The Past
Nothing that has happened in your past can stop you from an amazing future. I know this sounds unbelievable but hear me out. No matter how many times you have tried to lose weight in the past, it does not mean you can’t lose your weight now! Your past failures have no control over your future successes. You can absolutely lose this weight! Your past does not determine your future. The past has no power over you unless you give it power. The only way you give your past power is by what you make your past mean about you now. If you make it mean that all your past efforts to lose weight have made you a failure, you have given your past power to make you feel like a failure.
So, what are you making your past weight loss attempts mean? Maybe, ‘I’ll never get to goal’, or ‘Something must be wrong with me’ or ‘I just love food too much to be thin’. Can you see how these thoughts about your past are holding you back? Your past is just a story you have in your mind. It is the thoughts we are having now that make us feel discouraged. If we don’t believe in ourselves, it’s because of what we are telling ourselves. Thoughts like, ‘I have quit so many times before, there is no way I could reach my goal’, or ‘I can’t stick with it long enough’ or ‘I can’t stop overeating’ keeps you overeating and quitting. Thinking about all the times you have quit in the past, only perpetuates more failure. Don’t use your past failures as an excuse to give up. You can change how you feel about all your past weight loss attempts just by changing how you think about them. For example, what if all those attempts made you stronger, more resilient, more determined, smarter, wiser, and more capable? You get to decide how your past defines you. You get to choose what you make your past mean. Look at your past. You get to decide whether your past weight loss attempts have made you stronger, or whether they have made you weaker. It’s your choice.
Make a list of all your thoughts and beliefs about your ability to lose weight. See what comes up. So many of these thoughts will feel true because you have been thinking them for so long. But that doesn’t make them true! Question each of those thoughts. Are they true? Are they helpful? Do they motivate you? Do they make you feel better? Do you want to keep thinking them? If not, stop thinking them! Choose to retell the story of your weight loss journey. Make yourself the hero, not the victim. ‘I have never given up trying to lose weight’. ‘I am a person who goes after their goals’.
Stop looking to where you have been and instead look to where you are going. Take the knowledge, the wisdom, the strength, the growth from your past and let go of the rest. Take only what serves you. Dare to believe amazing things about yourself. You don’t need anyone’s permission. You get to believe anything you want. You get to choose what you want to believe about yourself-regardless of your past! So, what do you want to believe? Your future is filled with possibilities! Don’t look at what’s possible from your past, focus on what’s possible from your future and go get it!
So, what are you making your past weight loss attempts mean? Maybe, ‘I’ll never get to goal’, or ‘Something must be wrong with me’ or ‘I just love food too much to be thin’. Can you see how these thoughts about your past are holding you back? Your past is just a story you have in your mind. It is the thoughts we are having now that make us feel discouraged. If we don’t believe in ourselves, it’s because of what we are telling ourselves. Thoughts like, ‘I have quit so many times before, there is no way I could reach my goal’, or ‘I can’t stick with it long enough’ or ‘I can’t stop overeating’ keeps you overeating and quitting. Thinking about all the times you have quit in the past, only perpetuates more failure. Don’t use your past failures as an excuse to give up. You can change how you feel about all your past weight loss attempts just by changing how you think about them. For example, what if all those attempts made you stronger, more resilient, more determined, smarter, wiser, and more capable? You get to decide how your past defines you. You get to choose what you make your past mean. Look at your past. You get to decide whether your past weight loss attempts have made you stronger, or whether they have made you weaker. It’s your choice.
Make a list of all your thoughts and beliefs about your ability to lose weight. See what comes up. So many of these thoughts will feel true because you have been thinking them for so long. But that doesn’t make them true! Question each of those thoughts. Are they true? Are they helpful? Do they motivate you? Do they make you feel better? Do you want to keep thinking them? If not, stop thinking them! Choose to retell the story of your weight loss journey. Make yourself the hero, not the victim. ‘I have never given up trying to lose weight’. ‘I am a person who goes after their goals’.
Stop looking to where you have been and instead look to where you are going. Take the knowledge, the wisdom, the strength, the growth from your past and let go of the rest. Take only what serves you. Dare to believe amazing things about yourself. You don’t need anyone’s permission. You get to believe anything you want. You get to choose what you want to believe about yourself-regardless of your past! So, what do you want to believe? Your future is filled with possibilities! Don’t look at what’s possible from your past, focus on what’s possible from your future and go get it!
Pain, Exhaustion and Stress
So often, we turn to food or alcohol or TV or social media to help us escape our pain or our exhaustion or our stress. We grab a snack, pour ourselves a glass of wine or lose ourselves on our phones, hoping to escape whatever negative emotion we are experiencing. In that moment, we truly believe that those things will make us feel better. And they do, but only for a few brief moments. Then in order to stay numb, we know we must continue to eat or to drink or to scroll. We forget that once the overeating or the overdrinking stops or the hours spent scrolling or channel surfing are over, that the negative emotion will return even stronger as well as all the consequences of our behaviors. We quickly start regretting all of it and soon find ourselves mentally beating ourselves up over it.
As humans, we try to avoid discomfort. We prefer to be happy and comfortable most of the time. So, it makes perfect sense that when an uncomfortable emotion arises, we look to escape or to avoid it. But numbing our negative emotions only increases the negative emotions we will experience. Yes, it is true we can escape a negative emotion temporarily, but that temporary escape comes at such at high cost to us--such as weight gain, indigestion, poor sleep, and hangovers.
Relief is never found in avoiding or numbing our negative emotions. True relief is found in allowing the pain or the negative emotion just to be there. Emotions are just vibrations in our bodies. They are not painful. They will not hurt us. The vibrations of certain emotions may be uncomfortable, but they are not unbearable. Emotions are simply a chemical release and a behavioral response in our bodies that typically only lasts about 90 seconds. Physical sensations like the tightening of your chest, the clenching of your jaw, or the tingling in your face will naturally rise, peak and then dissipate if you allow it. When you begin to experience a negative emotion, breathe. Get out of your head and go inside your body. Feel the vibration. Don’t rush out of it. Mentally describe it. Feel the vibration rise…peak… and then dissipate. Once the vibration has dissipated, notice that the emotion has passed through you and it is now over. The discomfort is no longer there so there is no need to escape or to numb it and there is no need to eat or to drink. If the emotion returns a few minutes later, go through this process again, allowing it each time.
Allowing your emotions to pass through you rather that trying to numb or avoid them, is a skill that will take some practice. And as you practice experiencing all of the vibrations your emotions have to offer, you will find that you no longer need to eat, or to drink or to scroll in order to avoid them.
As humans, we try to avoid discomfort. We prefer to be happy and comfortable most of the time. So, it makes perfect sense that when an uncomfortable emotion arises, we look to escape or to avoid it. But numbing our negative emotions only increases the negative emotions we will experience. Yes, it is true we can escape a negative emotion temporarily, but that temporary escape comes at such at high cost to us--such as weight gain, indigestion, poor sleep, and hangovers.
Relief is never found in avoiding or numbing our negative emotions. True relief is found in allowing the pain or the negative emotion just to be there. Emotions are just vibrations in our bodies. They are not painful. They will not hurt us. The vibrations of certain emotions may be uncomfortable, but they are not unbearable. Emotions are simply a chemical release and a behavioral response in our bodies that typically only lasts about 90 seconds. Physical sensations like the tightening of your chest, the clenching of your jaw, or the tingling in your face will naturally rise, peak and then dissipate if you allow it. When you begin to experience a negative emotion, breathe. Get out of your head and go inside your body. Feel the vibration. Don’t rush out of it. Mentally describe it. Feel the vibration rise…peak… and then dissipate. Once the vibration has dissipated, notice that the emotion has passed through you and it is now over. The discomfort is no longer there so there is no need to escape or to numb it and there is no need to eat or to drink. If the emotion returns a few minutes later, go through this process again, allowing it each time.
Allowing your emotions to pass through you rather that trying to numb or avoid them, is a skill that will take some practice. And as you practice experiencing all of the vibrations your emotions have to offer, you will find that you no longer need to eat, or to drink or to scroll in order to avoid them.
Desire
As humans, we all have desire. Desire for food, for sex, for money, for expensive things etc. But so many of us struggle because of our desire for food. We wonder why we can’t just eat whatever we want, whenever we want and stay thin. When we compare ourselves to our thin friends or coworkers, we feel like we want food so much more and so much more often. We beat ourselves up for not being more like them and we can’t understand why we are the way we are or how to want the food less. We know the reason we are overweight is because we overeat. So, we question ourselves, ‘Why can’t I stop overeating if I want to lose weight so badly??’ What is it about overeating that it seems like we can’t stop doing it? What causes us to overeat so much? It is our desire, our desire to eat whenever and whatever we want to in the moment. We have so much desire for food and it is that over desire for food makes us overeat.
So how do we reduce our desire for food so that we can stop overeating? Well, desire is just an emotion. And emotions are just vibrations in our bodies. So, what causes the emotion of desire? One of the main causes of desire is our thoughts. When we think thoughts like,’Oooo that cookie looks good!” or “I want that”, we create the feeling of desire in our bodies for that cookie. When we think, “I need a little something to take the edge off”, we create a feeling of desire for maybe a snack or a glass of wine. Even though it seems like our desire just happens to us, so much of our desire is caused by our thoughts. Can you think of any thoughts that you might think before you want to eat something? Maybe thoughts like, ‘I could use some of that’ or ‘I deserve that’ or ‘That will make me feel better’ or ‘Let’s go celebrate!’. Can you feel the desire in your body when you read those thoughts? You have just created desire with those thoughts. Begin to recognize that so much of your desire for food is created by the thoughts you think. This is where your awareness begins, and your power is. You can change your thoughts. You can find the thoughts that aren’t helping you and you can stop thinking them. Knowing that desire just doesn't happen to you and that it’s something you create by your thoughts, gives you your power back. You can recognize that you are not a victim of your over desire. Desire is just not ‘happening to you’. You can control your desire by your thoughts. For example, instead of thinking, ‘Oooo that looks delicious’, you could think, ‘Oh, that’s going to make me feel like crap later.’ Do you see how much less desire that thought causes? Another example is, ‘I want that‘, when a dessert catches your eye. You could also think, ‘I do want that, but I want to lose weight more.’ Again, can you feel the difference in the levels of desire between both of those thoughts? Same dessert, just different thoughts. So, start practicing becoming aware of your thoughts that are increasing your desire for food. Recognize that those thoughts make food hard to resist. Begin to create new thoughts that you can think instead and you will feel a dramatic drop in your desire to overeat.
So how do we reduce our desire for food so that we can stop overeating? Well, desire is just an emotion. And emotions are just vibrations in our bodies. So, what causes the emotion of desire? One of the main causes of desire is our thoughts. When we think thoughts like,’Oooo that cookie looks good!” or “I want that”, we create the feeling of desire in our bodies for that cookie. When we think, “I need a little something to take the edge off”, we create a feeling of desire for maybe a snack or a glass of wine. Even though it seems like our desire just happens to us, so much of our desire is caused by our thoughts. Can you think of any thoughts that you might think before you want to eat something? Maybe thoughts like, ‘I could use some of that’ or ‘I deserve that’ or ‘That will make me feel better’ or ‘Let’s go celebrate!’. Can you feel the desire in your body when you read those thoughts? You have just created desire with those thoughts. Begin to recognize that so much of your desire for food is created by the thoughts you think. This is where your awareness begins, and your power is. You can change your thoughts. You can find the thoughts that aren’t helping you and you can stop thinking them. Knowing that desire just doesn't happen to you and that it’s something you create by your thoughts, gives you your power back. You can recognize that you are not a victim of your over desire. Desire is just not ‘happening to you’. You can control your desire by your thoughts. For example, instead of thinking, ‘Oooo that looks delicious’, you could think, ‘Oh, that’s going to make me feel like crap later.’ Do you see how much less desire that thought causes? Another example is, ‘I want that‘, when a dessert catches your eye. You could also think, ‘I do want that, but I want to lose weight more.’ Again, can you feel the difference in the levels of desire between both of those thoughts? Same dessert, just different thoughts. So, start practicing becoming aware of your thoughts that are increasing your desire for food. Recognize that those thoughts make food hard to resist. Begin to create new thoughts that you can think instead and you will feel a dramatic drop in your desire to overeat.