Being Thin = Having It All Together In Many Minds On the surface, I imagine that anyone would think that they deserve to lose weight and be thin. If you really ponder it though, do you believe deep down that you deserve it? If you don’t, this could seriously sabotage your weight loss goals. In our current world, being thin is equated with many other meanings besides health. If you are thin you are considered to be successful, beautiful, competent, and happy. Daily we are fed messages in the media about which looks are in and which are out, however thinness doesn’t go out of style. In general, we tend to think that being thin means you really “have it all together”. Whether or not these beliefs that we hold are good or bad (or even true, since being thin doesn’t necessarily bring happiness), most of us do believe them. It would therefore follow that if we are thin, then we become all of these things: successful, beautiful, happy, competent, and we will have it all together. What happens though, if our self-esteem is low, and we either do not or cannot see ourselves in this light while we are overweight? If you feel that you do not deserve to be happy, and you believe that being thin will make you happy, then you will have a difficult time achieving the weight loss that you desire. If you do achieve it, it is likely that you will regain. When we feel that we don’t deserve the good stuff in life, we are usually suffering from low self-esteem. If this is the case, diet and exercise will not be enough to get you where you want to be, no matter how much work you put into it. Self-sabotage is a symptom of low self-esteem, and you will invariably find ways to sabotage your weight loss efforts. The first step in raising your self-esteem is in becoming conscious that this is an area of your life that needs attention. If you have been struggling with self-sabotage in your weight loss program and you find that this post resonates with you, then you have already begun the process of change simply by recognizing this. The next step is to work on changing the negative thoughts and beliefs you hold about yourself, since it is all about what you think about yourself that determines your self-esteem. What if you don’t actually know what these negative beliefs are? One way to uncover them is by writing affirmations. Affirmations are positive statements you say, think, and write in order to encode them within you and change the negative thoughts and beliefs that you hold about yourself. How you can uncover the negative beliefs is by writing a positive affirmation followed by the first thought that comes to your mind. For example, let’s say you choose the affirmation “I deserve to be fit and trim”. You write this in your notebook and immediately write the first thought that comes to your mind, such as “yeah, right!” or “it will never happen”. If you continue to write the positive affirmation followed by the negative response it uncovers, eventually you will start to believe the positive, and the negatives won’t come up. You will have brought those unconscious negative beliefs to the surface, while enforcing the positive over and over. If you repeat this activity at least 25 times a day, you will soon start to notice a change in your attitude and a raise in your level of self-esteem. You could even start with writing them just 10 times a day; every affirmation you write will add up. How long it will take to uncover and release your negative beliefs will depend on how long you have held them, and how deeply rooted they are. Bit by bit though, by becoming conscious of them and planting the positive affirmations in their place, you will be effecting positive change in your thoughts. If our inside doesn’t match what we are going for on the outside, we either won’t obtain the outside, or if we do, we will eventually go back to our comfort zone of being overweight. If you do have low self-esteem, it is essential that you work on the inner you, in order to both reach your goal weight, and to maintain it.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 03:25:46 +0000
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