Now that you have set up your outcome or goal to something more you can work towards, you now need to believe in 3 things in order to be successful.

You need to believe:

1. POSSIBILITY: It is possible for you to get a slimmer body.
2. ACHIEVEMENT: You are able to lose weight or to get a slimmer body.
3. WORTHINESS: You deserve to lose weight or to get a slimmer body.

Possibility

Possibility is almost always mistaken for competence. We think that something isn’t possible, that we aren’t able to lose weight when really we don’t know how to do it – we don’t have the knowledge or resources to be able to lose weight. This is especially true in people who have tried countless diets with little or no success.

It is possible though, regardless of your situation. You can’t prove that it isn’t possible – you can only say that you haven’t achieved it yet.

Beliefs are not fact.

Beliefs are just our best guess at something and we often sell ourselves short. Do you think you have put a mental ceiling on your achievements? Do you think you have hindered your weight loss success through your beliefs about yourself?

Ability

Most of us tend to make others aware of our short comings, when we can’t do something. If you take a day out and observe people and what they say, you should notice how often people say they can’t do this or they can’t do that. We all think this is being modest, when in fact its not. Modesty is not boasting about what we can do, it isn’t boasting about what we can’t!

Once you become aware of yourself voicing your inability to lose weight, you can stop yourself voicing it. If you continue to voice your inability to lose weight, it will hold you back from achieving your weight loss goals. If you find it difficult to stop voicing your inability, a good alternative is to add the word “yet” to the end of your statements.

“I haven’t been able to lose weight…yet”

“I can’t lose weight…yet”.

It is also important not to make excuses for your weight loss failures. If you do not have the knowledge to lose weight, go out and get it. Set tasks that you need to do in order to achieve your slimmer figure.

A general belief that you should try to hold is:

You have not yet reached the limit of what you are capable of.

Keeping this in mind will help you to achieve your weight loss goals.

Worthiness

Do you deserve to lose weight? Does it make you feel uncomfortable to say you deserve to? If it does, this should help you figure out any obstacles that are in your way to achieving your goal. List them and work out how you can overcome them.

e.g. I don’t have the correct knowledge to lose weight – to overcome this I am going to do some research and find a suitable diet program or expert to help me.

For Help To Combat Cravings & Create Your Perfect Vision: CLICK HERE

Weight Loss Goals Part 1: Creating A Positive Weight Loss Mindset

Weight Loss Goals Part 3: Weight Loss Planning

Your weight loss outcomes can depend on many things but at the core of it all you need to believe in 3 things in order to successfully lose the battle with the bulge. But before I go into the 3 beliefs you need (which will be in tomorrow’s post), I would first like to address the term “losing weight”.

When saying to yourself you want to lose weight, you are setting yourself up for failure to begin with. When you say you WANT to lose weight, you won’t do so because you are concentrating on what you cannot do while still trying to do it instead of willingly doing the task i.e. I CAN lose weight. When you say you can lose weight your goal becomes focused.

However there is still a problem in the goal “to lose weight”. When you say you want to lose weight you are describing a negative outcome – to lose, when what you need to be doing is describing something positive. Not positive in the sense of being good for you or positive feelings, but positive in the sense that you want to work towards it rather than something you wish to avoid or to lose!

So instead of making the goal to get rid of excess weight or to lose it, try to change your goal into something more positive. I want to be slimmer or I want to gain muscle or I want a better physique. Making your goal positive and something to work towards is the first step in creating a successful campaign against the excess weight! It is your end result and if you keep this in mind instead of focusing on the negatives (the losing weight part) then you will have much greater success in your weight loss endeavours.

For Help To Combat Cravings & Create Your Perfect Vision: CLICK HERE

Weight Loss Goals Part 2: The 3 Beliefs You Need For Weight Loss Success

Weight Loss Goals Part 3: Weight Loss Planning

Previous Post: The Dangers of Low Carb Diets: A Quick Overview

Food is addictive especially when we use it for comfort and numbing ourselves emotionally. We can instantly turn to food during emotional upsets and get the instant gratification, the feeling of fullness we need in order to numb out old feelings resurfacing or stress we have just been experiencing. The problem is, we often feel extremely guilty afterwards and vow never to cave to food again.

Promising ourselves in the midst of guilt about our overeating and bingeing never works. You can’t just decide to stop and then never will again, especially when your decision is made during guilt.

Bingeing serves an important purpose to you and that is to make you feel better. When you are on the brink of the next binge, your promise to yourself never to binge again would have been forgotten and if it is still in the back of your mind, you will be doing everything to talk yourself into eating. We can rationalize anything when we want to.

This is why the all or nothing attitude to bingeing fails to work. It is too much to ask of ourselves to let go abruptly something we have been using as an emotional crutch for such a long time. It also lends its hand to making us feeling even more guilty when we can’t stay committed.

If you take the approach of more self awareness and observation, making note of when you binge and how you feel before and after you can gain a better understanding of your eating patterns and also can embrace and reflect on them properly.

It is too much to ask of yourself to change overnight. Bingeing and overeating has become a part and parcel of how you work and how you cope with the daily stresses and strains, so it is important to become aware of exactly what you do and to allow yourself time to overcome it. If you slip up and binge – learn from it and accept it as an experience. It’s not the end of the world, overcoming emotional issues especially surrounding food takes time.

Make sure you also acknowledge the small successes with your eating habits. These are just as important as the final destination, the final you you want to be, because without them you cannot reach that end.

Ending your binges and overcoming overeating isn’t easy. By learning to love yourself and having self awareness, you can overcome it. You won’t overcome it by continuously promising yourself not to do it again in the midst of guilt (but I am sure you already know this!).

Take it one step at a time. Learn from the binges that do occur through self awareness and embrace progress not perfection.

For Help To Overcome Binge Eating & Cravings: CLICK HERE

Previous Post: Stop Food Cravings: What To Do In The Midst Of A Craving

I came across a great article today about mindfulness and health. Being in the present moment, having self awareness is crucial to weight loss success and also to live a harmonious balanced lifestyle. If you are forever running around, if time flies by before you know it and you don’t really acknowledge what you are doing whether it be driving to work or stuffing your face with food, then you will find it extremely difficult to move forward with your weight loss.

Step back, take a moment to access the situation and you will reveal to yourself things you may never have noticed if you hadn’t of stepped back and looked at your life. The only way I truly was able to get to a weight I was comfortable with (and to continue to this day to achieve the healthy lifestyle I had always wanted) was by stepping back and spending the day observing myself. It revealed to me so many things I really hadn’t consciously acknowledged before, one being how food was a comfort blanket for me, a LOT of the time.

Anyway the article I came across talks about mindfulness being a form of meditation in which you: “…disengage yourself from strong beliefs, thoughts, and emotions, and increasing feelings of relaxation and well being”.

Being truly present is just something most of us live without, to our detriment, and something I feel strongly about introducing back into people’s lives for good!

The article talks about 5 strategies you can use to improve your mindfulness and subsequently your health and wellness. They are:

1. Consider what’s right with you.

Everyday take a moment to give thanks to the things that you do like about yourself and the things that do function correctly e.g. I am thankful I can walk, I am thankful for breathing easily etc.

2. Love yourself unconditionally.

Whether you give in to a piece of chocolate cake or if you end up eating a whole pizza, you must love yourself unconditionally. Don’t hate yourself for giving in, just embrace and accept this as a hiccup in your journey to where you want to be and learn from it. Being down on yourself or negative about yourself will only lead to failure. You are essentially setting yourself up for it by being negative.  So remain positive and when you feel yourself slipping into negativity thinking, focus on being in the present moment – dart your attention around the room to specific objects if this helps prevent you from taking your negative thinking further.

3. Live in the present moment.

When you live in the present moment, everything seems to make so much more sense. Living in the moment gives you the ability to grow, to learn and change. If you are dwelling on a past binge or worrying about the future, you aren’t living in the moment and you won’t truly enjoy life and those moments where you can grasp pleasure from it. Living in the moment also allows you to look at your life from a clear perspective. In the midst of a craving or a stressful situation, if you step back and access how you feel, you will ultimately be able to give yourself the breather you need instead of bundling along in some other dimension!

4. When life gets tough don’t take it personally.

While it is important to accept responsibility for your actions, you shouldn’t dwell on it.  The best way to deal with it is to look at what you are doing differently now, now what you could have done better in the past.

5. Put the “being” back in human.

If you fill every moment with manic activity you never give yourself a chance to simply be.  Just sitting for a moment and contemplating is a great stress reliever and calms you.  I usually spend my mornings in this way.  I awake and lay for a few moments or more in thoughtfulness before getting out of bed.  It sets my day up nicely especially after my morning smoothie

To read the full article : http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/living-well-usn/2009/03/02/5-ways-to-be-mindful-and-achieve-optimal-health.html

Previous Post: How Much Water Should I Drink?  8 Glasses A Day?

This is a video of a talk by Professor Rozalind Gruben/Graham on the social and emotional aspects of eating.  It is a great introduction to the social and emotional aspects and I wholeheartedly recommend you watch it (along with the other parts to it). 

Here is part one:

Positive Affirmations: A Great Way to Start Your Day