Weight Loss and Your Subconscious Mind

     We all have within us an incredible ability to achieve whatever we set our minds to, the one main obstacle standing in the way of you achieving your goals is you - that is, your subconscious mind.

What exactly is the subconscious mind?

Briefly, the mind can be divided into two parts; the subconscious also called the unconscious, where permanent memory, habits, and beliefs are stored, and the conscious mind where short term memory, willpower and rationalization faculties are stored.

The subconscious operates differently to the conscious mind, it uses pictures and imagination as its language, it does not rationalize but simply accepts any information that enters it via the conscious mind, it is the job of the conscious mind to edit beliefs and perceptions before accepting them.

This is how it works - Long term memory, personal experience, early conditioning, upbringing and culture, combine to form your belief system, these beliefs are not necessarily the absolute truth of course, but your perception of the way things are. These beliefs inform everything about you and how you behave, which causes you to think, feel and behave in the way you do, and this, in turn, produces your results - wanted or unwanted.

So to put this sequence into context here is an everyday example: You have had a hard day at work, nothing is going right, so to make yourself feel better you sit down at the end of your day and eat an entire family sized bar of chocolate. And while you are eating that chocolate you do feel better, but only while it is still there, when its all gone you're back to square one, the chocolate was only a fleeting distraction from your bad day.

So why choose food as a distraction from feeling bad? There are any number of reasons, it all depends on the individual, but generally choosing food as a distraction from emotion is compulsive behavior directly relating to your subconscious conditioning. Your subconscious belief is that the chocolate will make you feel better so you are driven to eat the chocolate for comfort.

It is the job of your subconscious mind to protect you at all times and in this instance it is protecting you from feeling bad by directing you towards the chocolate which your subconscious believes will give you comfort. There is nothing wrong with eating chocolate if you want to, the problem arises when you are actively trying not to eat chocolate, because you want to lose weight, or because you are following a particular healthy eating program. This is where the conflict arises, consciously you want to give up chocolate, subconsciously you want to eat the chocolate a fight between conscious willpower and subconscious conditioning ensues and nine times out of ten, the subconscious wins.

So how can we ever change? Well, essentially, to change a habit or unwanted behavior so you can finally achieve your goals without wrestling daily with failing willpower, you need to change the belief, habit or feeling at a subconscious level. There are many techniques and strategies that will allow you to do that. For example, visualisation, goal setting, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, NLP, affirmations and hypnosis are all extremely powerful tools for personal change.

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