Walking Wednesday
I was recently contemplating “Meatless Monday”, a movement to promote vegetarianism, when a thought occurred to me: Why not “Walking Wednesday”? If you are not already a regular walker, I would like to suggest that you get out and take a walk this Wednesday. If possible, tweet the time, distance, or steps taken on Wednesday using the hashtag #WalkingWednesday.
And remember to invite your friends along for Walking Wednesday!
Sometimes the simplest things can be difficult, though, but they are certainly worth the effort.
Today I Start at Zero
All the chocolate and other sweets I ate during the holidays really took their toll on me. I have to admit it was hard to see so much of the weight that came off last year come right back on. What’s even worse is trying to lose weight when you are carrying an emotional bag of guilt around with you all the time.
So, for today, and every day, I am starting at zero. I realized that I would not be successful if my mind was focused on the idea of fixing the past (i.e. the weight I gained over the holidays). I then decided that this was point zero—my new starting point. It is such a relief to let go of past burdens and just start fresh.
Affirmation for today: I let go of the past, and start anew.
What path will you choose?
Recently I got the idea to use the many affirmations in Sondra Ray’s book, The Only Diet There Is, as a starting point for the EFT work I’ve been doing based on Dr. Grayson’s method. As I started reading through Ray’s book again, I came across a paragraph which really sums up the idea that weight is really related to beliefs, and not food.
“Food has nothing to do with weight. It is the thoughts and attitudes you have about yourself, about food, and about your body that cause overweight. Only by changing your thoughts and attitudes about yourself, about food, and about your body will you free yourself from the tyranny of endless worrying and endless dieting.”
This book is a real treasure trove of wisdom on underlying causes of overweight, and yet so few people seek out such books when dealing with weight. Why are we so obsessed with dieting and the external factors rather than emotions and the internal aspects of healing weight? Maybe it’s just the feeling of control we get from dealing with the non-emotional factors. Maybe it’s just too hard to face the emotions buried in our toxic weight.
For the time being, it seems our future is riddled with more diet books, exercise programs, and pills, because that’s what people want, apparently. Perhaps we need to create more safe environments for weight loss instead of more diet centers. A radical idea indeed, but we are all free to choose our own paths. What path will you choose?
Peeling the Onion - What’s Holding You Back?
In my last blog post I wrote about Dr. Grayson’s book, whose program is essentially based on EFT (emotional freedom technique). The beauty of EFT is that is allows you to continually “peel layers of the onion” (a phrase I learned from Louise Hay). In other words, the more you work with it, the more you uncover about your limiting beliefs. Why is this important? Well, as Dr. Grayson says in Use Your Body to Heal Your Mind, “our barriers to healing are largely unconscious.” EFT is a great way to work through those top layers to get to the sub-conscious roots of our problems.
Regardless of where you begin, you will eventually start to uncover more and more of these hidden beliefs until you’ve peeled the whole onion, so to speak. If you really don’t know where to begin, Dr. Grayson has several worksheets you can use as a starting point. (You can find these in his book or on his website.) I am often amazed at what I uncover as I work through a round of EFT, as related thoughts inevitably come up. I then know what to work on for the next round, and so on.
One thing I’ve learned from using this method is that you really can’t go wrong. Choose a target (a limiting belief to work on), and just work through it until it improves or you hit on another facet of the problem that needs attention. I personally practice this for about 10 minutes a day, and if there is something I need to continue with, I will write about it in my journal so I can work on it the next day.
So what’s holding you back from peeling your own onion? It’s never too late to start, and things can only get better if you try.
Use Your Body to Heal Your Mind
A couple months ago I purchased a book by Dr. Henry Grayson called Use Your Body to Heal Your Mind. At the core of this method is EFT (emotional freedom technique) with some variations introduced by Dr. Grayson. Because I was already familiar with EFT, this new book really clicked with me.
One of the techniques I learned from the book is the Thymus Heart Rub (see Dr. Grayson’s web site for a video demonstration of this technique). I generally start my EFT sessions with this technique, but found it very helpful to use a simple adaptation of the heart rub during the day whenever I catch myself engaged in self-criticism. I’m amazed at how many times I catch myself in the act of thinking negatively, and am grateful that I have a technique to replace the criticism with positive messages instead.
If you are not familiar with EFT, I recommend doing some research and using the many free resources online, or better yet, purchase a book on the subject (Gary Craig and Gloria Arenson are two of my favorite authors) or buy Dr. Grayson’s book and work through his program. It really is quite simple and he has created a number of downloadable worksheets to help you pinpoint beliefs that prevent healing. If you prefer to work with a practitioner, I would recommend a good friend of mine who works with clients via Skype or telephone. You can contact Teresa Bolen through her web site Magic At Your Fingertips.
Tea, anyone? I just bought this at Trader Joe’s and it is divine!
Right Diet, Wrong Image?
I recently purchased a DVD called The Inner Weigh and must have watched it at least three or four times this week alone. I just can’t get enough of the messages in this DVD. Although the concepts are not exactly new to me (I had already been reading about this in Sondra Ray’s The Only Diet There Is and Debbie Johnson’s Think Yourself Thin), watching this DVD really put it all together in a neat little package. I am even more inspired now to change my thoughts and change my life.
There are so many wonderful quotes in this film, that I couldn’t even begin to write about them all, but one that stuck out for me was this: ”No diet is the right diet for a person who has the wrong image.” What image do you have of yourself? Are you envisioning yourself as a healthy person or an overweight person? The various teachers in this film stress repeatedly that you must begin with visualization. (I suggest reading David Hamilton’s How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body for more on this subject.) See yourself as you wish to be and your subconscious mind will make it happen.
Think Yourself Thin - Is It Possible?
I recently came across a book called Think Yourself Thin, but the book itself is not new at all. In fact, I remember seeing the author on TV many years ago (don’t remember which show, but it might have been Oprah). I didn’t think much about it at the time, because, back then, weight wasn’t an issue for me.
What she says in this book makes a lot of sense. As a culture, we have dieted for decades and decades, and yet we collectively carry more excess weight than ever before. So what we eat can’t really be the source of our problem, can it? It seems that there are other issues at the root of our weight problem.
I’d like to quote a few lines from her book, as I think they are crucial to understanding the deeper issues concerning weight. One of the most significant statements she makes in the book is this one: ”You are not what you eat, but you are or become what you think.” Another favorite of mine is, “When people beat themselves up with negative images, they will automatically sabotage themselves and gain weight.”
I look back at my life and wonder how many thousands of negative thoughts about my body I have bombarded myself with. And what did it get me? It didn’t make me thin, that’s for sure! Criticism does not change people, but love certainly does. Why not love ourselves today and see what our bodies will become tomorrow? Just think where we’d be if we had already learned this as teens and young adults. We just might have put the whole diet industry out of business by now. Perhaps someday we will.
Move Your Body, Shift Your Energy
I just recently began reading Sandra Anne Taylor’s Secrets of Attraction and was struck by something I came across on page 31: ”Every time you move your body with the intention to move out your old, unhealthy feelings and thoughts, you make a dynamic shift in your frequencies.”
Since beginning my walking journey roughly nine months ago, this has played out many times. (In fact, I must give credit to a Sandra Anne Taylor podcast for getting me moving in the first place.) I’ve shifted a lot of clutter from my life, started writing regularly, began using manifestation techniques, lost weight, and found subtle ways to change my thinking on a daily basis.
I’ve also discovered that energy shifts will affect the people around us, and sometimes the reaction is not always positive. People who are accustomed to your old energy patterns sometimes react in inappropriate (or even hostile) ways. This is when you really discover who and what is not working in your life. I know it’s been said before that people and situations simply reflect your own mind set, but I also think that some people are just comfortable with dysfunctional relationships and feel threatened when others change.
However, in the end, the changes you make are always worth it, and if you feel stuck in your life, get out and take a walk. Move your body, get away from negative people, and shift your energy today. You just may find that your life will take a turn for the better.
Today’s affirmation: With every step I take, I shift my energy and change my life.
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