Think Yourself Skinny

I love that Dr. Oz highlighted this concept in this morning's show.  I have been using and developing this technique for the past two years with fitness and weight loss clients.  I have been working with these kinds of clients for over five years. When I first added coaching to my personal training sessions I noticed how much emotional weight the women I was working with carried around. As we worked through releasing their beliefs about food, exercise, motherhood, family life, and the many ways that women guilt themselves, I noticed a significant difference in their performance and results. Emotional connection to everything was keeping the weight on. Emotional release was the first step. Belief about why their bodies were not cooperating came next. I worked with clients on the way they use food and exercise to get something that they wanted, which was always different than what they were voicing. Their deepest desires were about staying safe and secure in their world. Working with them on creating that safety outside of their bodies seemed to propel their results even further. When I added meditation to their weight lifting routines they were able to lift more weight and increased their endurance. Now that these bodies were experiencing incredible results I bumped it up an notch and after hearing a story about how the imaginative work of the muscle created a physical response I decided to experiment with virtual fitness. Olympic trainers use this method to increase the results in their athletes. As clients created a multi-sensory experience with an activity they actually felt the muscle response. After using this technique for a minimum of twenty minutes a day, clients were dropping dress sizes from size eleven to size four in less than three weeks. Now I teach physical mastery using the techniques highlighted in Dr.Oz's show. By using the power of the brain to change assist clients becoming conscious about their experience they feel good about what their food and exercise choices, experience fewer binge and purge moments, and resist impulse eating.

Habituation is the psychological theory behind the information presented on the show this morning. Habituation is the mind's auto pilot. We have two minds so to speak. The logical mind and the emotional mind. Some refer to the emotional mind as the "Monkey Mind," others the inner "Caveman." I like the caveman mind simply because it references our basic instincts for survival. The caveman in each of us makes quick decisions about risk based on easily retrieved information mainly images. The logical mind takes longer to access, sort, and compile information for decisions and because we make so many decisions with our caveman mind it has become lazy. Increased intentional involvement of the logical mind results in sound decisions, decreased emotional chaos, and decreased fear resulting in reduced stress, illness, hypertension, bad cholesterol, and fat.  The caveman mind uses the fight or flight mechanisms of the brain as it reacts to stimulus which turns off our immune system and routs energy to the adrenals, increasing insulin, adrenaline and cortisol into the body. The heart pumps harder to get blood to the extremities to prepare them for fight or flight. Adrenaline and insulin are pumped into the blood to provide fuel for the fight or flight, and cortisol increases to protect the major organs with fat to prevent damage.  All in all it is a perfect system. The glitch is that we live in an environment that is constantly filled with information for the caveman to draw on when assessing risk and depending on how highly we feel the probability of a thing happening to us the more it sticks in the quick memory system. If we have a highly emotional response to an event we see on TV or hear on the radio it increases it's stickiness in the caveman mind signaling it that this scenario is highly probable and to be on the lookout. Images about scenarios we don't feel will ever happen to us in a million years like being hit by a meteor are low on the caveman's priority list. The caveman thinking really comes in handy when there is a threat that we need to take immediate action on, other than that it can cause us a whole lot of trouble. The logical mind keeps an eye on the caveman but as long as the caveman seems to be doing a pretty good job the logical mind doesn't get involved, it just doesn't want to be bothered.

Increasing the involvement of the logical mind in decision making takes a little work. This is what I call conscious living. When you are using more of the conscious mind to make more of your decisions and using the subconscious caveman for what it was built for, fight or flight, you are living consciously and have more power in your life. You take on the power of creating the results you desire to experience in your life. The real secret is setting your mind to work in this conscious way so that your focus shifts to what you want and away from what you don't want.  Because the caveman is your auto pilot and we are all looking to make life easier as opposed to harder, I wanted to tell you that by repeating a behavior over and over again, it seeps into this caveman mind and resets your auto pilot. Similar to the example I like to use of the car with the manual transmission.  When you first learn to drive a car with a clutch it takes practice before it becomes "natural."  Any behavior you would like to put on auto pilot can be programmed into your caveman mind with practice.  This is what the psychologist referred to as habituation.Those beliefs you have about the way life works that are down deep in your subconscious and are effecting the way you react in the world can also be modified and reprogrammed. That's what I do, I teach you how to reprogram your thinking system to shift the way your are experiencing life by waking up the logical conscious mind and reprogramming your subconscious caveman mind to use its autopilot to streamline those logical responses to life's events, including how food and exercise impact your body.

The body is set up with systems that run perfectly and provide feedback when something is not working correctly.  Learning the language of these systems, how to interpret the feedback, and how to communicate effectively to adjust them is the key to creating change in your life. Being created of many layers of matter that are of different densities and vibratory frequencies we experience life through all of these layers and they all inform our experience. Simply by slowing down, breathing and thinking about our responses to input we become more effective and change what shows up in our experience. I tell people that as long as you are breathing you might as well make the most of it. And, as well as you are eating, moving, thinking, feeling, and using energy, you might as well make the most of it.  Breathing is one of the best ways to slow down and get the logical mind to get involved in your decisions. Taking three or four long breaths before acting slows this thinking process down and signals the logical mind that you want its input. If it takes you less than ten minutes to make a decision you are making it from the caveman mind. I have tons of resources, techniques, and methods for making the switch to conscious living. Keep an eye on my posts, Facebook, and my new Blog Talk Radio show to gain information that will assist you in living the life of your dreams.

Elle