Is Your Mind Trick Or Treating You To Lose Weight?

Well, it’s Monday and the start of Halloween Week at The Lunch Box Diet. Mondays are always a good day to start with some good motivation to get you all fired up to lose weight, so I’ve decided to start off the week by talking about your mindset… today’s question is, Is Your Mind Tricking Or Treating You To Lose Weight? What do I mean by that? Well…

When it comes to weight loss people focus their efforts quite obviously on the physical aspects – that’s quite natural. Though the physical fitness and all of the related elements are important components of losing weight, it can be much more mental than you think. If you don’t enlist your mind into the weight loss process then you are unfortunately setting yourself up for failure. Not only can your mind and your mental attitude have much to do with your success or failure, but it can have much to do with how you achieve your goals overall. So it begs the question is your mind trick or treating you with weight loss success?

Use an Appropriate Vision

When we look at this time of year with Halloween upon us one of the most important ways that our mind can play a role in weight loss is through visualization. If you look at a portion of food for example and consider what is truly ample to eat then your mind must recognize it. Your mind is what tells your stomach that you’re full so you must work through your preconceived notions of what makes up a proper serving.

Take a Halloween “fun sized” sweet bar for example. Though its deceivingly small size seems like it’s not enough to feed even a child, it could pack 80 calories and almost 5 grams of fat. This is more than enough if you allow yourself a splurge! Portion size and getting your brain to recognize appropriate servings is a major factor in weight loss. If you don’t start training your mind to feel full faster and to recognize what your body truly needs to fuel you, then you are going to have some serious issues down the road. It’s all about changing your mindset and this can help dramatically!

Playing the Mental Game

The other part is that your mind must be factored into your willpower or else you are going to fail. You can’t wait until you have devoured a huge plate of food to tell yourself that you don’t need that many calories in a sitting. Focusing on foods that are full of fiber for example can help your mind to send the signal that you are full. This doesn’t always come easily but after you go through the training process you will see results. Your mind must play a role in exhibiting willpower to be successful.

Though you may be offered chocolate cake, that doesn’t mean that you have to eat it if you are serious about weight loss. Though you may be served your favorite meal, that doesn’t mean that you have to or should eat several servings. It’s all about willpower and this is where your mind can play a pivotal role.

So if it is long term success that you are after in your weight loss efforts, you must focus on your mental efforts too. If you have a bad attitude or an improper mindset then you are never going to be successful. Weight loss is primarily about physical efforts but your mental status must be engaged as well. So before you let your mind trick you into another weight loss scam or not involving it like you should, treat yourself to a new mental game towards true weight loss success. This will be what helps you to achieve results this time around!

Here’s a few things you can do right now to help you…

Step 1: With your next food intake, as yourself – is this taking me closer or further away from my goal? If you’re not going to eat healthy, why is that? Lack or prepearation, knowledge, a stressful situation, maybe someone just gave something to you and you couldn’t say no? Find out what triggered it.

Step 2: Make a food diary starting now. Write down everything you eat for a week and study your patterns. Again, look at how to change those – what went wrong?

Step 3: Create a new fitness habit by getting out of your comfort zone for the first time. Ever remembered a time when you thought to youself ‘I wish I did that years ago’? Chances are the thing you’re putting off exercise wise could be the simple change that actually gets you to your goal. Just take action, right now and decide to ‘do it’ today, or at least tomorrow.

Step 4: Fight those zombies who are trying to pull you back to the person YOU DON’T WANT TO BE. Knock them down and mentally shift yourself to someone who is healthy and fit. You control your thoughts, so as soon as you think something negative, start training yourself to not let that thought stay around, change it to something that empowers you. “I can’t do that” can change to “I can try that, I am capable”. Your limiting beliefs need to be unblocked.

Step 5: Think back to where your negative thoughts and current eating and exercise habits stem from? Have you picked them up from a parent or at school? Were you always told you couldn’t get somewhere in life? Start by making a list of what you believe about yourself, do it now. Then imagine what would have happened if you were told different things, how would have panned out differently for you? Now what action step do you need to make to change that? Start making them.

Step 6: Make a list of all of your excuses. We have them all the time. No time, no money, my knee hurts – the list goes on. Now after you have made 10 excuses, sit there and imagine you’re a counsellor and someone has just sat in your office. Look at the list with a new perspective and as that counsellor, come up with a solution for this person. What would you say to them if you were giving advice. Write it down. Take action. Boom!

Step 7: Remember this -”the things that are sometimes the most challenging bring the biggest results”… that quote helped me a lot and still does to this day!

If you’ve yet to start The Lunch Box Diet yet, you’ll be glad to hear that I’ve put together a special Halloween promotion that will be ending early next week, so click here to check it out! You can now calulate how much weight you could lose! Spooky! I’ll be back later this week with more articles, in the mean time, show me you’re alive below in the comments…

Tags: Brain, Calories, Changing Your Mindset, Elements, Failure, Halloween, Losing Weight, Lunch Box, Mental Attitude, Mindset, Motivation, Motivation Talk, Physical Aspects, Physical Fitness, Portion Size, Preconceived Notions, Splurge, Stomach, Sweet Bar, Time Of Year, Visualization, Weight Loss Success