How old were you when obsession or problems with food began? What is your eariest negative memory about food? Asking these questions will help you get clear on these issues! Pay attention to the ansawers, accept them as misunderceptions and mistakes and let them go. Letting go could take minutes, a few days or more. If issues resurface, accept them and make an effort to really forgive yourself and others who accidently assisted you to acquire bad food habits.
Next step towards losing unwanted weight is to find a really stimulating and positive focus. If you focus on the words “weight” and “loss” well then it’s no wonder you keep dredging up bad feelings. Instead of placing your focus on “what you do not want” – which is Weight! Place your focus upon your positive goal / outcome.
Say; “I want to feel slim and fantastic” or “I’m going to change my ways so I can become the super fit and super healthy person I really am.” Now you are ready to move towards a beneficial feeling / goal / outcome, rather than constantly trying to escape a feeling you do not like. Once you have found your positive goal, picture it in your mind at every possible opportunity.
Keep stimulating pictures, quotes or praises from friends and family in your room, in your journal or upon your walls!
Next step is to feel good about yourself. If you find yourself being very critical then stop a moment, breathe deep and find and hold a more positive thought. Keep in mind that things take a little time. You did not develop “bad habits” overnight, so it stands to reason you will also not develop “good habits” overnight.
Do not focus on how long something will take, focus instead on taking one day at a time. When you wake in the morning write down your good intentions for the day, regarding positive thinking, meals you can prepare, simple exercise you can adopt. Keeping a journal is very important and incredibly useful. Every evening again, bring out your journal and write down all your little successes of the day. This journal can be an important motivating factor. This way you can avoid a BIG mistake that most people make. That mistake lies in judging your results, one of two ways. The people most likely to succeed and achieve their goals continuously judge their results by where they started! The people most likely to fail however judge their results against some kind of Ideal. Meaning; Group 1 looks at their new positive thoughts and appreciates that change, or they look at their new efforts to exercise and they see and appreciate that change. Group 2 on the other hand simply says, look at me, I have made efforts and I still do not look like Claudia Schiffer / Brad Pitt.
Group 1 is hopeful and happy and feeling good about the small things. Group 2 is discouraged and dissapointed (because they are not looking at what they have achieved they are looking at what they have not).
Stay in Group 1. For every little thing, give yourself a pat on the back. Write it down. Then if you find yourself at some point feeling frustrated you can look back and remind yourself that you were on the bottom rung of the health ladder and now slowly but surely you are climbing in the right direction.
Feeling good is the key to success in any area. How to feel good? That is simple. Appreciation. Appreciate yourself. Appreciate what you already have. Appreciate that your legs are working, your heart beating, your lungs pumping, your feet itching. Love your body Now, because no matter how much weight is on or off, its still the same body. Its the only one you’ve got!
Liking and loving yourself will motivate you to treat your body with care and respect. Once you develop a healthy love for yourself, you will feel good. Feeling good will lead you to eating good, eating good will lead you to feeling energetic. Feeling energetic will lead you to loving exercise and exercising will lead you to feeling Great! Feeling great will lead you to supreme health and supreme health will lead you to feeling fantastic … and so on.
Once you throw out bad habits and gain new healthy ones, the new healthy ones will be as easy to follow as the bad ones, with one huge bonus, instead of feeling bad and stuck, you will feel free and amazing. Remember all habits good and bad are caused by repetition.
“The person with a fixed goal, a clear picture of his desire, or an ideal always before him, causes it, through repetition, to be buried deeply in his subconscious mind and is thus enabled, thanks to its generative and sustaining power, to realize his goal in a minimum of time and with a minimum of effort. Just pursue the thought unceasingly. Step by step you will achieve realization, for all your faculties and powers become directed to that end. ”
Claude M. Bristol