True transformation occurs on a subconscious level. Your brain is the best tool that you have to lose weight and eat healthier and it can either work for you or against you.
Here are 5 ways to train your brain to lose weight.
Trust me I’ve been there.
You need to reprogram your subconscious mind if you want to lose weight. Think about it this way. When you look at an apple tree you see fruits on the tree, but the real transformation happened underground at the roots. It had to have the right soil and the right conditions underground to create the transformation above ground.
Here are 5 ways to retrain your mind and hack your brain to lose weight.
1. Change your thoughts
Here’s the thing, your thoughts determine your success.
When you continue to feed your mind with negative messages, your brain starts to actually adapt to the messages you’re feeding it! It doesn’t know how to choose what to follow and what to ignore.
YOU are the captain driving the ship and YOU are in control. You can feed your brain negative messages or feed it a buffet of positive messages – it’s your choice.
To change your body, you need to change your narrative.
Every pound and every bite represent your thoughts and habits around eating and your weight. You need to reverse the negative messages.
A great place to start is to rewrite your script. Flood your mind with positive messages and ditch the thoughts and the inner mean girl that aren’t serving you.
Give these affirmations a try:
I am happy, healthy, and radiant.
I am a healthy eater.
I believe in myself and my abilities.
2. Imagine your healthy future self and start showing up as her
Close your eyes and imagine you’ve achieved your goal of losing weight. What do you look like? What clothes are you wearing? How do you feel?
Now take a moment to ask her how she achieved her weight loss success. What did she do? What types of foods did she eat? What type of movement did she incorporate into her life?
Now open your eyes and make the commitment to start showing up as her every day.
Start living that life NOW.
Start doing even one small thing that will move you into the direction of your goals and let go of those things that you KNOW are not moving you closer to your goals.
When you live this way something magical will happen, you’ll actually start doing those things that will help you to achieve your weight loss goal. If you dig deep, you’ll know exactly what those things are. When you live this way something magical will happen you’ll actually start doing those things that will help you to achieve your weight loss goal.
When I was losing weight one of the things that I did that I found most powerful was visualization. I would visualize my future self, how I looked, how I felt, the clothes that I wore, the confidence I felt.
Every single time I started to falter or make an excuse not to work out or not to eat healthy, I would visualize my future self because that was the goal that I had, and I knew I needed to do those things to bring me closer to my goal.
3. Fear
Fear of failure is probably the number one fear people have who want to lose weight. Fear of feeling embarrassed if it doesn’t work. Fear of feeling like a failure. Fear of losing weight but gaining it back. Fear of giving up our favourite foods.
Here’s the thing you don’t give yourself the chance to succeed when you allow fear to paralyze you. I think my favourite acronym for fear is FACE EVERYTHING AND RISE.
Get past all of the failed diets and predicting the future about why it won’t work and just take action.
Your thoughts determine your feelings which determine the action that you take [or don’t take] which determines your results.
In my book Unbreakable I talk about your inner mean girl. Your inner mean girl represents your fear of not ever being enough – good enough, skinny enough, perfect enough.
You need to put your inner mean girl in her place! Brush her off the stage like a broom at the Apollo.
4. Work through emotional issues
Our thoughts and our emotions affect our bodies in many different ways. When we are unable to gain control over our emotions, it can often lead to an unhealthy addiction to food. This is what happens when we mix food and emotions. Think about it for a moment. What emotional obstacles are standing in the way of you losing weight or eating healthier?
5. Enjoy the journey
If you perceive weight loss and dieting as a chore or as torture your actions and outcome will match your perception. Enjoy eating healthy delicious food and the nourishment it’s giving your body and brain.
Don’t wait until you reach your goal weight to be proud of yourself. Be proud of every single step that you’re taking to achieve your goal.
Celebrate yourself along the way – even the little victories like losing 1lb or drinking one less soda a day. These small wins will give you the momentum that you need to keep moving forward.
Tell me in the comments below which one of these tips will you use to start training your mind to lose weight?