Weight Loss

DISCLAIMER: This information is presented for educational purposes only. Nothing presented here should be construed as medical advice and/or as a replacement for allopathic and official medicine. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, mitigate or cure any condition. If you have a medical condition, seek the advice of a competent health care provider.

Most people believe that weight loss or weight management is a matter of diet.

Diet is important, but what do you think of when you are on a special diet?

All the foods you can’t eat!

Then, you may think, it must be a matter of exercising and moving your body. You may even sign up for a gym membership only to end up not going there for more than 2-3 months.

Finally, you figure out that achieving healthy weight loss isn’t about a “diet” or physical exercise “program” but lifestyle changes with healthy eating patterns, regular physical activity, and stress management. And here is where many people encounter difficulties. They are dependent on others, and even if they make strides or even achieve their weight target, they don’t seem to maintain those gains without permanent help from outside.

Even if you manage to keep the diet recommended to you for a certain time, or you follow the “latest” and “ultimate” secret method which will make you shed the pounds, the result is usually temporary. You find yourself putting back the weight you lost once you’re off the diet or get tired of going to the gym.

Marketing and advertising industry are extremely proficient in selling us all sorts of foods under the label “healthy.” But are those really good if you want to lose weight, or simply designed to make you believe you’re doing the right thing?

You can’t blame the ads for your choices. Ads are designed to sell products and that’s great. Don’t blame them. Don’t blame yourself either. Once you understand how to work with your own values in the area of life called in NLP “health and fitness,” you can make those changes without feeling you’re working “against yourself.”

In NLP, losing weight is a matter of correct values. Your own values determine what you are motivated to do or not to do. You will do nothing which is not part of your values. (Yes, you have different values from other people, and your values are what’s important to you, not to others). You won’t continue a lifestyle which is not congruent with your internal values even if you force yourself to do it for a while.

From the NLP perspective, Values are what’s important to you. Not what you like but what’s important to you. If eating foods that taste a certain way is important to you, how easy is it to give them up even if you know they’re not helping your losing-weight objective?

It is not! It is a chore; you may even be determined to do it for a while, but eventually if your weight goals conflict with your values, you will give up.

NLP Master Practitioner Training has two techniques successfully used for this purpose.

The first technique, called Values Elicitation and Hierarchy, assists you in discovering your unconscious values attached to health and fitness. You will understand what prevented you so far from having the weight you want or taking the correct action which will lead you there.

The second technique in NLP, which is also extremely helpful, is to learn how to change your values to reflect the necessary level of fitness, heath, and thus your weight goals. Most importantly, you will be able to maintain them on your own.

NLP can also help with the following processes:

Getting rid of yo-yo dieting. Yo-yo dieting is a term that is commonly used to describe the pattern of starting a new diet, losing weight, stopping the diet, and regaining the weight that was lost. From the NLP angle, it is a behavior which is incongruent. A part of you wants to go that way (lose weight) and another this way (keep doing what you’re doing now). The technique that shows you how to integrate the conflict is called Parts Integration. Once the conflict is gone, congruently the behavior, which used to be half-half, is now coherent and helps you to move much easier towards your weight objectives.

Improve your beliefs about yourself (body image included). This is achieved especially through Time Line Therapy® which is a technique designed to allow you to release Negative Emotions and Limiting Beliefs like feeling bad about your body image or "I can't lose the weight I want."

The NLP Practitioner Training has another very important technique called "Like to Dislike," which can aid you in getting rid of those foods you like too much but wish you didn’t. It is mostly because of those foods that weight loss is a problem.

Another fun technique from the NLP Practitioner Training shows you how to communicate directly to the intelligence of your body (which some call the Unconscious Mind), and how to enlist the automatic behaviors toward the goals you establish consciously. A repetitive behavior is difficult to break without the knowledge of how you do it first. NLP can show you how to take concrete steps toward improving your relationship with food. All this can make a big difference over time.

Stress is also one of the reasons for putting on weight or even being unable to lose it. Time Line Therapy® can also assist with the stress reduction though the eliminating of Negative Emotions and Limiting Beliefs which constitute daily stress. Time Line Therapy® is a set of techniques taught in the NLP Practitioner and NLP Master Practitioner Trainings which allow you to let go of all the Negative Emotions and Limiting Beliefs from the past. Time Line Therapy® also gives you a clear technique for inserting goals in your future Time Line in a way that makes them happen.

While NLP and Time Line Therapy® do not offer any medical advice and are not to be taken as such, they can surely assist you in your goals. If you have a weight problem which could be in any way related to a health issue, you should seek the advice of a competent licensed practitioner.

The information, and the techniques presented by NLP and Time Line Therapy® have the potential to positively transform the difficult task of losing excess weight as both seem to show otherwise. If you want to create a healthy diet which includes all the good advice you’ve likely heard before: less refined food, more fruits and vegetables; replacing high fat consumption with good fat consumption, physical exercise and relieving stress, NLP and Time Line Therapy® can assist with the mental and emotional part so you can not only make that switch, but stick to it and maintain it for a very long time.