#709: How The Mind Affects Weight Loss

She said, I've worked with so many personal trainers, nutritionists, I really can't stop eating certain foods that I know are bad for me. I really want to stop eating them, but I just can't. And I've tried all these psychological techniques to make me not like certain foods, etc. And, David, I'm just stuck. Hello and welcome to the Self Belief Chief podcast. You're here with David home, and make sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening, if you haven't done so already, so you can get the latest insights, science research information to help you propel and excel your life. Let's begin. So I was talking with Janine, and Janine really wanted to lose weight. Okay? She wanted to lose about five stone. And she said, I've managed to do that in the past, but I just don't really keep it off. And she said, I don't keep it off because I can't resist certain foods. She said, there are just some foods that are just too nice and too good, and I can't stop eating them. Once I have a little bit, I have too much of it. And I indulge. And, you know, sometimes I. I indulge because I feel stressed, I feel anxious, and it's just a way of handling it because I've spoken to people about the psychology of it. I've had people who tried to, you know, ruin certain foods to maybe, you know, imagine it being, you know, covered in something disgusting or whatever, and it doesn't do anything. It doesn't change anything for me. I said, okay. So I showed her these. These five steps I take people through to change any bad habit, whether it's to do with smoking, losing weight, any habit you want to get rid of, radically change. Now, in the time we have, I'm not going to go through all five steps. I'm going to do something maybe more helpful, which is to just talk about one of them. See, anyone can rationally or logically want to lose weight, right? Loads of people can want to lose weight. And the issue that Janine had, she said, I eat way too much chocolate, right? We can say I want to stop eating chocolate, but that's not the issue. It's, do we feel like not eating chocolate? Because if you want to eat chocolate, if you don't, if you want to stop eating chocolate, but you feel like you really want chocolate, how easy do you think that, you know, that is to manage? Now, I'm not going to go down the road that she's already tried, which Is, you know, people say, imagine it in this and do this to the chocolate. It's disgusting. Everything it's not worked for her, that's fine. I'm not just going to, you know, do the same things that other people have done. I do the complete opposite. So I put her in a subconscious state and I said, okay. And you know, she's very deep state. And I said, imagine your favorite chocolate. She tells me it's dairy milk. I said, okay. She said, I want you to imagine you've got a big bar of dairy milk chocolate right in front of you. I said, I want you to have the first bite. I just want you to chew that chocolate and I want you to taste how creamy it is and how it melts in your mouth. She's got a big smile on her face. She's probably thinking, why on earth is David doing this? So she's imagining eating this chocolate. I said, have another square of it and another square. Okay, so finish off that particular row. And then I get her to finish another row and finish another row and she's enjoying it. And I say, keep tasting how creamy and chocolatey it is and she has more. We imagine finishing that first chocolate bar, you know, it's one of those sort of four by eight, you know, dairy milk chocolate bars. I said, okay, now I want you to imagine another chocolate bar coming towards you. And as it comes towards you, it gets bigger and bigger, bigger. And then eventually it's in your hands. I said, I want you to open the chocolate bar and I want you to have that first bite, taste how chocolatey and creamy it is, and then have another square, and then have another square and then have another square. And I said, now I want you to imagine those five squares in your mouth and trying to chew and creamy and melty. Try and taste all of that. Try and really enjoy it, how it sticks to your mouth and all that creamy chocolate. Try and swallow it. And as you can imagine, the smile starts to turn into a bit of a frown. She's got her eyes closed, she's imagining this. She's almost struggling to swallow the chocolate. I said, okay, now have some more chocolate. Have another square, have another square. I get her to imagine 10 squares in her mouth. So, okay, now just chew all that up, all that sticky chocolate going around your mouth and try and swallow that chocolate down as well. And you can see her sort of wincing over so slightly. And I get her to eat another row and another row and another row. And she finishes that chocolate bar. She's not really smiling anymore. I said, now I want you to imagine another chocolate bar coming towards you, and I want you to have that first bite and have another square and another square and another square. We get halfway through this chocolate bar, and she's starting to coil over. Now, bear in mind, she's not actually eating chocolate. This is all just in her mind because she's in a deep, subconscious state. She's really feeling like she's tasting the chocolate. She's starting to coil over. Her head's starting to go down in that way that you do when you feel like, oh, am I going to be a bit sick here? Now she's starting to hold her stomach. I said, well, have some more chocolate and have some more. And imagine those 10 pits of chocolate swirling around in your mouth, that creamy texture sticking to your mouth. And try and swallow that down. And we get to the last row of that chocolate bar. She goes, david, please, I. Please, I can't eat anymore. As if I'm actually forcing her to eat real chocolate. Please, I can't eat anymore. I feel like I'm gonna be sick. So good. I want you to finish that last row of chocolate. So she feels sick. She tries to eat a bit of chocolate and. And another bit. I said, those 10 bits of chocolate, swell it around your mouth, that sticky chocolate. And now try and swallow it down. And she gags. She said, david, I can't. I can't do anymore. I said, no, you love chocolate. Let's get. Imagine another chocolate bar coming towards you. And she goes to have that first bite of chocolate. She goes, oh, David, David, please, please, please, please stop. Please, please. I said, no, come on, have some more chocolate. So she imagines having some more chocolate. She starts gagging again. She has some more chocolate. She's. And I said, swallow it again. Imagine that swirly, sticky chocolate going around your mouth. You love it. I'll try and swallow it down. She says, david, David, please, please. I can't, I can't, I can't. I make her have some more. And then she's gagging, and she's having that reef sort of reflex over and over again. She can't eat it. And she's begging, please, please. I said, okay. I said, open your eyes. She opens her eyes. She's coiled over, her head's down. She's sort of peering up at me. I said, do you feel like having some chocolate right now? She goes, no, I don't. Place some chocolate in front of her. Said, eat it. She says, I can't, I can't. Eat that chocolate. I can't do it. Please don't make me eat the chocolate. As if I really have that type of power and control. And it works because it's like when you drink too much alcohol, you go, I'm not going to, I can't drink. I'm never going to drink alcohol again. Now, of course that feeling can come back after a couple of months, can't it? So we can reinforce the exercise back at that pace. We keep conditioning it and conditioning and conditioning it so that whenever she thinks and feels that chocolate, all she's imagining is that swirly, sticky chocolate and try to swallow that down her throat and that gag reflux that's been conditioned to come with it. The weeks and months after that, she says, I, I don't really eat chocolate at all. I have chocolate in the house because of my granddaughter and I used to have some of that and I can even have chocolate in the house and I don't eat it. So there are five steps to changing a bad habit. But one of those key steps is it has to be, it has to be a, you know, you have to create enough leverage. Basically you have to create enough leverage, but you have to have an emotional response. It can't just be a logical, rational thing to quit, right? You need, that's important to want to, but you, your, your body has to have the response that it doesn't want it. Now that can be making something really disgusting, but it can also be that feeling of over consumption. I find that's a really effective way, getting people in a deep state and imagine that over consumption over and over again. That can help change any bad habit. If you want to find out more, go to the Self Belief Chief website for more free resources and information. My name is David Holman. If you change today, today will change your life. So enjoy the rest of your day, enjoy the rest of your life and I'll speak to you again soon. Just one more thing before you go. So I hope you're enjoying the daily episodes. We put in a lot of work to keep providing content because to create permanent change needs consistency. To get that consistency, we want to make sure we keep providing you value on a daily basis. But to keep up with that pace, could we ask for one very small favor? If you could take the time to leave a five star rating either on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we'll put a link in the description for you to be able to do so. That really, really helps us out and helps us to keep providing content as frequently as we do. And we'll do one more thing to provide some extra value. If you take a screenshot of your rating or review and send it to self beliefchiefmail.com or DM us on Instagram, I will provide you with a free coaching session with myself. Okay, so it'd be fantastic if you could leave that five star rating so we can keep providing content. Just simply click on the link in the description. It'll take you 20 seconds. And if you want to go one step further, take a screenshot of that rating and review. Send it to self beliefchiefmail.com or DM us on Instagram and we'll arrange a free coaching session for you. Hope you enjoy the rest of your day and see you on the next episode.

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