Losing weight and keeping it off from the Soul
Top Five Weight Loss Saboteurs:
We’ve all been there. It’s a new year, a new month, new week etc. to lose weight. Technically speaking there are five stages we all go through prior to starting any weight loss programs, diets, or plans. They are pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. This is the way our brains acknowledge goals and what our brains need in order to take the next steps in order to implement our plan for our goals and then be able to maintain the results eventually. Knowing these stages are almost useless though if you are faced with any of these five weight loss saboteurs and haven’t been able to attain your goal. Let’s begin with a better understanding of how your brain works in order to begin planning your weight loss with greater ease, grace, and your ultimate success.
Popular belief would have you think that all you need to do is change your diet and exercise more and you will begin to see miraculous results, however, as a fitness and weight loss professional for over thirty years I can attest to how overtly wrong that thought is. Historically diets and exercise programs, especially those of an aggressive nature have failed people time and again. There is a very good reason for this all weight loss programs that exist today never address the status of the soul. Your brain is uniquely designed to protect your mind, body, and soul at all times. If we are leaving that dimension out of our weight loss equation then we will never be successful.
The official area of the brain that is in charge of your ultimate protection is the limbic brain that houses the amygdala. Limbic brain is also in charge of metabolism and can affect all aspects of weight loss as such. Here are all the ways you could be sabotaging your weight loss by not understanding how the soul of your limbic brain works:
Not knowing what the original trigger for weight gain was.
Very often people are in the dark about how and why they started to gain weight. They assume that they are going to lose weight with the variety of common methods only to fall short time and again. Instead of dieting and exercising try listening to your daily thoughts and hearing the problem you are dealing with daily. Perhaps it is depression, fear, or anger as those emotions tend to point the direction for your ability to address your weight gain issues appropriately.
Therefore we need to look at those emotions that require our attention most because they can also indicate a need within our souls that hasn’t been addressed. Therefore we need to breathe with this thought, that we can all benefit from the release of those emotions through prayer and meditation. I have several weight loss meditations on my website for the transformation of these emotions that get great results. Essentially the meditations allow your soul to feel safe and get the support it needs to balance neurochemistry for a normally functioning metabolism. Then you will crave the right foods and activities that will help you lose weight naturally.
2) Distractions.
We believe that we are all well informed by regular consistent use of our cell phones, computers, televisions, and radios. However, this only serves to entice your senses to other things instead of your goals. It’s easier to listen to erroneous information repeated over and over again than it is to carve a new path to our desired weight loss goals. You may have every intention to provide yourself with opportunities to workout or purchase healthy foods you can make at home but very often we get distracted and end up depending on our old habits just to get us through the day. We have a problem assuming that all those distractions are important to us and our daily lives when in fact, our souls and our health are the most important things to us and our families.
We believe that we are always in control of our environment however, we are always subjugating our environment whenever we are listening or watching something of ill will towards our senses. Meaning we may not realize it but our senses pick up on negativity, evil and destructive thoughts and events and can set the limbic brain on alert for days after an event. This means we are always putting our limbic brains in jeopardy of ill willed people who simply want or need an audience and know the fastest way to get there is through the emotion of shock or fear.
To make our weight loss efforts less and less difficult simply turn off your phones, televisions, computers, and make more strides towards listening to your soul whenever possible as it will never steer you in the wrong direction. In essence, let’s begin our days without those distractions that could lead us away from our goals without any way of returning until you stand on the scale yet again and discover you still haven’t made any progress at all. We all have a necessary need to get rid of negativity in order to feel a sense of peace in our days and create a sense of wholeness in our own souls, this is the best way of doing that very thing.
3) Lack of time.
Very often we have busier lives than we had ever intended. This means one of two things are happening, either we are over booking ourselves and our schedules or we are allowing social trends to dictate our lives or it could be a combination of the two. When I was in my twenties I used to think it should take about an hour and a half to two hours every morning to exfoliate, wash my face, condition and moisturize my skin, prepare and put on makeup to be ready for work each morning. The reality was I was listening to what several skin care and makeup companies said I should do in order to look good for work. The only problem is I simply didn’t have that kind of time. Now I have the routine down in about 15 minutes, 25 minutes if I include hair care.
Any time there is a wish or desire to accomplish anything, there always needs to be a re-evaluation of it’s priority level. First know that your time is always going to ebb and flow and perhaps this is the moment I can remind you how valuable the talent of saying “No” can be. Meaning recognize you have power in your own schedule, reassure yourself that you are prioritizing you back into your own schedule. Why? Simply put, because you, your health and your relationships are your priority. If we are truly committed then we should be able to take actions towards small shifts that can add up to an hour or more a day toward your goal. For instance, how long does it take to get a workout in? Five minutes, why? Because we need to focus on small victories instead of huge blocks of time that require a lot of preparation. Over time you could build up that five minutes to thirty minutes a day focused on raising your heart rate into your target heart rate range. Then this becomes your habit because you prioritized your day for it. Now let’s say you not only accomplished that task but you also got a huge boost of endorphins doing so, now you want to repeat this process and find friends to do it with you because of the feeling of an emotional payoff. You have to boil it down to what is the minimum amount of time you are willing to spend on that task from preparing foods to your workout, then work from there.
4) Staying committed
I was in a mall today at a coffee shop when I started chatting with three women who had just given birth to their babies and I asked them ‘What do you find most challenging about your weight loss goals?’ They answered “Staying committed” When I think about how many people hired me to keep them accountable for their eating habits and workouts this made sense. I feel there must be something said about the “stickiness” of a goal and the effort that goes into attaining that goal.
We believe that we will lose weight with our new plans by simply changing everything else but our souls in our minds, meaning a new diet and exercise regime will bring great results with our initial commitment alone. However, that has never been true, what we think is that something needs to change in our mindsets. No, this actually couldn’t be farther from the truth. It needs to change within our souls first in order to change the mindset. In other words, how can we subjugate our beliefs to engage more of our soul’s will? We need a better way of creating a habit of joyful living that can create the addiction to successful outcomes before they happen. In order for us to do this effectively we have to have nothing but love and compassion for our successes whether there is evidence of that success or not. Meaning, let’s make the process fun, and include joy in the visualization of our successes by excluding all the things that could go wrong. Dwelling on the image of you loving your body wearing anything you want can actually shift the soul of the limbic brain to accept more and more feelings of safety and security it needs to function more the way you want it to for weight loss purposes.
5) Being honest with yourself
We are always being mislead about our soul’s value. Our souls are usually the last thing we thing about when trying to lose weight however, as I have illustrated we are the very essence of light itself and are worth of all truth and honesty. Therefore I have always seen weight loss and healing differently than anyone in my industry. Honestly must be our priority to better understand what we need to lose weight but moreover to be happy and fulfilled.
I’m not speaking of hating yourself for not eating well or not exercising. I’m speaking of our ability to say that you are worth the time, effort, and energy to explore our Father in heaven’s hope for what He had always wanted you to experience in your life. Do you feel He wanted you to experience overweight syndrome or obesity? Do you think He would want you to feel a lack of self confidence, self esteem, unsafe, or a sense of self loathing? I know He would not! Moreover would Jesus have left you behind knowing your soul needed healing, time, compassion? Never. Begin thinking how our Father in heaven would treat you in your weight loss journey, and yes He wants to be involved always. Would he say “You don’t need to know why you gained weight, you should listen to how everyone else is losing weight, never make time for yourself or start your weight loss program you don’t really need to stick with it though.” No! He wants you to be as healthy and happy as you can possibly be. He wants you to live loving your life and your soul within your body, not denigrating it or subjugating your natural internal or external beauty. He created us perfectly from the beginning, let’s assume He is right and that you are always worth time, attention, reflection, effort, and prayer.