Your body follows your mind, its true!!!!! Whatever you think or talk about on a regular basis becomes your reality. One of the most basic psychological rules in life is 'you always get more of what you focus on,' so if you are constantly thinking and talking about how overweight you are or the size of your thighs or stomach this not only reinforces the image you have of yourself being fat, it tends to leave you feeling helpless, hopeless and unmotivated.
When you redirect your focus exclusively on to what you want a slim, fit, healthy body you are sending a message to your subconscious mind to find and explore every possible opportunity to move towards your goal. By getting clear on what you want, thinking, speaking and imagining exactly what it is you want for yourself, you are beginning the process of training your mind and body to give it to you.
The mind and body are intimately linked and whatever we think about ourselves becomes manifested in our outer form (the body). We were usually taught early on in life to, "Do unto others as you would have done unto you." It is a pity however we were not taught an even more important 'rule', "Do unto yourself as you would have others do unto you." What sort of things are you saying to yourself on a daily basis? Are you constantly criticizing yourself, calling yourself fat, disgusting or ugly or do you use even worse phrases to describe yourself?
If anyone else called us the names we call ourselves we would be up in arms and never want to see them again but we think its all right to do it to ourselves. We think our thoughts don't count but that is where we are wrong, our thoughts about ourselves are creating our reality here and now. Until we realize that criticizing ourselves for being fat and overeating is only holding us in the pattern and that there are healthy alternatives to motivating ourselves to lose weight we will just perpetuate the cycle. When we criticize ourselves we feel bad and then we attempt to stuff down the self-loathing with food creating more feelings of self-loathing and the cycle goes on and on.
If you find yourself eating and eating without feeling full you can be sure you are suffering from emotional hunger. What you need to do is change your feelings. When you are hungry for good feelings no amount of food will do the trick. Regardless of its specific manifestations, the feelings that underlie emotional hunger invariably come down to one thing, a secret many people carry with them throughout their lives: Feelings of self hatred, hopelessness, helplessness, worthless and unloved.
People tend to treat us exactly the way we treat ourselves. We've all heard the phrase, "No-one will love you if you don't love yourself," yet we continue to look outside of ourselves for validation, love, appreciation and protection while forgetting that we aren't giving these things to ourselves. Have you ever said anything nice to any part of your body? If there is a part of your body that you like and constantly praise, it may even be your hair or your nails you can be sure that particular thing always looks good. Make friends with your body right now treat yourself as you would want other to treat you, start now to be kind to yourself.
Think back to a time when you lost weight in the past and remember how you talked to yourself then. When the diet seemed to be working and the weight started to fall off you were probably saying things like, "Yes this is working, I'm losing weight - great." People started to compliment you and you felt wonderful. Perhaps you were saying to yourself, "I can do this, this is fantastic." Then at some point, perhaps when you hadn't lost any weight, or very little, for a week or two you started to waver and to focus on not losing weight, or even on putting it on again. At this point, when your thoughts and words changed, your diet was lost and you went straight back to square one or even worse, ended up putting on even more weight than before.
Start from today to look in the mirror and compliment yourself. Below is a list of affirmations you can use. At first it will seem as if it is all lies, but keep it up and your body will respond. When we first start to say affirmations our mind tends to argue with us, if for instance we say, "My thighs are so much slimmer today," we often get a little voice in the back of our minds saying,"Oh no they aren't," so to counteract this all the affirmations begin with 'I choose to believe' as the mind cannot argue with this.
I choose to believe that ..
I am beautiful just as I am
Every day I am slimmer than yesterday
I am losing weight quickly and easily
I am my ideal weight of ..
I am in control of my eating
I am eating smaller portions
I am eating and enjoying healthier food
Every day my thighs become slimmer
Every day my stomach becomes flatter
Now you can make up some affirmations of your own, just remember to make them present tense and they must describe what you actually want.
If you are intrigued, fascinated or just slightly curious about my approach to weight loss, and would like to know more log on to my website www.loseweight-feelgreat.org.uk and subscribe to a free newsletter.
Christine Wesson, contact: christine@loseweight-feelgreat.org.uk