The Slim Mentality

01/24/2020

Don't forget to visit my blog:

Look at your body today to discover what were your thoughts like yesterday, look at your thoughts today to discover how your body will be like tomorrow...

12/18/2019

www.theslimthoughts.com My new blog is about influence of our thoughts on our body and our weight and how we can use it for weight loss and weight management purposes. Feel free to subscribe to be notified about updates.

12/18/2019

www.theslimthoughts.com My new blog is about influence of our thoughts on our body and our weight and how we can use it for weight loss and weight management purposes. Feel free to subscribe to be notified about updates.

12/18/2019

www.theslimthoughts.com My new blog!!! Innovative thought provoking ideas about thoughts control over our physical Body updated daily. Feel free to subscribe to be notified. We can use it for weight loss as well!!! Athe end, our life experience is not what happened, but what we thought about it. We can't always control the events, but we can always control our thoughts.

Look at your body today to discover what were your thoughts like yesterday, look at your thoughts today to discover how your body will be like tomorrow...

10/28/2019

HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT BY ENJOYING FOOD MORE…
OR - WHY IGNORING THE PLEASURE OF FOOD MAKES US FAT.
“We live to eat...”

Have you ever had an “enlightened state” from the weight management prospective? What do I mean by that?

- The taste buds become incredibly sensitive to various flavors and each food is appreciated like you are trying it for the very first time in your life;
- You gain an amazing insight to discern between “good” and “bad” foods by intuitive choice rather than logical selection. You start to dislike the deep fried and junk-like food varieties, you start to crave for real fresh, nutritious and healthy selections;
- You get satiety from eating small portions and you are amazed how little you actually need to satisfy your appetite, you look at your past and realize that you started to enjoy eating on a completely new and different level;
- You feel like you have a direct line of communication with your body, with your nutritious needs and you start using food for nutrition rather than entertainment and stress management needs;
- You have the feeling that your body is naturally slimming and you have full control over it.

I’ve been is such “mode” few times throughout my life. Once I was in such a state, everything seemed to be natural, easy and intuitive. The pounds would start to shade off me easily and effortlessly. I’ve been looking for years the shortcut to that special mind-body state of existence. And this is my latest take on how to get there…

VICTIMS OF IGNORANCE

We overeat because we IGNORE food and ignore the process of eating. In some cases we might even force ourselves to learn to dislike food, because some of us may falsely believe that it a proper path toward the weight loss…

SATIETY

Satiety is a key to the ideal effortless weight management. Using our willpower to suppress or forcefully ignoring our satiety is a sure way toward a Yo-Yo diet. Our wild animal self-preservation instincts and urges will always eventually win… If you can’t conquer it - befriend it… Satiety is not our enemy, it is our best friend in our weight management journey, the happier it is, the more pleasant, engaging and effortless our journey will be.

What is responsible for satiety? I’m not sure if it matters whether it is physically located - in our brains or guts. What matters is that it is not just a physical phenomena like “the tank is full”, but it is as much, and maybe even more than physical, but rather spiritual - emotional and mental satisfaction. If we ignore this part - we may remain hungry for more even after the most satisfying meal.

So, to make a long story short, I think we need to fall in love with food rather than ignoring it. We should saturate our not just our mechanical, but, what is more important, our spiritual, emotional and mental receptors with meals to experience one of the greatest pleasures of this life - satiety. We should cherish our satiety rather than ignoring it. I do believe that in the first place “we live to eat” and we are doomed for failure if we try to overrule the Mother Nature.

In two words - eat mindfully.

MINDFULNESS AND MINDFUL EATING.

The state of mindfulness is when we dedicate our full attention to whatever we are doing at that particular moment, rather than to our thoughts...

The rules of MINDFUL EATING are fairly simple:

Eat with your mind. When you eat - the only matter that you are allowed to think about is the particular food that you are eating. It should not be thinking about the past, not about the future food that will follow, but it should be only about the particular food that you are eating at this particular fraction of a millisecond. It should be a full 100% focus of your attention and admiration. If you do not admire it - spit it out and stop torturing yourself. Enjoy the look, the smell, the texture, and maybe even a sound. Treat it like you’ve never seen it before. This is the moments of immense pleasure that you are allowed to deliver to yourself. How immense - your imagination is the only limit.

Look at your meal like you’ve never seen it before. This is an exclusive and the only moment that you are allowed to enjoy this particular food, from this particular cook, during this particular moment. This moment will never come back again, it will never repeat in the future and you will treasure this particular meal, not just a meal, but this particular dish, this very bite that you make right now. It is as precious as your wedding day, or as the first cry of your baby, it will never repeat again. Think about “best cook” competitions, or about French cuisine, or Japanese geishas dressed in the most exquisite kimonos tasting the masterpieces of japanes chefs by very tiny bites, being concerned to miss even a grain of the precious rice or caviar… This is the kind of meal you should eat every time you put anything in your mouth… It’s a game. Be a kid again, imagine yourself being a King who is served with delicious foreign rarities that commoners are not even allowed to see…

Now, the common misconception is that our appetite is always stimulated by the thoughts about food… Make an experiment, if you’ve just stuffed in your esophagus a quick bite of burger, just as you always do, how else do we eat a burger?:) Slow down… and think back how you just made a bite, how it felt in your mouth, how much efforts from how many people were put into that particular meal, how it was carefully cooked to a perfect texture and moisture, how it was tastefully combine with delicious juicy green lettuce that made that crunchy sound, how that tomato exploded or moisten your mouth, how good did it taste in your mouth and how satisfying it was to swallow that delicious juice treat, how differently it felt in the back at the basis of your tongue which has surprisingly different array of unusual taste receptors not present at the tip of your tongue… The important rule is to think just about a particulate food that you’ve just had and happened to forget to enjoy as you should. Thoughts about any other food may indeed stimulate the cravings for more… Now imagine that particular taste that you’ve just had again… Now you might even consider doing a craziest thing ever - you can fool yourself that you’ve had not one, but two burgers, and now you feel stuffed…

Eat slowly, chew extensively. Keep your food in the center of your attention and your thoughts. The world around you does not exist for you during these 15-20 minutes. There is only you and your food. This is your time to communicate your physical body with the physical elements surrounding you - with food. Think about that - other than s*x, and other rare physical contacts, food is the only time we directly conect with the physical life around us. Every meal, no, every bite deserves your undivided attention and appreciation.

I like travelling to France… And I quickly learned that meal for French people is a sacred event. They don’t eat when they drive, they don’t bite when they walk, they don’t stuff their stomachs like they stuff the stomachs of poor geese destined to produce the famous gras foie, which is essentially an overfed fatty liver. Poor geese have tubes advanced directly into their guts bypassing any chance to chew or appreciate what they eat.

VIRTUAL FEEDING TUBE FROM MINDLESS EATING

Isn’t what we, humans, do all the time when we are involved in MINDLESS EATING? How can you force yourself to eat more than your body needs? I think it is very simple - just ignore the whole process of eating and ignore the very food that you consume. Just like refilling a car - full tank till you feel the last bite not going any further than the back of your throat - the tank is full, as Garfield said. What is the best way to ignore the food, so you can stuff it more? Just switch your attention to anything else other than food. Or, even better - completely distract yourself from the process of eating by reading, driving, watching, worrying, planning, criticizing or disciplining the others or yourself…

We often register just a tiny fraction of the pleasure from the consumed meals, because our attention is busy wandering about our past or future, about our friends and family, or our enemies. We have this virtual “feeding tube” bypassing our attention and going directly into our stomachs, bypassing all our physical and spiritual pleasure centers. We are hungry because we’ve been distracted. We literally do not remember that we’ve just eaten and we are ready to do it again. And when we do it again - we get distracted again and again.

I’ve discovered for myself that some of the thoughts that made me appreciate meal and have increased satiety even from small portions, are thoughts about complexity of the consumed meals… It used to be a wild tuna, which got caught by a brave fisherman in a very stormy ocean, then it was brought to a market… Someone from the local restaurant had to go to that market at 4 am and to become a lucky bidder to win that fish… Then there was a driver… Then a skillful cook had to clean and marinate it… He used a very sharp expensive japanese knife… Another cook had fried it… And then my waiter, with a big smile and exquisite manners that warrant a hefty tip at the end....

Now you didn’t just had a bite of a fresh delicious sashimi, you’ve been a center of attention of so many people around you. You are the king of your own kingdom, appreciated and cherished by your peasants - your thoughts, which are under full and unlimited control of your mind

Every time you eat - bring to your attention -”did I do it right?” Am I the King or am I a goose? In the beginning you will often forget to do it, but you will try to fix it by bringing back memories about the food that you’ve just had… Eventually you will learn how to make it a habit.

And remember - if the food you have does not bring your pleasure - there is a reason behind it, don’t eat it. Your taste buds and smell sensors are some of the most sophisticated tiny miracles ever produced by Mother Nature. You have to pay a full and undivided attention to the signals that they convey to your mind. You can multiply, purify and immensely enjoy them. Along with this immense pleasure you’ll get a trivial sensation which was a subject of our conversation in the beginning - you’ll get SATIETY. But this time it will be a complete, unquestionable physical, emotional and mental satiety. You will feel that your are COMPLETE and that you are ready to look forward to the other pleasures of life with all undivided attention that they deserve...

08/09/2019

“If you want to see what your thoughts were like yesterday, look at your body today. If you want to see what your body will be like tomorrow, look at your thoughts today”

Does it seem to you at times that your body has a “mind of its own”. You want it to do one thing, but as soon as your thoughts are distracted, the body does what it wants, and it is often very different from what your mind thought should be good for it... Do you ever feel like you are in an eternal fight with yourself? You want to stop smoking, but your body wants to have that cigarette. You want to be slim, but your body wants to have more food… You want to do the right thing, but your body wants to misbehave.

Typical weight loss scenario: The body is craving for pleasures of food. The logic calculates why we should restrict them. Willpower makes sure that the logic prevails. The harmful weight is gone…. The willpower gets tired, the emotions prevail again - we do what pleases us and we get back where we started from… or even worse.

Can we get smart and learn how to align our body’s subconscious cravings with our logically designed weight management goals?

BODY (SYSTEM 1) VERSUS MIND (SYSTEM 2) THEORY

The latest psychological studies have confirmed that we respond to the reality via two systems - fast and slow. The fast one, often called “system 1”, is an automatic system that is always “on” and always reacts to any changes in our surroundings, it responds immediately, intuitively and emotionally. The process of “thinking” by this system is hidden from our consciousness, we just aware of the final stages that come to our attention as intuitive urges/decisions/inclinations. We may also call it as our “body reaction” to the situation.

Among other things, this system controls our appetite, satiety and the resultant body mass.

This initial response often, but not always, followed by a slow, but detailed and logical evaluation of the events by an effortful “system 2”, that we usually appreciate as “thinking” or “mind”. This process is slower, conscious. It requires energy, concentration and attention. When it is “off”, as it usually happens in the 80-90% of the time, our actions are directed by the “system 1”, by our body intuitions and emotions by default. When our “system 2” is “on,'' it would reassess our “bodily feelings and urges” and it would either approve them, or disapprove and correct or overpower them.

When our body strong urges are being overpowered by our conscious mind, we call it a willpower, or self-control.

DIETS
Traditionally our appetite and eating habits are mostly controlled by an automatic “system 1”. When we “go on a diet”, we wake up the “system 2” that recruits the willpower and tries to overrule and correct our “system 1” by whatever new logical information it has. It usually takes some energy to do what our Mind, or logic is considering to be right, which is often in opposition to automatic instinctive urges brought up by system 1. When our lazy and energy consuming “system 2” (or our Mind) gets tired and wants to take a rest - “system 1” (our Body) takes over by default and makes us to do what we have always been doing and what has already made us overweight.

This is one of the reasons why diets often fail. They technically speaking do not fail as such. It is our willpower and our conscious efforts to overpower the urges of our Body that eventually fails.

Do you think that successful “weight losers” are simply people who have a stronger than others willpower? I think that in many cases they are. But I think to be really successful with the weight loss and management, it would be ideal to reprogram the subconscious, automatic and effortless “system 1” (our Body). If we are successful - we would accomplish the permanent effect.

The ultimate obesity fix is when we could do what our body wants - we would eat whatever we want, as much as we want, whenever we want and get and stay with the weight that our mind wants...To be continued in my new book "WEIGHT LOSS PSYCHOLOGY - INTUITIONS VERSUS LOGIC"

12/20/2018

Can we use our logic to change our feelings or emotions? Let's make an experiment:

Say to yourself - "I feel good", or - " I feel bad". Does it make you to feel such way? Do you feel dramatically different just from changing the words?

What about visualizing that you have reached your dream, or imagine a sincere open full of joy face of your child? Or imagine how you feel after a passionate relation with your loved one? I am not asking you to visualize the horrible memory that would make you sad, I hope you got an idea. What is more powerful - word or visualization?

We used logic in both instances in attempt to generate a feeling, but we used different languages to communicate the message to ourselves... I think visualization is one of the ways to convert logical conclusions into the feelings and corresponding emotions. I thinks one of the ways the words make us feel different is by awakening related imaginations. Some people do it automatically, others need to learn how to do this right…

What do you think about actors? Do you think they prefer logic or emotions? Do you think they possess an ultimate willpower to keep themselves slim? Isn't it the case that many of them are addicted to drugs or alcohol? How do they manage to stay away from food indulgences? It may not be applicable to all of them, but you have to agree that the majority of them are remarkably good at weight management. I think they think differently and I suspect their way of thinking is somewhat related to what they do for living. I think they think differently in few ways.

1. They train their mind to play the life of others. By trying to replicate, they end up visualizing the feelings, emotions, bodies, movements of their roles, they literally live the life of others.. By doing this their mind automatically shapes their bodies to the body they live in their imagination.

2. I think their own thinking process automatically switches in the similar directions, they visualize their logically created structures and emotionally charge them as a result… They automatically visualize the body the way they want it, instead of "I want to be 123 pounds", they see, feel, live in the body of their dreams...

Many, but not all people fail the weight loss efforts. I think some people get the right solution by coincidence or luck, they find the right way of communicating their desires to their bodies. Could visualization be one of the secrets to their success?

12/19/2018

When you look at a really heavy person sipping on a huge 2000 calories cup of smoothie, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Where is his/her willpower? Why should this person exercise the willpower and make the life measurable instead of pleasant, to satisfy our opinion? How many there are out there of very successful, motivated and smart people, with incredible willpower and motivations who can not get in charge of their weight? Why?

I think people do not understand what the motivation is… When your body wants to be fat and your logic, your cortex wants it to be slim - it is not a motivation, it is a struggle. It is an attempt to rationalize and destroy a desire for pleasure. It is a self torture. It is possible to have an immense willpower and overcome the physiological urges… But it takes the inhumane efforts and, of course, it will eventually fail… It is not “apples to apples”… It is more like “apples versus happiness”. It is a fight of our conscious mind with our subconscious nature.

I think it is not about a willpower at all. It is a about using our logical power in the correct way. Some people are lucky to find the way to apply their logical efforts and manage to change their subconscious, others are not… There is certainly a group of superhumans who lose and manage their weight by immense willpower, but this writing is not about them… There are humans who were born with better genes and corresponding physiology, and this is not about them neither...

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
Albert Einstein.

Below I attached a view of the US Endocrine Society on the Obesity pathogenesis and treatment. To summarize their conclusion - our body has a predetermined weight and every effort to alter it with diet and exercise usually results in failure. It is as pessimistic as it gets. But…

It does not result in failure “always”, but usually… There are so many successful “weight losers”, including myself, 80 pounds down for the last five years. Can we replicate it and make it contagious?

I think we can use our logic to communicate with and to change our subconscious mind. I think we can move in the desirable direction our “body mass set point. I think we can make our body to “want” to “desire” to get the weight that we logically want and our body will do it with pleasure and enjoyment, not by sacrifice and punishment which has been a “usual” approach. I think that many people have successfully accomplished that, whether by luck, or by a system that could be replicated. To find a system is not the same as to be able to realize it, replicate it and to be able to share it with others. I hope to be able to accomplish this - to find the system, to understand it, and to find the ways to share it with others...

What is that mysterious thing “subconscious mind”. Everything complex can always be eventually broken down to basic bits of “plus” and “minus”, “zero” and “one”.

Our physiological functions are regulated by a vegetative system. Is is comprised of a vegetative nervous and endocrine systems. They are connected directly to our conscious mind, but yet, they are not under our conscious control… Our conscious mind presents our vegetative system with “situations” rather than verbal commands. What do I mean by that?

Let’s look at the example. Let’s try to tell our subconscious mind a very simple thing - like “I want to be hungry”. Do you feel any different? Do you feel like you have an appetite when you say these words to yourself? I bet you know thousands of ways to wake up your appetite, right? You can imagine food, you can look at it, you can smell it, you can fantasize, you can talk to your friends and come up with an idea to get a bite of something… Do you think you can do the same, to use your visualizations to destroy the appetite? Just for the sake of convincing you that it is possible, let’s do an exercise of your imagination… It is strictly for demonstration only, and not for any appetite suppressing future use… Just imagine for a second a rotten dead roadkill, or rotten food, or a smell of a homeless man… There are certain images, smells and sounds that meant to warn us about danger - do not eat it, it’s bad for you… Again these imaginations are strictly for the purpose of delivering a message that we can as easily suppress, as we can activate our subconscious desires using our logic.

The key moment here is - our logic can do incredible things, it can control and influence our subconscious, we just need to use it right and find the right language to get our logic to communicate with the subconscious mind.

The truth is that our subconscious mind appreciates not the words, but presented situations. Our logical mind collects the outside information and then decides which situation to present to our subconscious brain. Imagine yourself watching a movie. Did you ever notice that there is a difference between watching a movie at home, and in the movie theater. Why? There are too many distractions at home. What are the destructions? Destructions are various situations our conscious mind switches and presents to our subconscious. One minute you are immersed in the movie, the next minute you talk to your wife, next moment a laptop screen has a pop up message about a new email.. It the movie theater you are all immersed in the presented. You live the presented as if it was real, you experience the emotions… You still realize that the events are not real, you consciously decide to treat them as real and enjoy them…

Another example… Try to tell your heart - beat faster. Now, imagine a scary situation - you are facing a huge audience of people and you are about to deliver a speech… Is your heart beating any faster now?

The above example are my attempt to convince you in what has been already proven a long time before me - visualization is the language of the subconscious mind. Our subconscious mind reacts similarly to the reality and to the imagined reality… Our conscious mind, our logic is the one to decide what to present, it is also the one to decide what is real and what is not. The function of our subconscious mind is just to react to the presented.

So, why some people follow their logical conclusions and able to influence their subconscious mind and in our example, to accomplish a permanent change, to move the body setpoint to a new desirable level, and others can not? I think this is the critical moment. I think it is not about the willpower at all. It is about using the power of logic that we have in a correct way. Remember, give me a leverage long enough and I can flip the Earth? This is the same.

I think that many people end up using their logic to wake up the corresponding visualizations and effectively influencing their emotions and subconscious. I think using logic correctly is a better explanation why some people succeed in their weight loss efforts and others do not. I do not think it is a result of immense power alone, although I am sure that there are many people who succeeded with their weight loss by the extremely strong willpower as well, but this is not what I am trying to teach the others...

If it was a matter of any specific diet - we would have it discovered a while ago and get over this. If it was about exercise routine - we would sign up on this everyone interested and get it fixed. I believe that we are close to the discovery of something huge…

Now, when I say that we can use our visualizations to communicate, influence and change our subconscious mind, it sounds simple… But if you think about that, it is about the same as to say that physicians use chemicals to treat. Someone has an infection - give him a chemical, someone has a high blood pressure - give him another chemical… The most important questions are - which chemical, which route, how often, how long? Etc.

And this is what my book “The Slim Convictions” is all about… It is on amazon.com...

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12/18/2018

The language of subconscious mind

How do we accomplish a sustained reliable permanent desired weight? By accessing the subconscious mentality. It appears that everyone has a body mass weight setpoint. All efforts to alter our weight by conscious and logical efforts almost inevitably result in failure. Why? Because we, humans are driven by emotions rather than logic and knowledge. Emotions are product of our subconscious mind.

How do we get in touch with our subconscious mind? What language does it use? Our subconscious mind does not understand the “human” language. It doesn’t understand English or French, it doesn’t know Ukrainian neither… But it perceives the visualizations. It accepts the real situations exactly the same way as it treats the vividly visualized products of our imagination. We can communicate with our subconscious mind by presenting it with real scenarios, or with real scenarios but somewhat altered purposefully by our perception, or simply imagined events or situations. It will treat them equally.

Our logic and conscious mind are responsible to decide what is real and what is not, and what to serve to our subconscious mentality. Just like watching a movie, or reading a book, we clearly understand what is real and what is not and make a conscious decision to enjoy a movie or a fiction book and to experience all of the emotions they bring to us for our pleasure or entertainment. In many cases our subconscious mind can create new associations based on that. You can read a book and decide that the most interesting place on Earth is city of LA, or whatever, and it doesn’t mean that this is the truth, but it is for you… If we repeat those new associations often and long enough it will result in the creation of new believes.

Visualizations presented to our subconscious mind result in generation of emotions. If we link the visualization of activities or routines to the visualizations of desirable pleasant goals that they lead to, we can subconsciously link the beneficial activities to the emotion of pleasure. The routine activities that might be perceived under other circumstances as unpleasant, our subconscious mind can reconnect, rewire and reteach as pleasant. Do you enjoy flying to Caribbean?

Visualization can make remote pleasant rewards as immediate and available for our satisfaction and gratification immediately. Immediacy is a result of our perception after all. You do not need to lose 10 pounds to enjoy the pleasure of a weight loss related activity, you just need a certainty that activity that you are doing is one step immediately forward toward your new body and you do it with a great pleasure rather than sacrifice.

Visualizations are particularly beneficial for weight loss efforts to overcome the food and unhealthy habit cravings. Why? Logic should compete with logic. There is very little logical in the pleasure of food. It looks, smells, tastes great, it makes us feel good and that's why we like it. To compete or overcome visual image we need another, better and more desirable/pleasant visual image. Smell with visualized smell etc… Create a clear image of your new body with all sensory attributes, including taste and smell and kinesthetic sensations… When you face the image of the tempting meal, bring in your mind and image of the body that competes with the image of food. When you face a smell - bring a linked imagined smell of the victory-body ( it doesn’t have to be a body smell… could be anything, may be you met a person with the body like the one you want to have and that person had a perfume, or smell or fruit, or chewing gum, as long as it linked, the same with taste, just link a specific taste, like a toothpaste flavor to your dream-body that you want).

Visualizations need to be powerful. The more modalities we use for our imaginations, the more effective they might potentially be. Is it one of the things that makes some authors so convincing in their books?

The next important moment is repetitions. Repetitions create habit. Repetitive visualizations are stronger motivators than the isolated ones. Find a fixed daily routine, like tooth-brushing and get a habit of to do the daily visualizations of your goal along with visualizations of activities that can lead you to your goal, do it in great details, link it to the immense pleasure that you will experience when you eventually attain your goal.