Most people who come into my fitness studio know more clearly what they don’t want than what they do want. They know they don’t want the fat around their belly, arms, face, or other places. They know they want to get rid of the fat or they want to lose weight. The problem with this is that it is focused on what they don’t want. You can’t get rid of something you don’t want. The reason for this is you always get what you are focused on because your brain responds to what you are most focused on. If you are focused on the fat you want to get rid of, then you are actually telling your brain to give you more fat. You have to focus on the lean and healthy body you want in order to get a lean and healthy body. It’s like going to a travel agent and telling her you want to go to “not here.” You won’t get far with that information.

You see, the non-conscious (might also be considered unconscious or subconscious) part of your brain that helps regulate the cells of your body doesn’t distinguish between want and don’t want. It only goes on the information it is getting, and most of that information is transmitted by imagery and emotion. Imagery helps program the brain to know what to look for, and emotions trigger chemical and electrical responses that the body and cells react to. So if you are looking at or thinking about the body you don’t want, that imagery is reinforcing what your body will reproduce and your emotions are telling your body that something is very wrong (see http://thethoughtdiet.com/layout3/newsarticles/april09thechemical to review the effects of negative emotions on the body). All of this means you will be programming your body to remain right where it is. Your brain only knows to give you what you are focused on, which in this case is what you don’t want.  

Because it is hard to change how we think about something we see every day and take with us everywhere we go, we often resort to taking drastic action to change the circumstances we are in so we can see something different. The problem with this is that it often takes a massive amount of effort—like extreme exercising and crazy calorie reductions—to see change. Without tending to one of the biggest programmers of your body—your brain—you are relegated to trying to trump the signal telling your body to be where it is by action alone. This is also one reason why someone will initially see change through exercise and diet and then gain it back at some later point.

Think of where you are as a set point. Your brain has received enough information to give you a match to that—both with how your physical body looks and with the actions you are driven to take to maintain that image. (Yes, your appetite, lack of desire to exercise, and so on are largely in response to where your body thinks it needs to be.) If you try to change the set point from the outside using action alone, it is easy for your body to want to eventually return to its previous set point. This is not to say that proper exercise and diet can’t help you feel better about yourself and make positive changes in your body, health, and lifestyle, but it is rare that these changes last a long time without some major will power. This is because you are more than likely working against programming that is telling your body to be somewhere else, which was originally set up by trying to avoid being fat or to get rid of fat. You then spend the rest of your time trying to avoid going back to this. If you are oriented to try to get rid of something or stay away from something, you can’t help but point yourself in that very direction. It’s like trying to walk somewhere while looking at where you left from—chances are you are eventually going to end up at or near where you are looking. If anything, you won’t get too far if you can’t see where you are going.

In this situation there are two things you can do, one of which I will discuss here and the other in the next article. The first thing we do for clients here is to help them see what story they have been telling themselves. That story is just an interpretation of what is going on. Their body is just a body. It is just where it is. It doesn’t have meaning until they give it meaning. And when that meaning creates a negative response emotionally, they have chosen a perspective or interpretation that is working against them. Our goal is to first help them see that the way they are looking at their body is just one of many interpretations. We do this by helping them to first identify their subject or point of focus (like their abs or hips) and then the emotion they are feeling. Once we identify the emotion they are feeling, we ask them why they are feeling this way about their subject. We ask, “What are you making the way you body looks or feels mean or say about you?” Once they answer, we ask them if that is true or not. If it is, meaning they can say that their answer is 100 percent true, we then ask them what they are making that answer mean, and we continue this process until they have something that is not 100 percent true. At this point they have an interpretation, and an interpretation can be changed since it is one of thousands or millions of possible interpretations.

The fact that they can say that this is not 100% true means that there has to be some particular aspect that makes it not true. Meaning, there has to be some other belief about this situation that makes this story less true—some other positive belief that contradicts the original statement. The goal then is to focus on this other belief and try to elaborate on it. By giving attention to this side of the story they slowly start to shift the emotional state surrounding this subject.

We also help them see how their story has contributed to their body’s reaction. It should be no mystery how they have ended up where they are; they themselves have been telling their body to be where it is. It’s not hard to draw the correlation between the signals being sent by their negative interpretive story and the signals of starvation or extreme cold that tell their body it is much safer to hold on to fat as well as increase the desire to move less and eat more. The part of the brain that reacts to both these signals does not distinguish where the signal came from. All it knows is a signal of loss, not enough, or lack has been triggered, and the brain and body respond accordingly.

Once our clients are feeling better about where they are they should slow (or even totally stop) the body from wanting to be where it is. It might take some constant reminding of the things learned from this exercise to keep the old story from creeping back in since it is probably pretty hard-wired into their neural network of thoughts. Once this shift has occurred, the vision of where they want to go should be more visible. In the next article I will discuss how we help people create a program to help rewire their brain for success.