In the previous post, we opened with looking at the shift in thinking and defining things that will go a long way to helping you on your weight loss journey. Taking a different approach to weight loss, particularly when other approaches haven't worked for you, might be just what you need.
The way you think, your perception and interpretation of events can lead to success or failure in life. In the past, you might have allowed your conditioned mind to control you, but now you can take control and train your brain. Studies in things like neurolinguistic programming, accelerated learning, and hypnotherapy has given us the potential to be able to do this. Working with your mind, and understanding what it is doing is a fundamental key to your approach to weight loss.
Understanding even the smallest thing about these studies will help you take steps towards winning the battle. These have given us the framework to enable us to explore our experiences and improve our understanding of how the mind works, and how we process information. Most importantly, they open up ways for us to make deep and lasting changes quite quickly!
Perhaps the most important realization is that we have the most powerful resource within us to achieve our dreams in life. We just need to learn how to tap into it, and to get the most out of your weight loss journey with this, you need to explore your food choices and experience to date.
Living in a Different Time
Many of us live in societies where food is much more abundant and easier to consume than it ever has been in the past. This is a little bit of a problem in that our ability to get food is probably a little too easy compared to how much work went into hunting, farming and providing a basic meal even only as recently as only a short 25 years ago. Ask your parents and grandparents what kinds of food they had access to when they were growing up, and how they got it. This will paint an interesting picture and give you some wise perspective.
Processed foods are loaded with excess sugars and salts which are all there to develop an addiction and leverage the temptation even further. Cunning marketing and advertising with the use of music and specific colors trigger thoughts of hunger, even when you are not hungry, and they are linked to these processed foods through association.
Food these days is designed and marketed in line with current trends, and there are hundreds of millions of dollars spent on getting this finely tuned. The bright colors and enticing packaging is all a part of the trick. Even the 'healthy eating' marketing of prepared foods is so cleverly designed with green and white, and more recently earthy brown paper bag colors being used to make you think this is clean and fresh, or somehow unprocessed and from a more wholesome time; like that days of your grandparents when food was fresh and clean.
You need to be wary of these things so you know how the marketers and manufacturers of these not-so-healthy options are trying to win over your subconscious mind and program you to eat their garbage. Understanding the psychology of this is going to be one of your biggest weapons in the fight, and it will certainly be a great support in your approach to weight loss.
Genetically engineered food has become something that is much more prevalent today than any other time in history. This is a topic for another time, but with the application of this science, we now have even more food than before! There's also plenty of yummy organic foods, fresh foods, and in some places, you can get food from all around the world!
We are surrounded by so much more abundance these days than ever before, and that's got its own price tag. That price tag comes in the form of the weight that we are carrying as a result of our increased consumption of processed foods, high sugar, high salt, high-fat diets, and we don't generally feel the pangs of hunger in the western world anymore.
Where weight management is concerned, there are 'healthier' options where you have access to low-fat or fat-free alternatives, packaged in such a way that they seem to be the healthier choice, some even being branded as 'healthier choice', but are they? Many of these are cleverly portioned so one serving is just enough to get you over the hunger line for a little while, but then you need to reach for more. This is largely based on what they have done to the food in how it has been marketed and manufactured.
The Sneaky Tricks They Use
When I was younger I watched my Aunt shift from full fat and full cream options in her fridge and freezer to low-fat or fat-free options which had two to three times as much sugar in them. What took place over a number of weeks is that she doubled her consumption based on it being 'half the fat' of what she was having previously. Subsequently, she gained a lot more weight than she had before she started to choose these 'healthier options'.
What I want to help you avoid is falling into these sneaky traps the marketers set for you. We will work together in this series to help you understand how you can take control of your approach to weight loss. With this, you will begin to see much more clearly that there are delicious foods and drinks advertised on billboards and posters everywhere, on television, the internet, radio, you name it. Think about how many of them are packed with sugars, salts, preservatives, and chemicals that all serve a specific purpose; to make you want more!
I know this because I was a chef with a big company some years ago, and the foods that we made in bulk quantities had specific chemicals added to them to make the brain respond a certain way. Think of any processed food that you find you just can't stop eating once you have started until it is all gone. That has been made in such a precise way to get you to consume as much of it as possible because your increased consumption equates to increased production and profit for everyone from the retailer to the manufacturer.
One of the tricks that were used in a restaurant I worked in was to put just the right amount of Maggi Powdered Chicken Stock into the Carbonara Sauce. This particular brand of chicken stock had a chemical in it that made your brain say 'Oh, that's yummy! I want more' and we sold hundreds of portions of Carbonara every week!
I tell you this because I want you to know that there are some deceptive tricks being used against you, and these are both draining you financially, mentally and emotionally as you struggle to gain control of your weight. The weight loss industry is one that is worth billions of dollars, and it only stays profitable if people don't get control of their minds and their choices. You'll notice in this that I'm not trying to sell you any weight loss products, pills, or potions. I'm trying to help you wake up to their games so you don't have to buy their crap; you don't need it!
Through their sneak tricks, they are using the same type of psychology as Ivan Pavlov explored with his dogs where they were conditioned to respond to the ringing of a bell. That, and they are manipulating what you are eating like any good drug dealer would, in such a way to get you physically addicted also. I know this may sound like a venomous rant, but once you see the truth, there's a strong chance that you'll be disappointed that no one told you sooner.
So, Pavlov used a ringing bell to condition his dogs to want to eat. They literally began salivating at the sound of the bell. As humans, we respond to images, sounds, and smells as stimuli that flood our senses and make their way into to our subconscious. Try this simple little test, what comes to mind when you think of the jingle with the words 'makes you work, rest, and play' or 'the real thing' or who 'makes exceeding good cakes'? If you were exposed to these marketing campaigns you will have thought of the iconic Mars Bar, Coca-Cola, and Mr. Kippling.
Now that you are thinking of Mars Bars, Coca-Cola, and cakes, how are you physically responding? Are you finding that you are suddenly thinking about eating chocolate and cakes, drinking fizzy drinks? So the next time you are at the supermarket, the corner store or anywhere else that you see these advertisements, also look at the positioning of the products.
How many stores have snacks and confectionery all over the counter where you are paying for your purchases? See? This is yet another sneaky trick to keep you consuming addicted. It's a very easy movement to pick these items up, place them in your basket, pay for them and before you know it you have eaten them. Repeat this pattern a few times and a habit is born.
We respond very much the same way to these stimuli as animals will, I'm not suggesting that as people we are animals, simply that we are wired similarly when it comes to food and the psychology of food. In the past, you may have let your conditioned mind control you, but now you are starting to see that there are things that you can become conscious and aware of in order to take control of your mind, and the decisions it leads you to.
Reprogramming your thinking is a primary step in your approach to weight loss, as you can clearly see. We will dive deeper into the psychology behind this in the next post where we will look in more detail within our surroundings, our culture, and our environment.
This was originally posted on my blog at Female Venue and shared here to add value to the Steemit Community.