful Mark

Guilt and Weight Loss

Guilt and weight loss are strongly linked because diets are designed to encourage this feeling. Listen to the audio above or read the transcript on our MindBodyWeightLoss.info website to learn.

Diets do not work because they ask you to take away and deny yourself something you like, so when you have the 'thing' which you should not eat you feel guilty. This 'Weight Loss and Guilt Audio' helps demonstrate what we can do instead, how guilt is not good for us and what we should do instead.

Guilt is one of the most pointless feelings ever as we are looking back and wishing we could change an event, which we all know is impossible. With this is mind, guilt is destructive and keeps us stuck in suffering and pain. There is another way which is suggested by Buddhists, the experts on ending suffering and we discuss this in the above audio.

We would love to hear your views on this post.

Take care and speak soon.

Mindful Mark

Thinking That Will Make You Thinner - Part 2

Lets look at some more ways that we can adjust our thinking to make us thinner.

1. What is the best alternative I can come up with, right now?

This works because it come from a point of acceptance of where we are right now and from here we can work out the best journey to our destination because we know our starting point.

2. I will NOT let chocolate determine my self-esteem.

You are perfect as you are, this is important to realise. There are just some behaviour we may need to change, like the amount of chocolate. This is a huge difference and a fantastic way to move forward. Check out our post on Love and Acceptance to learn more

3. My husband is 6’1″ and I am 5’3″ – WHY do I think I could or should eat what he eats?

A useful perspective to use here is to the Eat to Live rather than Live to Eat. We should try and consume the correct amount to keep us at our most healthy enabling us to live a longer life with our family and friends.

4. Buffets are intended for you to have choices, not to eat the whole thing!

So true, the all you can eat buffet mentality is dangerous because of the reasons I mention in point 3. We at Mind Body Weight Loss have discussed this in previous posts called: Hara Hachi Bu - Eat until 80% full

We hope you found this second part of how 'Thinking That Will Make You Thinner' helpful please checkout other in this series:

Thinking That Will Make You Thinner - Part 1
Thinking That Will Make You Thinner - Part 3
Thinking That Will Make You Thinner - Part 4

Take care and speak soon.

Mindful Mark

The source of these thoughts for weight loss come from our friends at conquersugarcravings.com.

Love and Acceptance for Weight Loss

I intended to write a whole section on why love and acceptance for weight loss is important when I searched for an image to support the post I found the image above, which is a really nice summary.

"Love means that you accept a person with all their failures, stupidities, ugly points, and nonetheless you see perfection in imperfection itself."
Zizek

I believe that the person is perfect and that it is some of our behaviours which are imperfect, but luckily for we can change behaviours but we can not change us as whole. I am a very strong believer that our behaviours and us, as a person, are very different things. Lets explain this further we could say to a child that they are silly, or we can say that the child behaved in silly way. The last statement enables the child to love them self as whole but change the silly behaviour.

"Love the person, Dislike the behavior" 

This quote is so powerful and I believe that you as a person is whole perfect and complete and can love and accept yourself in the fullest. And seeing as we spend 24 hours every day with our self loving and accepting our self exactly as we are makes sense.

At this point if you have behaviours you dislike, be grateful and thankful for them for getting you to this point. A point where you love and accept yourself enough to making yourself the best you can be by changing your behaviours. In Buddhism they do not have a word for guilt, they see guilt as pointless. Love and accept that something in the past was done incorrectly but pledge with love, acceptance and kindness to yourself that in the future you would do it (behave) differently. Can you see the difference? Guilt is pointless it is just a way to beat ourselves up and stay stuck in the past. Loving and Accepting exactly where you are gives you a base to adapt your behaviour to make the future exactly as you would like it to be. The power is in the now.

So I love and accept you exactly as you are are, and now I hope you do too. By accepting yourself as you are now gives you a fantastic base to work from to lose weight

Kind regards

Mindful Mark

p.s If you would like to learn more way to love and accept yourself please read 'You can heal your life' by Louise L Hay

Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 5

This final section of Mind Techniques for Weight Loss series focuses on Meditation and Visulaisation and how it can help you lose weight.

1 Imagine yourself eating like you should be. The more you imagine it, the more likely it will become reality.

Picturing the healthiest food and imagining eating it can have a positive effect on your body and mind and can encourage you to eat this food in real life.

2 Picture yourself thin. If you believe that you can and will be thin, then you give yourself the motivation and drive to actually make it happen.

By imagining yourself going from you current weight to your ideal weight sends a great message to your body of your goal, you are then much more likely to achieve your desired weight.

3 Think about activities you’ll do when you’re thin. If you’re too overweight to do things you love right now, picture yourself doing those things as the new, thinner you.

This is great forward planning and you could even start pacing yourself toward this activity.

4 Relax. You can’t take control over your thoughts and your mind if you’re stressed out and distracted. Simply relax and let go the problems of the day.

One good way to do this is to imagine placing all your stresses on to flying saucer about to leave earth and never to return. Really imagine this scenario right the way through to it taking off and going out of sight.

5 Picture yourself wearing something you’ve always wanted to wear. A big reason many people want to lose weight is to fit into the clothes and style that they love and admire. Get a mental picture of how you’ll look sporting something you’ve always wanted to wear to give you some motivation.

Start this by imagining to look at yourself in the mirror as you now watch as you become your ideal weight. Become aware of your feelings as you leave the house to walk to purchase this piece of clothing. Notice your confidence as you get to shop and try it on and then go to checkout and purchase it and go home and put it away ready to where it. Then finally imagine how you feel wearing it.

This visualisation/meditation is fantastic way to add to you motivation.

6 Imagine that you love to exercise. Rely on the power of imagination to help give yourself the initiative you need to get fit and in shape.

There is evidence to support that imagining exercise can be as effective as actually doing it. However if you are going to imagine 20 sit ups you just as well do them.

7 Don’t let negative thoughts interfere. It’s easy to think negative thoughts about yourself when you’re tackling a big and difficult obstacle like losing weight, but you have to make sure to keep these kinds of thoughts out during your meditation. Replace them with happy, supportive ones instead.

The quote of 'it doesn't matter how thin you slice it, everything has two sides' means that if you have a negative thought FLIP it to look at the other side and examine the positive angle, explore it and ask yourself why not follow the positive.

8 Kick all unhealthy habits and foods out of visualization. Don’t let your mental fantasies include unhealthy foods and behaviors. You might really crave them but the purpose is to retrain your mind to let them go.

Imagine anything unhealthy just disappearing from around you and as more and more healthy food takes over your imagination, notice how you are losing weight. This is a fantastic way a aligning your mind in to associating eating healthy and losing weight.

9 Breathe deeply and calm yourself. Once you’re calm, relaxed, and in control of your mind and body, you’ll be able to start thinking clearly about who and where you want to be.
Source - totallyzen.com

A great tip for this is to imagine your stomach is a balloon and as you taking in deep breaths your chest rise and as you continue to breath in your stomach rises like a balloon and you breath out your stomach go down followed by your chest really take notice of the rising and falling and you take 10 deep breaths.

We hope you have found this series of Mind Techniques for Weight Loss helpful in you achieving your weight loss goal. If you have not already, why not sign up for our eNewsletter to receive free gift, exciting offers and lots of weight loss information.


Read more in this series:
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 1
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 2
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 3
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 4

Mindful Weight Loss Tips

Mindfulness is fantastic ways to enjoy life in the moment and extend can help you lose weight here are some tips I have found recently which I would like to share with you:

Eat mindfully. Turn off the TV, put away the computer and mobile devices, even put away the book or newspaper. If you eat with any of these things (most people do), eating without them will seem boring. And yet, unless you do this, you are not truly appreciating your food. I like eating my oats (with nuts and berries — see my diet) mindfully, paying attention to each bite. It makes the food taste better, and I eat slowly and with gratefulness.
Leo Babauta

As you know we at Mind Body Weight Loss we love mindful and conscious eating and I love the way it is explained in the above quote.

Wash your bowl. When you’re done eating, wash your dish immediately. Do it while paying full attention to your washing, to the water and suds.
Leo Babauta

This extends upon the mindful eating and can continue in to the washing up, the process of mindfulness can also take place in the purchasing and preparing of the food with thanks for the people who worked to get the food to you.

Block one or more senses. Eat blindfolded, wear earplugs, shower with your eyes closed.
litemind.com

This one sounds like a different way to fully to experience the food you are eating because when one sense is muted the other become more aware and can raise your mindfulness consciousness of the food you are eating.

Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 4

These Mind Techniques for Weight Loss look at food and our relationship to it.

1. Think yourself out of bad habits. Bad habits with food don’t have to take down your weight loss goals. Instead, use the power of your mind to fight these bad habits. It will take some doing but you can overcome them.

The best two ways we can think of to help you out of bad habits are: 1 - Positive affirmations and 2 - Start adding more good habits whilst doing the bad habit until the bad is overpowered by the good habit.

2. Look at food differently. Food isn’t your enemy or your friend — it’s neutral. Learn to look at food as a source of nourishment rather than a reward or a way to deal with emotions.

Probably best summed up as 'Eat to Live' rather than 'Live to Eat', we can see food as our friend because without food and nutrients we will die. So even unhealthy food will keep us alive longer than no food at all. Though unhealthy food will not keep you alive as long as healthy food.

3. Picture what food is doing for your body. When you look at what you’re eating, picture what that food can do for your body and how the nutrients will help you feel.

Good point imagine and expect the food you are eating will benefit you in the way it suggests. (Please note if it does not suggest health benefits then the food probably does not have any.

4. Allow yourself to eat when you’re hungry. Losing weight should never mean starving yourself. Listen to your body and feed yourself when your body tells you it’s hungry. Just make sure it’s actually hunger and not boredom or thirst you’re giving into. Likewise, stop eating when you are full.

Listen to your body and know the difference between hunger and emotions. Your body communicates to you, if you listen it will guide you in the best direction for the healthiest life. Let me extend on a couple of examples which back this up. When pregnant women get odd cravings the food they crave normally contain the nutrients they are lacking. The next example is of a friend who has low iron, when she craves spinach and chocolate (both high in iron), she checks her iron levels, every time check get this craving she now knows because she listens. So listen to your body, it will guide you.

5. Eat foods you crave. You can have foods you crave while you’re trying to lose weight if you can do so in moderation. Keeping things totally off limits could cause you to binge.

Point 4 is similar to 5, however this point does highlight that totally avoiding things you like is the wrong way to go because you and your mind will focus on it more.

6. Be conscious. Always be aware of what you’re eating. Eating mindlessly while watching TV can lead to a lot of unwanted and unneeded calories.
Source - totallyzen.com

We at Mind Body Weight Loss love the concept of mindful or conscious eating it just makes so much sense to focus on and appreciate your food. Two Posts we have done on this recently are: 'How to Eat Consciously' and 'The Five Contemplations While Eating'.

If you have not already done so, please sign up to eNewsletter for some fantastic Free Weight Loss Goodies, Information, Advice and Tips.

Read more in this series:
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 1
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 2
Mind Techniques for Weight Loss - Part 3

Blue Plate Weight Loss Tip

Studies have shown that eating of a blue plate encourages you to eat less.

In one study participants were placed in different colored rooms to eat. In the blue-colored room they ate over 30 percent fewer calories. In another study blue food coloring was added to food and resulted in fewer calories consumed
Foodtrainer^TM

This psychology is also use against us to make us eat more as the quote below shows.

"Ever wonder why McDonald’s color scheme is yellow and red? “We are naturally drawn to red, yellow and orange in our dining area or restaurants because psychologically it stimulates us to want to eat"
ivillage.com

Interestingly Orange is the complete opposite colour on the color will to blue.

One of the suggestions why it is felt that blue encourages us to eat less is that in nature, other than blueberries, there are very few natural blue food which are good for us. Some are even poisonous so through evolution we have learnt to consume less blue food.

Mindful Mark

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.

Thank you for reading this post, if you liked it and would like more information form us at Mind Body Weight Loss please fill in the form at the top right of this page to receive offers, the latest new and other great weight loss goodies.

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