Welcome to Day 5 Supporting you to Stick to Your Weight-Loss Plan, so you can reach your goal weight, once and for all.  We have been learning strategies and tips from life and weight coaching to support you in sticking to your plan.  Yo-yo dieter?  I bet your desire for certain foods have thwarted your weight loss goals many times. After 50 or so years of building experiences eating, feeling and living, you have accumulated lots of desires.

Do you know your desire is created in your brain?  Do you know your desire is optional?

Impossible, you say?  Have an open mind and read on.

We think desire comes from the ether.  Is it a chemical reaction?  It is an innate attraction?

The business of advertising understands desire very well. They create desire for products, for foods, for experiences, equating these false pleasures with our human desire for comfort, connection, and purpose. 

Desire is an emotion created by thoughts in your head. 

Thoughts are powerful as proven by neuroscience and medical research.  There is the Placebo effect and the Nocebo effect.

Advertisers want you to think you will receive amazing benefits when you see their products.  Yet, advertisers spend billions on research and have many tricks and tools.

If you knew the beautiful photo of milk being poured over breakfast cereal, surrounded in light, beautiful music and happy people was really white glue, would you have a desire for it? If you knew the piping hot apple pie right out of the oven was really cold with a microwaved tampon hidden in it to create steam, would you desire it? If you knew the hamburger dripping with juices was branded and covered in shoe polish, would that impact your desire for it?

Cardboard, toothpicks, motor oil, fabric protector hairspray and soap bubbles all create the illusion of beautiful, appetizing foods.  Your thoughts “That looks amazing! Delicious!” driving desire.  Until you are told what is in the food and your thoughts instantly change.  “That’s disgusting.  Eeeeech!"  How could your desire change so quickly?  The only thing that changed is your thought about the food!

How can you use this understanding of desire to stick to your weight loss plan and reach your goal weight, and stay there?

Be aware of how many of your 50,000 daily thoughts convince your brain something is attractive and that you desire it.

Why do you eat?

Let’s start with your basic desire to eat.  Why do you eat?  Do you eat to satisfy pleasure, out of boredom, for entertainment, excitement, and fun?  Or, do you eat for optimal energy to do things with family and friends, health, fat loss, to nourish cells

Let’s look at where you might be right now in the way you think about food and life:

FOOD = PLEASURE, STRESS-RELIEF, BOREDOM, ENTERTAINMENT, CONNECTION, GO UNCONSCIOUS

LIFE = WORK, OBLIGATION, DOING WHAT I SHOULD DO, KEEPING UP WITH NEWS, ZONING OUT, SQUEEZING IN TIME WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS

RESULT = OVERWEIGHT, COMPROMISED HEALTH, MOOD SWINGS, CHRONIC STRESS, CAN'T KEEP UP

I have an alternative way for you to think about food and life:

FOOD = NUTRITION, OPTIMAL ENERGY, LESS PAIN IN JOINTS, REMAIN SELF-SUSTAINING, FEEL BETTER, LOOK BETTER

LIFE - PLEASURE, ENTERTAINMENT, CONNECTION, STRESS-FREE, RECREATION, PURPOSE, SELF-CARE

RESULT = HEALTHY WEIGHT, FEEL BETTER, STABLE MOODS, ABLE TO MOVE MORE, LOOK BETTER, PURPOSE, FUN, ENJOYMENT

From Current State to Future State

Educate ourselves about food and use our brain to consciously choose thoughts to create desire.

How can you think about it to create a desire for food that is nutritious?  I have an outline to use.  Just plug in the result and work backwards.  What result do you want? What actions do you have to take to get that result?  What emotion will motivate you to take that action?  What thoughts give you the emotion of desire? 

 Circumstance:           I eat food.

Thoughts:                  I am learning about foods that will give me energy

                                   Whole foods will give me the body I want.

                                   Whole foods will make me feel better

Feeling:                      Desire

Action:                       Choose Whole Foods, Less Flour/Sugar, Exercise

Result:                       Optimal Health; Fit Body;

You have to answer the question, "Can I believe those thoughts?"  If you can, great.  Just start practicing them.  If not, you need another thought that you believe.  Everyone will have a different thought to motivate them because we are all individuals and are driven by different emotions.

Let's try it on that yummy bowl of roasted vegetables.  If you want to desire a bowl of roasted vegetables, how do you create that desire?

Circumstances:        Bowl of roasted vegetables

Thoughts:                That looks amazing! When I eat roasted vegetables, I am getting                                   amazing nutrition.

I choose to eat nutritious vegetables because I want enough energy to go out dancing.

Roasted vegetables may not be the most interesting things to eat, but I love having energy to play with the grandkids

Feelings:                Content; Satisfied; Desire

Action:                    Eat lots of vegetables

Result:                      I get nutrition, less cravings

If you don’t change your desire, you will always be using willpower to stick to your weight loss plan.  You may get to your goal weight, but I guarantee you won’t stay there.

To get to that future state, desire the food that will take you there.  Because when you land there, you will have new goals to set, that have nothing to do with weight!