slim – Health & Well Being

The trouble with science is that it has no soul.

It says if you do this and this and this, then that will always happen.

That’s what happens when science gets involved with weight loss – it says if you eat this many calories and burn this many calories then what’s left turns into this much fat.

I’m not suggesting that this isn’t true, but it isn’t as true as it seems because what you burn isn’t just about physical activity. A supremely fit athlete burns many more calories just sitting watching TV than someone who is overweight and covered in flabby muscles and fat.

It does seem a little unfair though, doesn’t it? Imagine two people sitting on the couch next to each other watching TV. One is covered in muscle, the other is covered in fat. The muscley one is getting thinner just sitting there, while the fat one is getting fatter just sitting there.

Why is this?

Muscle tissues needs energy just to live and breathe. Muscle burns calories just by existing. Fat just sits there. Of course in order to maintain that muscle, physical exercise needs to take place. The more exercise you engage in, the more muscle you build, the higher your metabolic rate, and the more calories you burn.

Of course science likes to deal with numbers, and you want to know how many calories going to the kitchen for a snack is going to burn.

1lb of fat converts to 3500 Calories (that’s big C Kilocalories for the scientists). This is great news because all you have to do in order to lose 1lb a week consistently is burn 500Cals a day more than you eat.

So how easily can you do that?

Moderate walking (3mph) burns about 250 Calories an hour; birdwatching 140; dusting 180; golf 350; Cycling (easy, less than 10mph) 300; yoga 300; gentle skipping with rope 600; cross country walking 470; swimming breaststroke 800; weight lifting/body building 470; and housework 250.

You don’t need to join a gym to burn calories. You just need to move. But you need to move daily and consistently and for at least an hour. Remember, that Mars bar is going to take two hours walking to pretend it never happened.

But that’s just the sums that scientists like to do. You see when you do that hour of yoga, hour of housework, or hour of walking every day, you build muscle tissue. When you build muscle tissue your metabolic rate goes up and your resting heart rate lowers. So over time, you burn more calories during the day and so your weight loss increases rather than drops – for the same effort. You also get fitter, your body shape moves in the direction that you desire, and your endorphin levels increase. This means you feel happier, more alive, and more interested in enjoying life rather than spending it watching mind numbingly boring TV shows. When your body feels fit and well, you are quite naturally and effortlessly attracted to healthier foods, and the fats and sugars that used to fill your plate gradually drift away. No resistance, no battle, no struggle, just a gentle natural movement towards foods that you enjoy.

It isn’t just about Calories. It’s about you feeling good. You achieve that by making a conscious choice now to move a little more today than you did yesterday and to make that same choice tomorrow, and the next day, and…

If you’d like to find out more then check out my book How to Lose Weight and Free Yourself from Diets Forever

The trouble with diets is that you have to think about food all the time. Though “At first a diet can give you a sense of control. You are taking charge of your eating patterns. You may see success as the scale drops. But soon you are fighting cravings for forbidden foods, as well as hunger pangs and a lack of energy from the lower calorie level. Eventually you rebel against the diet and start “cheating.” If your cheats are small you can still be losing weight, although more slowly. But soon you may go into full rebellion and return to your old eating habits” Am Psychol. 2007

This is how the well known yo-yo effect starts. You get all enthusiastic, go wholeheartedly into the new diet, lose some pounds; then after a few weeks, or a few months, the enthusiasm starts to slip, you’ve done really well, and you want to give yourself a treat or a day off, then that day happens once a week, twice a week, three times a week and the treat happens once a week, once a day, three times a day…

The pounds slip back on, the clothes slowly tighten up again, and you look in the mirror one morning and think I was doing so well…

…or no matter what you do, how closely you stick to the diet, nothing much happens. Others lose pounds, you lose ounces, or even gain them. Life is so unfair…

…or you spend the whole ‘diet-time’ thinking about food, thinking about what you can and can’t eat, counting calories, or points, or syns. Until you get fed-up with the whole thing and give it up…

…for a while…

…and then, usually after Christmas, when you go try on the new summer outfits… it all starts all over again.

The trouble, I hasten to add, is not with what the diets suggest you eat. The vast majority of them provide good healthy rules for eating that will provide you with a nutritious and balanced intake of food. And lots of people do lose weight using these tried, tested and very successful methods.But the weight doesn’t stay off. The reason is the reasons for weight accumulation are not being addressed. One of the assumptions made is that weight is purely the product of what you put into your mouth and how much energy you expend. Lots of energy expenditure i.e. active life, low calorie intake equals weight loss. Sedentary lifestyle, high calorie intake equals weight gain.

That’s simple maths and it’s perfectly true. You eat fewer calories than you expend and your body has to get those extra calories from somewhere. What you are told is that it gets them from the fat it has carefully stored away under your skin, for just such an emergency. But the truth is that it takes it from lean muscle tissue, because the body knows that lean muscle burns calories even when resting and the body is trying to conserve energy because food seems to be in short supply.

Another assumption is that it is about metabolism or genes. But the territory that is not normally explored is the territory of emotional eating. If it was explored you would find associations with food and being good buried in the subconscious. When you were good as a young child, sweets, candy, cakes, ice cream, chocolate, biscuits, cookies, were the reward for that goodness. When you pleased your parents, this is frequently the treat that was given. But very soon that got twisted and you assumed that if you didn’t get it, you had been bad. And so eating this sort of food gave your subconscious mind the message ‘I am a good and/or loveable person’. The only reason your subconscious would need to be re-assured about that is if it didn’t believe it already. But when you stop giving yourself these ‘treats’, then at a subconscious level, you feel you must have been bad and you are driven to eat something forbidden just to reassure yourself that you really are good.

Now, when hypnosis is used in weight control, the focus is not purely on changing your eating habits. The focus is on changing you deep down inside. Or more accurately, correcting a view of you (someone who is not loveable) that is mistaken, and bringing back to the front the more correct view of you which is that you are as special and as loveable as everyone else.

You will eat differently, and will eat less, but that is purely because hypnosis reconnects you with you, so you listen to your body and feed it when it’s hungry. What hypnosis doesn’t do is give you rules about what you can and can’t eat. By reminding you of the truth about you, we release a power, or an energy, that starts to work with you rather than against you. When you work purely to a diet plan, without addressing underlying subconscious issues (and I’ve only touched on one here – there are many more) there are two of you. One wanting to be slim, and one needing the re-assurance of treats. And the one needing the re-assurance of treats will work to sabotage the diet plan – because their needs have been ignored.

A hypnotherapist works on improving how you feel about yourself, they also install post-hypnotic suggestions that will make it much easier for you to not only have no desire to eat the foods full of calories, but also assist you in achieving a pleasure in eating foods that are good for you that outweighs any pleasure you ever obtained from eating sugary sweet sickly foods.

This control is short term and just to break the habit element of eating. For in truth, you can eat anything you want and stay slim. The emphasis being on want. Hypnosis retrains your mind so that what you want is to nourish a body you care for – easily, effortlessly. Once this is achieved it remains.

When you already feel good about yourself, you have no need to demonstrate that by eating foods that are bad for you. Wholesome, attractive, tasty, well-prepared food is what you deserve – always.

If you want to know more, or would like some help in easily and permanently losing weight and feeling good, then check out my website.

Author: Michael J. Hadfield

Source: Hypnosisiseasy