Diet for the Mind Archives

The psychology of weight loss

January 6, 2016 by Skyler Madison Leave a Comment

There is a psychology to weight loss, eating and food. It’s called your weight/health story. If you have an emotional relationship with food and eating you need to change your story.

Take the Emotional Eating Assessment to find out more.

Research shows the first step you need to successfully change, lose weight AND keep it off, is to identify and change your (weight) story. Stories are how patterns and behaviors are wired into the brain.

We all know how to lose weight, go on a diet… simple eat less and exercise more. The problem is, as soon as the diet is over, we go back to our old ways because the diet is viewed as a short term fix and does not deal with the underlying cause of the problem (changing the self-image and the programmed behaviors).
In order to lose weight successfully you must re-program and install new habits that you begin to prefer that then become your new default way of eating. To do that you must change your story this includes the limiting beliefs that hold the story together and keep you stuck.
The problem is the decision to change is a conscious one, but unless you create coherence and alignment between the conscious goal to change (lose weight) and the unconscious stories, the old story wins out all the time.
Using guided meditation and hypnosis you can program the new identity (you thinner, fitter and happier) and manage the emotions when the brain realizes the discomfort (cognitive dissonance) of the change. If you don’t know what guided meditation is download and check out Letting Go one of the many you will be using.
New research in neuroscience is showing how using guided visualization and meditation we can create new neural networks, strengthen the part of the brain most involved in making changes, increase positive emotions and reduce stress. All of this is critical to your success.

Richard Davidson PhD using functional MRI (fMRI) technology identified that the left side of the frontal lobe – known as the left prefrontal cortex – is more active when people feel happy and the right prefrontal cortex is more active when people feel sad.

This research shows how learning how to meditate stimulates the left prefrontal cortex and helps to train people to be more focused, experience more positive emotions and makes the actions to change come easier. Check out Buddha’s brain and neuroplasticity.

In order to really create this alignment between the conscious and unconscious mind, you must do the preparation work that will begin to change your weight story. This is done with personalized sessions with me along with the guided meditations that will set you up for success… coherence between what you want and what you do. Skipping this step can make the difference between succeeding or not.

Getting control of your weight and health is the most important thing you can do… it is the foundation for everything.
To find out if The Diet for the Mind, the foundation for lasting weight loss I have created is right for you, schedule a free consultation.

Doing this foundational work can make the difference in finally losing weight successfully.

Are you an optimist and why is optimism so important?

May 30, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

In a recent article in The New York Times Jane Brody discussed the merits of being an optimist. Seeing the glass as being half full as opposed to half empty is very much a function of how you see it. An important distinction was made between being an optimist and two other character traits that complement optimism: persistence and what is called motivation (not giving up).

This was found in a research study by Dr. Segerstrom and others to be the gift of optimism because when you combine optimism with persistence it leads to being able to creative solutions. All great moments of creativity began with a problem. Frustration and not giving up on finding a solution to a problem is the genesis of creativity. Pessimism derails creativity which often requires one to keep on keeping.

Insights come when we least expect yet when we are still waiting expectantly for an answer. In order to do this, a problem has to be turned around into a question and not viewed just as a problem. That takes character.

The other gift in optimism is the capacity to see a set back into a learning. Once again this is a function of how you view it and how a negative once again gets spun into a positive. These gifts appear to have some basis in genetics specifically one’s that affect neurotransmitters in to the brain such as dopamine that affect goal focused behavior.

The question then becomes if you were not born with the optimism gene can you acquire it? According to Dr. Segerstrom and other researchers the answer is yes. Perhaps we should focus more attention on optimism than happiness? Her advice is to “fake it until you make it” which is another way of saying how taking actions have the capacity to rewire the brain. I think a key to this is to reawaken the creativity within which then leads to the qualities that help turn problems into solutions. Creativity is a state of mind and a way of seeing. If you think you can, the likelihood that you will is much greater.

Losing weight is really the same dynamic. If you think you can, you will, but you must think of yourself first as a thinner person, from there you have the ability to make changes that become your way of living. Another way to approach this is to take up meditation. Meditation has the capacity to increase the cells in the brain that register optimism. Download Meditation Made Easy and get started now on thinking like a more optimistic person.

Want change? Embrace change without needing anything to change

May 17, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

We live in a culture that is full of advertisements that encourage us to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We all want to change or strive to keep things the way they area. What you may be wondering is wrong with that? The messages are subtle: a mother who sits down on a park bench to take a well-deserved break eats a Nutrigrain bar. If you pay attention, most food advertising is selling and linking pleasure and reward with food. No wonder so many people associate food with a reward. This is one of the main reasons people find it difficult to lose weight. Successfully losing weight requires re-wiring the brain. To find out more download my free EBook The Key to Successful Weight Loss.

The wisdom traditions have been suggesting the root of suffering is the constant striving for pleasure along with the desire to avoid pain and displeasure. We are very conditioned to think there is something outside of ourselves whether it is a pill or an Almond Joy that can give us pleasure and the happiness we are longing for.

The sad thing is that all these things do is to lull is deeper into a lifeless sleep. I feel very grateful that I am aware of how this conditioning negatively affects us and try as best I can to help other people to awaken and start making decisions based on their self-interest as opposed to mindlessly pursuing short term fixes in the form of candy bars and other distractions. I think my meditation practice has helped me to do this. That is why I created Meditation Made Easy. Try it you might like it or leave a comment to let me know how this resonates with you.

In search of your Creativity: The Real Hunger Game

May 7, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

Let me just start out with saying stories and movies like the Hunger Games are not feeding the soul.

If you stopped to think about it, you might ask yourself what you hunger for that you cannot name or do not recognize? Some would say it is creativity that really feeds the sou. Creativity is what we really hunger for and the capacity for creativity comes from deep within… an authentic place the yogis and Carl Jung called the Self. To access this creativity requires you to know yourself differently. Most of us never go beyond the lens of the ego. The ego is a filter thru which you experience your reality that is based on the past, the culture and may not reflect who you really are. As creativity is denied in our culture and marginalized in the educational system, we feel a hunger we mistakenly try to fill by consuming things. For more information on how we are stifling creativity see Ken Robinson’s Ted Talk.

James Hillman the founder of what we call archetypal psychology said that “creativity is in and of itself an instinctual drive just like the drive to eat” This means that the satisfaction of creativity is a requirement of life. We all have the need to fulfill our creative drive. How you go about doing that is what you need to look at. Most of us focus on our work and the roles we play in life such as parenting. This may not feed the creative drive and cause one to feel a sense of dullness about life that also lacks meaning. If so you are not feeding your creative drive properly, this could spill over into other drives like eating, shopping and other escapist modes of behavior that do not fulfill or fill.

So how do you get back on track? First we have to redefine creativity. I love this definition: “The genie of creativity is bottled up for most of us-to liberate the genie is to become a genius” (Goswami, 1999, p. 17). Stay tuned to find out how to become a genius.

Goswami, A. (1999). Quantum creativity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

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

January 17, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

Let’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.

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.
“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.
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.”
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?
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.
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.