If you have a repetitive craving for something that is doing you no good and potentially harming your health, such as cigarettes/alcohol/sugary foods etc. I’m pretty sure you ‘know’ that what you’re putting into your mouth and ultimately every cell in your body, is not good for you.
So how does our brain allow us to do something that we ‘know’ is not good for us?
Well, there are several ways – as you will know if you have ever eaten or drunk anything that’s not good for you!
Firstly, we make our decisions based on instant gratification. If we want to feel happy and we have conditioned ourselves to associate any of the above with pleasure, then that drives our behaviour in that moment. This is our fast-thinking process, our brain doesn’t even take a Nano second to consider if there are any negative side effects in the future. In the absence of any neurological resistance, then we eat or drink it ‘without thinking’. It’s almost as if we are just watching our hand put it into our mouth in an almost robotic manner.
Think about a food or drink that you crave; imagine how it looks and tastes. Take a moment to really use your imagination and see it in your mind’s eye – and notice the physical responses you have to the thought and the image; maybe you’re salivating a little more (just like Pavlov’s dog?), maybe you can feel a physical desire somewhere in your body? Really notice the signals your body is sending your mind. Has your posture changed? Has your breathing rate changed? Your body and your mind are deep in communication, so go inside and pay attention to the messages being sent, and really calibrate how it feels emotionally and physically to desire this food or drink.
How you see that food or drink is critical, you already ‘know’ based on past experience, that it will make you feel good, but what if you could unlearn that and replace that knowledge with something much stronger….
Do this exercise now and notice what changes in your mind’s eye:
Look at the image of the food or drink with your mind’s eye. Now imagine that you have developed some magical X-ray type vision, and you can see it contains the most virulent acidic toxic poison. What would that look like? Maybe it’s as if you’re seeing it through a magnifying glass? If you were to imagine you could see a toxin normally only visible in a science lab – what would it look like? Maybe the toxins would look like loads of bugs or ant like microscopic creatures?
Once you have imagined that you can see it differently now, imagine putting it to your mouth, as it touches your lips and tongue the acid eats away into the soft flesh inside your mouth, which immediately burns and blisters with puss, and as you swallow it fills your stomach with a mass of breeding acidic bugs that multiply over and over again causing you to throw up and vomit violently – but imagine now the bugs are only just getting started, they are now inside you, carried by the food or drink, and are breeding more disease ridden carcinogenic bugs that as you swallow go straight for your heart and your lungs, immediately you begin to struggle to breathe, imagine that now, exactly how would you breath if you had a mouth and stomach full of puss forming bugs? What would that feel like?
All the time you are still throwing up, notice your vomit still tastes of the food or drink you have just swallowed, and your brain attaches massive PAIN with this taste now, at a level way beyond any phobic response, so that every cell in your body and your psyche calls out to you, screams at you from the inside STOP – DO NOT PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH!
Spend 30 seconds imagining the horror of having disgusting acidic bugs that the food or drink carried into your body.
Now look at that food in your mind’s eye and imagine you know that this actual food or drink, the actual one in front of you now, contains all this horror, and only you can see it. Imagine you have superhuman perception that allows you to see what only scientists can see in the lab. Maybe you see these tiny crawling bugs? Or maybe you can’t see them but you know they are there. You can sense them. If I offered you this now, would you take it?
Of course not. You are way too smart for that. Are you not?
If you could see the outcome of your choices, then you would make different choices. After all your unconscious mind is programmed to keep you alive, safe, and happy. In order for it to make the right choices ‘fast’ you have to change the associations you make.
This principle applies to many decisions in life, not just food and drink. If you go for the easy option because it brings an immediate relief, satisfies an urgent need, then you still have to suffer the bonus negative feeling you get later on. An example would be if you are in an abusive relationship with a bully, and he or she is shouting at you to do something you don’t want to do, but you know that if you comply they will immediately start being nice to you as a ‘reward’, so you do it to gain that instant reprieve from the pain of the argument. But later you feel violated and sad. You went for the instant relief instead of taking the actions and creating new behaviours and circumstances that would set you free and give you the life you want and deserve. I know that’s a big leap from eating too much chocolate, but sometimes it’s necessary to shock so that you can really learn and understand, and apply what you know.
People often say to me “I eat X, Y or Z because it makes me feel good, I deserve it” etc. etc., but the problem is that you get two feelings, it’s a ‘buy one, get one free’. First you get the instant gratification, the ‘happy’ feeling, and then later comes the unavoidable feeling of pain that you feel when you look at yourself in the mirror and don’t like what you see, or when your health and size starts to inhibit you from having the life you want and deserve.
Think of the worst thing about being overweight or fat. What’s the absolute worst thing? How does that make you feel? Because that’s the feeling you get for free when you forget to remember to make your choices based on outcomes. Instant gratification has a buy one, get one free painful emotion. That doesn’t sound like much of a bargain to me!
The good news is that it’s actually very simple to replace any of these foods that gave you the emotional hit with alternative foods that would give you the same high, and nourish you at the same time, or with behaviours that aren’t food related at all. It’s not about stopping doing things that make you feel happy or good – far from it! The Placebo Diet is ALL about learning to find new ways to feel not just good, but great! To have a sense of control, to be confident and empowered. Would you like more good feelings in your life?
When you change the neurological emotion to the outcome, your neurology will do the rest. Willpower is when you stop yourself doing something that you want to do, something that you believe will bring you pleasure. Willpower works – but only until it doesn’t. The point it doesn’t work is when you are fed up of not having the good feelings, and that natural desire to be happy cancels out any willpower. When the changes you are making are neurological, you don’t need willpower. You can find new ways to feel good, and your buy one, get one free feeling, is an extra burst of feeling even better later on. That is the basis of all the programmes and workshops I teach. To learn to feel bloody brilliant without any negative side effects.
If you want to learn how to do this come along to one of my workshops. I’d love to work with you and help you change your mindset to get the life you desire.
Champneys Retreat is coming up in Eastwell Manor August 4th 2019 – choose from a 2-night or 4-night retreat where I will personally guide you through my step by step process that will teach you how all your existing behaviours were created, and how to change your mind so that you naturally want to eat less, eat and enjoy different foods, and banish cravings. BOOK YOUR PLACE HERE>>
Saturday September 28th, 2019 – My next one-day inspirational COLOUR YOURSELF SLIM workshop. Learn how using the simple Colour Code System or the Colour Fast Re-set, can bring about permanent physical changes – fast .If you have begun the process of change but feel you need a boost and you want to re-invigorate your intentions, then this day is a must. BOOK NOW and SAVE with the EARLY BIRD OFFER HERE>>