Most of us are familiar with the basic formula for weight loss: eat less and exercise more. It sounds straightforward, but if it were that simple, wouldn’t we all be at our ideal weight? The reality is that many adults struggle with weight loss, despite knowing the fundamentals. We find ourselves caught in the whirlwind of the latest diet trends, fitness crazes, and the constant counting of macros, calories, and carbs.
So, why are we not losing weight? This article delves into the factors that might be sabotaging your weight loss efforts and provides strategies to overcome these obstacles.
The Impact of Stress on Weight Loss
Stress is a significant factor that can stall your weight loss journey. When you’re stressed, your metabolism slows down, leading to fewer calories burned. Moreover, stress can trigger cravings for sugar and fried foods, which are detrimental to your weight loss goals.
To counteract the effects of stress, try taking five or six deep breaths before you eat. Eating slowly, without distractions, and savoring your food can help you absorb nutrients more effectively, burn more calories, and feel satisfied with smaller portions.
The Role of Your Subconscious Mind
Your subconscious mind might be playing a more significant role in your weight loss journey than you realize. While you consciously want to lose weight, your subconscious might be holding onto weight for various reasons. For instance, it might associate being overweight with safety or strength.
To align your subconscious with your weight loss goals, visualization techniques can be beneficial. Visualize yourself at your ideal weight, fit, and healthy, and your subconscious will start to believe it.
Whether your subconscious believes it’s safe to lose weight is something I always look at with my clients in regards to weight loss. We know exactly what to do to lose weight, but most of us are sabotaging any chance of losing weight on a daily basis. You consciously want to lose weight, but your subconscious may think it’s helping you by keeping you overweight for a variety of reasons.
I find the two most common reasons your subconscious tries to make you fat are: to make you less attractive to the opposite sex or to appear bigger and stronger. For girls and women, we can have negative or even highly traumatic attention from men, and some part of us wants to hide or make ourselves invisible, so that doesn’t happen again.
For boys and men, being bullied or abused triggers a primitive part of ourselves to do what it can to look bigger and tougher. Think about animals, if they feel threatened, they puff themselves up as a defence mechanism.
The Addiction to Processed Food
Processed foods, particularly those high in sugar, wheat, and dairy, can be addictive. They act like drugs in your body, triggering dopamine and filling the opiate receptors. Cutting out these foods can be challenging, but it’s a crucial step towards achieving your weight loss goals.
Eating slowly, doing nothing else (like watching TV or reading your phone) while you eat, and savoring your food helps you absorb the nutrients from your food more effectively, burn more calories and to feel satisfied with smaller portions.
Eating is kind of like sex, if you are distracted and do it really quickly, it’s not very satisfying…
You can go to a hypnotherapist, you can buy hypnosis MP3s online for very cheap, or you can listen to guided visualizations on weight-loss on YouTube for free.
Here is a link to one of my weight loss visualizations you can listen to for free.
You are addicted to processed food.
Sugar, wheat and dairy are addictive and act like drugs in your body. Sugar triggers dopamine (similar to cocaine), wheat and dairy fill the opiate receptors in your body (same as heroin and painkillers).
Wheat is sprayed with glyphosate (Roundup – a weed killer) before it’s harvested and then bleached with chlorine dioxide. Glyphosate kills the good bacteria in your gut, and the chlorine creates a toxin in wheat called alloxan that attacks your pancreas.
Researchers are well aware of this connection and use alloxan in lab rats to induce diabetes. Did you catch that? It’s used to cause diabetes! If I sprayed your sandwich with a weed killer and bleach, would you still eat it?
So how do you stop eating those foods?
Yes, it’s hard changing your diet. But I guarantee it’s more difficult feeling fat and tired all the time. I find a good place to start is by committing to cutting out sugar, wheat and anything deep fried. I think you can have those foods as a treat now and then but not on a daily basis. I found the best way to stop eating the foods you’re addicted to, is to create aversions.
For most of us, there are certain foods we just won’t eat; we may have been forced to eat them as a child, have gotten food poisoning from it, or just plain don’t like it. You want to create something similar with the foods you know you shouldn’t eat.
A good technique to do yourself is to imagine at table with all of your favourite naughty foods that are triggers for you and then imagine them covered in mould.
It may be white and fluffy, green and slimy, or with black spots. Just make it as disgusting as you can. Imagine spraying the food with weed killer, bleach, sprinkling dish washing powder, rat poison or a food or drink you hate on top.
Make it look as disgusting as you can so that your subconscious mind associates those foods as something poisonous and toxic for you. Every night before you go to bed, imagine yourself your ideal weight, fit and healthy.
Tell yourself you love to eat fresh, clean food, drink lots of water and love to exercise and imagine yourself doing those things. Your subconscious believes everything you tell it, so show and tell it the positive things you want to believe.
I don’t advocate one particular diet; different diets work for different people – paleo, keto, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan all work to improve your health. It’s just finding a diet you can stick to while cutting out processed foods.
Top Tips to Lose Weight
- Set a goal. Decide what you want to achieve, what weight or size do you want to be and picture yourself having achieved that every day.
- Take five or six deep breaths before you eat, do nothing else while you eat (no phone!), and eat slowly, really enjoying your food.
- Tell yourself that it’s safe to lose weight, and the best way to keep yourself safe is to be fit, healthy, strong and confident. Tell yourself that excess weight causes you to be less safe.
- Reprogram your subconscious mind by visualisation to associate unhealthy foods as disgusting. Picture the foods that are keeping you from losing weight covered in mould and poison.
- Book an appointment with a Clinical Hypnotherapist who specialises in weight loss. My partner Grant Bodle is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, Nutritionist and Personal Trainer, who has amazing results with weight loss and the Virtual Gastric Band Four Session Protocol that we developed together.
Conclusion
Losing weight is not just about eating less and exercising more. It’s about understanding the underlying factors that might be hindering your progress and addressing them. By managing stress, aligning your subconscious with your goals, and breaking free from the addiction to processed foods, you can pave the way for successful weight loss.
Changing your habits and diet is simple but it’s definitely not easy. Not easy but worth it. Nothing feels as good as being fit and healthy, and this gives you the energy and focus to achieve your dreams.
