Whether weight is or isn’t an issue in your life the principles will apply to your life, this is not solely about becoming the weight that you want to be, it’s also about your overall health and your families health as well. The more that I have worked with people and their issues with weight the more passionate I become that your mind plays a critical if not the most important role in finally becoming the weight that you want to be.
Physiological Weight Control Fundamentals
There are basically two reasons that you possess the weight that you possess, one is physiological (physical) and the other is psychological (mind), there are numerous physiological reasons that some are thin and others are overweight. We have a part of our brain called the hypothalamus (weight regulating mechanism) even though the hypothalamus is in your brain; it addresses the physiological aspects of weight control. This part of the brain singles you that you are physically full, but not psychologically full and there’s a big difference. This party or brain determines physically what you’re proper healthy weight should be based on physiological input. This input is called your set-point, defined as a predetermined weight that you hypothalamus considers to be safe, effective, normal and healthy for you. This is the part of the brain that controls metabolism which is the optimal amount of calories that your body burns per day based on many contributing factors. Last it’s believed that this part of your brain is responsible for perceiving feast or famine, whether to try to conserve energy or to burn it.
Psychological Weight control fundamentals
The psychological program in your subconscious mind relating to weight is your inner homing device or default program that controls you’re eating and exercise/activity behaviors. As they are repeated over and over for the most part oblivious to the person struggling with weight, they keep your inner orientation on overeating, eating unhealthy foods, cleaning the plate, reward for overeating, overeating when worried, overeating when happy, associating junk food with happiness, associating food with having friends, associating food with romance, on and on. Just like a compass needle points always north, you will always be pointed in the direction of the program that’s in your subconscious mind.
All your thoughts, decisions and actions related to weight control are so powerfully imbedded in your subconscious mind that it becomes difficult to tune in to the self-talk, and will move you towards your likely environmentally programmed destructive attitudes towards food exercise and activity. If you choose not to focus on reprogramming this destructive damaging behavior, your actions will further become haphazard. You will function with your inner guidance system focused on the same unhealthy destructive behaviors rendering you powerless to control your weight no matter what diet you’re on.
Weight control adds a complexity to what you discovered thus far about behavior and how to change it, for example you don’t have to have a bad attitude in order to live, however you do have to eat to sustain life. You don’t have to be unhappy in order to live, however food is a requirement, in other words if you change your bad attitude into a good attitude or unhappiness into happiness you will continue to live and of course a much more fruitful life. If you change from eating to not eating temporarily you likely will be healthier of course eventually you will die. This adds to the complexity of psychological weight control.
The good news is that just as your gyroscope points you in the direction of weight gain you can get your gyroscope to be your greatest weapon in the assault on finally becoming fat-free and fabulously fit forever. Just like you were programmed with a very powerful destructive operating system that guides your life regarding weight, that operating system can be reset, reprogrammed, readjusted and your inner homing device or default program that guides your thinking and your behavior to have the operating system of a thin fit high-energy person. In other words if you are highly susceptible to the destructive programs you are just as highly susceptible to the constructive programs. It won’t simply just happen, however it will happen justly.
The Psychological and Physiological approach
It seems with most things that we do we have this desire to find the one thing that will solve all our problems, when more accurately it’s likely a number of things that we require. For example we solve our transportation needs by getting a car, however a car in the middle of the Yukon with no roads or no gas stations will not solve the problem of transportation, the problem is solved by a collective effort such as roads, gas stations, GPS, as is the case with most things in life.
When it comes to weight most people go on some sort of “program” whether it’s a diet, and exercise plan, a way of eating, low-fat, low-carb, low glycemic index, a liquid diet, Hollywood diet, diet pill, meal plan etc. Every one of these is physiological in other words it deals with the physical problems/issues relating to weight. They’re all good and they’re all bad for various reasons but they all address only the physical and completely ignore the psychological yet ultimately it’s your brain that tells you to eat or to exercise or to be more active.
When you consider all the other attitudinal concepts through reasoning we instinctually know when we have a bad attitude (unless it’s so bad we become blind to it and only those around us know) and that we need to correct it, or when we are negative through reasoning we instinctually recognize we need to correct it and that holds true with most of the ways of “being” (more on this concept of “being” in other articles). However with weight our reasoning ability on this concept is not instinctual like it is on all others, for various reasons the first one we discussed is, because we have to eat to survive, however with other beliefs we don’t have to have them to survive such as, we don’t have to be negative to survive.
The concept of eating less to the subconscious mind is either difficult or impossible to understand unless you can clearly define what that is. So another words a “WINstruction” (Definition: WINstruction™ (pronounced win-struction) is the proper language/code that the dominant, subconscious understands; often subtly, to dramatically different, then the linguistics of the conscious mind; always engineered around excellence in, performance, behavior, attitudinal characteristics and emotional IQ) related to eating less is useless example: I eat less food. The concept of less food is understood by the reasoning conscious mind but not by the subconscious mind. However the subconscious mind can understand being full when there’s no more food left on the plate. Or being full when your stomach hurts, or being full when you clothing becomes tight, or being full when your body has nutritionally satisfied its needs for life although the latter is a bit more complex.
The only way to achieve lifelong success with weight is an all-encompassing approach dealing with both physiological and psychological. That means whatever you are physically doing for your weight currently continue to use as a tool for the physiological aspect of weight control until your program is so strong and powerful and your gyroscope or inner compass is so perfectly pointed and aligned in the direction of being fat-free and fabulously fit forever that the tool is rendered useless. Up until that point, I want you to work with that tool as you discover new psychological weapons.
You will also discover how to use additional physiological weapons to reprogram your hypothalamus to be a high-energy fat burning furnace however let’s start by more carefully examining the harmful destructive damaging existing programs that are psychologically negatively impacting your objectives.
Psychological weight related issues
It’s important to understand the psychological or subconscious programming issue related to weight for a number reasons, first and most important help you recognize damaging patterns, programs, self-talk, way of thinking. Second this will give you an insight and understanding when you go into the reprogramming phase, and third so you don’t continue the pattern with your children, family and loved ones.
Keep in mind also that likely much of the reason that there is an obesity epidemic in this country and across the world is that in a relatively short period of time 50 or so years we have gone from a very active society and the necessity of expending high amounts of calories on a daily basis was required for survival. In addition we did not have the vast availability of calorie rich, heavily processed, sweet, high fructose corn syrup, high-fat foods that we have today. The meat that we eat today has much more fat, than the wild game we ate in past generations. Many of the damaging programs in the subconscious mind were grounded in healthy beneficial programs of the previous generation that led to survival, health and longevity, likely passed down from generation to generation very possibly even passed down instinctively. It very well may mean that you have within you the power to positively impact not only your life but the life of many generations to come, you very possibly can dramatically improve the quality of life for your children and your grandchildren and many generations after that. When you think about it that way, the gravitas of impacting many generations of life and the quality of life, very well may begin with some insignificant thoughts and turn into what likely will have significance in not just your life but many generations to come.
What is psychological weight control?
I have done extensive work in the area of psychological and physiological weight control, starting well over 30 years ago working one on one, and then in small groups, in the health club arena. Then in a private practice that led to A Goen Seminars Institute becoming the largest weight loss seminar company in the country of its kind, which primarily focused on the psychological challenges with weight loss. As I worked with larger and larger groups I realize that I needed some additional tools to deal with the physiological challenges with weight control as well. That’s what gave birth to a company called NUTRAMERICA and then to a brand called TRIMSPA that eventually became the number one selling diet pill the country outselling number two through five combined. This is not pointed out to brag, but to impress upon you the work done in this field.
One of the problems with weight control from the psychological/subconscious mind viewpoint was addressed earlier; you have to eat to sustain life. You wouldn’t want to create a program to get you to stop eating altogether but for example if you were a smoker you would want you to stop smoking altogether.
The other complexity with weight control is that the programming is so deeply embedded into the operating system of your life, this is important to explore with you so you have a deep understanding of the real root of the issue so you can address it and in turn have great success. In order to address the issue keep in mind everything that you learned thus far about the subconscious mind and now were going to probe even deeper.
So far you remember that your subconscious mind dominates your behavior according to Sigmund Freud that first made the reference of subconscious mind is that it’s 90% of your mind. The subconscious mind also is programmed through repetition, and its mission in life is to take you towards pleasure and stay away from pain.
The subconscious mind also regulates many bodily functions heartbeat, breathing, digestion, and many others. When the subconscious mind regulates your heartbeat for example, can you get in on the conversation? In other words when was the last time you listened to heartbeat self-talk (find my article on self-talk to better understand) or even instructed your heart to beat? Is there any self-talk at all taking place? Or is it all completely automatic? When a behavior or a bodily function is repeated over and over and over again enough times the self-talk is more difficult to tune into or sometimes altogether disappears, however you can get it to reappear. You can control your heartbeat if you train yourself properly. Let me give you another example, how often do you think about your breathing? Most of the time it’s automatic like your heartbeat, you don’t think about it, it just happens; you are not involved in the self-talk, in the reasoning, in the discussion. However you can join in any time you choose, for example you can say to yourself, take a deep breath, hold it for a moment, and exhale slowly, and now you have total control, you have join the conversation, (you likely took a breath just reading this) you are now participating in the self-talk, you are now in control at least for a temporary period of time before it goes right back to automatic and the subconscious mind dominates once again. If every day you spend some time controlling your breathing for a period of time, and understanding that pattern, after that you take some time and work on controlling your heartbeat, in a relatively short period of time if not capable already, you will be able to control your heartbeat and join in on that conversation, become part of that self-talk, this logic can in turn be followed for many bodily functions and even behaviors that seem to be completely controlled by the subconscious mind and can’t be controlled or influenced by the conscious mind.
In a study by knee surgeon wishing to figure out the best surgical procedure, performed knee surgeries on three groups in the study, the first group with two small incisions simply cleaned out the debris in the knee, the second group received the addition of some of the knee cartilage shaping and the third group (the placebo) got two small incisions and nothing was done. All three groups were awake during the procedure and were able to watch on a video above them of the procedure, there was a blanket draped below their neck preventing them from looking directly at their knee. The first two groups watched their actual video of the procedure however the third group that didn’t have a procedure other than two small cuts watched a procedure from the first two groups. After incredibly all three groups experienced the same post surgery benefits, of course the third group experienced the placebo effect, was that the conscious reasoning mind that created this or was it the subconscious mind? Did the conscious mind join the conversation? May the conversation have sounded something like this? “Wow look at that video screen that’s my knee that the doctor is cleaning out and fixing, I’ll be walking and running better than I have in a long time I’m so excited about this, I can’t wait to be mobile again, hooray I can’t wait!” What would you have said to yourself if you are lying there watching? Self-talk grounded in emotion and belief are profound and incredibly powerful and would you ever think that your self-talk could affect the way your knee functions or heals?
The reverse is true as well, and the reverse logic is especially helpful in developing highly tuned athletic abilities. For example have you ever been driving a car using only your subconscious mind, when your conscious mind is basically asleep? Let’s explore this, can you ever remember a time when you got into your car and time just, about disappeared, you got to a destination, you don’t really have much conscious recall, you were driving on automatic, it was your subconscious mind doing the driving. Well how did it do? Likely very well, anything that you do with your subconscious mind typically is much better than with your conscious mind, providing there is a good set of instructions or as we call it WINstructions. What would you rather use 10% of your mind to do something, or 90% of your mind to do something?
Think for a moment about driving again, as you drive down the road, how often do you join the conversation; participating in the self-talk, making sure that you stay between the white dotted lines? If you have only been driving for only a few months, you likely join the conversation often, in the beginning you are nonstop telling yourself to stay between those white lines, as time goes on you hardly ever join the conversation, your subconscious mind takes over and you’re perfectly happy, confident, that you’re in good hands, that your subconscious mind is in control, and you may even get into deep thought about something completely different, or get into a deep conversation with someone, or listen to the tunes on your radio, or look at the beautiful scenery around you, and you don’t think for a moment about those white lines that your car has to stay between. At the same time, any time you so choose; you can interrupt what your subconscious minds doing, and join the conversation, become part of the self-talk.
I would venture to say that your subconscious mind will drive your car much better alone then when you and your conscious mind joins the conversation. For example you’re driving down the road and in front of you is a construction site and in a moment you are going to have to drive between two concrete dividers for an extended period of time, now you’re your conscious mind takes over and tries real hard to stay between those dividers on both sides without hitting them, you are constantly nonstop correcting the steering wheel, you get nervous you maybe even start to sweat a bit, you’re not nearly as comfortable as you were only a few minutes earlier when your subconscious mind was in charge, can you at least somewhat relate or at least get the point?
What does all this have to do with weight you may be asking, or you may have already figured out, two primary considerations. First the understanding of how to join the conversation, participate in the self-talk and second, behaviors grounded with massive amount of repetition become so embedded into the subconscious mind that eventually it seems that you can lose control. The truth of the matter is that even with a bodily function such as heartbeat with just a little bit of work, you can intervene, you can participate and you can take control and reprogram or instruct your subconscious.
I also want you to understand that ideally you want your subconscious mind to be in control providing that you’ve programmed it according to the way that you want to be, and not engineered by your environment and you powerless. Wouldn’t it be great if your subconscious mind was in alignment with your conscious mind’s desire to be fat-free and fabulously fit forever? Wouldn’t you be excited if you were becoming full twice as fast on half the food? Would you enjoy life more if you were on a mission to find your normal body weight (the weight that you want to be) and your subconscious mind was in complete and total alignment with your conscious mind? Of course, the answer always is life is better when you’re conscious and subconscious mind are in alignment.
Human Brain and Conditioning
Before we go any further it’s important to take a little time to understand how the brain functions a little bit better. I like to make the reference that your subconscious mind is similar to the hard drive on your computer in its capacity to store information and to use electrical impulses or electrons to communicate the information. However the human mind is much more capable/complex than any computer or hard drive that can be found today. In addition to using electrons, our brains have receptor sites for chemical signaling. This chemical signaling plays a role in the programming of your subconscious but it’s the electronic signaling the plays the majority of the role. With weight control the chemical signaling plays a role in both the physiological and psychological challenges/solutions.
Our brains are composed of microscopic cells that cannot be seen by the eye without a microscope. A grain of sand could have millions in the same space, the type of cells that are in the brain that make up the conscious and subconscious mind are called “neurons” your brain contains an estimated 100 billion neurons that communicate with one another through electronic and chemical signaling and the communication from neuron to neuron being that it’s both chemical and electrical is called “electrochemical”.
Every thought, triggers a magnificent array electric and chemical impulse’s from neuron to neuron, an intricate chain reaction communicating electrochemically from neuron to neuron. Your brain simply and magnificently is the most complex computer circuit board ever created and likely never duplicated made up of living cells and constantly changing, mutating, growing unlike any computer that man has ever created and likely ever able to create.
The ability for the human brain to change, improve, figure out, reprioritize, take orders, accept commands is truly amazing and to imagine we are so incredibly fortunate to have this magnificent factory, the greatest on earth between our two ears. Even more magnificent each and every one of these microscopic neurons have ever changing wires extending from them called “dendrites”, that connect these neurons to one another and in turn rapidly being able to change the pattern of messaging from one neuron to the other, simply by the most powerful force on earth, a thought, truly magnificent, awe-inspiring. Plain and simple you command this complex electrochemical processing, programming, factory to communicate differently and the dendrites do exactly as instructed at all times , most of the rewiring is done, in what’s called the Delta state.
As instructed by you the individual neurons create additional dendrites, or lengthen the connections, or change the connections, or create additional means of communication called “synapses” used for a higher more important means of communication, in addition it’s hypothesized that neurons as needed work together to restructure one another and that network of dendrite connection and the inner-weaving of such to respond to your very commands.
When you think about it in terms of what’s going on in your brain every time that you “think” the gravitas of what’s taking place is truly extraordinary. The chain-reaction that you create and control as a result of the thought becomes an extraordinary gift that comes with extraordinary responsibility. Every day it’s estimated that we have approximately 65,000 thoughts, 95% of them being the same from the previous days, new thoughts that are born as insignificant, can providing proper repetition, stimulate and cause structural change or “dendrite cabling” when needed to improve the efficiency, messaging, cabling, communications of your brain. Repeated thoughts typically will use the same set of neurons to carry out efficiently the tasks. The neural circuitries of the brain, and it’s capacity of extraordinary structural changes that take place every day, every moment of the day and especially during the Delta state is a tool that we have available to us at all times.
With repeated thought (WINstructions) dendrites (wires) will string themselves from neuron to neuron and become locked in place to carry out a task repeatedly and efficiently, that’s why with repeated WINstructions the dendrite cabling reinforces your belief/security structure/traits/attributes into who you “be” or into your very being, into who you are, into who you is. As you repeat your WINstructions and you incorporate them into your self-talk the old dendrites atrophy (die) and new dendrites are formed and replace the dying ones.
As time goes on and you continue to engineer you, the structure of the brain can change and is a shaped by the process of repeated thought, WINcycles of WINstructions, WINcourses, the neural networks in your brain increase in efficiency, complexity, dendrite cabling, to serve you better, to improve your efficiency, and to ground you into the “being” that you are engineer for yourself.
Psychological and Physiological Fullness
Have you ever gone out to a restaurant, they served you an appetizer 20 or 30 minutes prior to your meal and by the time your meal comes out you have the sensation of feeling full or maybe partially full? That would be an example of physiological satiety (fullness) (because it takes approximately 15 to 20 minutes for CCK to be released from your stomach lining and received by the receptor site at your hypothalamus indicating physical fullness). You still eat anyway because you’re not psychologically full, can you make the distinction? In this example you will experience the sensation of physiological fullness but you weren’t psychologically full so you continue to eat.
Physiological fullness typically takes place as a result of a handful of phenomena.
- Time eating, we have a chemical that rests in the lining of our stomach called CCK (cholecystokinin) after we eat, and chew our food for between 10 and 30 minutes the chemical is released and received at the receptor site for the hypothalamus and is one of the chemical signals for physical fullness.
- Set-point, for various reasons your hypothalamus determines that your healthy body weight is the weight that it is and like a magnet strives to keep you there.
- Perception of feast/famine, if your hypothalamus believes that there is a famine in turn slows down metabolism. This perception is often indicated by eating one very large meal a day, and by eating highly refined foods. Dehydration can also be an indicator.
- Spikes and glucose levels, high glucose levels or blood sugar levels cause the overproduction of insulin in turn causing the muscle cell to develop resistance to insulin reinforcing the cycle over and over again in turn creating a desire for sweets or low glycemic index foods.
- Amino acid balance, not properly complementing proteins that complement the essential amino acid balance.
- Nutritional constituents, not providing your body with the proper nutrition and nutritionally dense foods.
Contributing to, Psychological satiety and its signals
- Clean plate, not listening to your body telling you that you’re full but believing that you’re full once your plate is clean.
- Associating food with activity, believing that certain activities are directly connected with certain foods for example popcorn and movies.
- Bottomless pit, the belief that you have a bottomless pit for stomach.
- I’m so hungry I could eat a horse, the belief that you can eat more than you could possibly ever eat.
- Exaggerating how good of food tastes, the belief that a food is to die for or better than sex etc.
- Reward for gorging, repeated usually as a youth being rewarded with a smile, a congratulations, TV, playtime, pleasure, for overeating.
- Desert reward, the belief that every meal should end with some sort of desert.
- Eating when watching TV, inability to tune in to your body signaling you that you’re full.
- Food as great pleasure, not having to believe that food is simply a fuel.
- Lost weight, unbeknownst to you but your subconscious mind’s desire to find the weight that’s lost.
- Taking ownership of the weight that you are now, subconscious mind desires to own what it believes is yours.
- The biggest problem, food equals love.
Food Equals Love
Human beings use many different symbols for love, a hug, kiss, praise, conversation and so many others, families or individuals that use food as a means to demonstrate love often have issues with weight. It’s certainly understandable that hundreds of years ago when we were very active and there were shortages of food, that food would equal love and likely the grounding of that belief, saved lives, however today in a sedentary world of highly concentrated caloric foods, very damaging.
It likely is not a surprise that encouraging a child at a very young age to gorge themselves causes serious challenges with weight as we age. Even though this is not surprising and common sense with all of the news about obesity in this country and how it negatively impacts our lives, yet loved ones still do it. Some recent studies have shown that parents continue to encourage their little babies and children to overeat. It’s not because they have a vision for their child to live a life of obesity, of course not, it’s because they love their little child so much that they instinctively believe that food is love. The way that they demonstrate their love is by the very food that may one day sadly and tragically lead to premature death and maybe even worse a substandard quality of life.
The sad thing is that the most loving, caring, compassionate parents are guilty of this because rooted deeply within is this connection of food to love. Having seen, taught and experienced this tragic cycle, those that believed they were able to control and put an end to this destructive belief only to find out that it’s so deeply embedded that they can’t. I know it may sound a bit depressing, the good news is you have within you the ability to take control and to engineer you into the person that you want to be. Below are examples so you can immediately identify damaging programming patterns, and break that cycle.
Breaking the Obesity Chains
Suggestion, whether or not you think that you associate love with food for this exercise at least pretend that you are guilty so you can develop the ability to recognize this association. In addition I can’t remember one person that I ever worked with a weight problem that didn’t associate love with food.
From this point forward food is not love; food has absolutely nothing to do with love! Food is fuel, it’s giving your body the necessary constituents to sustain life and that’s all. If anything, in this day and age food can kill, food can destroy life, food can cause massive amount of pain, food can cause rejection, food for the most part equals pain, food causes loneliness, food negatively impacts athletic ability, food destroys energy level, food causes cancer, food causes heart disease, food is death.
The above paragraph is a written this way to begin the process of breaking the chains once again it is true that food is death but it’s also true that food is life, so the accurate statement, the real truth is that food is both life and death, to a starving person life to a terribly obese person with heart disease clogged arteries, death. The likelihood is you never connected death to food did you? You never connected rejection to food did you? But just as you may connect love to food the reality is food in today’s world is more a symbol of hate then love when you really think about it, Isn’t it?
If you really hated someone would you want to curse them with the pain of obesity or the joy of being fit? If you’re really, really, hated someone you would like them to suffer the pain of rejection that many obese people suffer, wouldn’t you? If you wanted to cause great pain in your child’s life you may very well want them to suffer being alone on date night when all the thin fit people are out having a great time wouldn’t you? (Please understand I am not being cruel here, I am starting the insignificant process of significance, reading this is very important, I love you and want to help you, I care deeply about you, I have devoted 30 years of my life to helping you) if I hoped you would be afflicted with heart disease I would give you food, wouldn’t I? If I wanted you to suffer cancer I would give you food, wouldn’t I? If I wanted you to have low energy levels I would give you food, wouldn’t I? If I wanted you to be a horrible athlete I would give you food, wouldn’t I? If I wanted to destroy your life I would give you food, wouldn’t I?
Just as true as giving food to someone to be a great athlete for muscular development, energy, giving food to an athlete is hate because it can cause high fat levels and lack of energy, so another words food is not good and food is not bad than what is food? Food equals fuel that’s all. Food is fuel. Food is no different for our bodies as going to the gas station and putting gas in your tank.
Side note: read the article on the concept of what a word is, the reason you are going through the above process in this section is to help your subconscious mind understand what food really is, if you’re having some difficulty with this please reread the section on what a word is. Also as mentioned many times in other articles on this website, the logic of the building process, at times terminologies that seem somewhat contradictory or maybe even out of context. Much of what is written is important information to learn, but it’s not really written in a matter to learn but to transform, so in turn you are on a psychological journey. We live in a world where we are at war and being assaulted by polluted destructive programs, this is waging a war as well, that’s right, call it “psychological warfare” finally being waged so you can take control of your life, very likely for the first time.
The concept once again that we all “kind of” do know that attitudinal beliefs help us in life is widely accepted though at times difficult, in other words we understand when seeds of insignificance (read article on law of insignificance) are planted by very simply understanding that an attitudinal quality for example having confidence, instead of lacking confidence makes for an overall better quality of life. And even with all that prior understanding it is important to very carefully plant seeds of insignificance to get the process started. With food those seeds of insignificance are likely not there, so therefore need to be sowed and you need to help me so I can help you. You need to participate, so I can help you. You need to play along, so I can help you. Please very kindly and politely don’t go on reading this until you take a moment to understand and maybe even reread some of the sections I’m suggesting, before you continue the journey.
Insignificant seeds of obesity
In this section my goal is to give you the insignificant seeds that were sowed and caused the problem in the first place and are now the programs that you live by. I do this for two reasons one so you understand the root of the problem and number two so you break the chain with your family. Also this will help in understanding with your conscious reasoning mind why the WINstructions are written the way they are.
Our eating behaviors are influenced and programmed at a very young age basically when you were born however it’s probably not until you’re about four months old that the programming really get started.
The earliest cycle, the baby cries and the parents respond by feeding, during the feeding the baby is encouraged to eat by use of a toy, or possibly music or possibly words or possibly a smile or possibly some sort of encouragement that’s where the problem begins. By the very nature of the baby being a baby when that baby is being fed it’s being held associating a warm embrace with food if you combine a toy, music, words of encouragement, a smile and that only happens during feeding time powerful seeds of insignificance are planted at a very young age. I’m not suggesting that you should not hold your baby when you feed however I am suggesting you refrain from the rest of the behaviors. More importantly take more time with your baby during non-feeding, hold your baby, use a toy, music, words of encouragement, a smile, so pleasure is not so strongly connected with food but it’s connected to other healthy activities. Better yet celebrate movement, rattling the toys, crawling around the house, kicking the legs, moving their hands, and anchor those behaviors with a big smile, positive comments and most important tonality.
Often the very devices that are used for feeding may be some sort a happy Disney character, with a big smile and to a baby a smile is extraordinarily pleasurable, once again associating directly food with pleasure. The very plates or bottle often colorful, bright, happy/fun sort of coloring, representing to the baby happiness, pleasure, once again while eating.
The other problem, a good baby may very well be a baby that is inactive, lies there happy but doesn’t move around the house too much. Comments such as “wow your baby is so well behaved” often used; this is a comment that makes me cringe when I hear it. Likely the baby doesn’t understand the words but understands the tonality. The baby may be a little too active, plays with its toys, or crawls around too much, and the tonality is of a negative nature discouraging activity and encouraging a sedentary lifestyle. The innocent baby may also rattle some of her toys that make noise and once again corrected for being too active.
What really should happen at this age is encouraging activity of all kinds or a least careful, cautionary, consideration should be given to every behavior and its possible long-term effect. What possible seeds of insignificance could you be planting? Carefully consider should be paid, to the profound impact that your reaction has on your baby at this very young developmental age.
Better yet create an feeding environment for your baby if you can that is a neutral for feeding time, do your best to refrain from any kind of symbols of joy or happiness never have the cartoons on, or even any TV or music at all. Create an environment where eating is just something that you do but not celebrate.
For the most part a young baby experiences overall quite a bit of encouragement clearly too much at feeding time however overall the positive to negative ratio in a baby’s life is more positive than negative early on. A significant developmental stage is talking and walking. Both are highly encouraged in the typical baby’s life, there’s mommy to one end holding the baby boy, on the other and there is dad saying “your daddy’s little boy, come to daddy, you can do it, you can do anything!” And dad is smiling from ear to ear clapping his hands and baby feels like he can do anything.
Next baby starts to walk around too much, and talk too much and now sadly for every one encouraging word that baby has to hear a discouraging word approximately 30 times. Most of those discouraging words are associated with some sort of activity, movement, exercise. This now will be the ratio for the next few years; it will seem to that toddler that there is not much that she can do right.
Then there’s eating, at least that toddler can do that right, the toddler may start to hear and understand comments such as “he’s such a good eater” with an encouraging tonality and a smile on the face. Everything else that toddler does has a 30 to 1 ratio of discouragement to encouragement, but not when it comes to food, although toddler is rewarded with, he’s such a good eater, think about that. It’s amazing, that we even have thin people in this world, but it even gets worse.
Advertisers Brainwashing and Obesity
Recognize the word brainwashing is a very strong word however consider a highly programmable toddler is watching cartoons, between the cartoons are commercials, at this age your innocent toddler has zero ability to reject any sort of messaging, programming, brainwashing, they take everything in and immediately the messaging of the environment becomes the belief/security structure of their subconscious mind. Your toddler does not have the critical analytical factor, or the ability to reason, or to distinguish healthy nutritious food from junk food. So when the McDonald’s commercial comes on, with a “happy meal”, all that matters is that it’s “happy”. The association of pleasure repetitively to any behavior anchors that behavior, another thing that McDonald’s does, they have a playground that reinforces fun, playing, joy with McDonald’s to a child’s brain that can’t defend itself, it is pure brainwashing. Adults have difficulty and can’t defend themselves from repetitive advertisements, but were talking about children here.
It’s truly amazing, in this day and age with obesity the leading cause of death in this country advertises are allowed to subject innocent victims in the form of children to damaging, destructive, food associations/beliefs. 30 years ago cigarette companies were forced to stop advertising to children, prevented from advertising on TV, and forced to put warning labels on their packaging but even 30 years ago the cigarette companies weren’t advertising smoking cigarettes to babies, toddlers and tween’s during cartoons where they?
When you watch cartoons pay particular close attention to the programming/brainwashing that’s taking place, and yes again brainwashing is a strong word, but what is brainwashing? It’s using some sort of drug, or sleep deprivation, to relax or preoccupy the conscious mind to plant messages/programs into the subconscious mind for the benefit of someone else. What benefit, is it to a two-year-old hearing Tony the Tiger say “They’re Grrreat! What if Tony yelled “They’re repulsive!” What kind of success would they have? Or what if he told you the truth “they make you fat and lethargic” How would the ad work then? Are Frosted Flakes really healthy for children? Are frosted flakes Grrreat for children? What about Honey Nut Cheerios the slogan Bee happy Bee healthy or the one that really makes me sick, Lucky Charms Magically Delicious, do you think all those marshmallows are magically good for your toddler? Fruit Loops the slogan follow your nose it always knows, and it’s not just the words that are damaging it’s the imagery, the association with pleasure, and the crime of marketing to an innocent victim, a child.
The slogan for Oreo cookies, “Kids everywhere know that magic happens when you eat an Oreo cookie”. Then the image of a small child with a grin from ear to ear, what magic happens? Is the magic becoming magically fat? Is a magic becoming addicted? I know it’s starting to disgust you but I’m only just getting started. In a study by College University on a research project in 2013 the very same Oreo cookies that kids eat every day were found to be more addictive than cocaine on laboratory rats. Kindly take a moment and consider that, this country’s toddler’s and children being programmed to consume cocaine would be outrageous wouldn’t it? What really is the difference if this is true, could Oreo cookies possibly even be worse because not only are they addictive they also cause obesity.
Let me make this clear, the free enterprise system, freedom of speech, two pillars of the American system that should be treasured, respected and protected, an entities right to advertise is important in the free enterprise system but at the same time it must be done responsibly. America has the Federal Trade Commission to protect consumers from outrageous claims, what organization is out there protecting our toddlers and children from this kind of programming that is killing and greatly affecting the quality of life for about 50% of Americans?
In a report in 2008 by the FTC to Congress the average child is subjected to two billion dollars’ worth of food advertisements a year. The Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine, reported that the average child is subjected to about 4000 food related ads a year, that’s 4000 brainwashing’s, programming sessions, that, that child is not in control of, but a victim of. In a research brief by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 98% of food advertisements viewed by children are for products that are high in fat, sugar or sodium and 79% are low in fiber. In 2009 a study by Healthy Psychology found that children exposed to television food advertising consumed 45% more food than children that were not exposed to food advertising. It’s hard to believe that this would be allowed with obesity killing people in this country; our young kids being subjected to programming that makes them eat 45% more food than kids that aren’t subjected to those food ads. The Center for Responsive Politics reported that in 2010 the food and beverage industry spent over $40 million lobbying Congress against several regulations including those that would decrease the marketing of unhealthy foods to kids.
Loved Ones Brainwashing and Obesity
Enough now about the programming that’s taking place by our junk food advertisers what really may be even more tragic is a programming that’s happening by our loved ones. In 2007 a study published in the Journal Appetite found that 85% of the parents try to get their children to eat more even when they indicated they were full. As a result 83% of the encouraged kids ate more, with 38% eating moderately to substantially more. Mothers would typically praise girls for eating and fathers used pressure tactics on boys and both parents use reasoning, praise, and rewards to get their children to eat more.
Director of the Center for Childhood Obesity Research at Penn State, Leann Birch, studying the effects in 1987 found that preschoolers asked to focus on external signals of eating such as cleaning the plate, consumed more than children that were asked to focus on internal singles such as being full. In a 1999 study, obese adults remembered being encouraged to eat more food growing up than their leaner counterparts and “clean your plate” was the most common. There are many studies, research papers on the effects of parents and loved ones insisting our kids eat all the food on the plate. Worse than insisting that a child gorges themselves is the rewards for doing so or being made to feel guilty for not doing so.
Common rewards for cleaning the plate, in other words for stuffing yourself beyond being full:
- Dessert you now get to have something with highly concentrated calories after you are already stuffed.
- TV, rewarded with pleasure after eating beyond being full.
- Play, now you get to have fun as a result of stuffing yourself.
- Being held prisoner at the table until all the food is gone from the plate and then rewarded when the plate is clean.
- Cleaning the plate causes the parents to praise, smile and complement.
- Clean the plate because they’re starving kids in India, guilt complex.
- Clean the plate; because it will make you have muscles and be strong, what boy wouldn’t want that? How about mentioning it will make you obese?
- Being paraded in front of friends and family that the child is a good eater as though that’s an extraordinary accomplishment.
You’ve probably heard them all and of course there are more, it’s amazing how as parents we can get so set in our ways that we may even consciously know the damaging consequences and yet we still partake in the same behavior.
The other problem that we have with food and this may be one of the biggest problems is how we over exaggerate our love for the food, or how the food tastes or the pleasure involved with eating it. Food needs to be referred to for what it is which sustenance, fuel, nourishment, and food should never be a treat, a reward. One must be very careful not to use the massive amount of emotion when describing food or adjectives such as delicious, to die for, so, soooo, good, here’s a list of common adjectives widely used referring to food:
- The food is better than sex, this is a very serious problem because for the most part sex is considered to be the most pleasurable behavior to partake in by the subconscious mind, to associate food or a specific food to sex or being better than sex is a terrible message to give to your subconscious mind if you truly want to become fat-free and fabulously fit forever.
- Often in a joking manner suggesting that food or a specific food is better than a loved one, yes I know that your conscious reasoning mind can distinguish the difference but your subconscious mind believes everything you tell it especially with repetition anchored in pleasure, even though you’re joking the association to a loved one (pleasure) and that food is a powerful program to your subconscious mind. Example “I love chocolate more than my husband.”
- The food is happy, heavenly, and addictive, all plant seeds of insignificance creating eventually powerful significance in the subconscious mind.
- Suggesting a food is to die for, of course an exaggeration but completely real and true if repeated and anchored with pleasure to the subconscious mind.
Last self-inflicted or inflicted on love once category is the exaggerations of how hungry one is, or how much someone can eat, or the appetite one has.
- I’m so hungry I could eat a horse/cow/elephant, can you really, can you even come close? Of course not is that the message you want to be giving to your subconscious mind?
- My stomach is a bottomless pit, is it really bottomless? Deftly not and should never be referred to that way.
- I have the appetite of bear after hibernation or some kind of crazy suggestion and association along those lines which of course is untrue.
- My appetite don’t quit, not a belief that you want to program into your subconscious mind if you want to control your weight.
- I’m starving; I’m famished are you really? What does a starving person look like? Is that how you look? Is that a good suggestion/program to give to your subconscious mind if you finally want to overcome the ravages of over eating? Worst yet it’s the “feeling” that I’m starving is said with, the emotion, the passion.
- I’ve got the munchies, do you really want to be telling yourself this if you want to stay away from potato chips and cookies and ice cream etc.?
- Starved to death, you probably could go without eating for a month and still be alive.
- I could eat an ox, I could eat ox between two bread vans, I could eat the north and of a southbound bear, my belly thinks my throats been cut, I’m malnourished, I’m undernourished, I have of a voracious appetite, I could eat a horse and then go back for the rider, I believe you get the point.
At this point you have of the psychological problem associated with food and overeating and though some of you may use many of these expressions as a figure of speech, or just a casual expression I do want you to understand that they can have a real negative impact as all words create a chain reaction in your mind. In addition when words are said with emotion they much more powerfully enter into the subconscious mind, think in terms of the emotion of which many of these are said with. This is the very type of emotion that you want to use with your healthy programming or the way that you say your WINstructions.
6 physiological steps on how to speed up your natural metabolic rate and lower your set-point
In this section the focus will be to address some of the most important factors in a revved up metabolic rate, perception of feast and the lowering of the weight that your hypothalamus considers to be safe normal and effective for you. The human body is an amazing machine that’s always striving for efficiency, health, protection it does what it does because it believes it’s the best/healthiest alternative. The human body stores fat for times of need or if it perceives there will be a need, there are certain behaviors that trigger that there will be a need. For the majority of the time that man’s lived on earth there were natural cycles that humans were subjected to. There were seasons of plenty and seasons of little, there are times of great activity and times of inactivity, life had a rhythm and the body became attuned.
Today in a relatively short period of time the cycles are either gone altogether or ever so slight, the requirement for life and sustaining life is not necessary yet the very same rhythmic signaling may still be in place and the same triggering mechanisms to slow down or speed up the natural metabolic rate, the outcome. Your body may perceive that there is a famine even though you may be 50 pounds overweight but the very behaviors that you’re participating in are very similar to the natural yearly rhythmic cycles of feast and famine.
Feast high-energy/fat burning, famine store energy/conserve fat
Consider what life was like just 100 years ago and how similar it was for thousands of years and how the seasons were different, the needs of the body different as well. In the winter typically a natural time to be less active, slow down the metabolism, days were short and nights are long, most of foods that we eat were stored for long periods of time so another words the complexity of the carbohydrate broken down and a more sedentary lifestyle causing a resistance to insulin and insulin spikes, signaling to the body to store fat, deprived muscle cells of nourishment. If animals were consumed and caught in late fall and early winter the meat was more laden with fat, as most animals go through these cycles and build fat reserves for the winter. Lack of light producing more of the sleep hormone melatonin, inactivity likely causing eating behavior similar to many that we have today all signaling muscle is not needed and the requirement for fat storage and the conservation of energy/fuel/fat.
In the spring days lengthen exposure to light is increased, the requirement to do more chores causes one to exert more energy from first thing in the morning to night in turn requiring regular refueling or another words a meal first thing in the morning and then throughout the day and intern signaling to the brain/hypothalamus under these conditions a high energy metabolism is a requirement and there’s a constant supply of food/energy/fuel to fire the metabolism. The brighter light causes the release of hormones such as serotonin which in turn create a more alert overall feeling.
Summertime fresh food becomes abundant refined carbohydrates are replaced with complex carbohydrates, basically any carbohydrate that stored for a long pier to time, breaks down and becomes more refined and then becomes even more refined through methods of preserving and processing. If meat products are consumed that are killed in the late spring and summer they contain less fat, a natural process that wild animals go through as season cycle. Days become longer, light becomes brighter more chemicals are produced that in turn keep one more alert and energetic. Blood sugar levels from eating complex carbohydrates become more stable in turn keeping the insulin production by the pancreas more stable in turn creating sensitivity to insulin in turn keeping the muscle cells nourished and growing and the metabolism high.
In the fall the days become shorter, fresh meat is more laden with fat, the fruits and vegetables that we eat become more refined and even the late fall fresh vegetables are of a simpler carbohydrate and the feast or famine cycle, the speed up and slow down metabolism cycle, the store fat and burn fat cycle, is complete and starts all over again.
Some get stuck in the low-energy, slow metabolism, high-fat storage cycle (famine) pay attention to the following steps to help you become stuck in the high-energy, fast metabolism, fat burning (feast) cycle.
The six physiological steps
Step 1) Bright light, Light very much affects the natural annual rhythms and may trigger metabolic rate, fat storage or fat burning, and energy. We all are familiar with the winter doldrums and many experience less energy, desire to be more sedentary, and even depression during the shorter days. If you work indoors in an environment full of florescent light, the light spectrum may not be signaling daylight or serotonin (wake up feel good hormone) production. If you’re sleeping at night even with your eyes closed and it’s not completely dark you could be stimulating small mounts a serotonin production at the wrong time causing difficulty with sleep or not very deep sleep and not enough melatonin (sleep hormone) production.
Suggestion, as soon as you wake up in the morning do all your activities in an environment full of light especially in the winter, and suggest that you invest in a full spectrum light bulb that contains the light frequencies of sunlight. If you work in a florescent environment bring a lamp with a full spectrum light bulb and place it on your desk. Also very important when you go to sleep make sure that it’s completely dark, lights on a DVR or cable box can be a real problem even with your eyes closed unless they are red lights. If you have to use some sort of sleep mask for complete darkness so you sleep better and wake up more refreshed and energetic.
Sunlight and full-spectrum light regulate the biological clock and produce important hormones and vitamins such as C and D. When you’re not getting enough light some functions diminish and can even cause issues with the immune system. Lack of light or the wrong kind of light can cause stress, eyestrain, craving of carbohydrates, changes in menstrual cycle, irritability, depression and a weaker immune system in turn causing more colds/flues. Lack of ultraviolet light during the winter months may very well be the single biggest trigger for winter blues.
Important ultraviolet light is blocked by glass in our Windows, contact lenses, sunglasses, car windows, do your best to get at least 30 minutes of natural sunlight a day without sunglasses or contact lenses, if in a car open the windows. It does not need to be direct exposure to the sun, for example sitting under a shade tree or the like is fine. 98% of the light benefit enters through our eyes and about 2% through the skin which in turn help the body develop vitamin D (Vitamin D supplementation in the winter may help if you cannot get at least 30 minutes a natural sunlight but certainly not the ideal solution).
Light travels to the hypothalamus gland and the benefit is distributed to the rest of the body, the hypothalamus regulates your circadian rhythms required to distinguish night from day, summer from winter. Most important it singles the pineal gland to produce appropriate hormones two of which are melatonin and serotonin. Ideally your pineal gland should produce about 16 hours of serotonin and eight hours of melatonin every day and proper use of light will help that balance.
The body converts light into chemical electrical pulses that go through the nervous system providing energy to every cell, with the additional requirements of nutrition and oxygen light is the “spark plug” that ignites energy in the cell and important for cell repair. Light really does have a significant effect in our bodies, in an interesting study done by John Ott, florescent light that have more of a blue spectrum caused test animals to have primarily male offspring and florescent light with more red spectrum to have more female offspring. This study should remove any doubt of the significance and impact of light, in other words if it could so dramatically affect the sex of offspring it makes sense that it would affect human beings in other ways.
In some school studies that changed lighting to full-spectrum lighting, grade-point averages rose and surprisingly cavities dropped hypothesized to be likely from the production of vitamin D which is necessary for calcium absorption.
Step 2) Hydrating fluids, you’re probably saying I heard this before; well you are going to hear it again. Eight glasses of water a day is a minimal amount that you should have, contrary to popular belief avoid drinking a lot of water right before a meal or during your meal, primarily because water dilutes the acids in your stomach necessary for proper and healthy digestion in turn assimilation of nutritional constituents. Ideally drink water any time throughout the day and drink less starting a half-hour from before your meal to about 15 minutes after. Most other drinks are not very hydrating and some even cause dehydration such as coffee, alcohol and soda.
After oxygen, water is most essential and as simple as it may appear, is very complex often containing hundreds of important minerals and chemicals structured and clustered in ways that can’t be duplicated and essential for life. Surprisingly too many advanced filtering methods may alter the beneficiary properties of water, carbon filtration is fine and for the most part here in the United States tap water is good with probably the worst chemicals being fluoride and chlorine. Lemon may reduce the surface tension water in turn making it more “slippery” or wetter and helping hydration.
Step 3) Sensitivity to insulin, insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance play a significant role in muscle formation and fat storage. There are three fat related types of insulin problems.
First Peripheral insulin sensitivity/resistance (by far the most common problem) is how sensitive or resistant your muscle cells are to the absorption of glucose (blood sugar) in the presence of insulin when produced by the pancreas. To make this real simple and unscientific our muscle cells have a “gas cap” and the way the gas cap is opened is through the production of insulin, when opened glucose and other nutrients are able to get into the muscle cell and fuel it. In turn causing the muscles to grow and the glucose to be burned and most important not be converted to fat and stored. Insulin resistance happens often by overproduction of insulin, imagine the guy in the gas station sees the insulin but doesn’t open up the gas cap so the pancreas produces even more insulin to get the gas station attendants attention but this blinds the attendant. The insulin, the fuel/glucose does not get into the muscle cell the muscle atrophies/starves eventually the glucose is converted to fat and stored in the stomach, legs and butt.
Second Hepatic insulin resistance inflammation for various reasons, may be immune system related prevents signaling from the liver to stop producing glucose.
Third Pancreatic insulin malfunction the beta cells that secrete insulin are either damaged or for number of reasons, cannot function which is what often happens in type I diabetics.
Contributing factors to this insulin resistance is refined carbohydrates, especially high fructose corn syrup which in turn causes a highly concentrated release of glucose stimulating the overproduction of insulin eventually causing insulin resistance. The muscles atrophy and the body stores fat, the number one culprit in the American diet of high fructose corn syrup is soda however after a shortage of sugarcane in the 50s and 60s the food industry has used more and more high fructose corn syrup in food, today it seems that the tide may be slowly shifting as consumers are becoming more educated. If you must use some sure sort of sweetener stay away from high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners, sugar from sugarcane and honey are better but it’s best to go without.
Processing, preserving, storing, and refining also break down the complexity in carbohydrates so for example a banana is more complex when it’s green and becomes more refined when it’s yellow with black spots, whenever you can choose fresh fruits and vegetables, in addition combining any kind of fiber with a carbohydrate causes it to enter into the blood system more slowly preventing the spiking of insulin. For example if you were to sweeten your coffee in the morning with sugar and have some farina or oatmeal with it, the combined glycemic index of that meal would be dramatically improved (if you are going to have coffee, I recommend against it but if you must for every cup consumed add water equal to double the amount of coffee consumed for proper hydration)
Exercise helps with insulin sensitivity by stretching out that area of the “gas cap” and causing glucose to fuel the muscle cell in turn building muscle and not storing fat. Additional benefit, muscle is an active tissue it requires calories for sustenance in turn speeding up the metabolic rate. Chromium picolinate may also help increase insulin sensitivity by increasing elasticity of the cell/plasma membrane.
Vitamins and supplements, antioxidants may be beneficiary especially for their anti-inflammation properties (Hepatic insulin resistance), in addition the mineral Chromium Picolinate, the amino acid Carnitine, the herb Green Tea, Cinnamon, Chlorogenic Acid (CHA), Omega three fatty acids, vitamin E, fiber and vinegar may help act on cells to induce insulin sensitivity or to regulate glucose levels.
Step 4) six meals a day, one of the absolute best ways to get your body to go from that famine mode to the high-energy, high metabolism, fat burning machine mode is by breaking up your meals into six smaller meals.
Avoid going any more than three hours without having a least a small healthy snack, important to either have breakfast first thing in the morning or something healthy as soon as you wake up. Couple suggestions half a banana, half in Apple, a quarter of a protein bar. Otherwise go right into your breakfast, ideal breakfast a bowl of plain oatmeal or farina with a little fruit is great, one or two eggs and plain whole-wheat bread or a fruit.
Snack between meals, all depends on how you eat but if for example you wake up at 6 AM and you eat breakfast and lunch is at 1 PM then at 9:30 AM have a little snack such as suggested earlier, the smaller and more complex the better, high-fiber great. The other way you wake up at 6 AM and you have your snack and then at 9:30 AM you have your breakfast, 1 PM lunch and then between lunch and dinner once again some sort of small snack similar to your morning snack. If you eat early dinner let’s say before six and you go to sleep at 11 suggest one more small snack halfway between dinner and sleep. Protein is good at this time so for example the white part of the hard-boiled egg for two reasons one metabolic, two about 45 minutes after you fall sleep your body produces growth hormone very helpful for deep sleep, metabolism, and muscle development. The production of growth hormone needs, protein especially the amino acids arginine and ornithine, stimulate this very healthy and beneficiary production.
This method of eating is designed to rev up your metabolic rate in addition beneficial for insulin resistance.
Step 5) Activity/exercise, you knew it was coming, they’re so much confusion regarding exercise some say anaerobic (resistance training) is best, other say aerobic (running, jogging etc.) is best, still others say walking is the best, or running is best, today the evidence is clear, all exercise is cumulative and so if you choose to do it three times a day for five minutes at a time or 15 minutes once a day it’s basically the same, if you walk at 3 miles an hour for half an hour or run 6 miles an hour for 15 minutes it’s basically the same. Find something that you enjoy and do it. If you have a highly sedentary job do your best to get up a couple times a day and either take a brisk walk for 60 seconds longer the better, do 20 squats or even as you sit at your desk, contract and release your muscles especially your glutes (butt), hamstrings and quads.
Step 6) Appetizer, when you eat your three main meals keep in mind one of the physiological signaling methods that your body uses to indicate physical fullness is by the release of CCK (cholecystokinin) from the stomach lining to the hypothalamus this process takes about 20 minutes. You can induce physical fullness by slowing down when you eat or by having an appetizer 20 minutes before. I am not however suggesting more overall food but I am suggesting that instead of eating it all within five minutes start with something 20 minutes before your meal that you are going to eat anyway. A really great appetizer is a salad with vinegar as a dressing for three reasons, first it accomplishes lengthening the meal, number two salad greens are high in fiber as well as digestive aids, and third vinegar aids in insulin sensitivity.
Worth noting, digestive type, one of my companies in the past did quite a bit of work on the kind of digestive system that one has, how to determine it and whether it’s carnivorous (meat eating) or herbivore (plant eating) humans are considered omnivorous, there’s a good amount of evidence that people with blood type O, the oldest, originating in hunting tribes, have a digestive system with higher amounts of digestive acids for meat digestion, and may fare well with higher intake of meat especially red meat, and those with blood type A the next blood type to evolve likely as a result of farming and fair better with a diet higher in vegetables. The remaining blood type B, AB, about 6% of the population, likely similar to type A however inconclusive. Some of the work we did relating to blood type and nutrition my companies receive patents for however at the same time first to say that though anecdotally likely helpful, don’t believe it to be conclusive, certainly worth a look.
Step one through six, once again address the physical challenges with weight and we will incorporate them into your WINstructions. I especially love step one, bright light because it’s so easy to do, below some additional tips though not as significant as the above six.
- Doggie bag, as soon as you receive your meal at a restaurant take half and pack away, restaurant portions are notoriously large.
- Always eat before you go grocery shopping, this will help you make wise choices. If you are hungry while grocery shopping, stop get something to eat and come back afterwards.
- Put your utensils down between bites.
- Never eat with the television on. In a recent study watching TV led to higher consumption.
- As you eat think about the different flavors that you can notice, carefully taste to distinguish different ingredients and seasonings.
- Keep unhealthy snacks out of site preferably out of your home.
- Eat foods that don’t have health claims, that sounds funny but your fruits vegetables don’t have health labels and most of the processed foods do.
- Brush your teeth and tongue, a minty fresh mouth helps one have a more satisfied sensation.
- Don’t leave serving dishes with second helpings on the dinner table.
- If you’re eating something that creates trash for example chicken wings leave on your plate. One study shows when you throw the trash away you eat more.
- Smaller plates will visually look like more food and has been found to help eat less.
- If you must have wine with your meal it’s better to have it after you’re done.
That completes the six physiological major steps to speed up your natural metabolic rate and lower your set-point.
Steps to psychological fullness
Unlike physical satiety (fullness) psychological satiety is programmed in other words it’s not natural, often one may be completely physically satisfied/full however they continue to eat because they are not psychologically satisfied/full and the reverse could happen as well. That may lead you to ask what’s more dominant physical or psychological satiety, it depends on the person and also the situation for example if you haven’t eaten for couple days it’s clearly going to be physical but under normal conditions could be psychological or both. Most important, is to address both so one doesn’t take over where the other one leaves off, for example you become physically full but not psychologically full and you continue to eat or you become psychologically full but not physically full and you continue to eat. The ideal is that you become both physically and psychologically full on much smaller meals at approximately the same time.
All the behaviors both physical and psychological will be addressed with different WINcourses however it’s important to distinguish between the two and develop sensitivity to what is happening in your body both physically and mentally. Some of the physical satiety tips can cross over into psychological as well.
Cornell University researchers conducted an interesting study that concluded that the average person makes approximately 221 decisions about eating each and every day. Most of the study participants believed they only made 15. This is important because decisions about food are not physical by nature, but thoughts made by our conscious reasoning mind are greatly, greatly, influenced by what’s in your subconscious mind, most of these 221 decisions being made solely by the subconscious mind. Because if most only believe that they make about 15 a day the rest must be on autopilot. So one can conclude 206 of those food related decisions are made without the conscious reasoning mind. Drawing the conclusion that just like you can participate in the self-talk related to breathing you also can join the conversation on the remaining 206 food related decisions that you’re making on autopilot and in turn make sure that these decisions are helping you become fat-free and fabulously fit forever.
Steps for psychological Satiety
Step 1) Always leave food on the plate, no matter what always leave a least some food on the plate so visually you notice it. In addition recognize that you left food on your plate say to yourself as you are leaving food on your plate that you left food on the plate because you could not eat it all, whether true or not and use emotion when you say it. To be perfectly clear with your reasoning mind, in other words through self-talk; make the distinction that you left food on the plate as a result of being full. This is what it should sound like “I just left food on the plate because I could not eat it all I think my stomach is shrinking” that is a perfect statement, make sure you’re emotional! This will help you focus on physical fullness. In addition the WINcourses will make you feel full twice as fast on half the food, the process starts when you leave food on your plate.
For some of you it may be difficult because you don’t want to waste food consider your health and the health of your children to be much more important. I’m also not suggesting that you have to throw the food away, by all means put in a container and eat at your next meal. Eat your breakfast lunch and dinner the same way. Leave on the plate the most unhealthy food, for example if you’re eating a chicken sandwich and you notice there some skin mixed in, leave the skin and some of the bread but eat the tomatoes and lettuce.
Always leave the unhealthiest part of the meal on your plate this is a great message to the subconscious mind, when you do this once again make the distinction through self-talk that this is exactly what you did.
Reward yourself, as you make these distinctions during your self-talk reward yourself by saying to yourself “I just removed some of the fatty skin from my chicken sandwich and I left the skin as well some bread on my napkin because I couldn’t eat it all I feel full already and now I’m going to reward myself by saying job well done!
Step 2) I can’t eat very much anymore, as you are eating carry on a conversation with yourself that goes something like this “my stomach is shrinking, I seem to get full twice as fast on half the food, I can’t really eat very much anymore, my stomach is really tiny, I seem to know exactly how much my body nutritionally needs and I never eat more, this ice cream seems repulsive to me, I really don’t like sweet things anymore,” as you eat take control of the conversation that you have with yourself.
Reward yourself for having great conversation, praise yourself for healthy self-talk you could say “because I am now recognizing that I become full twice as fast on half the food I am now going to get up from the table and reward myself with TV.” Often the reward isn’t what’s most important it’s the distinction of the reward that’s important.
Step 3) Making fattening food taste repulsive, you may have some fattening food weaknesses or should say you may have had some in the past. As you’re eating your food talk to yourself about the taste of the food and tell yourself that the healthiest food tastes the best and associate the most fattening food with something completely repulsive. It could be a food that you absolutely can’t stand or could be something really repulsive such as puke, diarrhea please be creative. So the conversation would go something like this “this broccoli and spinach is absolutely smile delicious however I really don’t care for this hamburger, first it’s greasy and it just doesn’t taste right, I don’t know why but for some reason I just don’t like hamburger meat like I used to and these French fries are disgusting it’s amazing I don’t like French fries anymore, this brownie actually taste just like puke, I can’t believe how bad it is.(Reward) I’m so proud of myself for feeling this way that I can’t help but smile”. You need to take control of your self-talk in this manner, even if at the beginning you don’t notice a difference, for example you continue to eat a large portion or enjoy the brownie that don’t matter what matters is that you planted seeds of insignificance they will become profoundly significant.
Strong suggestion read article on the law of insignificance, this law of insignificance is critically important to understand and if there is even a slight chance that you don’t completely understand it take the time to read.
Step 4) taking ownership for the weight that you want to be, imagine yourself possessing the weight that you want to be, close your eyes and envision your stepping on a scale and it reads the weight that you want to be and as you see that weight registered on your scale imagine the word normal next to that weight.
Constantly make the distinction when you talk to yourself and do it as often as possible that your normal body weight is _____________ pounds (the weight that you want to be) and have the faith and belief that this is your weight, this is the weight that you are, this is not the weight that you want to be, this is the weight that you are, this is the weight of your being. The conversation may sound something like this “I love my normal body weight of _____pounds I look so hot, sexy, muscular I have wide shoulders, shapely chest, the tight butt and strong muscular legs, I love looking this way, when I step on the scale my normal body weight registers at ______ pounds, this is my weight, this is the weight of my very being. Hijack the conversation whenever you can in regard to eating, exercise/activity, food and how quickly you become full and control that self-talk, at first it may seem somewhat far-fetched, that don’t matter the seeds are being sowed.
Step 5) Punish yourself for damaging thoughts related to food and exercise, if you find yourself saying something that you know is destructive to you finding your normal body weight or to eating properly, punish those thoughts, make it clear that you’re unhappy with that way of thinking. You say something damaging such as this chocolate cake is delicious or you see a chocolate cake on the dessert cart and you say that chocolate cake looks delicious immediately upon recognition and tuning into your self-talk stop yourself. For example, you catch yourself saying something like this “that chocolate cake on the dessert cart looks delicious (now you catch yourself and correct with) that’s a disgusting thing to say as I look closer at that chocolate cake it looks like diarrhea and is disgusting I’m disappointed I would even think that way!”. Take control of your self-talk, hijack it when it’s healthy/beneficial, praise, congratulate and recognize it, and when it’s incorrect, reprimand and punish it, let it know how disappointed you are. When you do this it’s best to do it the moment the thought enters your mind, however don’t say this to yourself “stop thinking this way” that’s like saying don’t think about the pink elephant in the room. All you need to do is associate pleasure with great thoughts and pain with thoughts that don’t serve you well. Eventually the thoughts that don’t serve you well and are connected with pain will stop and the thoughts that serve you well and are repeatedly associated with pleasure will be repeated. That’s how the mind works, its mission is to take you to pleasure and keep you away from pain.
Side note: When you think about your subconscious mind and training it, think in terms of how you would train a dog, for example, what separates human beings from animals may very well be that humans have a conscious reasoning mind. Similar to a dog your subconscious mind wants to serve you well, wants to protect you, wants to do what is best for you. The confusion is that the trainer you and the environment are not clear, the way to become clear is to take control of your self-talk and reinforce through reward and repetition good self-talk; punish damaging self-talk as if you would your dog. If you get the thoughts right the behaviors will follow, studies from as far back as the 70s demonstrate that our brains begin to prepare us for some sort of action or response in over a third of a second before our conscious does. So every stimulus we are present to is being reacted to by the subconscious mind about a third of a second before it is reacted to by the conscious mind. Consider that a decision is likely the consideration of hundreds or thousands of factors, a third of a second that may appear initially insignificant has profound significance when we have approximately 65,000 thoughts a day, and most of the time it’s our subconscious that is making the decisions for us. Can you consciously remember the 65,000 thoughts that you had yesterday? Or even the 2000 thoughts that you had in the last hour.
So often we spend a lot of time trying to correct a behavior, for example the behavior of eating less food or the behavior of not eating ice cream, trying to correct that behavior is an exercise in willpower. Ignore that behavior, focus on the thought process, get the thought right, the behavior will follow. Initially it may seem that you are having little or no success I assure you if you are getting your self-talk right you are having extraordinary success that is simply starting initially as insignificant, eventually every time you think about the thought that you corrected for example “chocolate ice cream”, chocolate ice cream is not one thought it’s many thoughts a color, a taste, thought of a smell, temperature, texture, feeling, socializing, hot summer night, eating with a friend, eating with a lover and association with pleasure. Now you take control and think chocolate ice cream and think color is disgusting, taste is puke-like, temperature cold lonely, texture slimy, feeling lonely rejection fat, socializing rejection ugly, hot summer night being all alone and fat, eating with a friend no being all alone, eating with a lover no because no one loves me because I’m fat, so another words chocolate ice cream equals pain.
Neuroscientists have demonstrated that the conscious mind provides between 1% and 5% of our cognitive activity, so another words between 1 and 5% of the time we are making our decisions cognitively (consciously). Some scientists studying the subconscious believe that the mind operates at 40 million bits of data per second and the conscious mind at only 40 bits per second that’s 1 million times per second faster; it seems the subconscious mind is running on automatic pilot 95% of the time. Of the 65,000 thoughts that’s estimated most humans have every day only about 5% are different than the day before, the remaining 95% is your autopilot, stop working so hard to correct the behavior, remember it all starts as a thought, get the thought right the behavior will follow.
Step 6) Think thin, you become what you think about most, this chapter on weight loss will finish with WINcourses and WINstructions, all day long, especially after your WINstructions take some additional time and concentrate on the conversation that you have with yourself (self-talk) and after you complete your WINstructions take a few extra minutes and really concentrate on your self-talk (also consider doing this during other times such as taking a shower, driving your car, taking a walk, relaxing etc.) eventually you will not need the WINstructions or maybe just every so often use a maintenance WINstruction, for the most part the self-talk will be all you need.
Make the distinction that if it is during mealtime you try to eat less food you are doing this with the power of will that is born in the conscious reasoning mind, that’s hard, it doesn’t take much effort to correct a thought and even if it took exactly the same effort, correcting the behavior is temporary, correcting a thought has lasting impact. When you correct an eating behavior by eating less food, think about the reward for eating less food is it pain or pleasure? That’s right it’s pain because now you’re hungry so the very behavior of eating more food is really being reinforced so the next time you may want to eat even more.
Now does it take a lot of willpower, or do you have to endure a lot of pain when you correct the thought? No it just takes some education, some know-how, some understanding. Let’s say that you just completed one minute ago, a WINstruction on becoming full twice as fast on half the food and now you are in the shower. As you are showering say to yourself “let me work on my self-talk relating to loving to eat less and the pain of being stuffed” note the great words you just used, as you’re washing your hair or whatever it is that you do in the shower this is what your self-talk should sound like “my stomach really shrank, if I put more than a half the amount of food that used to in it, it hurts, it’s painful, it makes me want to throw up, that’s right that feeling of being stuffed makes me want to puke, I now become full on half the food that’s on my plate, feeling stuffed is really disgusting to me, it’s as though the next piece of food I was to put in my mouth someone spit on it and it is that really gross green slimy spit. I really enjoy the feeling of a clean, empty, happy, resting stomach after all it needs a break to, the best way I can associate putting food in my stomach is to putting fuel in my gas tank I don’t want to do it, I don’t enjoy doing it, it’s simply a requirement to fuel my car/body, I don’t know why I am the way I am but for some reason this is how I am this is my very being I am a person that simply feels like throwing up when I get slightly full having a little bit of food my stomach a few times a day feels okay but any more than that I want to puke, it’s painful to me, it’s repulsive and the next bite of food makes me think that someone spit on it, being this way makes me really happy.” You’re probably saying that kind of sounds like a WINstruction I was hoping you recognized that, and to that, my George I think you’ve got it. It sounds like a WINstruction because a WINstruction is designed to train your self-talk; it’s designed to give you the words that you need to use between sessions.
Now let’s imagine you’re eating a meal, I don’t want you to focus on trying to eat less food during your meal; no, no, that should not be your focus. Your focus must be on the way you think during the meal, and get your self-talk correct. Eventually the belief that you create for yourself relating to the food will help you eat less and you will have long-term benefits but if what you do is simply eat less even though you want to eat more you will simply experience that same sensation next time you eat. So instead of focusing on eating less food, focus on the way you think (self-talk) about food.
Self-talk during a meal related to eating too much, so while you’re over eating because you just started using this technology say to yourself “I can’t stand the feeling of fullness anymore, it’s really repulsive to me, as I’m putting this piece of meat in my mouth it’s becoming clearly disgusting, I still have over half the food left on my plate and I get the sense that I’m going to puke from eating too much and it feels like for some reason I can’t help but think that the next bite of food you put in my mouth someone spit on, and it’s that disgusting slimy green diseased spit, I become full now twice as fast on half the food, the feeling of being full is repulsive to me, it makes me feel as though I just ate throw up, I really enjoy an empty clean happy stomach I love that feeling, the feeling of a clean empty stomach feels great to me, being this way for me give me great pleasure.” Before you ever attempt to eat less food complete a WINcourse on eating less food and follow it with great self-talk and eating less food will be autopilot.
Step 7) most powerful time of day, last this cannot be stressed enough, there are two times a day that naturally your subconscious mind is by far the easiest to train, to change, to be able to create for yourself the life that you want. Let’s talk in terms of hypnosis for a moment, the state that a hypnotist tries to get his patient during a hypnotic session is called the “theta” state and if successful the patient will normally have extraordinary success the truth of the matter is that it’s difficult to get someone to the theta state. Throughout the day we are in what’s called the beta state, in the beta state the critical analytical is highly aware and defensive of the subconscious mind. When we relax we normally enter what’s called the alpha state, the critical analytical is still very active and defends the subconscious mind. Every single day we enter for between three and 10 minutes the theta state, anything that you are subjected to during this period of time becomes almost instantaneous belief. In other words if during this period of time you hear a WINstruction it is many, many, many, times more powerful than in the alpha or beta state and it could be a magnitude of 100 times maybe even more. So I’m suggesting is, and it can be hard to do but as you’re lying in bed and you’re falling asleep, go over your healthy self-talk and do this also as you wake up in the morning.
Use of a recording device, another great option is to record your WINstructions and listen to them as you’re falling asleep, and also as you’re waking up in the morning, use them as a wake-up clock. I can’t stress how important and how highly suggestible you are during these two times of the day and how they can help you collapse time frames and proceed much faster from insignificance to significance.
Important distinction, every life experience molds your subconscious mind in some way, so another words every word that you hear or speak, everything that you see, everything that you feel, everything that you sense, everything that you think, shapes you in some way. However it’s all done in different degrees, in hypnosis it’s called how “suggestible” one is or the suggestibility index, however that’s not just simply as a result of the person one is, it’s a result of the patients ability to participate in the suggestions, the patient’s ability to enter a deep state of relaxation, the patient’s understanding, the cooperation or alignment between the conscious and subconscious mind and other factors.
A few rules of thumb, the more relaxed you are the easier it is to engineer your subconscious mind into the person that you want to be no matter what technique you use. For example, your self-talk, your WINstructions, listening to someone or recording, reading something choice of words can all dramatically affect your suggestibility index as well. That’s one of the reasons that you have the WINstructions to help guide you during your self-talk to use similar or the same words. Repetition is another factor, the more of the same repetition the more effective and is likely exponentially, anchoring all the above techniques with pleasure also increases the effectiveness with the ultimate being that magic window between the 3 to 10 minutes before you go to sleep or enter the Delta state and the 3 to 10 minutes after you wake up or come out of the Delta state. That is by far the most effective or suggestible state, it’s the state that is the most effective for engineering you into the person that you want to be.
During the Delta state or more specifically when you enter RIM (rapid eye movement) state of sleep, the majority of the rewiring of your brain takes place prioritized by the above factors, another reason why the time right before you go to bed is such an incredibly valuable time. By using the time first thing in the morning right after you wake up, yes helps prepare you for the day but really the more specific value is that it reinforces to your subconscious mind that the rewiring was done right, and that there is alignment.
Step 8) admit your behaviors regarding weight are wrong, so often I hear when I first start to work with someone how they’re doing everything right but yet they’re fat. It’s incredible how righteous they are, this is not something solely with those struggling with weight, this is something that is typical with most everyone struggling with anything. If you can’t admit, accept, identify, that you are eating too much, not active enough, eating the wrong foods, partaking in behaviors that cause you to be fat then you will never be able to control your weight. You can’t say I am doing everything right but yet I still have a weight problem. You must say I’m doing everything wrong and that’s why have a weight problem, I am not saying to repeat this over and over and over again I’m simply saying accept and admit to it, identify it and then the WINosp technology can work. Do not defend your current way of being/ thinking if you do you can never penetrate into your subconscious mind; submit to this new way of being. Allow your life to occur to you in a new way, with a new way for you to be. Once again, this is a decision that you make, for life to occur for you in a different way. The only way this happens starts with you and the way that you are being, so often people expect that life will change, that’s not what happens what happens is how life occurs changes because the interpretation of the stimulus changes. The stimulus remains the same then interpretation is different so another words the being is different.
Step 9) conscious and subconscious merge the real magic of WINosp is when the conscious and subconscious mind align, earlier you learned not to use willpower to correct an eating behavior because basically you are punishing a healthy behavior such as eating less food, if your subconscious mind believes you should eat more, by solely using willpower.
Eventually your subconscious mind will adapt to the new belief system that you create for yourself, so in other words will believe that for example you become full twice as fast on half the food or that a certain food taste horrible to you that you enjoyed in the past. This is the point that you want to use both your conscious and subconscious mind to correct a behavior, normally it will be after a complete WINcycle and the behavior modification will be related to the WINcycle and the self-talk that you focused on as a result of the WINcourse you were on.
Let’s say that the WINcourse is becoming full twice as fast on half the food and every time you repeated or listen to your WINstructions you incorporated focused self-talk relating to this new way of being. You did this for 21 days or longer and you felt you are ready to start eating less, here’s how. While you’re eating repeat your self-talk regarding becoming full twice as fast on half the food, and once you start getting close to the point that your plate is half empty repeat to yourself the food begins to taste like puke and the next bite you get the sensation that someone spit on it and it’s not just the regular kind of spit it’s the green slimy spit etc. all the things that we created for you in some of the previous steps. Over the course of the next couple of weeks start leaving just a little bit more food on the plate every time you eat as you’re having this discussion with yourself until you get to the point that you are eating the amount of calories that you need to eat to become thin. That visual of leaving that food on the plate will be helpful in the beginning, continue to do that and incorporate a little different type of self-talk this will be in the WINstruction, the self-talk would be “I know exactly how much I need to eat to nutritionally satisfy my body and become and maintain my normal body weight of______ pounds eating anymore is repulsive to me, and makes the next bite of food tastes like puke, someone spit on it, I love being this way.” The whole process is step-by-step, keep in mind that this is not a diet, this here is alignment between the conscious and subconscious mind to become fat-free and fabulously fit forever.
Remember to constantly recognize yourself for great thinking say to yourself things like this way of thinking makes me smile, makes me happy, gives me pleasure, feels like having an climax, sorry to use that term, however it for most people is by far the most powerful anchoring mechanism to associate to a new way of being that you are creating for yourself.
Summary, so much of the psychological warfare of weight control is relatively simple once you do it for a couple of weeks and also apply to WINstructions.
- Do your self-talk at a time that you are not in the midst of the behavior you are looking to improve.
- As you carry on a conversation with yourself imagine yourself doing it in a passionate way.
- Anchor all your helpful self-talk with pleasure.
- Correct a behavior first in your self-talk.
- The most effective state by far is the 3 to 10 minutes before you go to sleep and after you wake up.
WINcourses on Weight Control
Now the creation of WINcourses will begin, even though I’m okay with you going right into weight loss without completing any other WINcourses, I would strongly suggest that you follow the protocol. Some of the important foundational WINcourses prior to weight control are: forgiveness (as strange as this sounds I have found so many times with weight reduction there is some sort of resentment that is lingering and gets in the way, in addition to a WINcourse on forgiveness, consciously forgiving something that you’ve had difficulty forgiving can be very helpful) happy, attitude, appreciative, good Finder, persistence, determination, faith, patience, thoroughness and visionary are really important. In the important advanced WINcourses I would also highly recommend self-confidence and self-esteem.
I’m sure you noted already the use of strong disgusting words or associations to anchor pain to food, attitudes, satiety, the use of puke, diarrhea, spit, have been commonly used over the last 30 years normally with the subject choosing what they feel is most powerful, feel free to substitute what you think would be most effective for you.
Join me on a year-long journey to become fat-free and fabulously fit forever with me as your personal coach we will work together to reprogram the harmful destructive fat loving habits program throughout your life into healthy, happy fat destroying operating system that will not only benefit your life but those loved ones as well.
© Copyright 2013 Alex Goen /NAYA IP LLC all rights reserved. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner for any means, including print, electronic, mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system whatsoever, without the expressed written permission from the copyright holder. All WIN prefixed words are trademarks of Alex Goen/NAYA IP LLC