Weight Loss Success Psychology

Why is losing weight such a battle? What are we as a culture missing? What is the looming truth about weight loss success psychology?

With diabetes on the rise, eating disorders causing more deaths each year, obesity gaining in staggering numbers...what are we not getting? Why is weight loss success such a struggle?

We try to loose weight...just to gain it back again.

I believe there is a bigger picture to weight loss success. Yes, what we eat is important, how we move our bodies...but there is more.

What we think about what we eat is a Primary key!!

Our own internal guidance system for food choices is the only answer. One persons panacea is another person's poison is true, but only partially. Why is it that our poison is their panacea...how we hold that food in our psyche can either heal us or destroy us. Pause-think of the power in that statement. Feel the complexity and simplicity.

Our underlying belief system about that food changes the way it affects our bodies.

We, our every thought... affects our every swallow.

Food Think

Psyche of eating

Let’s think about it

1. 98% of all diets fail within 1-2 years. Of the 2% of the people who have kept the weight off they have done so because of: life change, career or relationship change, job change, or a complete restructuring of the beliefs around body and food.40-60% of our metabolic power at any meal – meaning our ability to digest, assimilate and calorie burn - comes from something called the Cephalic Phase Digestive Response – which is a scientific term for taste, pleasure, aroma, satisfaction, and our visuals of a meal

2. Willpower is not a problem if you are overeating. Usually overeating occurs because we have one not given our body the nutrition it needs and two we eat so fast our brain does not register that we have eaten. We miss the opportunity for tasting; smelling, enjoying, digesting our food and the brain interprets this as “hunger”. Also when it receives empty calories it drives us to continue eating to get the nourishment it needs.

3. What we think around our food affects the way it integrates into our bodies. If we deem certain foods as bad and use them to punish ourselves that food will react differently than when eaten by someone who enjoys that particular food in moderation.

4. Our thoughts around our body affect the foods affect on the body as well. How we see our bodies can actually generate a placebo response that causes the body to create the very thing we fear. In other words, body image of weight gain will produce high levels of stress hormones and cortisol and insulin, this will signal the body to store body fat, generate a loss in muscle tissue and drop our metabolism. Our fears can literally create a metabolic reality.

5. 94% of women hate their bodies. On average there are 100 million Americans on a ‘diet’, and the weight loss industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Making peace with our bodies and food in a real way is the only answer.

Relaxation is the most optimal physical state for the body to digest and breakdown food. Our bodies are designed to evolve and metabolize food under, “parasympathetic dominance” also known as the physiologic “relaxation response”. So is it possible to relax around eating, the body, the pressure of looking a certain way, and enjoying our food? Because it does a body good!

When we relax and understand our bodies the instrument will naturally guide us towards healthy healing foods, because when unobstructed we natually want what is good for us. When we slow down, listen to the bodies needs, we will be led to our personal panacea...what ever the food is- it will heal us.

In right relationship to our body it is an amazing instrument for health and vitality. How do we arrive in a perfect relationship to our body?

First we must clear away blocks, pain, addictions and than we must slow down and listen and trust.

Together we can heal the planet one body at a time!

-Many statistics generated from Marc Davidhttp://www.marcdavid.com/products_of_marc_david.htm

Marc David Have questions? Ask our Residence Wellness Coach!