5 Tricks To Visualize (And Get) The Body You Want

When I was morbidly obese, I spent years trying to lose weight by dieting. But no matter how hard I tried, I just kept gaining weight. Exercising didn’t help much either, and even though I was riding a stationary bike for almost an hour a day, I just couldn’t get my weight to budge. I was over 400 pounds, frustrated with myself, and completely at a loss for a solution.

I wondered whether I might find success using visualization — a meditative technique used by athletes, celebrities, and people like you and me to relax, improve performance, and achieve personal and career goals. I'd used visualization to solve other problems in my life, such as relieving headaches and quitting smoking, so I decided to try it for weight loss.

To my surprise, visualization worked stunningly well. It seemed that as soon as I started practicing visualization for weight loss, a subtle shift happened inside of me. I just wasn’t as hungry. I started to crave healthier foods, and I started to become more active. I had more energy and less appetite.

In just over two years I lost 220 pounds without forcibly restricting the quantity or quality of the foods I ate, and without forcing myself to exercise. In fact I lost the first 75 pounds without doing any exercise at all. It’s as if my body all of a sudden wanted to be thin and was actually helping me lose weight.

That was 10 years ago, and I’m still the exact same weight. My body still wants to be thin, and it’s simply not an effort. To me, this inside out approach to fitness is the most sensible and sustainable way to lose weight, and it all starts with using visualization to get your mind and body to work together.

Here are some of ways visualization helped me achieve the body — and life — I always wanted.

1. I visualized my ideal body.

I targeted my weight problem through visualization by creating a vivid image of my ideal body. I imagined myself thin and fit, with defined stomach muscles and tight skin. Anyone who knew me at that time would have thought I was insane: This ideal body seemed like an impossible, crazy goal to set for myself. However, I didn't care how unrealistic this image of myself seemed. I wanted to make sure that I had a clear vision of where I was headed. Eventually I became the exact image I visualized.

As it turns out, picturing clear, vivid images is the perfect way to communicate to your brain. Research has found that when your mind enters the state of deep relaxation brought on by visualization and other mind-body practices, it becomes primed for suggestion.

2. I used visualization to help reduce stress.

One thing obesity studies have clearly established is that stress can drive weight gain. When we're under constant pressure, the body releases stress hormones that spur hunger, slow down metabolism, and encourage our body to convert calories into fat. What I later discovered was that visualization, meditation, and other mind-body practices are proven tools for reducing stress. Even though my daily life was still filled with challenges, visualization helped me stay calm and kept me relaxed and immune to potential stressors. As a result, the stress hormones that were causing hunger and fat storage in my body started to dissipate.

3. Visualization helped me work through my emotional issues.

When I reached my heaviest weight, I was working alongside an extremely angry, aggressive business partner. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was using my weight as a protective barrier between him and myself. While he wasn’t a physically violent person, he triggered past memories of being abused as a child.

Many people unconsciously use weight as a barrier when they feel threatened, but I found that I could use visualization to create a proactive barrier that helped me feel safer. I would imagine being engulfed in a column of light that was impenetrable. It created a safe barrier around me that others could enter only with my permission. Yes, this was all in my mind, but when I created this barrier using visualization, I was able to convince myself that I was safe and didn't require the excess weight to insulate me from the world. Once I felt safe, the fat began to melt away very quickly.

4. Visualization helped me eliminated my junk food cravings.

Once I figured out how suggestible my brain was during visualization, I tried an experiment. I had always been susceptible to sweets and sugar, and I wanted to see if I could eliminate this craving. Once I reached a state of deep relaxation during my visualization, I imagined that sugar granules were actually pieces of ground glass. I pictured what would happen if I put these sugar granules — which were ground glass — in my mouth. They were tasteless. Worse, they would cut up my mouth and destroy my insides. I was repulsed. After just a few days, I didn't want sweets or anything with sugar in it. The effect was so strong that I haven’t craved sweets or junk food of any kind for almost 12 years now. I've since taught this method to other people, and they've found it equally effective. One woman wanted to control her chocolate cravings. During visualization, she imaged that chocolate was in fact stinky, foul mud. Within two weeks, she no longer craved chocolate.

5. I activated the “Get Thin or Get Eaten” adaptation using visualization.

Way back in our evolutionary past, certain adaptive behaviors helped us survive. People who lived in cold climates with long winters and scarce food supply survived by developing the ability to slow down their metabolism and conserve the fat stores in their abdomen and thighs. Conversely, our ancestors who faced the threat of large predators developed what I call the “Get Thin or Get Eaten” adaptation: They were able to go at a full-out, life-or-death sprint to escape the jaws of a bear or tiger. When the Get Thin or Get Eaten adaptation is activated, your body wants to be thin for survival reasons, because the thinner and faster you are, the better your chances of surviving an attack. This adaptation still exists within all of us — we just need to activate it. The problem is there aren't too many tigers out there chasing us anymore. But you can activate this primal survival response with visualization.

I discovered the power of using visualization to activate the Get Thin Or Get Eaten Adaptation by accident. One day while I was riding my bike a dog started chasing me, barking ferociously. Before I knew it I was at an all out sprint with this canine snapping at my heel. I escaped, and then discovered over the next two weeks the weight just melted off my body. I never got chased by that dog again, but while I was biking I would visualize that I was being chased. I imagined the dog was chasing me, and I would experience the same surge of adrenaline, and then I would imagine myself outpacing the dog with a smile on my face. This worked really well and my weight loss continued to accelerate. Sometimes I wouldn’t even exercise, I would just image I was biking really hard and the dog was chasing me and that still yielded results. That’s because our survival brain doesn’t know the difference between a real and imagined experience, so when you visualize your being chased, to the body it still feels real. If being chased by a predator feels too threatening, you can achieve the same effect by imagining yourself being chased by a friend in a game of tag, but still running really fast to escape.

In these various ways I was able to use the power of my mind, through visualization to help address the real issues that were causing my body to hold onto weight and get my body to once again want to be thin, naturally and sustainably, from the inside out.

If you want to learn more about visualization to lose weight and improve your health, I encourage you to visit www.TheGabrielMethod.com.

1. Prev:10 Things I Tell Every Woman Whos Trying To Lose Weight
2. Next:Im A Nutritionist. Heres How I Plan To Lose 20 Pounds