IOWL 283: Get Thin Quick – the Right Way Part IV
On Today’s show, take a little test to find out what to say to yourself to reduce your cravings.
Welcome to Inside Out Weight Loss. I’m your host, Dr. Renee Stephens, and together, we’re accessing and adjusting the control panel of your mind, body, spirit system. Bringing ease and joy to your weight loss journey and fullness to the rest of your life. This journey isn’t about food plans and calorie counts. It is about learning to love and care for you from the inside out. So that it becomes natural and easy for you to be slim and healthy. Join me, as a former compulsive overeater, I have been where you’ve been, and I am here to help you create exactly what you want.
Now go ahead and take those few moments. I’d like you to start today. I’d like you to start this experience by taking three long slow deep breaths. That’s right. Taking a nice deep inhalation. It feels so good to bring in nourishing, refreshing and renewing air into your lungs and into your body. It’s completely free. You can do it anywhere, anytime, and actually, that long slow deep breath. Those three long slow deep breaths that you’re taking right now, can change your physiology. They trigger the relaxation response. Where all of your body starts to go, ‘ahhhh, isn’t that nice?’ Start to settle in, because as you let go of the cares of your day. All of those thoughts and things that might be whirring away in your head.
I know what’s going on in there. You might think to yourself, ‘oh but I’ve got an extra busy mind.’ You know what? Everybody’s got a busy mind. It’s the way the standard equipment arrives. Especially given all the stimuli of our culture. We have so many stimuli if you tune in to a TV program or a movie today. The average scene time is so much shorter than it was in those old movies. Even if you watch a show from the 1970’s you’d be amazed how much longer the scenes are. It can actually seem boring. So we are constantly stimulated by rapid-fire information images. So much going on, and that’s why it feels extra refreshing to slow down and sink down into our own bodies. That is where change occurs. That is where enjoyment occurs.
I wonder, what part of your body feels the best right now? What part of your body feels the most comfortable of all of the parts of all of the places in your awareness, what feels the best? And as you answer that question, what if noticing, simply noticing the part of you that feels the best right now automatically triggered the ‘me too’ response from the other parts of your body. So all of the other parts of your body jump on the bandwagon and say ‘oooh I want to feel that good too!’ And instantly, with each breath, and you can throw in the extra long slow deep ones as much as you like. Go ahead and overdo it on the long slow deep breaths. Just go for it, and as you take those deep breaths, perhaps it’s on the exhalation right now when all of those other parts of your body relax as well and start to feel much better then before. Now, as you take a new assessment, you may find that there is another part of your body that feels even better. That’s now the part of you that feels the most relaxed and the most wonderful. And so that ‘me too’ response happens again, and all the others say ‘oooh I like that idea. I like what you’re doing. I’m going to do the same thing.’
And progressively, as all of you hops on board with the deeper and deeper relaxation, just listening to the sound of my voice. Feeling those inner sensations. You relax even more. Of course, I want you to stay alert enough to be able to take in of the great information of this podcast. Of this episode, and also, if you’re doing anything that requires a great deal of attention, I suggest that you stay alert for that. Maybe pause this and finish your drive, or whatever it is you’re doing. Safety first of course.
Today, I would like to give a shout out to Miriam Mayer. Miriam is a musician, and she writes ‘When I see those January ‘how to lose weight articles’, how stars did it. I always think Renee should be at the top of these lists. You are the most wonderful affective weight loss LOVE MYSELF program ever!’ Also, I’m a professional musician, and I use your techniques to make my music life better all the time. Thank you so much for sharing that Miriam, and Miriam also shared with me a little song that she composed for her weight loss journey. To represent the journey for her. It is a sweet song. Very uplifting. All about being in the now and enjoying the journey, and you can listen to that song. We’re going to do our best to post it at insideoutweightloss.com/podcast. So if you haven’t visited the podcast webpage, you can also download the free inside out weight loss workbook that goes with the first episodes of this program. Step by step reviewing and outlining all of the homework with space to complete it. Though if you want to check out Miriam’s music, you can find the link at insideoutweightloss.com/podcast. Check that out, and we will post her song if it is technologically possible there. I have a good feeling about it, so go check that out.
By the way, as a reminder, take a moment to feel an awareness. A connection with all of the other listeners of this podcast, across space and time. Notice that there are other listeners. A lot, a lot a lot a lot of them, and that they are on the same journey. Notice that you are not alone. And as you feel their presence, a connection with them. Send them your support. Your well wishes and your love, and feel theirs coming back to you magnified many many times over. We’re a community here often times, the weight struggle can seem so lonely we feel like we’re the only crazy person in the world who just can’t get it together. And that of course is a figment of our imagination. That is a story that we tell ourselves, when in fact, so many people share the same experience. My daughter recently asked me to talk to her ballet school, and the dancers there were sharing that they felt the same thing. They had the same experiences of the struggle. You are not alone. So feel that connection and enjoy it.
The last couple of episodes, we have been talking about expressing your weight release journey. Speeding it up, and I’ve been sharing a daily process. A daily habit, as Steven Covey says that it is our habits that define us and if we make our habits, our practices, things that lead us to our goals, then we are much much more likely to achieve our goals and our intentions while we’re at it. The first step is to keep a hunger diary. To check in with your body’s levels of hunger and satiety. So that you are aware of when you are over-eating. When you are straying from your body’s physical signals and eating for other reasons. Typically emotional reasons. Once you know that because you have been tracking and tuning in with your body. The hunger diary is great tool to tune in to your body. To get you into the habit of coming back home to the body and the belly so that you can make that body of yours feel as great as it possibly can on any given day. No matter where you start from. You want to feel the best that’s possible for you.
After keeping the hunger diary, or while you’re keeping it. Then you review your day. At the end of the day you say, ‘Hmm, what went well?’ Being sure to give yourself plenty of pats on the back for what went well. What you enjoyed. And then asking, What would I change if I could? What would I like to improve?’ And you may find, ‘hmm, well there was nothing, it was quite a great day.’ Congratulations, you rock! That’s awesome. But alas, if you happen to find something, and I know that’s probably more common for you. Maybe a little overeating slipped in here or there. Then you can mentally rehearse being different in that situation and behaving different in that situation. In other words, you can run a little predo on how you were in that situation. So that you start, bit by bit to shift your behavior through the practice of the redo and sometimes even the predo.
We’ve talked about this a lot, how that starts to create the feeling of familiarity for the new behavior. So that when a real-life circumstance comes up that would trigger such a behavior, or where such a behavior would be appropriate. It already feels comfortable. It’s already ready to go. It feels like something that is in your scope of things that you do and gets over that inertia that doing something new can create in us. Now, I’d like to talk to you about the final step, the next step today, and we’ll do that after our break. You’re listening to Inside Out Weight Loss. I’m your host, Dr. Renee Stephens, and we will be right back.
Want to hear more episodes? Have a friend you'd like to share them with? The entire archive is now available at InsideOutWeightLoss.com/podcasts, plus we have a free gift for you there. The Inside Out Weight Loss Workbook that walks you through the crucial first steps outlined in episodes 1 through 18, plus you'll get to hear my story in the prologue. That's: InsideOutWeightLoss.com/podcasts.
We’re back now. Before the break, we were talking about this daily practice to accelerate change because you’re going to make improvement part of every day. Every day that you do this process, you can improve just a little bit. Do you remember when we talked about continuous improvement, and kaizen, way back, I don’t know when. How this isn’t about making the dramatic leaps. This is about small steps in the right direction. If you were going to school to learn something, let’s say you go to school, here’s something random, to become a dental hygienist. Would you expect to start your first class and immediately know how to clean someone’s teeth? No, you wouldn’t. Let’s say you want to become a surgeon. Would you expect going to your first biology class, ‘Boom! I know how to do that.’ No, you wouldn’t expect that. Anything that you study. Even if you study to get a degree in history, you wouldn’t expect to know much about it until you had taken the classes and done the homework.
It’s the same thing you are a student right now. A student of naturally slender living. And you are learning and adopting the new practices as you go. As you progress. As you listen to more podcasts. As you do more of the homework. So, alas, young student. Young at heart student no matter what your age is. What’s the next step? You may recall that if you want to change a habit, if you want to change your behavior in a way that lasts, in a way that is more than just the oomph of the enthusiasm for a new program or the resolve that you might feel at the beginning of the year or at any other time. If you want it to last beyond that, and really incorporate deeply into who you are and the way you operate, which by the way is our specialty here. You must address both the habit and the cause of the habit. That makes sense, right? How would you expect to change a habit unless you are addressing the actual cause of the habit? That’s the piece that we do now in our little daily process. You go to redo, let’s take an example. You review your day and you think, “Ah that was great. I really tuned into my body. I did some exercise that felt really good. Breakfast and lunch super healthy. Dinner started out well, and then it kept going and going. I just kept snacking as I was sitting at the computer after dinner or sitting on the sofa, lying on the sofa. I just kept going. Before you know it, I had downed an extra bag of chips or a whole pint or half pint of ice cream and gosh darn it I didn’t need that. That is what is between me and that slim sexy body that I want.” And your first reaction is ‘Why can’t you change!? You terrible good for nothing piece of flop on the sofa. That’s just not gonna work!’ Well if you have an emotional reaction like THAT to making a mistake. That is not gonna fly or in other words, you are not going to be able to fly in that naturally slender state until you release all that guilt. All that negativity. Contrary to popular belief it is not motivating. It is not motivating in a lasting way. It is very very effective however at making us feel bad. Makes us feel like crap. Am I right? Test this out here. Have I got an experiment for you. I want you right now to think about a food. We will call it a “treat.” Something that you find hard to resist. That you have perhaps an unnatural relationship with. Maybe there is a little bit of a romantic allure. Maybe you just are in to this…whatever. So visualize in your mind, see this particular item of food. The “treat” that you have that you tend to overeat on. Ice cream, cookies, candy, I don’t know, whatever. See it now in your minds eye, and as you see it, I want you to say to yourself a few negative things. Choose some of your favorites. Your all-time favorites on your overplay list on your mind. Like, ‘You idiot, I can’t believe you do it.’ Or ‘You did this! You’ll never change. I’m always going to be so fat. Why can’t I get it together?’ Choose your favorite and say those to yourself. Get a good nice dose of it from your all-time favorite repeat playlist, and now look back at that tree and on a scale of 0-10, how strong is your desire to eat it? After that negativity, how appealing does that treat look? Note your number scale of 0-10. Now take a deep breath, see a blank screen and think about the color of the last pair of shoes that you bought. What color were they? Were they white? Where they brown? Were they blue? Did you do something fun? Did you get a purple or a pink? I don’t know, just think about it. Okay, now, I want you to again, we’re going to imagine in our minds, I want you to say some nice things to yourself like, ‘I accept my beautifully imperfect self just as I am.’ Or, ‘I am beautifully imperfect. I’m perfectly imperfect. I accept myself even though I’m imperfect.’ You could say anything like that. I like to use words like acceptance. You might say something like, ‘all is well and all will be well.’ Choose one or a few of those that you really like. Say those to yourself. Now that you’ve said those to yourself, you might even throw in some compassionate statements like, ‘Hey, I know that maybe you’ve had a tough time. Or it’s completely understandable, the way you are. You got this way for a very good reason.’ Just some nice things to yourself. ‘I accept myself as imperfect as I am. Now, having said those things to yourself, look again at that image of the treat. Look again at that image of the treat, and rate on a scale of 0-10 how appealing it is for you. 0-10. How appealing is it now after saying those kind and accepting things to yourself? Did your number from the negative statements to the positive statements, did your number change? Interesting to notice that. Did it go down? I’m guessing that it did. And simply knowing that your number goes down, the appeal of that food is variable. It is dependent on how you talk to yourself. How you feel about yourself. Just notice that. That beating yourself up actually makes those foods more appealing. You have seen it for yourself.