By Stephanie Riseley, MFA, CHT
New statistics show that more than 50 percent of Americans are overweight. If you’re one of them, you may previously have lost weight on one or more of the diets that scream out from a zillion magazines, TV shows and misleading infomercials. Be it vegan, vegetarian, high protein or food combining; or the more structured Pritikin, Stillman, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, The Zone, eat for your blood type, Optifast, or even the ice cream and cookie diet. Maybe you’ve tried them all. And still, you struggle with extra unwanted weight.
So does that make you feel angry, frustrated and hopeless? If the answer is yes, that’s the precise problem. You’ve reprogrammed your brain into failing. According to Martin Seligman, PhD, author of Learned Optimism and father of cognitive behavior therapy, that’s called “learned helplessness.” In a nutshell, what’s happened is that because you’ve failed already, your own subconscious, unconscious mind makes “the premature, cognitive commitment” that it’s simply impossible for you to lose weight. Ever. So you think, “Why should I even try?” And on some level you just give up.
But here’s the beauty of this. Your brain is just badly programmed right now, and new research proves you can learn how to reprogram your brain. It’s a learnable, doable and easily acquired skill set, just like riding a bike or tying your shoelaces. Once you learn how your brain works, you can learn how to control your thoughts, and then you can control your reactions to stress and the self-destructive behaviors that stress sometimes triggers. You can free yourself from addictive, obsessive compulsive thinking. And because of that, you can lose weight and keep it off forever . . . and accomplish pretty much anything else you desire using the same tools.
In the past ten years, a veritable explosion of brain research has proven beyond a doubt that by reprogramming your subconscious mind through hypnosis or mindfulness training, which are simply forms of focused concentration, in conjunction with cognitive behavior therapy (proven to be more effective than psychotropic drugs), you can change the actual structure of your brain.
Sharon Begley, science writer for the Wall Street Journal, in her book, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, walks her readers through much of the scientific research that proves exactly how and why your own thoughts can and do change your brain structure. Begley, who co-wrote The Mind & The Brain—Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force along with UCLA’s Jeffry M. Schwartz, MD, explains how obsessive-compulsive thoughts can be easily deleted from the “software” of your brain, its neuropathways. In Schwartz’s newest book, You Are Not Your Brain, he continues his groundbreaking work with obsessive-compulsive thinking, and shares his four part system for “deleting” sabotaging thoughts, by simply viewing them as faulty wiring, learning how to focus away from them, and then “inserting” new thoughts instead.
Harvard’s John J. Ratey, MD, author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, spends an entire book explaining the biochemistry of your brain and shows how simply getting outside and walking can be more effective than addictive, anti-anxiety medications. He also explains why there is so much resistance to beginning. He inspires his readers to spark their own brain cells so they can override their “premature, cognitive commitments” and get started.
Ready? Here’s how: First, overcome your own resistance to change. Believe that you can change and that you can learn to override your self-sabotaging impulses. Think of them as faulty wiring in your brain. Then become aware of what you “choose to think.” Because scientifically, what you choose to think leads directly to what you choose to say to yourself in that endless mind loop of self-talk. In order to change, you must be aware of what you’re saying to yourself, because what you say to yourself leads directly to the actions that you choose to take. Once you learn to be aware of what those actions are, you can gain control over them. You can make choices in the moment that are in line with your intention, whether that’s to lose weight or anything else. So begin at the beginning and get control over your thinking, and you’ll not only lose unwanted weight and keep it off forever, you’ll accomplish anything else you set your mind to.
Stephanie Riseley is a certified hypnotherapist and the author of Love From Both Sides (Findhorn Press)
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