Pleasure and Pain: The Driving Forces Behind Your Weight Loss Success

Part 2 of a 4-Part Serie: Exercise Your Mind: Redefine What’s Possible

Last week we talked about How to Condition Your Mind, this week we are ready to get to the meat of the issue and talk about the “how.”  Many times, the “how” part of the journey is more important than the journey itself because if you don’t figure out how you will accomplish your goals, it’ll never get done.

As the title suggests, you must first redefine what’s possible before you even plan what you are going to do.

Since Pleasure and Pain are the emotions that are driving this entire experience, as you found out in Part 1. You now know that these emotions also drive just about every experience you encounter. You have to redefine what’s possible IN your mind and TO your mind for you to be successful on this weight loss journey.

For example, if you’ve gone on a weight loss program or diet before (as I am certain many of you have) and you did not lose the weight you had set out to, quit in the middle or have regained the weight you lost and more, your mind sees this journey as having similar outcomes as before. During a recent client session, my client told me that even though she’s going to lose the weight, “It all creeps back.” I immediately told her that it only “creeps” back when you let your guard down and allow it to come back. So recognize that it can happen and be on guard.

Don’t allow an extra  5 pounds to grow into an extra 20. Stop it at 5 and lose it!

Her mind was already at work telling her that even when she does lose the weight, it will be back. Why does that have to be the reality?

Redefine—Redefine –Redefine!

She was associating the pleasure of having the weight gone with the pain of seeing it all back again, starting over and re-doing this process soon. NO! NO! NO!

You must put mental exercises in place that associate the feelings of accomplishment and achievement of losing the weight alongside enjoying that feeling and continuing it for weeks, months even years to come.

Think about how you’ll feel when your weight is no longer an issue. When you are free to make choices about the foods you eat and where and how you eat them, while fully knowing that your choices are healthy and nourishing to your body. Doesn’t that feel comforting? Pleasurable? Yes!!

Your mind’s picture of success and pleasure is now a happier, healthier, thinner you. Your mind now sees that not only can you accomplish this task but that you will and that you will succeed. Now that’s something pleasurable to dwell on.

Check back next Wednesday for Part 3: Peak Conditioning = Peak Performance

If you haven’t listened to the Fit4Life Radio show that aired on Tuesday, please do so now so that you’ll have a preview of what this series is all about.

To get you up to speed, let’s review what I presented. Pleasure and Pain, as suggested by Anthony Robbins in his “Personal Power” program says that these two emotions drive all our decisions and experiences each and every day. As I listened to him speaking, I realized that he certainly spoke the truth. Every decision you make involves an effort to either seek pleasure from it or avoid pain because of it.

This revelation struck a chord in me, as I realized that if you apply this theory to weight loss and control it, you can just about guarantee your success on your weight loss journey.

So that’s how this series came about. I’ve broken it down into 4 digestible parts so that you’ll be able to not only truly grasp it, but put into motion in your life right away.

In this first part, you’ll learn How to Condition Your Mind. You condition your mind by thinking of your mind as a muscle.

How do you condition a muscle? You train it to do what you want it to do, the same as your muscles when you’re strength training.

The science of gaining strength and building or sculpting your muscles is pretty simple. You start by lifting a weighted object and forcing your muscle to move it. In order to move the weight, your muscle begins to tear (microscopically) under the strain. The cells repair themselves using the fuel or food that you eat and during sleep or resting periods. Afterwards, something really neat happens, during the repair process, your muscle becomes bigger, stronger and better so that it will be able to lift that same weight the next time, and then some.

So what do you do the next time you workout? You don’t lift the same weight, the same way, you change something. This shocks the muscle and again makes it compensate for this change, starting the recover-repair- growth cycle all over again.

In the end, what you get are beautifully sculpted, strong muscles that burn calories 24/7.

Now, let’s take this same scenario and apply it to your mind. Each time you do new things or put new routines and processes in place, you force your mind to grow and expand. Doing the same things the same way makes your mind become stale and stagnant. But filing it with new images, patterns and sensations causes it to explode and want more new sensations.

The best part is the more that you challenge yourself and your mind, the more you get out of it and the more you grow, from the inside out and shrink (physically) from the outside in.

Conditioning your mind is equivalent to conditioning the other muscles in your body. Remember, if you don’t use it, you WILL lose it!

Check back next Wednesday for Part 2: How to Exercise Your Mind