Spirituality and Self Help

The psychological aspect

There are hundreds of books about weight loss and dozens of diets, and yet people keep searching for that ultimate diet. The one that will actually work. The problem with diets is that they focus only on the physical aspect and you can’t diet forever. Once you quit you gain the weight back and often even more than before.

So what works? The answer is changing your life style. It works because it’s permanent. Before changing your life style it’s important to understand why you chose it in the first place. I’ll give you a couple examples:

1 Mary was molested when she was a teenager and ever since she thought that being attractive is dangerous and therefore she gained weight to protect herself. Usually such thoughts are unconscious meaning she isn’t even aware she thinks them. To change her behavior she will need to change her beliefs.

2 When John was little his mom offered him cookies every time he felt sad. With time John linked pleasure to eating and ate every time he felt sad or depressed to comfort himself, often regardless of his actual hunger. In many similar cases a vicious cycle is created. People feel bad because they’re obese so they eat to feel better; and the cycle is perpetuated.

These examples illustrate that it’s vital to understand the psychological reasons in order to successfully lose weight. It’s also important to understand your rules and their hierarchy.

Each of us has rules like I have to be nice to people, or I should clean the apartment once a week. The difference between should and have to rules are that should are rules that you prefer to do but you don’t link pain to not doing them, and have to are rules that you feel obligated to do because otherwise you’ll feel pain.

One of the differences between obese and slim people are their rules. often slim people have a big list of I have to rules like: I have to exercise four times in a week, I have to eat healthy, I can’t smoke, I can’t use drugs, etc and a short list of I should rules.

Obese people on the other hand have a long list of I should rules: I should exercise,eat healthy and so on, and a short list of I have to rules like: I have to eat, sleep eight hours, and so on. If you want to lose weight you have to make it a priority, change your I should to I have to rules. This will not mean that you’ll do something against your will, it just means that you’ll make it a high priority because you’ll understand that the current condition can’t last.

Using NLP to lose weight

Lets say you have two conflicting parts. A part that wants to lose weight, we’ll call it part X and a part that sabotages part X, we’ll call it part Y. What we want to do is to establish a communication between the parts and to reach a mutual agreement.

The following techniques are from a book called Reframing : neuro-linguistic programming and the transformation of meaning by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.After reading them choose the appropriate one and do it. It won’t help if you just read it.

These techniques include the term reframing which I want to explain first: Just like when you change the frame of a picture and suddenly everything fits and the picture looks great, Reframing in NLP means to view a situation from a different perspective. This is done to to help accept the situation and deal with it better.

Negotiating between parts

1) Ask the part that is being interrupted (part X) the following questions:

a) What is your positive function?

b) Which part(s) is (are) interrupting you? (part Y)

2) Ask the same questions of part Y:

a) What is your positive function?

b) Does X ever interfere with your function?

3) If both parts interrupt each other at times, you are now ready to
negotiate an agreement. (If not, this model is not appropriate, so
switch to another reframing model. If Y interferes with X, but X
doesn’t interfere with Y, six-step reframing with Y may be most
appropriate.)

a) Ask Y if its function is important enough that Y would be willing
to not interrupt X so that it could receive the same treatment in return.

b) Ask X if it was not interrupted by Y, would it be willing to not interrupt Y?

4) Ask each part if it will actually agree to do the above for a specified
amount of time. If either part becomes dissatisfied for any reason, it
is to signal the person that there is a need to renegotiate.

5) Ecological check: “Are there any other parts involved in this?” “Are
there any other parts that interrupt this part, or that utilize these
interruptions?” If so, renegotiate.

Six Step Reframing

1) Identify the pattern (X) to be changed. “I want to stop X’ing but I
can’t,” or “I want to Y, but something stops me.”

2) Establish communication with the part responsible for the pattern.

a) “Will the part of me that makes me X communicate with me in
consciousness?” Pay attention to any feelings, images, or sounds that occur in response to asking that question internally.

b) Establish the “yes/no” meaning of the signal. Have it increase in brightness, volume, or intensity for “yes,” and decrease for “no.”

3) Separate the behavior, pattern X, from the positive intention of the
part that is responsible for X. The unwanted behavior is only a way to achieve some positive function.

a) Ask the part that runs X “Would you be willing to let me know in consciousness what you are trying to do for me by Pattern X?”

b) If you get a “yes” response, ask the part to go ahead and communicate its intention. If you get a “no” response, proceed with
unconscious reframing, presupposing positive intention.

c) Is that intention acceptable to consciousness? Do you want to
have a part of you which fulfills that function?

d) Ask the part that runs X “If there were ways to accomplish your positive function that would work as well as, or better than X, would you be interested in trying them out?”

4) Access a creative part, and generate new behaviors to accomplish
the positive function.

a) Access experiences of creativity and anchor them, or ask “Are
you aware of a creative part of yourself?”

b) Have the part that runs X communicate its positive function to
the creative part, allow the creative part to generate more choices to accomplish that function, and have the part that used to run X select three choices that are at least as good or better than X. Have it give a “yes” signal each time it selects such an alternative.

5) Ask the part “Are you willing to take responsibility for using the
three new alternatives in the appropriate context?” This provides a
future-pace. In addition you can ask the part at the unconscious
level to identify the sensory cues that will trigger the new choices,
and to experience fully what it’s like to have those sensory cues
effortlessly and automatically bring on one of the new choices.

6) Ecological Check. “Is there any part of me that objects to any of the three new alternatives?” If there is a “yes” response, recycle to step 2 above.
The following videos will help you lose weight using hypnosis

The physical aspect

It’s important to understand that the changes I offer are for life, it’s not a diet. As you know changing your psychology isn’t enough. To lose weight you have to eat less calories than the body consumes. To do so you’ll have to do two things: cut back on your calories and exercise.

Eat healthy

The easiest way to cut back on your calories is to eat less fat. Don’t eat: butter, milk with high percentages of fat, gravy for salads. Eat: lean meat, lean chicken (without the skin) and vital fats like: avocado, salmon and almonds. Of course in the right amount.

Although controlling your calories is essential it’s not enough, it’s equally important to control your hormones. The hormones manage the body’s metabolism. Repressing the hormones that are responsible for fat accumulation will result in a large quantity of fats that can be burn in activity.

To effectively manage your hormones you need to manage your Carbohydrates, because consuming carbohydrates elevates the levels of insulin in the body. Insulin is a hormone that interferes with decomposition of fats. Not all the carbohydrates are the same. Simple carbohydrates like the ones in white bread, white rice, potatoes and some cereals elevate the insulin very fast and therefore should be avoided. On the other hand complex carbohydrates like the ones in whole wheat bread, oats, yam and beans should be in your daily menu.

Calories and hormones determine whether the nutrition will be used to build muscles or to build fat, While the number of meals during the day affects the general metabolism. Every time you eat the metabolism increases slightly. If you’ll eat six times in a day your metabolism will increase six times.

It’s a way to lose weight without eating less. It doesn’t mean that you need to eat more, on the contrary you will need to eat less in each meal and chew slowly because it takes approximately twenty minutes before the brain signals the body that your full.

Drink a lot of water. The following video explains more about the benefits of drinking a lot of water.

Exercise

Do aerobics (exercises for improving the body’s oxygen intake ). Aerobics include running, swimming, dancing, walking fast, yoga and so on. To produce a benefit, aerobic training must raise the heart rate (pulse) to the exerciser’s target level for at least 20 minutes and include at least three sessions a week.

Aerobics has three benefits: it improves your cardiovascular fitness, it burns calories and it influences your hormones. Aerobics elevates the norepinephrine hormone that helps burn fats. it’s best to do aerobics in the morning before eating breakfast for an hour max.

Do anaerobic exercise (exercise intense enough to trigger anaerobic metabolism). Anaerobic exercise includes: heavy weight-lifting, all types of sprints (running, biking, etc.), jumping rope, hill climbing, interval training, isometrics, or any rapid burst of hard exercise.

Besides making you stronger and improving your cardiovascular fitness it will improve your metabolism and stamina. To lose weight a good combination would be to do aerobics four times in a week and Anaerobic exercise twice in a week.

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