The Slim Mentality

www.theslimthoughts.com My new blog is about influence of our thoughts on our body and our weight and how we can use it for weight loss and weight management purposes. Feel free to subscribe to be notified about updates.

Can we use our logic to change our feelings or emotions? Let's make an experiment:

Say to yourself - "I feel good", or - " I feel bad". Does it make you to feel such way? Do you feel dramatically different just from changing the words?

What about visualizing that you have reached your dream, or imagine a sincere open full of joy face of your child? Or imagine how you feel after a passionate relation with your loved one? I am not asking you to visualize the horrible memory that would make you sad, I hope you got an idea. What is more powerful - word or visualization?

We used logic in both instances in attempt to generate a feeling, but we used different languages to communicate the message to ourselves... I think visualization is one of the ways to convert logical conclusions into the feelings and corresponding emotions. I thinks one of the ways the words make us feel different is by awakening related imaginations. Some people do it automatically, others need to learn how to do this right…

What do you think about actors? Do you think they prefer logic or emotions? Do you think they possess an ultimate willpower to keep themselves slim? Isn't it the case that many of them are addicted to drugs or alcohol? How do they manage to stay away from food indulgences? It may not be applicable to all of them, but you have to agree that the majority of them are remarkably good at weight management. I think they think differently and I suspect their way of thinking is somewhat related to what they do for living. I think they think differently in few ways.

1. They train their mind to play the life of others. By trying to replicate, they end up visualizing the feelings, emotions, bodies, movements of their roles, they literally live the life of others.. By doing this their mind automatically shapes their bodies to the body they live in their imagination.

2. I think their own thinking process automatically switches in the similar directions, they visualize their logically created structures and emotionally charge them as a result… They automatically visualize the body the way they want it, instead of "I want to be 123 pounds", they see, feel, live in the body of their dreams...

Many, but not all people fail the weight loss efforts. I think some people get the right solution by coincidence or luck, they find the right way of communicating their desires to their bodies. Could visualization be one of the secrets to their success?

The language of subconscious mind

How do we accomplish a sustained reliable permanent desired weight? By accessing the subconscious mentality. It appears that everyone has a body mass weight setpoint. All efforts to alter our weight by conscious and logical efforts almost inevitably result in failure. Why? Because we, humans are driven by emotions rather than logic and knowledge. Emotions are product of our subconscious mind.

How do we get in touch with our subconscious mind? What language does it use? Our subconscious mind does not understand the “human” language. It doesn’t understand English or French, it doesn’t know Ukrainian neither… But it perceives the visualizations. It accepts the real situations exactly the same way as it treats the vividly visualized products of our imagination. We can communicate with our subconscious mind by presenting it with real scenarios, or with real scenarios but somewhat altered purposefully by our perception, or simply imagined events or situations. It will treat them equally.

Our logic and conscious mind are responsible to decide what is real and what is not, and what to serve to our subconscious mentality. Just like watching a movie, or reading a book, we clearly understand what is real and what is not and make a conscious decision to enjoy a movie or a fiction book and to experience all of the emotions they bring to us for our pleasure or entertainment. In many cases our subconscious mind can create new associations based on that. You can read a book and decide that the most interesting place on Earth is city of LA, or whatever, and it doesn’t mean that this is the truth, but it is for you… If we repeat those new associations often and long enough it will result in the creation of new believes.

Visualizations presented to our subconscious mind result in generation of emotions. If we link the visualization of activities or routines to the visualizations of desirable pleasant goals that they lead to, we can subconsciously link the beneficial activities to the emotion of pleasure. The routine activities that might be perceived under other circumstances as unpleasant, our subconscious mind can reconnect, rewire and reteach as pleasant. Do you enjoy flying to Caribbean?

Visualization can make remote pleasant rewards as immediate and available for our satisfaction and gratification immediately. Immediacy is a result of our perception after all. You do not need to lose 10 pounds to enjoy the pleasure of a weight loss related activity, you just need a certainty that activity that you are doing is one step immediately forward toward your new body and you do it with a great pleasure rather than sacrifice.

Visualizations are particularly beneficial for weight loss efforts to overcome the food and unhealthy habit cravings. Why? Logic should compete with logic. There is very little logical in the pleasure of food. It looks, smells, tastes great, it makes us feel good and that's why we like it. To compete or overcome visual image we need another, better and more desirable/pleasant visual image. Smell with visualized smell etc… Create a clear image of your new body with all sensory attributes, including taste and smell and kinesthetic sensations… When you face the image of the tempting meal, bring in your mind and image of the body that competes with the image of food. When you face a smell - bring a linked imagined smell of the victory-body ( it doesn’t have to be a body smell… could be anything, may be you met a person with the body like the one you want to have and that person had a perfume, or smell or fruit, or chewing gum, as long as it linked, the same with taste, just link a specific taste, like a toothpaste flavor to your dream-body that you want).

Visualizations need to be powerful. The more modalities we use for our imaginations, the more effective they might potentially be. Is it one of the things that makes some authors so convincing in their books?

The next important moment is repetitions. Repetitions create habit. Repetitive visualizations are stronger motivators than the isolated ones. Find a fixed daily routine, like tooth-brushing and get a habit of to do the daily visualizations of your goal along with visualizations of activities that can lead you to your goal, do it in great details, link it to the immense pleasure that you will experience when you eventually attain your goal.