Nirvana Diet

A Diet For the Mind

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Does being or feeling overweight sabotage your passion for sex and life?

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Woman with orange slicesNotice I said being or feeling, you may not actually be overweight, but you don’t feel like you are thin enough so you don’t feel sexy or like having sex. Research shows that your sex drive, sometimes called libido is related to your confidence levels. Libido is not just limited to sex it also relates to passion for life. Cindy Meston, Ph.D., and director of Sexual Psychophysiology at the University of Texas, determined that the more we compare ourselves to what the fashion world wants us to think is sexy, which is of course thin, the less attractive we feel. It is the comparing that has to go. I would also suggest that women have an unrealistic notion of how much they should weigh, and this sabotages not only your weight loss goals but also according to Dr. Meston’s research your confidence levels.

I think if we asked most guys, they would not think the thin body type is sexy. In fact this has been proven guys like an hour glass shape. It has to do with unconscious thoughts about reproduction and child bearing which persist well beyond the child bearing years. More importantly, I think you would find that more than body type, guys find confidence and an over feeling or being at ease with yourself and others to be sexier than being thin. That’s the problem, if being thin is the benchmark or touchstone for confidence we have it all wrong.

One thing you could do to remedy this is to start exercising. It turns out that exercise makes you not only feel better but gives you more confidence and energy which of course will make you feel sexier. Dr. Meston’s research supports this. According to her research, doing just twenty minutes of cardio in your target heart rate for burning fat increases your sex drive or libido by as much as 150 per cent.

So if you want to feel sexier, more confident and have a more exciting life, stop comparing yourself to a cultural ideal that is not even attractive to most men. Second I would start exercising. Once you do those two things, you will find you eat healthier. Finally being or feeling comfortable in your own skin is a mindset. When you look in the mirror… like what you see back. More than how we look it is the light we have, the energy with which we vibrate that people find attractive. If you want to get a jump start on your confidence, download the hypnosis MP3 I have on my webiste called Unlock Your Potential.

Does losing weight make you happier?

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fall-waterI think most people would think that losing weight makes you happier? The research shows it doesn’t in the long run. Losing weight, just like falling in love or getting a promotion creates a short term bump in happiness but after a while you return back to where you were. Could this be one reason why so many people regain their weight? One question I ask people I coach that is very enlightening is: what do you want by losing weight that you don’t already have? Or what are you hoping that losing weight will do for you? These powerful questions are what lead us to the unresolved issues that need to be worked on so that the weight loss is illusory.

What is also interesting is how much we compare ourselves to other people and how that affects our happiness levels. Nick Powdthavee who wrote the book The Happiness Equation, said: “it feels okay to be fat when our loves ones-or other people with whom we normally identify-are fat as well.” This I found to be very revealing. We live in a thin-obsessed culture. If we are comparing ourselves to celebrities and social expectations, we will be miserable. That is why I suggest you look at your weight goals differently. It’s not about losing weight. Weight gain is often a symptom for something else that is unresolved and the eating is a distraction for those unresolved issues. It is about feeling good. When we feel good emotionally and physically it’s easier to do what we need to do to stay at a healthy weight.

So I learned some other interesting things from The Happiness Equation that we can learn from.  Our capacity for happiness just like our weight has a set point to which we continually return. Happiness is a point of view, part of how we see the world. It’s similar to our personality.  That is perhaps what really needs to be worked with or else we continually fall back to the place we began. It is kind of like a catch 22: happier people tend to earn more, have more satisfying relationships and even better health. Albert Schweitzer so wisely said: ‘Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.’

I think the answer or the key lies in how we define happiness and how we go about attaining it. The best way I know to increase your happiness set point is to learn how to meditate. It actually is proven to grow new brain cells in the area of the brain that registers happiness. That is why I developed by new meditation program: Smart, Sexy and Sane…meditation made easy. The sooner you begin the better you will feel. Then it becomes easier to guess what…eat healthy and stay fit.

Six tips to improve your body and self- image so you can be happier and healthier

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smell-flowersLet’s face it, in this culture how much you weigh is as important as how much you earn. I am not saying I agree with this, but there are things you can do to boost your body and your self- image that might be the key to unlocking your inner power.

  1. Focus on how you feel not how much you weigh.  A negative body/self- image colors every aspect of your life. Research shows that long term successful weight loss requires you change the way you see yourself to keep your weight in check.  Your weight is not the only thing that defines you. When you eat in a healthy way and do some form of exercise daily you will feel better.
  2. “Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” This was said by Kahlil Gibran, an inspirational writer and philosopher. People respond to your inner light. So try cultivating inner beauty which has to do with making eye contact, seeing the beauty in another, giving people the gift of your presence and smiling at people even if you do not know them.
  3. Know that you are good enough just as you are even if you have to lose weight. People respond to you in accordance with how you see yourself. Make friends with your “inner critic.”
  4. Become a more interesting person. Take up a new hobby, something you feel passionate about and cut back on the TV time. Haven’t you had enough of reality?
  5. Cultivate self- love and compassion. As hard as it may be to believe, recent research is showing that self-compassion can be your greatest source of strength trumping so called willpower which is based on discipline and negative self-talk. If you are kinder to yourself and treat your set-backs as learning experiences with compassion you will find it easier to change.
  6. Become the observer of you in a non-judgmental way. If you overeat or over indulge, these are distractions that keep us from dealing with what is really going on underneath. Instead of feeling bad because you think you have no self-control, ask yourself what need the action was trying to fill or feed? Acknowledge that perhaps you were looking for happiness or comfort in the wrong place.

If you want to make change easier, be healthier, lose weight successfully or whatever, understand change is a process and has a lot to do with how you see and view yourself than just deploying discipline and willpower.  I would also suggest down-loading one of my guided hypnotic meditations such as Unlock your potential. This is a great way to start changing how you think.

Did you ever consider that what you think is as important as what you eat?

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medium-meditationThe first time I heard the notion that we have an internal dialogue I was surprised. I think that is because I had taken it for granted. My internal dialogue was part of my automatic way of thinking. I never stopped to look at and examine what I was saying to myself, and how my thoughts affected me. Years of meditation have given me a different perspective on this. The first thing you do when you meditate is to look at your internal dialogue. It is like a stream of consciousness and unless you are made aware of it, it just flows on and on. That is why it is called the ‘monkey’ mind or the ‘yenta’ in the mind.

One of the first things I have my clients do is to pay attention to what they may be thinking that brings on or precedes an action they are trying to change. This is obviously not limited to just changing the habit of eating. Let’s say you are trying to start a habit of daily exercise in the morning. You wake up and immediately the conditioned part of your mind is telling you that you don’t feel like it. That is where ‘You’ take over, and start changing the dialogue. If you don’t I guarantee you won’t feel like exercising. Even if you think about something enjoyable like the shower you take after you exercise, that is how simple it is.

Getting in touch with your internal dialogue which can be very automatic and even unconscious to an extent, is your first step to making meaningful change. You cannot change what you do not understand or see. This is another way of saying start becoming aware of the automatic reactions. The point is to have a choice. Some automatic reacting is useful. You don’t have to think about how you drive a car; you can leave that to autopilot. If you want to break or change a habit, whether it is to eat healthier, stop procrastinating or cut back on TV, it’s about creating a balance between autopilot and focus. That is what I think we are looking for.

Diet Myths You Need to Let Go Of

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Silk touchOne of the common themes I have seen in my practice is the notion that when you lose weight your problems go away and your dreams get fulfilled. I wonder if that is part of the reason  people regain the weight they lose. What they thought would happen by losing weight does not happen so they lose the motivation to delay immediate gratification, the pleasure they get from certain foods and the discipline it takes to eat right and exercise daily.

To lose weight successfully means you keep it off involves the ability to be able to weight short term actions, against longer term goals. Although the current thinking is that 85 to 95% of people who lose weight regain it, The National Weight Control Registry has been keeping track of people who do keep it off. Their site has some interesting findings.

The bottom line is simple: you have to change the way you eat, exercise daily and make this your lifestyle because you place more importance on your health than eating the treat.

Here are some other things people who lose weight and keep it off do:

    • 78% eat breakfast every day.
    • 75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
    • 62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
    • 90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.

So what about those other dreams you have that you think losing weight will achieve? You don’t give up when it does not happen that way. You get focused on how to change another aspect of your life just like you did with your weight. If you think by losing weight you will find the love relationship that has eluded you, that is false thinking. There is something else going on that keeps you from finding that love.

The  best way to really lose weight is to make the actions you took to lose the weight permanent. This requires the creation of an awareness practice which can then be used for any change you then want to make, such as attracting a better relationship. I developed what I call the Pausing Technique to help to build the habit of awareness. I suggest you start with that. Then I recommend you strengthen it with a meditation practice which builds the mental muscles of focus. Everything you want to achieve in life begins with a dream, actions and the ability to stay focused and never give up.  Let losing weight successfully be your first dream come true. You can also order the Nirvana Diet™ Home Study Program to get you started.