What part of the mind causes weight loss and weight gain?

You and I are not the only ones trying to lose weight. According to some studies, there are about 150 million American adults who are overweight, obese, or severely obese. Out of those, only 60 million of us are actively working on losing weight and remodeling the body, unfortunately not with much success.

People start diets and exercising, but eventually drop out of the program. The big question is: Why? Why do we drop out of the program?

There are some physical and some mental reasons why people drop out of their chosen method to adjust their bodies. One of the most potent motivators of human behavior is hunger. Hunger can cause a person to actually kill; in fact we kill animals, we kill plants to eat and satiate hunger.

Hunger is an extraordinarily powerful motivator of behavior. When we are hungry enough, long enough, we eat anything. We end up eating excess food when we are hungry because the logic of the body is “I've been going hungry for so long, I better eat up a lot and store, in case food is missing in the future”.

The body evolved over millions of years to survive, and food was typically, for most of human history, scarce. In the past there was not a lot of food, all over, as there is today, at least in some parts of the world. As a result, the body evolved to store energy.

Any type of exercise and body remodeling program that involves any kind of hunger is bound to fail. Unfortunately, it is going to fail miserably to the degree that we are going to gain more weight than whatever little weight we lost while hungry.

Furthermore, there are some complex biochemical reasons why losing weight is indeed difficult. Some of these have to do with several hormones, bone and muscle remodeling, and even receptors at the cellular membrane level.

If it has been difficult for you to have a body that supports your desired life, instead of hindering it, know that it is not your fault. Remodeling the body is a complex thing.

Interestingly, the key to the body remodeling is not even in the body. The key to succeeding at remodeling the body and losing weight, at building muscle tissue, is in the mind. I don't mean the mind is in “oh you got to be motivated, listen to a good tape in the morning, a good recording, so that you feel motivated to go to the gym” I don't mean that kind of thing because that kind of thing is relatively superficial.

Humm… what do I mean by “superficial”? I mean that “exogenous motivation” only reaches a superficial part of the mind: the rational mind. The rational mind is not what controls our behavior, particularly instinctive behavior, such as reproductive and eating behaviors.

Those kinds of primitive, animalistic, survival behaviors are not controlled by the rational mind. The rational mind can temporarily put on a veneer of “control” over our proclivities, but eventually, as we all know, particularly in the case of diet, the rational part of the mind fails, yielding to the more primitive aspects of the mind whose job it is to assure survival.

You will see this particularly pronounced when there is hunger. The first key to losing weight, therefore, is not to go hungry.

We say that the key to losing weight and remodeling your body is in fact in your mind, but the portion of the mind that is below the level of conscious awareness: the subconscious. We need to access the subconscious mind because it has access to the more primitive “survival” portions of the mind.

Hypnosis will get you access to the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind cannot eliminate the drive to survive, but it can communicate to the survival part of our minds that a moderate decrease in food consumption does not threaten our survival. This “communication” will make it possible for you to eat less, enough to lose weight, but not so little as to go hungry. By not going hungry and losing some weight – thus succeeding – you will continue adjusting your intake until you reach your ideal weight.

Blessings,

Flavio