I swung between dieting, starving myself and then swinging the other way to full-blown overeating / bingeing for a longg time, before finally breaking free. Overeating would be anything for me, from all-day grazing to restricting calories massively and then later reacting with out-of-control binges. Sometimes my weight would look normal when on the inside I was suffering, sometimes I'd start getting a bit skinny and sometimes a bit on the fat side. Whatever weight however, I never felt in control. Even though from the outside I probably looked ok. There was always a battle happening inside my head. I know so many people dealing with weight issues also experience this inner disharmony between their conscious desire (to be slim, healthy weight) and the way their subconscious makes them act (struggle to be slim)
One thing that always got me was why on Earth do my diets keep leading back to overeating, and why did I use to be free of the cycle completely when I was a kid? How come some people have no issues with food at all and others suffer so much?
YOUR USE OF LANGUAGE IMPACTS RESULTS: PSYCHOLOGY OF YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND
Basically I became a practitioner of a specialist form of hypnotherapy, which enabled me to understand how the mind works more and then create a model that broke myself out and is now breaking many clients, even ones with pretty hardcore eating disorders ie. bulimia. I want to share one of the secrets I use with everyone because I know that just talking about it - beyond what I do in my practice - really helps people to understand their own behaviour a little better and how their use of language and mental programming affects outcomes.
We are more averse to loss than we are attracted to gains. If you're familiar with Daniel Kahnemann, then you'll know what I'm talking about. What I mean by this, is that humans fear loss and will do anything to prevent themselves from losing something. We fear it so much, as a general rule, we'd rather stop ourselves from losing something we already have over gaining anything. Just think about the word LOSS for a minute: loss of job, loss of house, family, friend, child, money, car, football game, possessions... loss completely sucks. There is only ONE example where the word 'loss' is used in a regular context in society (though if anybody here can come up with some other positive examples of loss, do tell!) and is meant to correlate positively .. with weight. " Weight Loss " :(
The subconscious mind (which runs at least 95% of your thoughts, actions, behaviours) is binary and can only process a concept as either positive (making it want you to move towards it, to gain) or negative (making you want to do anything you can to get away, avoid is). When you tell your self you need to LOSE weight, your mind starts freaking out. It cannot differentiate between one example of 'loss' being positive and one being negative. Through the course of growing up in childhood, most people's subconscious will have built an overall view that 'loss' is a very bad thing. This stacks your subconscious programming to have strong foundations to reason that it must avoid loss at all costs.
Bottom Line - when you use the word loss, your mind struggles to accept your desire - to lose weight - as a positive thing and does what it can to prevent you from doing it. You could be setting yourself up for more failures, and more struggle, that you can free yourself of simply by changing your language
Tip - reframe your weight goals to something undeniably positive and affirmative ie. "gain a great body" "get rid of excess fat" "release unwanted weight" "free body to be slim and healthy" "be a wonderful, healthy weight". You need to catch yourself out when you I think 'I need to lose weight', intervene with your thoughts, and start rephrasing the way you talk about your quest to drop the pounds!
PHYSIOLOGICAL FREAK OUT DUE TO EVOLUTIONARY WIRING
Throughout the majority of our evolution, millions of years, assuring food has been top of our priority list of things to do to survive each day. In fact if we didn't carry out this above task, the risk of dying of starvation was very real!!! In less than 100 years, it has become so easily accessible for developed countries, that getting food takes pretty little effort by contrast. However this has all happened in less than 0.01% of our evolution..
.. this means when your body - your subconscious mind - believes that it has to 'diet', meaning that food will be scarce and restricted, biological alarm bells start ringing. It thinks that it needs to store more calories and do whatever it can to force you to act upon the stresses and fears of having no food and eat what it can (often anything that is in sight). Even if you manage to control those urges for an amount of time, you enter a battle between your conscious mind's innocent wills and your subconscious mind's stubborn, fear-based reaction. These freaks out spike cortisol, nervousness, anxiety.. ..and if you also battle with emotional eating habits too.. you've just hooked, lined and sunk yourself out of your wonderful 'diet' intentions. Even if emotional eating isn't really you, well.. ..your body is going to go against the grain and try to keep more weight on than you might otherwise naturally drop-off without really 'thinking' so much about it.
Bottom Line - simply rephrase the words you use, the way you talk to yourself, to be more successful in reaching your goals. be aware of your subconscious mental programming and work to change your inner thoughts to align more, and be in greater harmony, with your own primal inclinations!
Hope this strikes a nerve with a few of y'all and you've gained something from these insights :)
As a practitioner w psychology/medical physiology background who applies this in RTT hypnotherapy all the time with big success and top popularity ratings in my city, feel free to ask me any questions about using your mind more to break out of these self-defeating cycles when it comes to weight. I'll do my best to answer any questions on the topic!
