Eat Healthy: Curb Your Cravings with NLP Help
Cravings get the best of us an generally cause us to choose unhealthy sweets, fast foods, starchy and refined food that does not sit well with our body and causes us to gain weight. There are many underlying reasons why people have cravings but it comes down to one simple aspect. That one important aspect is being in control of your emotions and your behavior.
In order to eat healthy, a person needs to control not only what they eat but how they eat. Some people have a problem with emotional eating which causes them to gain weight. Other people have a problem with eating too much and never feeling satisfied or full. The list goes on and on. In order to control what you eat, you need to understand why you eat and what causes you to eat. Once you figure out these important key factors, you can then begin to address them and focus on them.
Weight loss and eating healthy are pressing concerns for people of all ages. Especially with the New Year, many people have made it a resolution to lose excess weight and bring balance to their daily diets. Achieving these goals can be presented in many ways as you see through the advertising of a magical pill or diet drink. The methods these products provide are often times unhealthy in themselves and also quite pricey. The best way to control weight and eat right is to completely revamp the way you think about food. With that being said, the only one who can take these first steps of getting your thoughts on the right track is you.
It has long been said "If you change your mind, you change your life." Many people struggle to lose weight, and the vast majority in any given year will either be completely unsuccessful or will gain every ounce back once they "go off their diet."
The good news, however, is that there are simple tools that can make the weight loss success rate much higher - they"re readily available to anyone, at little to no cost whatsoever. Our minds hold tremendous power, and in many cases can make what we dream about - whether that"s weight loss, better eating habits, or enjoying more satisfying relationships - come to fruition. This is how cognitive and Neurolinguistic therapies can become a useful part of the arsenal needed to help with weight loss.
Duke University in North Carolina has studied the effectiveness of treating both mind and body in its "integrated health approach" to weight loss. They work toward weight loss through a combination of "mindful eating," clinical diagnosis and monitoring, hypnosis, stress control, and other mind/body approaches to provide tools to support healthy eating. This takes place at their Integrative Medicine Center.
Many spiritual traditions hold the belief that "thoughts are things" and that if, for example, we carry in mind the idea that "I will never be successful in losing weight" then that (incorrect) thought can become the absolute truth in our lives.
Duke"s Integrative Medicine Center teaches that we all have the power to eliminate these self-defeating thought patterns, and can replace them with positive, supportive belief systems that help us with responding to stress, practicing proper self-care, and goal achievement. (See http://www.dukehealth.org/Services/IntegrativeMedicine/About/index)
One simple, yet very effective technique is "mindfulness." Many people report "diving into" an unhealthy food of some type, and "before they know it, they"ve eaten "the whole thing,"" whether the "thing" was an entire bag of chips or a gallon of ice cream. Mindfulness, like meditation, teaches us to stay in the moment and remain aware of the choices we are making. If one is truly committed to caring for ones" body in the best way possible, it is difficult to both stay mindful AND devour a whole pie at one sitting.
Specifically, Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) is thought to be direct contact with a person"s subconscious, and is a method for examining the deeply-held beliefs a person might have about weight loss, exercise, and self care. NLP then reframes these thoughts and beliefs into ideas that are more supportive of good health (or weight loss). For example, "I can make appropriate choices to support the health of my body with food" rather than "I always choose foods that are bad for me and cause weight gain."
The basic supposition of Neurolinguistic Programming is that all behaviors and thought processes have a positive intent. Using this approach it is possible to take the positive intent"for example, to feel safe, or to feel good (by eating) and anchor it to a more positive and desirable behavior. This might include "feeling good" by visiting a friend, or feeling stronger by working out and building stronger muscles.
NLP has been used with success for wide-ranging situations, from the trauma of those involved with the Lockerbie Air Disaster to helping asthmatics to overcome their need for inhalants in order to breathe.
According to an article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in May 2003, the keys to success in Neurolinguistic Programming may be very simple. They include:
•Setting your goal.
•Be positive that you can reach your goal.
•Be detailed about exactly what you goal looks like.
•Be realistic about your goal.
•Decide what your criteria for success will be.
•Choose the correct model. (According to the BJM article, "modeling" in NLP terms is the process that brings about the behavioral patterns necessary for success.)
•Monitor your beliefs. "Whether you believe you can, or believe you can"t" you"re right."
•Pay attention to physiology.
•Pay attention to strategy.
We are not helpless victims of our habits or of our past failures. Any accomplished NLP practitioner can help you to make use of the keys that you already hold to make powerful changes in your life.
Hypnosis MP3’s and CD’s by Ndependence Hypnosis can help you do just that. They are very convenient and easy to use making it a simple integration into your life. Through these tools you will learn how to relax your body and mind into a state of self hypnosis. By doing this, you will be able to tap into your subconscious mind and take away the barriers that keep you in the same predicament you are in now. You will be able to change the negative food eating behaviors into more positive food choices. Hypnosis can also help you realize what triggers you to eat the wrong foods so that you can begin to eliminate those triggers.
By going into a deep hypnotic trance that is focused on your food choices the subconscious can be retrained easily and effortlessly to choose healthier foods. When we continually choose these unhealthy foods we develop eating habits that become hard to break. The subconscious begins to send these sensations of cravings for these foods as this is what you have programmed into the subconscious over many years. Once we develop steadfast eating habits it takes 21 days to change them as in any habit we have developed over time. By using hypnosis the subconscious can be reprogrammed for change, so that change can occur faster and become a permanent way of life. Guided Imagery and Hypnosis can also use creative language patterns that help your subconscious understand the need for healthier eating habits.
By using Neuro Linguistic Programming, you will be able to assign a certain feeling or image onto foods that are bad. You will also be able to do the same for foods that are good for you. If you are looking to eat healthy, you can assign the sweets and fats as food that tastes disgusting or makes you feel like they are so heavy they prevent you from walking. Just by associating the junk food with a feeling of nausea to your unconscious mind will trigger these feelings when you come in contact with them. After all, it is your unconscious mind that translates these feelings.
In the same reasoning you can also associate healthy foods with tasting delicious. You can also have them produce the opposite effect of the junk foods and have the healthy foods lift you up and make you feel as though you have a lot of energy.
In time, usually from listening to the MP3’s and CD’s from Nedependence Hypnosis repeatedly, you will find yourself wanting to eat healthy and automatically grab the foods that provide a benefit to your body rather than weight gain.
NLP is also a very powerful tool that can be used in conjunction with hypnosis. You can imagine that bad food takes on a form other than its normal form. The person who is looking to eat healthy can choose to see the junk food items as something that they do not like or something that is completely disgusting. Through this, the unconscious mind is re-programming itself to see the once desired junk food as something that is not so desired at all.
Moreover, if it is a person that has problems with control, finding a different image for these food items will allow them to feel more comfortable about having control because they will not be tempted by the feeling they would typically associate with junk foods.
Neuro Linguistic Programming takes a fair amount of time and commitment of the person that is looking to make a change. But as they say, nothing good in life comes easy. The aspect that you can take comfort in is the fact that when you are successful, it is not just putting a band-aid on something; it is correcting the problematic behavior.
Resources:
http://madelynfernstrom.ivillage.com/2008/02/alternative_medicine_and_weigh.html