by Rena Greenberg
When people get serious about weight loss, the bottom line usually becomes getting that excess fat off NOW! Yesterday is not soon enough! The problem with this type of impatience is that it often leads to very counterproductive thinking—the exact same thinking that caused the overweight condition in the first place.
When our No. 1 priority is dropping the fat, our thinking becomes distorted at the most crucial times.
For instance, when we “accidentally” let ourselves become ravenously hungry or when our neighbor or coworker decides to surprise us with a homemade pie. In those moments, our intellect, along with our stated goals, go on pause and the old, default thinking that has preprogrammed us for the same ineffective results we’ve had thus far regarding weight takes over.
That robotic, fear-filled voice can gain control of us in a heartbeat. Worst of all, this familiar dialogue feels so right and true in the moment, but in reality it is nothing more than enemy thinking. Its convincing strategy can cause us to doubt everything we know to be true in that moment. It says things like:
- “You’ll always be fat. You might as well indulge today.”
- “You’ll get back on the diet tomorrow.”
- “You’ve already lost five pounds so you can ‘cheat’ a little.”
- “You look pretty good for your age. So what if you are fat?”
- “It’s not fair that you don’t get to eat that when everyone else does.”
- “How many calories/points could it be? I’ll just skip lunch to make up for it.”
- “I’m just a food addict. I can’t help myself.”
All these lies feel like rational statements in the moment, when we let our reactive, emotional, wounded self take center stage. Later when we “come to” and realize what we have done by indulging in foods that we swore we wouldn’t touch anymore, we are filled with deep regret and remorse.
Avoid the Potholes
Here’s the god news…when you fall into a pothole often enough you get to a point where you see it coming, in advance, and YOU CAN learn ways to avoid it without a big emotional drama.
Once toxic food is already on your tongue, it’s a little late to try to talk yourself into not eating it. Depending on the amount of sugar (including all sugar substitutes), fat, sodium and chemicals in any particular food, it can be like trying to stop a high-speed train in its tracks.
The time to gain control over your life and your eating habits is not when you are emotionally seduced by food, but rather when you can look at the food industry’s deceptive antics objectively and take steps not to succumb to the trap laid out for all of us, especially those who are the most susceptible: carb addicts and people with diabetic predispositions.
These steps are simple:
1) plan ahead
2) have healthy food with you at all times
3) choose only healthy foods you enjoy, so you never feel deprived
4) don’t treat yourself as if you are one a diet and eat less food than your body needs. (In other words: Don’t let yourself get hungry.)
Over and over, I have found that these four keys are critical for long-term success. One final step you can take is using self-hypnosis on a daily basis to program your mind for victory by seeing yourself subconsciously as healthy, fit, happy, worthy, at your ideal weight, and in control of your life and your eating habits. Don’t mentally replay your failures—instead, visualize your successes, with gratitude.
Stop Negative Self Talk
You may ruminate over an insult for years to come when someone criticizes your appearance or your intelligence. However, if someone lashed out and said, “You’re a banana!” no matter how harsh the tone, it would mean nothing to you. Why? Because the statement has nothing to latch onto inside of you. It didn’t push any of your buttons because you knew in every cell of your body that it’s a lie. Why can’t we do the same with other degrading remarks? Because they trigger a place within ourselves that believes them to be true. When you clear yourself of negativity, that negativity will no longer have a grip on you.
This has everything to do with our food choices. The reason people continuously believe the manipulative marketing tactics of many companies in the food industry is because at some level they are still controlled by negative, unproductive subconscious programming of the past.
We want to believe the promises about how happy we will be when we eat something and that we have “the right” to eat whatever we want, whenever we want because nothing is going to control us.
Even in the face of the living proof that our bodies are overweight and likely in an unhealthy condition, at some subconscious level we still want to believe that food—excess, processed, toxic food—can somehow fill the void that is part of our human condition.
If you have turned to food as a mechanism to numb and suppress your emotions and distract yourself from life’s challenges, then you probably actually believe on a conscious level what people constantly tell me, “I’m just a food addict,” “I just love to eat,” and “Food is my greatest pleasure.” But the real truth is that you have been programmed to have an unhealthy and ultimately very unsatisfying relationship with food.
Isn’t it time to cut your losses, let go of the past and realize that eating unhealthy food and obsessing about food daily is robbing you of your life force. It’s time to climb out of that pothole once and for all.
When the old voice wants to tell you that, “You deserve to eat that,” speak up with your Wise, Inner Knowing and say, “I deserve to be happy. I eat only when I am physically hungry. I prefer real, whole, clean, unprocessed food from the earth.
With conviction affirm to yourself, “I am in control of my life and my eating habits. My emotions move through me, like the weather, but they don’t control my choices. I am happy, healthy, strong and successful.” You can do it!
Rena Greenberg is the author of The Right Weigh: Six Steps to Permanent Weight Loss, which is used by over 100,000 People (Hay House Publishing) and The Craving Cure: Break the Hold Carbs and Sweets Have on Your Life (McGraw-Hill). She conducts weight loss seminars using hypnosis at hospitals throughout the country and has a private hypnosis practice specializing in gastric bypass hypnosis in Sarasota. She can be reached online at www.EasyWillpower.com or at 800-848-2822.