If you've been a regular Total Fitness newsletter reader (www.TotalFitness.net), you are aware that we encourage people to eat well, exercise in a balanced way, get enough rest and release stress.
The ability to revise all those areas of your life simultaneously is key to turning your weight-loss goals into reality.
However, you must have something special to be able to do this. Something special drives you to do what it takes to be healthy regardless of the pressure you are under in other parts of your life.
When that something special is missing, you stop short of your greatness. When it's present, you easily create the health and body you want. That something special is self-love.
That Special Something
To be willing to take action to become a healthier, more fit person, you must love yourself. Here's why:
Getting and staying slim and healthy requires you to be consistent. You must consistently master the outer activities of eating, exercising, resting, and managing your stress more effectively every day for the rest of your life.
If you stop doing healthy things, you'll stop feeling and looking healthy. To be successful at the outer activities, you have to do inner activities that clear out the old, unresolved beliefs that sabotage your efforts.
When you do both the inner and the outer activities, you are addressing the whole problem.
Many people try to succeed in their health and fitness programs by using mental willpower, but that approach isn't an effective long-term solution.
This is because your emotions are the most powerful motivating force you have and can override your mental will.
If your old beliefs are creating a daily emotional rollercoaster, then your health program will only be effective on the days you are calm and stress-free.
The Triad of Motivation: Thoughts, Emotions, and Intuition
Emotion is your most powerful ally. It either helps you to be consistent with new habits and see them through to fulfillment, or it pushes you to throw in the towel.
When your emotions are positive, you'll have an easy time getting things done and life is rosy. However, if one of life's challenges comes your way and an old belief triggers stress, you might start feeling negative emotions that divert your thoughts away from doing healthy things for yourself and block access to your intuition.
As the above heading reveals, your thoughts and intuition complement your emotional powerhouse to help you make change permanent. Thoughts serve as an alarm clock to remind you to do those outer activities day-in and day-out. Intuition helps by making you aware of how to successfully do the outer activities, or it may guide you to the best source of help. To make change successful you have to use the triad of motivation: your thoughts, emotions, and intuition.
But hold on a minute... what has self-love got to do with motivation and being fit and healthy? When you love yourself, just as you are, your old beliefs will no longer be in the way of your continuing success. When you love yourself, just as you are RIGHT NOW, you are able to easily generate the emotions that motivate you to take care of yourself and do what needs to be done to be healthy every day. One of the common things I notice is that people with healthy levels of self love make a change for themselves and not to please anybody else or be at a specific weight or dress size by a set date.
When you don't love yourself enough, it is because you have been keeping unhelpful beliefs alive in your cell membranes. These unresolved past beliefs may include unhelpful thoughts, emotions or memories. Some originate from our self-talk, others come from other people's opinions which we've taken to heart. Ultimately, unresolved past beliefs act like a proverbial rain cloud in your daily emotional life, clouding out the joyful sun-like rays of self-love that are your true nature.
When you have too little self-love in your life, creating positive emotions and motivating yourself becomes difficult or impossible to sustain. Unhelpful beliefs keep you in Henry David Thoreau's state of quiet desperation and triggers self sabotaging behaviors.
Past Feelings Feed Fat
Your cellular memory systems have also recorded your thoughts and feelings every time you've looked in the mirror. When you consider how many times you've probably used a mirror during your life, you can imagine that any uncomplimentary thoughts may have been uttered thousands of times. Repetition just increases their power to sabotage your best efforts - so change your self talk!
Throughout your life, have you ever had moods where you've felt sad, depressed, angry, or frustrated about the way you look? If so, these detrimental emotions created stress hormones in your body that then led to the production of free radicals.
These types of free radicals damage your DNA and the mitochondria of your cells, which produce energy. When your cells are replaced, damaged DNA is used, and this makes the replacement cells malfunction. Over time as stress accumulates, your cells work inefficiently and your energy levels drop because the mitochondria are so damaged that they can't function properly.
The kicker is that your cells have a hard time using body fat for energy and it becomes incredibly difficult to reduce body fat or feel healthy. Groups of similar cells which we call organs then start working less effectively and disease may manifest.
In summary, thoughts and feelings from your past which you've taken to heart still live on in your physiology. They affect your cellular health, your energy levels, looks, and your motivation to nourish yourself, exercise or rest in a healthy way. You can break the pattern of inconsistent action by revising the unhelpful beliefs locked in your physiology.
Once your beliefs have been revised and new, more empowering ones are planted, you will gradually feel a greater spectrum of positive emotions and generate the self-love to see through any change from start to finish. Your body will also change and physically you'll look and feel healthier and happier.
Generating More Self-Love
Here are 10 powerful ways you can increase your self-love and motivation to be healthier. You may need to repeat them often to generate enough love to change your lifestyle for good:
1. Identify and revise your old, unhelpful beliefs. Here at Total Fitness, we use kinesiology to identify and clear these beliefs, both in person and over the telephone.
2. Spend time around supportive people. Dissolve relationships with people who do not help you to feel good about being you.
3. Get a friend to help you go through your wardrobe and throw out clothes you don't feel beautiful in. Even better, hold a yard sale, or donate the clothes to a charity shop or other family members or friends.
4. Toss out clothes from your distant past which you'd like to be able to wear again, but can't presently fit into. Holding onto them just keeps you focusing on your past when your body was different. That makes it harder to accept the size and shape you are now and keeps you physiologically stressed.
5. Get a new hairstyle, have manicures and pedicures regularly, or buy a new dress. Go out with friends who support you in your efforts to be healthy.
6. Repeat daily affirmations that tell your unconscious that you accept yourself just as you are now. Forgive your past feelings and choices and feel content and grateful for the life, looks, and health you have now.
7. Catch your uncomplimentary self-talk as soon as it starts and nullify it by silently saying "Cancel, Cancel."
8. Do something to brighten your environment, such as buy flowers for yourself regularly and take care of them by changing the water every day or two. Once a day, look at them for a moment and feel admiration for their beauty.
9. Every time you look in the mirror, compliment one thing about how you look. Use only positive language and smile at how beautiful you are! Try to compliment a different thing each time. If you can't think of something new, then keep repeating the same thing over and over. As a man, it has taken me 25 years to accept how I look and to be able to feel beautiful. Start listening to people who love you - maybe their compliments are true!
10. Take daily antioxidant supplements to minimize further DNA damage and shift your physiology towards greater health. A healthy physiology is vital for a toned body. Speak with a Total Fitness practitioner to determine which antioxidants will work best for you.
Recommended reading: Joy: The Happiness That Comes From Within by Osho, ISBN-10: 0312320744
James Williams consults with clients in person and on the telephone. Through his diverse life experiences and background in fitness, nutrition and healing, James helps his clients to empower themselves to achieve profound levels of personal transformation at a pace that's right for them.
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