1. Talk to Yourself AND to the Universe.
Ask yourself what you really want.
Research shows that asking a question is more effective than making a statement because
your brain likes to solve problems and will come up with ways to find a solution.
You may ask yourself: “How can I fit into my jeans again?” And then, “What can I do this week to be healthy?”
Then pick a positive affirmation related to your weight loss goals and repeat it to yourself throughout the day while touching the beads on your bracelet (See step 2). For example, you may say “I want to eat fruit and vegetables at every meal today,” or “I will exercise for 30 minutes three times this week.”
By telling yourself and telling the Universe, you can make your goals a reality. Set a small, reasonable goal and change your affirmation each week. Don't try to do everything all at once.
Don’t believe your negative thoughts. They are not the core of who you are. Drown out the negative chatterbox in your head.
How should you use affirmations? The most usual method recommended for affirmations is first to justBstill: still the mind and the body, then use positive expectation, belief and daily repetition.
Try this process:
1.
Make a list of all the ways you will attain your affirmation. For example, if you decide to add more fruit and vegetables to your healthy eating, write down how you will accomplish this. Will you stop by a salad bar on your way home from work? Or go to the grocery store and fill your cart with half fruit and vegs, and half “other foods”? Visualize what will work for you. Close your eyes and imagine how you will incorporate the fruit and vegs into your week, or 30 mins. of exercise, or whatever goal you choose for the week. One affirmation week is the best way to start.
2.
Make a list of all the problems that will kill your affirmation. “I’m not ready to eat fruit, or to exercise,” whatever. Now take that list and rip it into pieces. Ceremonially throw it away, and focus on the attainable list.
3. Spend a few minutes everyday watching yourself attain your affirmation. Include mental visualization using as many of your five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch) as appropriate.Don’t let your 6th sense – your chatterbox mind- get in the way of your goals.
You are not your thoughts. Read this excerpt from the book, Practicing The Power of Now, By Eckhart Tolle:
Extract from Practicing the Power of Now
..Being and Enlightenment
“The greatest obstacle to experiencing the reality of your connectedness is identification with your mind, which causes thought to become compulsive. Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a shadow of fear and suffering.
Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate “other.” You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is.
The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly — you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.
It’s almost as if you were possessed without knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself.
The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity — the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated.
You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind.
You begin to awaken.”
From Practicing The Power of Now, copyright 1999 by Eckhart Tolle.
2. Remove It and Use It
Take off your bracelet, gently roll or touch each bead between your fingers and say your
affirmation aloud. You cannot overdue this, so do this as many times as possible, especially when you feel the urge to binge: just b-just breathe and b still.
Touch each bead with your fingers. Observe how they feel. Acknowledge stray thoughts entering your head and let them go. Focus on your goal instead, and say your affirmation. If you cannot say your affirmation aloud, say it in your head during downtime, whether riding the bus, waiting in line, getting your teeth cleaned or even in a boring sales meeting!
By gently rolling your crystals between your fingers, you are using them like mala beads. Mala beads are a tool used to keep your mind on your intentions and affirmations.
JustBstill™ =just breathe+ be still...aka meditation.
Meditation =mindfulness =justbstill.
JustBstill™ can be quite a tricky practice because the mind is like a naughty child. By its very nature, the mind tends to wander off during the meditation practice. If ones energy is low at the time of meditation, falling asleep can result. If the energy is too high, fantasy and distraction become the barriers. At such times, the mala provides the much needed anchor.
The beads are moved in rhythm with the breath and the mantra, so that both-sleep as well as excessive mental distraction-are prevented by this action upon the beads.
Hold your beads while repeating your affirmations because this will increase the focus of your attention and intention. The banter of the negative chatter you have been repeating to yourself for years will lose its ability to interfere with your healthy lifestyle goals.
3.justBstill™
Try this throughout the day. Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and just b still. Focus on your breath. When you breathe in say “just” and when you breathe out say “be.” This mantra forces your mind to focus on something constant, rather than focus on negative thoughts that drift into
your head. Try this 5-6 times a day, for a few moments each time.
Gradually you will be able to do this for longer periods. Remember, it’s practice, not perfection that will allow you to achieve your goals.
Research shows that learning to be in the present moment releases stress. Too much stress has been shown to affect heart health, and what else? You guessed it… overeating! Even one breath is a meditation. You need to practice daily if you ever want to master this life saving skill.
These are notes taken from Jon Kabat-Zinn,PhD on awareness from you tube video at Google…
“Wake up, you have more than 5 senses and one is the mind. Bring being and doing together, more balance for more clarity. Medicine and meditation come from the same root word. The future and past are a concept. The only time our lives are unfolding are NOW. Point to your mind, where is it? Did you point to your head? Sorry mind and brain are not the same. Use 5 senses to be here now. Drop into the senses of breathing without fiddling with it, the nervous system does it for us. We don’t have to tell ourselves to breathe. But we can drop into it to feel our breath, ride the waves of the breath in the body. Surf and feel the sensations of the breath. Just be in the moment of the sounds in the room, don’t block them out or listen in to them, just return to your breath. Forget the grandiose new age bullshit; just let the guided mediation take you to the present moment.”
People who meditate show increased brain thickness in areas important for attention and sensory processing and appear to have less age related thinning of the prefrontal cortex. Studies have also
shown that meditators recover faster from exposure to stressful stimuli and do not show typical brain wave patterns in response to stressful stimuli. Too much stress- you know what that means!
Several studies indicate that meditation alters brain wave and brain activation patterns as measured by EEG and fMRI. ²
What is mediation? It is mindful Awareness is the moment by-moment process of actively and openly observing one’s physical, mental & emotional experiences.
How to meditate: Sit down in a comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed and spend five minutes focusing on the sensation of breathing in and breathing out-pay attention to how it feels when your stomach rises and falls. Soon, you may notice that you're thinking of something else-your job or some noise you just heard or your plans for later in the day. Label these thoughts as "thinking," and refocus your attention on your breath. You can add a mantra to focus your intention. Any 2 syllable set of words is best. Say one when you breathe in, and the second word as you breathe out. If you are overly distracted, try a visual image mediation. This is a mental picture of something you like to see.
Do this daily. Every couple of weeks, increase the length of time you spend on the exercise-10 minutes, 15, up to 20 or more if you feel you can. Try the same thing throughout each day, focusing on your breath for a few minutes as you walk from place to place, or when you’re stopped at a red light or sitting at the computer. JustBstill™, and then record when you are still. Post your justBstill™ moments in my forum.
What if you just can't keep your mind focused? Will the exercise still do any good?
It's the nature of the mind to be distracted. Mindful awareness isn't about staying with the breath, but about returning to the breath. That's what enhances your ability to focus. And this emphasis on re-shifting your attention, of outwitting the mind’s natural tendency to wander
4.Mindful Eating Exercise
This is an exercise for your brain. Research shows you can retrain your brain to eat mindfully, and mindful eating leads to long term weight loss. (Did you know you can also retrain your brain and taste buds to like healthy food, rather than processed foods.)
You must do all the steps to just B still.
a. Set the table. Make it pretty by using real silverware, lighting candles, etc. Turn on some relaxing music.
b. Prepare and serve your food from the kitchen, bringing only your plate to the table.
c. Look at your food. Smell and touch your food. Taste it. Chewing every bite and letting it linger in your mouth. What does it feel like? Soft, crunchy, hard? Smell like? How does it taste? Salty, sweet, sour? Swallow. Wait. Drink some water. Repeat this for 20 minutes with one plate. This provides your stomach time to signal your brain that it is full.
Here are 12 of his tips, from Brian Wansink, Author of, "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think" explores the unconscious cues that make us feast as we do, and how we can keep them from manipulating us.
• Put high-calorie foods on plates in the kitchen and leave leftovers there. You'll eat 15 percent to 20 percent less. Do not serve "fat-family" style (from a big platter or bowl that is passed) unless it's veggies or salad.
• See it before you eat it. Dishing out Chex Mix led one group to consume 134 fewer calories than others who ate straight from the bag.
• Keep the evidence on the table _ turkey bones, muffin papers, candy wrappers. Diners in one study ate 30 percent more chicken wings when the bones were periodically cleared away than others whose bones stayed in front of them.
• Bank calories. Skip the appetizers if you know you want dessert. You also will be more accurate at estimating how many calories you consume.
• Sit next to the slowest eater at the table and use that person to pace yourself. Always be the last one to start eating, and set your fork down after every bite.
• Embrace comfort food. Don't avoid the food you really want, but have it in a smaller portion.
• Avoid having too many foods on the table. The more variety, the more people will eat. People ate 85 percent more M&Ms when they were offered in nine colors rather than seven.
• Keep your distance. To reduce the mindless snatch and grab, move more than arms length away from the buffet tables and snack bowls.
• For foods that are not good for you, think "back." Put them in the back of the cupboard, the back of the refrigerator, the back of the freezer. Keep them wrapped in aluminum foil. Office workers ate 23 percent less candy when it was in a white, covered candy dish than in a see-through one.
• Use small bowls. A study found that people serving themselves from smaller bowls ate 59 percent less.
• Use tall, narrow glasses for drinks. Even experienced bartenders poured more into short, squat glasses than into skinny ones.
• Don't multitask. People tend to unconsciously consume more when distracted by conversation or a game on TV. Setting your fork down and giving the conversation your full attention will prevent overeating.
“We don't know exactly how many calories, but chances are you'll enjoy it more," Wansink said. "And people will enjoy you more.”
On the Net: Food and Brand Lab: http://www.MindlessEating.org
d. How do you feel when you eat this way? Record your thoughts, likes and dislikes, into a personal journal, and do this daily for at least 3 weeks.
Studies show that people who keep a food and mood journal were more successful at keeping weight off over the long term.
The just B still™ methods in this book are based upon research I have gathered, and I have listed the most relevant books and studies below. Please consult a physician before beginning this or any other weight loss program.
RESEARCH:
1. “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think” — By Brian Wansink, PhD.
2. Isolation of a Central Bottleneck of Information Processing with Time-Resolved fMRI . Neuron , Volume 52 , Issue 6 , Pages 1109 - 1120 P . Dux , J . Ivanoff , C . Asplund , R . Marois
3. Mental Stress and Coronary Artery Disease:
A Multidisciplinary Guide Sari D. Holmes, David S. Krantz, Heather Rogers,John Gottdiener and Richard J. Contrada Progress in Cardiovascular Disease, Vol 49, No 2 (September/October), 2006: pp 106-122
4. Underwood A: The good heart: Diet and exercise are not the whole secret to cardiovascular healthmounting evidence suggests that your psychological outlook is just as important. Newsweek magazine 2005
5. Change Your Thoughts Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Dr Wayne W Dyer
6. The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-create Your World Your Way by Wayne W. Dyer
7. The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things: Fourteen Natural Steps to Health and Happiness by Larry Dossey
8. Law of Attraction: The Science of Attracting More of What You Want and Less of What You Don't by Michael J. Losier
9. You: On A Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management by Mehmet C. Oz and Michael F. Roizen
10. Lazar, S.W. et al. Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness. Neuroreport. Vol 16(17), Nov. 2 005, pp. 1893-97.
11. Davidson, R.J., et al. Alterations in brain and immune function produced my mindfulness meditation.
Psychosomatic Medicine. Vol 65(4), Jul -Aug 2003, pp.564-570.
12. Goleman, D.J. & Schwartz, G.E. Meditation as an intervention in stress reactivity. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Vol 44(3), Jun 1976, pp.456-466.
13. Segal, Z. V., Williams, J. M. G., & Teasdale, J. D. (2002). Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for
Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse. New York: Guilford.
14. Shapiro, S.L., Astin, J.A., Bishop, S. R., & Cordova M. Mindfulness-Based stress reduction for health care professionals: results from a randomized trial . International Journal of Stress Management. Vol 12(2), May 200 5, pp. 164-176.
15. Mann, T., Tomiyama, A.J., Westling, E., Lew, A., Samuels, B., & Chatman, J. (in press). Medicare’s search for effective obesity treatments: Diets are not the answer. American Psychologist
BOOKS/OTHER:
Oprah
Oprah&Friends Radio Show
“Stillness Speaks” — By Eckhart Tolle
“The Power of Now” — By Eckhart Tolle
“A New Earth” — By Eckhart Tolle
"10 Conversations You Need To Have With Your Children" By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
“Coming to Our Senses” — By Jon Kabat-Zinn
“1001 Ways to Relax” — By Mike George
“My Stroke of Insight” — By Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD
“Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life” — By Byron Katie, Stephen Mitchell
The Mindful Kessel Girls, 2008