A few weeks ago, I wrote a post entitled "˜How to love the foods you hate' this week I have a more challenging post for you. It is more challenging in that it is easy to avoid foods you hate but, just now, harder to avoid the foods you love. I will show you a way to do this and how to cut down on the foods that your body doesn't like; it's easy when you know how. I was originally going to entitle the post as "˜how to hate the foods you love' but changed it after doing some more research.
A mental game
You guessed it, it's mostly psychological, however, it's the way you set your mind up that we are going to challenge here. I am not going to tell you the foods to cut down on, as you will know which ones your body should cut down on.
Listening to your body
My body has told me that I should cut down on biscuits, especially cookies, as I feel bloated and tired after eating them. My body has also told me to stop eating as much pasta as I feel really tired and heavy after eating it. Pasta is my staple diet so it was a tough one to think about cutting right down on pasta. Chips (French fries) are also another favourite food of mine. My body feels okay after eating chips but I know eating too much will cause weight gain.
Learning to listen to your body when you are eating is essential to setting your mind up for cutting down on the foods you love.
Will power vs habit forming
This guide is not a diet plan and it is not about cutting out foods you like. Although the title suggests hating the foods you love, it's about hating eating too much of the foods you love.
You might have tried cutting down in the past and lost some weight only to put it back on again a few months later and going back to eating too much. You might have thought you don't have the will power to stop eating as much of the foods you love. Let me tell you just now, it's nothing to do with will power; it's about forming a new habit and reprogramming your mind to listen to your body.
Your mind
Let me ask you this question:
When you look at your body in the mirror what do you think?
Do you say to yourself you'd like to lose more weight? You'd like to get rid of your beer belly? You'd like to get rid of that big bum of yours?
Guess what! You're focusing on the very thing you want to get rid of. Yep, the good old law of attraction is at work here. You get what you focus on. If you focus on your big bum, your beer belly, your 3 chins your unconscious mind sets you up to keep them; you always get you focus most upon. Now, if you focus on your slim, fit and trim body you mind will work toward ways of getting you there.
You might think this is absolute poppycock (I never thought I would use that word in my writing!), believe me it's true. I know from personal experience.
The 4 easy steps to losing weight
This is the easy part of it and one you will enjoy.
Step 1 "“ Write down your goal
Write down what you want from your body.
Be as specific as possible and write it in the present tense. Some examples:
I am now 9 stone (126 pounds)I now fit into all my size 34 trousers
Step 2 "“ Visualisation
Every day, imagine yourself as your target size. Imagine yourself in different situations wearing the clothes you want, imagine everyone commenting on how slim you look, imagine yourself weighing yourself and seeing your target weight, imagine your friends asking how you did it. I always use visualisation techniques when I am doing something that does not require me to think for example standing in a shop queue, waiting for traffic lights to change, waiting in a traffic jam, waiting at the doctors or a hospital. Anything that requires you to wait on somebody else or something else use visualisation to imagine yourself at your target size. It has been scientifically shown that visualisation can greatly enhance your efforts when trying to lose weight.
Step 3 "“ Listen to your body
The problem with diets is that they advise you to stop eating the foods you love. Don't stop eating the foods you love just eat less. If you follow the first two steps above every single day, your mind will automatically tell you not reach for the cookies, in fact after a few months you will not even feel like reaching for the cookies.
If you start listening to your body, by this I mean recognise which foods make you feel tired, recognise when you are full, recognise which foods make you feel more energetic. Recognise the after effects of food as some foods are sneaky for example, a McDonalds makes me say "˜ah! That was great' and I feel I have filled up and have some energy but about 15 minutes later I get sluggish. I have recognised this and now have a McDonalds once every few months instead of once per week. I still like the taste but my body doesn't crave it as much as it used to.
Step 4 "“ No need for the gym
You don't need to go to the gym to help you lose weight you just need to do more exercise.
Exercise increases your metabolism, which in turn increases the speed at which you burn the calories to keep your body going. If you don't do any form of exercise, your metabolic rate will decrease and it will be much harder to get yourself slim. You might have been told that diet alone can help, this is not true, as dieting without exercise will make you fatter, yes you read that correctly. When you diet without exercising your metabolic rate slows down as your body is trying to preserve what it has. To do this it has to work on the fat on your body but it will burn it at a much slower rate than normal which will make you feel tired and will not help you lose weight. The key to being slimmer is to increase your metabolic rate.
Here are five ways to increase your metabolic rate without going to the gym:
Walk for 15 minutes every morning
Skip for 5 minutes
Jump up and down for 5 minutes
Walk up and down your stairs for 10 minutes
Jog for 15 minutes every morning
This is not about burning more calories than you eat. This is about speeding up your metabolic rate, which in turn will help burn the fat.
Conclusion
It's easy to lose weight; it's just that you've been told in the past that it wasn't easy. Half an hour per day to use visualisation techniques, listening to your body, and doing more non-gym exercise is all it takes to lose weight.
Going to the gym is great and is a great habit to form but you don't have to go to the gym to exercise and if you do go it's not about pain it's about doing something physical to increase your metabolic rate.
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