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July 18, 2006
My Basic Psychology for Losing Weight
1. Become sufficiently terrified.
People tend to fail at losing weight unless they experience mortal terror. It is actually good to have a vivid and in-your-face medical situation that impels you to change your behavior and habits. For me, my horrifying prospect was diabetes. For Ron, it was seeing his ailing father. For many others, who have not lost weight as they wished, chances are they are not scared enough. The first step, counter-intuitively, is becoming terrified. (However, for Brian, it was not this way: he simply felt it was time. He did not need to be terrified.)
2. Imagine a detailed picture of the body you want.
Once the terror gets a hold of you and you are fully motivated and thinking hard, you must create in your mind a highly detailed picture of what you want to look like, the way you want to look. This image must be from head-to-toe; each body part should be clearly imagined and in-focus—arm muscles, legs, abdominals, shoulders, even your neck—all clearly envisioned. Spend some time on creating this image because it is the very core of how you will stay strongly motivated in the face of obstacles. The more detailed the image you create, the stronger you will be in the face of temptations. If you find that you fall victim to the myriad of temptations out there, I'd wager that your image is too blurry, not focused, and that you need to re-form the details of the picture of your new body.
3. Search for an eating principle. Be curious about digestion.
By this I mean you must aggressively learn about your own body and determine what foods for you are best, and what are worst. Losing weight is much, much easier if you understand your digestive system. Most people have shockingly little knowledge about how their bodies operate and they wonder why they're not gaining the control that is so satisfying to acquire. Furthermore everyone is different and no single dieting plan or way of life is best for everyone. To that end, there are many eating principles out there to try: the Atkin's diet (this worked like a charm for me and Brian), the Mediterranean diet, various low-fat diets, Eat-Right-For-Your-Type, and many more. Once this eating principle becomes secured in your mind, you will find many eating decisions fall into place naturally and without any conflict: your life will become very simple and your body will be forced to respond.
Other Tips
- Losing weight comes primarily from changes in eating habits, not exercise. For regular people, e.g. not extreme athletes, the ratio of struggle should be 80% effort toward eating habits and resisting temptation, and 20% effort toward exercise.
- Study your own eating habits and examine your relationship to hunger. It's best to feel the sensation of real hunger at least once a day and reflect upon it. Yeah, it hurts a little, but then you have a snack and the hunger goes away. When you do this, it makes you appreciate food more and you feel direct feedback from your stomach that it's responding to your change in behavior. Your body will have no choice but to shrink.
- Examine your relationship to your "poisons". Many people have a weakness for specific types of food. If the incentives of your poison are stronger than your detailed picture of the new body you want then—guess what?—no weight loss. Try to instill in your mind that your imagined picture must always overpower the tempting nature of your poisons. This is how you psych yourself into successfully losing weight.
Posted by Rob at 09:25 PM | Comments (0)