Our minds and bodies are one. Our physical well-being impacts our emotions and vice versa. If you are fighting obesity you absolutely need to think about the psychological factors that are influencing your behaviors. Your attitude is crucial. A positive attitude has a significant impact on your over-all health. If we could teach one thing to people that would have more impact on their health and general success in life it would be how to think positively. Dr. Norman Vincent Peal’s classic work, The Power of Positive Thinking, should be required reading. You can absolutely learn to think positively.
Christopher Petersen, PhD, says, “…optimism…has been linked to positive mood and good morale; to perseverance and effective problem solving; to academic, athletic, military, occupational, and political success; to popularity; to good health; and even to long life and freedom from trauma.”
You are not your behavior and all behavior is learned. Regardless of whether you have been a pessimistic, negative thinker for your entire life you can change your behavior. The benefits of a positive attitude will be your reward.
Optimists believe things will always get better. They just know that good things will generally come their way. When bad events do happen it is viewed as an isolated incident, or something outside their control.
Your thoughts are yours to control.
You will not lose weight simply by thinking positive thoughts. If you don’t control your thoughts and thus your emotions then overcoming obesity and controlling of your weight will be a monumental undertaking. Controlling your thoughts and thus your emotions is a very important step. Your pessimistic way of thinking is habit and all habits can be changed. It takes work, motivation, and a consistent effort. Prayer is a powerful tool for those who are religiously oriented.
When you first realize you are thinking a pessimistic thought about an event in your life, the first thing to do is evaluate the evidence that supports the emotion. Focus on the factual events not the emotions. Ask yourself what is the lesson that needs to be learned? It is the lesson you want to hold on to not any negative emotion.
Next, think of the reasons you are feeling the emotion or the pessimism. Take the lesson from that and then actually visualize yourself either in the future after the successful completion of the event or in the past before the event happened. There is a process called Time-Line Therapy Techniques that is a bit more involved than that, but essentially by visualizing the positive outcome you want or “replaying the event” from a different perspective you change your negative emotions. Time-line therapy is a powerful tool for your well-being. It can quickly help you deal with the emotional baggage you are carrying around that absolutely influences your behavior associated with being obese or over-weight.
A much older technique is to use daily positive affirmations to improve your attitude and well-being. You need to develop this positive habit through practice. The more you use the positive thinking approach you’ll soon find it comes naturally. You may be amazed to realize that you simply feel better with a positive attitude.
Your mind and spirit impacts healing
There is little doubt left in the medical community that your mind has a tremendous impact on healing. Many of the alternative healing “arts” involve using your mind and tapping into your spirit to help “heal” your body. Letting go of your negative emotions is vital in the battle for over-coming chronic obesity.
It is the spiritual aspect of humanity that is the least understood, most powerful, and important. Humans are spiritual beings. That “spirit” does in part consist of the values and beliefs you hold, but it goes much deeper than that.
Religions attempt to address the spiritual nature of mankind. In the previous paragraph I stated beliefs and values have tremendous influence on our personality and our actions. Religions dramatically influence the beliefs and values of the followers of that religion. Those beliefs and values go on to shape the identity and attitudes of the “believer”, which in turn send messages to their cells regarding their health.
Our memories and the emotions attached to those memories have a significant contribution to our health and well-being. Those memories are influenced by our actions and thus our beliefs and values. There are psychological techniques that can be utilized to help address a person’s belief and value system as well as any negative emotions attached to their memories. Time-line Therapy techniques is just one of those psychological methods, but it could be the most powerful and time affective. Religions address those very same issues through various worship or other rituals, but they also attempt to go beyond the psychological and physical into a realm science cannot address – the spiritual realm.
The Human Spiritual Side
The spiritual realm is not easy to define but could include such things as love and intelligence. In the Bible the book of John says God is love. Humans can feel love and see the results of or even measure intelligence, but science can’t explore the origins of either love or intelligence. Scientific research has shown the power of prayer and other spiritual practices on health and healing. Isn’t it reasonable to conclude that there is a spiritual realm.
Spiritual pursuits deal with much more than our health and well-being during our life time. They deal with the after-life. Whether it is reincarnation, eternal life in heaven, or some other notion of what happens to our spirit when we die religions address these concerns. Atheistic and humanistic beliefs tend to shy away from these spiritual practices and belief systems.
All religious belief systems cannot be true. Different religions may share similar beliefs that are true, yet ALL religions are at their core exclusive. The reason they are different is they have fundamentally different beliefs. People struggling with obesity or other health issues should really look at their spiritual life and seek what is true. Ultimately it is a decision each person has to decide what is true, but it is a decision that shouldn’t be made lightly.
Seeking to validate the truth claims of Christianity would be a great starting point because of its cultural influence in America (indeed the Western World) and its clear exclusive claim that “I [Jesus] am the way, the truth, the light, and no man comes to the father except through me [him].” If a person rejects the truth claims of Christianity they can move on from there.
The Spirit and its ability to fight obesity
Your spiritual well-being is an important topic in fighting obesity because this mind-body connection has a tremendous influence on weight management. In our experience, EVERYONE, who is struggling with obesity and weight management has emotional and stress related factors that are not being addressed. Those factors can be addressed in the ways mentioned above.
The reason this topic is the third in the series is the other two topics, nutrition and exercise, are ultimate responsible for managing your weight. The spiritual and emotional side is what will enable you to control your behavior, which is necessary to lose weight and keep the weight off.
Many times our eating habits and lack of motivation to exercise are a result of the negative emotions we are caring around in us. Food can become a substitute for some emotional need and your motivation to exercise can be greatly hindered by this emotional “baggage”. Once dealt with your ability to control eating habits and follow through with an exercise plan are increased greatly. You will find it much easier to set goals and adopt a plan for the reaching of those goals.
Your over-all well-being will be greatly enhanced if you learn to think positively, eliminate negative emotions, and understand the importance of caring for your soul!
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