Values, beliefs, pain, pleasure: why can't I lose weight? Part 1

Hi everyone,

This article is the first of five. In this you will learn how habits and behavior are stored and why it can be so difficult to break them without the right approach.

I work with people on a regular basis helping them to recognize and change limiting patterns of behavior, and I also teach trainings to help them learn skills that dramatically increase their happiness in life.

As I did this, I started to notice some interesting things …

Five years ago, I was only doing personal training; During that time, I had clients who got fantastic results that lasted and others who even struggled to lose fat.

Now this can be annoying because at the time I didn’t understand how the mind works and how much of what we do (our behavior) is out of conscious control.

Look, I had clients tell me how unhappy they were because of their size, how tired they were of feeling this way, and that they just wanted to reach a certain level of health and fitness so that they could enjoy their lives more fully.

This was all great, but STILL, even after I told them the right and wrong foods to eat, the right portion sizes for them, etc., they still ate all the wrong things and a ton.

It bothered me and they felt like a failure because they felt they couldn’t even control themselves.

Let’s stop here … And as we fast-forward to now, I can look back and realize exactly how and why they fought …

What many people don’t know is that you have a conscious mind (logical mind) and an unconscious mind (emotional mind).

Your conscious mind:

It’s the part of you that thinks logically and tries to make sense of things and it’s actually quite limited and can only handle about seven things at a time. (try this: no breaks, ‘ums’ or ‘ahs’, as fast as you can, name 7 different types of cars or types of food … Now if you are like most people you probably have 3-5 before having to take a short break to ‘recharge’ your conscious mind with more data from your unconscious).

Your unconscious mind:

It is the part of you that works in the domain of imagination, it is where all your values, beliefs, attitudes, emotions, memories, behaviors and habits are stored. While the conscious mind is limited, the unconscious mind is expansive and fully capable of amazing things. Essentially, your identity is stored on the unconscious level.

This is the problem:

Most people have no connection between their conscious and unconscious mind and that is why creating change and getting the things you want can be so difficult, it is because you are consciously trying to work with unconscious processes without knowing how to do it. . (Would you try to fix a car without first reading a manual or learning how? If you did without first learning how, how would the results differ if you compared it to the result you would get if you read or learned first?)

All learning, behavior and change is unconscious …

So back to the story

All of these people were struggling with weight loss or that’s what it seemed to be, when I look back now I realize they didn’t struggle with weight loss, no, they struggled with all of their unconscious programming and that’s what caused the fat to appear in the first place.

The reason they couldn’t control their eating habits is because that is something that is an unconscious process (a habit) and with no connection between the conscious and unconscious mind, unfortunately the unconscious mind always wins and that is why people are victims of your habits so often, it is because the conscious mind is a thinker and the unconscious mind is a “doer.”

Let’s think about what causes people to become obese.

1. Habits
2. Behaviors
3. Values
4. Beliefs
5. Environment

Our habits and behaviors are the things that give us what we want or what we don’t want, the things we do and don’t do will help us or stop us.

Overeating, not exercising, drinking a lot of alcohol, smoking, gambling, drugs, etc., are habits, just behaviors, and as you have just discovered, that is the domain of the unconscious mind.

We go through life and observe what is happening around us, our friends, parents, other family members, and as we do this, we are essentially building a model of the world that is full of values, beliefs, attitudes, etc., and these things. Let us know what we think is right and wrong and what can and cannot be done.

During this time, we also acquire many limiting habits and behaviors, and the key is learning to find, challenge, and remove all these limitations.

Here are a couple of questions to bring some of your habits and behaviors to consciousness and open the door to change:

(you will use your imagination in the following exercise)

1. What things are you doing that you want to stop doing?
2. When, if you knew, do you think you might have started doing that behavior?
3. How did you start doing it? Was someone else doing it around you?
4. If you are left behind at that point, consider whether that habit was good or bad to begin with … Consider how it had affected the person / persons from whom you may have learned it …
5. As you do this, begin to notice other new and better ways of behaving.
6. Imagine going back to now and asking yourself, “When would be the best time to STOP those old habits and behaviors?”
7. Then write down all the things you are doing to change now and all the things you are not doing.
8. Now imagine living the rest of your life as a victim of those old habits, see how bad it feels …
9. Now stop and see that you have a choice, in fact, you always had a choice, you just didn’t know …
10. Keep practicing this, bring your unconscious habits to consciousness and every time you fall into a pattern start breaking it and do something else because it is your right to live an amazing life.

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