|
On June 13 2011 15:18 McKTenor13 wrote:
@tryumm Very much appreciated! I will admit I could've used that even more a couple years ago. I have gone through a lot in the past 1-2 years and have finally emerged mentally as the person I want to be. I am not at all saying that I am comfortable with my body, but I am completely comfortable with my personality and how I interact with people. I mainly just want to not have to wear jackets to cover up, I want to be comfortable swimming with friends, I want to hit on the attractive girls I see.
As I see it. Right now I am a happy person who will in time over the summer become even happier. I wont change at all who I am, but more so I will be able to comfortably do things I was scared to do before.
If you are afraid to talk to girls because of your current physical body, talk to them anyways. If you get rejected by them you can perceive the rejection to be either positive or negative. The law of opposites dictates that you can't have a positive without a negative. Just like you can't have an up without a down or a hot without a cold. When you are rejected by somebody you can see it negatively (ex: an embarrassment) or you can see it positively (ex: motivation to fulfill your goal of living in your ideal body). The same thing can go with swimming with friends. Through leaving your comfort zone you can actually become even more motivated to accomplish your goal. This is because when you leave your comfort zone you are becoming more emotionally involved with an idea. As you get more emotionally involved in an idea, it becomes more and more programmed into the subconscious mind. Ideas programmed in the subconscious mind become habits. As you step out of your comfort zone you being to develop habits quicker. However, if you perceive the negative aspect of rejection or swimming with your friends you are being counterproductive and you are moving away from your goal. So its important to really monitor your thinking and the law of opposites if you are going to step out of your comfort zone. Just thinking about hitting on girls and swimming with friends is good motivation in itself, but actually putting yourself out there and doing the activity further reinforces the idea of presently being in the body you want to live in. I discussed this when I made the reference to being like an actor in my original post.
|
I need to start reading your stuff then! and you should write a book.
|
Hi.
I would recommend you to follow a program that mix a strict diet and workouts.
I have lost in one week 6,6 pounds // 3 kgs. I am feeling great, i don't feel like i am starving on the contrary i feel healthier. Farewell red meat, sauces, junk. Welcome vegies and white meat.
If you are short of money this program is easily found on the internet, it's quiet famous too. + Show Spoiler +Power 90 from beachbody.com
First of all this is no JOKE, this program is serious. It is intensive, painwrecking and goddamn satisfying.
No need to go to the gym and feeling ashamed compared to the others. Your place to work out is at home. Necessary equipment are dumbbells, motivation and DEDICATION.
Quick summary of my diet: 1300-1500 kcal a day. 2.5 3.5l water a day. Below what kind of food i have been eating
![[image loading]](http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/5241/p1010838b.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/9696/p1010783i.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/1512/p1010799c.jpg)
Quick summary of workout: One day you focus on your muscles/strength with dumbbells/pushups/stretches, the next day you focus on cardio/power yoga/basic kickboxing/crunches.
This goes on for 6 days, last day is your rest day.
This might sound intensive. Actually it is. It is hard but remember that you can do it. Not by rushing exercices but by doing it at your own PACE. This can be a new routine, a new life ahead of you. I hope i could bring you some hope and new goals. Good luck!
|
On June 13 2011 15:01 tryummm wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Get rid of the idea of losing weight. When you lose something your conditioned way of thinking tries to get it back. Instead, see your body in its most healthy and most favorable state. Begin to love your body each time you look into the mirror. Instead of giving energy to ideas of being overweight or out of shape, get ideas of your ideal body and the power locked up within your body. When you do so you change your self image. This causes your habitual way of thinking to change. When your thinking changes you begin to feel differently. When you begin to feel differently, you begin to act differently. In other words, your thoughts cause your feelings and your feelings cause your actions. The reason you have been gaining the weight back is because your are attempting to directly change your actions without addressing your feelings or your thoughts.
When you feel bad as you lose weight you develop negative associations to the idea of losing weight. This causes you to feel pain. Pain is a negative emotion that people attempt to avoid at all costs. Pain, like any problem, is caused by ignorance. Ignorance is not knowing, and people just don't know some things. Therefore, everybody is ignorant. All people can do is attempt to expand their conscious awareness in order to grow intellectually and spiritually. This growth is impossible if you are focusing on your physical reality, rather than living in the body you want to live in. To fix this problem you want to see your body where you want it to end up. In other words, you want to see the end result. If you just focus on the end result, you will be able to withstand circumstances.
Now, when employing the method of changing your thoughts which automatically change your feelings and actions you will need to satisfy two prerequisites.
1) Make sure your goal is something big. Your image of your body should be of your body in its ideal condition based on what you think. Don't base it on what anybody else thinks. You are responsible for your thoughts, feelings, and actions (aka your results). Don't give that responsibility to anybody else or you will enter an uncreative mental state where you will only go backwards from where you want to go. You also won't be fulfilled in the process as many negative emotions will be expressed if you live how you think somebody else thinks you should live. Back on point, your goal should be so big that you fear going after it. If you do not fear a goal, its probably not a good goal. This is because goals are meant to develop people intellectually and spiritually. Goals are meant to cause people to progressively move towards a worthy ideal. In other words, moving towards goals that cause people to grow on a continual bases is what makes an individual successful.
2) When a negative emotion or idea becomes present, don't put energy into it. The 7 negative emotions are fear, jealousy, hatred, revenge, greed, superstition, and anger. The negative emotion of jealousy is misunderstood by many people and is a huge problem for a lot of people trying to live in their ideal body. I define jealousy as "An emotion caused by a fear of losing something that you don't have." Any time you come across a jealous idea, simply realize you fear losing something you don't even have. Then remind yourself of how ridiculous such a negative idea (jealousy) is and you will not put any energy into being jealous. You can also do that with the other negative emotions, if you choose to define each of them. If you would like, I could go into more detail regarding the other 6 negative emotions. Moreover, when a negative idea, or an idea that will not move your towards your picture of living in your ideal body enters your consciousness, just say next and get a different idea. An idea is an accumulation of thoughts bundled up together. Thoughts are produced by reason, which is a faculty of the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is what dictates your habits. When you think about positive ideas, you develop positive habits. Keep in mind, that the conscious mind can only think of one thing at any given time. If you maximize the time you are thinking about your ideal body and minimize the time thinking about the fear, why you can't, etc...you will change your habitual way of thinking about your body. This will cause you to feel and consequently act differently, which will change your results into what you desire.
In conclusion:
All it takes to 'lose weight' is making a decision. Once you make the decision, get a picture of yourself living in your ideal body. Then, when fear strikes or negative emotions come replace them in your consciousness with positive ideas. These positive ideas can simply be the picture your created of being in your ideal body. You have to be an actor, you have to act like you are already living how you want to live. You should absolutely love yourself when you look in the mirror. Your actions will automatically change if you did the former correctly, and you will enjoy the process. Once the actions kick in your results will consequently change. The time this takes really can't be determined since there are so many unpredictable factors. When you do make your goal and put it down in writing, make sure everything is in the present tense. The only thing not in the present tense is the date by which you want to achieve living in your ideal body. This date cannot be predicted, but you should take a lot of caution in picking a date that isn't too soon, but will also provide motivation in the process (AKA seems unreasonable to you with your current awareness). If you haven't satisfied your goal when the date comes, just push the date back and keep the picture.
In response to some of the posts above me:
"Write down (or otherwise document) what you're eating / how much"
"Make a sustainable plan for exercise."
If you develop the habit of thinking about your ideal weight, you will not be making bad eating choices. Your current paradigm will be urging you to pick unhealthy foods, but you can just use the power of decision to overcome those thoughts. Decisions are made in a split second. There are three things you should consider when making a decision:
1) Do I want what I will get?
2) WiIl it move me towards my goal?
3) Will it violate the rights of others?
If you answer yes to #1 and #2, and no to #3 then make the decision and stick with the decision.
When losing weight you will be making a lot of advanced decisions. Meaning, you will have already made a decision of what you will do before presented with the opportunity to make the decision. As an example, you might make the decision to eat healthy. Then if you go to a party and are offered a piece of cake, you will have already made a decision. Think for awhile how to make decisions. Don't go to other people to make decisions, make your own decisions. Otherwise you are not being responsible for your thoughts, feelings, and actions. This will cause you to move backwards, as I mentioned previously.
The two comments of the poster I quoted above can easily be accomplished through the information I have provided in the post. From my understanding, your outcome is not to lift X amount of weight or run X amount of miles. Its to live in your ideal body. The accomplishment of this idea is accomplished progressively. In other words, it happens over time. The only way to ensure it will happen over time and you won't get off track is by changing your habitual way of thinking (Through repetition of ideal, which will be accomplished by following the information I provided) and employing the technique to get rid of negative emotions and ideas.
After reading through your post a few times, I still don't understand what others see in it. I guess your main point is to focus on your goals and think positively, which is something I agree on and is something one should do while trying to lose weight. I don't agree on having one ultimate goal and only focusing on that. It can easily the goal seem unreachable, because it's so far away. Small goals leading up to your ultimate goal make losing weight much easier, at least it did for me.
I don't think all negative emotions should be ignored and replaced with positive thoughts and emotions. For example you might envy someones body, instead of thinking that it's just silly to think like that and ignore it, you could use it for more motivation or make that a step towards your goal. Not only will you have a better body, you will surpass the thing you are envying.
I can't really make any sense of the paragraph where you talk about pain. Why is he feeling bad when he is making progress? People don't avoid pain at all costs. People go through pain to make their future more enjoyablel, that's not the same thing. What is spiritual growth? It almost seems like your solution to the problem is to pretend the problem doesn't exist while you work on it.
|
First of all: I wish you the very best of luck
I lost quite a bit of weight last summer myself, as I too felt it was about time (after having had a comfortable life and a girlfriend for 3 years, I realized after our break-up that I had gained way too much).
My advise to you is obviously to count calories, as others (and probably most weight blogs etc) have noted. Losing weight is very simple (not easy, simple), as you just need to have a lower calorie intake than your output. That being said, remember not to try losing too much too quickly. To lose 1 kg (2.2 lbs), you need to "lose" 7.000 kcal. Your goal of losing 70 lbs (32 kg) in 11 weeks is, I'm afraid, way too ambitious, as you would need have a caloric intake of 2900 kcal less than what you take in. A more realistic goal is around 22-26 lbs (10-12 kg), and doing that by trying to have an intake of about 1.000 kcal less than your output every day. This is not necessarily easy, but any more than this could quickly become unhealthy. 20+ lbs is still a lot, and I promise you that you will both see results and feel a lot better in the process!
Also, drinking lots of water is very important. Last summer, I would go by bike to and from my summer job (8 km each way), and had a goal of drinking 3,5l of water every day. It's amazing how much dropping coke etc for water makes your body feel much better. Combining physical exercise with lots of water, a balanced diet and controlled calorie intake will surely get you there. Don't deny yourself a snack now and then, think more of them as rewards. I've seen many people lose lots of weight while still drinking coke or eating chocolate, but it's all about the amount you consume (and hence the amount of calories your body takes up).
Again, I hope you do well, and look forward to seeing your progress! The best thing for long term weight loss (losing the excess weight and then maintaining it) is changing your habits, not just going on a specific diet designed to help you lose weight, then go back to your old habits. Remember that if you lose around 70 lbs, you will have a much lower BMR (basal metabolic rate), which means that you won't be able to eat as much of the same food as you could now if all you wanted to do was maintain your weight.
If you have any questions, feel free to PM me. I'm a medical student and have spent countless hours reading my textbooks, reading on the internet, attended seminars by doctors at my university on weight loss, and spoken with them in person about this subject. Not saying I'm an expert or anything, but you have any questions, I'm sure I can either answer them or try and find the answer
|
I am 6 feet 2 and used to weight 265 in the fall of 2010. I made a commitment to exercise and eating better. Although writing down what you eat is a good idea, I didn't do this. My way was to drink as much water as possible to make it feel like I was full and then eat a lot smaller meals. Then go to the gym 3 days a week with a sweatshirt and beanie and on the other days run with a sweatshirt and beanie. Like other people have said you need to start slowly and build up your endurance along the way or you will give up to easy. Currently I weight 220 lbs and aiming for 185. Good luck in finding your way in weight loss. Remember every person is different, and this means there are a million different ways to lose weight. Just try and find the best way for you and stick to the plan!
|
United States261 Posts
Remember with eating try to make changes that you can stick with even after you are done putting off the weight. Some people think they can just eat healthy and once they are done with all the fat loss they can go back to eating the way they were so don't fall into that trap!
With exercise, I like starting strength or stronglifts 5x5. If you have access to a gym you should do them. They give you a nice basis for strength and you will gain muscle which will help with burning calories.
Anyway, good luck! I'm also on a weightloss journey too
|
On June 13 2011 19:33 Sotamursu wrote:Show nested quote +On June 13 2011 15:01 tryummm wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Get rid of the idea of losing weight. When you lose something your conditioned way of thinking tries to get it back. Instead, see your body in its most healthy and most favorable state. Begin to love your body each time you look into the mirror. Instead of giving energy to ideas of being overweight or out of shape, get ideas of your ideal body and the power locked up within your body. When you do so you change your self image. This causes your habitual way of thinking to change. When your thinking changes you begin to feel differently. When you begin to feel differently, you begin to act differently. In other words, your thoughts cause your feelings and your feelings cause your actions. The reason you have been gaining the weight back is because your are attempting to directly change your actions without addressing your feelings or your thoughts.
When you feel bad as you lose weight you develop negative associations to the idea of losing weight. This causes you to feel pain. Pain is a negative emotion that people attempt to avoid at all costs. Pain, like any problem, is caused by ignorance. Ignorance is not knowing, and people just don't know some things. Therefore, everybody is ignorant. All people can do is attempt to expand their conscious awareness in order to grow intellectually and spiritually. This growth is impossible if you are focusing on your physical reality, rather than living in the body you want to live in. To fix this problem you want to see your body where you want it to end up. In other words, you want to see the end result. If you just focus on the end result, you will be able to withstand circumstances.
Now, when employing the method of changing your thoughts which automatically change your feelings and actions you will need to satisfy two prerequisites.
1) Make sure your goal is something big. Your image of your body should be of your body in its ideal condition based on what you think. Don't base it on what anybody else thinks. You are responsible for your thoughts, feelings, and actions (aka your results). Don't give that responsibility to anybody else or you will enter an uncreative mental state where you will only go backwards from where you want to go. You also won't be fulfilled in the process as many negative emotions will be expressed if you live how you think somebody else thinks you should live. Back on point, your goal should be so big that you fear going after it. If you do not fear a goal, its probably not a good goal. This is because goals are meant to develop people intellectually and spiritually. Goals are meant to cause people to progressively move towards a worthy ideal. In other words, moving towards goals that cause people to grow on a continual bases is what makes an individual successful.
2) When a negative emotion or idea becomes present, don't put energy into it. The 7 negative emotions are fear, jealousy, hatred, revenge, greed, superstition, and anger. The negative emotion of jealousy is misunderstood by many people and is a huge problem for a lot of people trying to live in their ideal body. I define jealousy as "An emotion caused by a fear of losing something that you don't have." Any time you come across a jealous idea, simply realize you fear losing something you don't even have. Then remind yourself of how ridiculous such a negative idea (jealousy) is and you will not put any energy into being jealous. You can also do that with the other negative emotions, if you choose to define each of them. If you would like, I could go into more detail regarding the other 6 negative emotions. Moreover, when a negative idea, or an idea that will not move your towards your picture of living in your ideal body enters your consciousness, just say next and get a different idea. An idea is an accumulation of thoughts bundled up together. Thoughts are produced by reason, which is a faculty of the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is what dictates your habits. When you think about positive ideas, you develop positive habits. Keep in mind, that the conscious mind can only think of one thing at any given time. If you maximize the time you are thinking about your ideal body and minimize the time thinking about the fear, why you can't, etc...you will change your habitual way of thinking about your body. This will cause you to feel and consequently act differently, which will change your results into what you desire.
In conclusion:
All it takes to 'lose weight' is making a decision. Once you make the decision, get a picture of yourself living in your ideal body. Then, when fear strikes or negative emotions come replace them in your consciousness with positive ideas. These positive ideas can simply be the picture your created of being in your ideal body. You have to be an actor, you have to act like you are already living how you want to live. You should absolutely love yourself when you look in the mirror. Your actions will automatically change if you did the former correctly, and you will enjoy the process. Once the actions kick in your results will consequently change. The time this takes really can't be determined since there are so many unpredictable factors. When you do make your goal and put it down in writing, make sure everything is in the present tense. The only thing not in the present tense is the date by which you want to achieve living in your ideal body. This date cannot be predicted, but you should take a lot of caution in picking a date that isn't too soon, but will also provide motivation in the process (AKA seems unreasonable to you with your current awareness). If you haven't satisfied your goal when the date comes, just push the date back and keep the picture.
In response to some of the posts above me:
"Write down (or otherwise document) what you're eating / how much"
"Make a sustainable plan for exercise."
If you develop the habit of thinking about your ideal weight, you will not be making bad eating choices. Your current paradigm will be urging you to pick unhealthy foods, but you can just use the power of decision to overcome those thoughts. Decisions are made in a split second. There are three things you should consider when making a decision:
1) Do I want what I will get?
2) WiIl it move me towards my goal?
3) Will it violate the rights of others?
If you answer yes to #1 and #2, and no to #3 then make the decision and stick with the decision.
When losing weight you will be making a lot of advanced decisions. Meaning, you will have already made a decision of what you will do before presented with the opportunity to make the decision. As an example, you might make the decision to eat healthy. Then if you go to a party and are offered a piece of cake, you will have already made a decision. Think for awhile how to make decisions. Don't go to other people to make decisions, make your own decisions. Otherwise you are not being responsible for your thoughts, feelings, and actions. This will cause you to move backwards, as I mentioned previously.
The two comments of the poster I quoted above can easily be accomplished through the information I have provided in the post. From my understanding, your outcome is not to lift X amount of weight or run X amount of miles. Its to live in your ideal body. The accomplishment of this idea is accomplished progressively. In other words, it happens over time. The only way to ensure it will happen over time and you won't get off track is by changing your habitual way of thinking (Through repetition of ideal, which will be accomplished by following the information I provided) and employing the technique to get rid of negative emotions and ideas. After reading through your post a few times, I still don't understand what others see in it. I guess your main point is to focus on your goals and think positively, which is something I agree on and is something one should do while trying to lose weight. I don't agree on having one ultimate goal and only focusing on that. It can easily the goal seem unreachable, because it's so far away. Small goals leading up to your ultimate goal make losing weight much easier, at least it did for me. I don't think all negative emotions should be ignored and replaced with positive thoughts and emotions. For example you might envy someones body, instead of thinking that it's just silly to think like that and ignore it, you could use it for more motivation or make that a step towards your goal. Not only will you have a better body, you will surpass the thing you are envying. I can't really make any sense of the paragraph where you talk about pain. Why is he feeling bad when he is making progress? People don't avoid pain at all costs. People go through pain to make their future more enjoyablel, that's not the same thing. What is spiritual growth? It almost seems like your solution to the problem is to pretend the problem doesn't exist while you work on it.
My main point is to alter the habitual way in which you think. This will alter how you feel, which will ultimately change how one acts. What most people do is try to change the action and they put little energy into the way they think. This often times doesn't work, especially in the long run, since people's old habits are not replaced with new, constructive habits. People get certain results because of their habitual way of thinking. I have read numerous autobiographies of some of the most successful people in the world and they all agreed that what people think about is absolutely essential to changing behavior.
The ultimate goal I believe one should have I refer to as a worthy ideal. Its a dream that one seems worthy of themselves. Its a dream that one will consciously trade their life for. Clearly losing weight is not a worthy ideal. however it can be part of a worthy ideal. When you begin losing weight its important to have a picture of where you want to end up. You will not know exactly how you are going to get there, but you should know the first step. When you act on that step you will see another step, and so on until you accomplish your goal. There is very little motivation in setting a small goal (aka accomplishing the next step you can see) and then setting a new goal every time you accomplish something. Its important to know where you are currently and where you want to end up. You then act on the ideas that enter your consciousness by using the decision principle I discussed in one of my previous posts.
We have to stay away from the 7 negative emotions. We have to marry the positive emotions. Think about what kind of emotions drive criminals verses what kind of emotions drive millionaires. In Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance he said, “Envy is ignorance.” In other words, to look at another person’s “Accomplishments,” or “Results,” and then to envy them, is truly unwise. For those people first chose their thoughts, in order to build the picture in their mind of the good that is now manifest in their life. That is what the great artist, Vincent Van Gogh, meant when he was asked how he did such beautiful work. He said, “I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.” In other words, he saw the picture in his mind first and then he made a replica on canvas—
in oil, of the original in his mind. Now, I disagree with the last sentence in your paragraph regarding envy. Can you supply me with a biography or other form of documentation by somebody who had magnificent results in all aspects of their life and attributed it to envy?
When I discussed pain I stated that people who directly try to change their habits without changing their habitual way of thinking will not change their actions for a long period of time. They will soon revert back to their old habits, since they never changed those old habits. The old habits are still present. Therefore, an individual that tries to directly change their actions without changing their thinking will have negative associations to going after what they want. A person who tries to directly change their actions might see some results in the short run, but the results are eventually stopped by old habits and often times they gain the weight back. The OP actually said this was a problem for him in the past. When you lose weight and gain it back, that's probably not a very good feeling. The feelings make people feel pain when they think of the idea of losing weight. Moreover, emotional pain isn't a very good motivating force. Think about procrastination for a minute. People procrastinate because they associate more pain to an activity than pleasure. As their deadline for accomplishing the activity nears, the urgency to complete that activity increases the amount of pleasure this individual will get and eventually the individual does the activity near the time of the deadline. The idea of procrastination is easily analyzed if you look at students in schools. Students know they don't benefit from procrastination, but they do it anyways because they want pleasure in the moment. They are not thinking about what they want in the long term. These students are reacting to their physical environment. The cause of their problem (Procrastination) is their way of thinking. The action of procrastination is a side effect of their habitual way of thinking. To fix the problem they need to change their habitual way of thinking.
Moreover, I never meant to say to pretend a problem doesn't exist. People should be aware of their problems, but they should not obsessively think about them. People make absolutely no progress when they sit down and complain about their problems and talk about their problems with all their friends and family. Instead, when one has a problem they should be grateful they have a problem. They should see it as a learning experience. Then, a person has two options:
1) Enter a creative state and come up with a solution on your own.
2) Go to a professional in a calm manner, and ask for some advice. Then use the principles of decision I discussed in an earlier post to see whether or not you want to act on the idea.
To discuss into further detail what spiritual growth is, we need to define spirit. To do so, we have to look at creativity. Creativity is expressed through the imagination. There are two forms of imaginations: the creative imagination and the synthetic imagination. Spirit comes from the creative imagination. The creative imagination allows people to originate ideas that didn't exist before. These ideas come from the reason faculty of the subconscious mind and are transferred into ideas by the imagination. is soirit. This is what causes people to get an inner urging or desire to make something better. They want to make the world better. This desire becomes stronger as the awareness of its presence grows. This desire to make everything better comes from spirit. Spirit is always for expansion or fuller expression. The nucleus of one's being is spirit. When the mind is extremely active your creative imagination kicks into action. Your creative imagination is what connects you with pure spirit. The mind enters this extremely active state through strong desire. The more you feed your desire with the food of thought, the stronger the desire becomes. It is when you are in this high level of mental activity with the creative imagination roaring that spirit presents you with a vision of something bigger, better, more beautiful, and more effective than the world has ever known. I define spiritual growth as the process of building this vision, thinking about the decision, then acting on the decision and eventually doing something extraordinary.
By the way, I would be interested in seeing you cover how people use pain to make their future more enjoyable in more detail.
|
best of luck to you!
my advice to you would be to not start off too ambitiously, and instead find something that is sustainable in the long run.
i know this sounds very generic (focus on longterm lifestyle change yadda yadda) but i personally have struggled with this in the past couple of years since i stopped competitively swimming. what will happen is this: after having not properly monitored my fitness and my eating for several weeks, i'll start to feel really gross, and i'll get extremely determined to drastically revamp my workout and eating habits. at this point, i'll monitor my eating religiously and clock in at least an hour and a half at the gym everyday. i'll do this for about 2 weeks, before i start to get really tired of the gym and feel like i've already invested so much effort that i can afford to skip a day or two or to binge a little, and my discipline will slip and i'll slowly go back to working out less and less and eating unhealthy foods more and more. in about 3 weeks, i'll start feeling really fat and unfit again, and this will once again trigger the daily work out phase lol. it's like a never ending cycle that i never learn from.
|
On June 14 2011 02:11 tryummm wrote:
My main point is to alter the habitual way in which you think. This will alter how you feel, which will ultimately change how one acts. What most people do is try to change the action and they put little energy into the way they think. This often times doesn't work, especially in the long run, since people's old habits are not replaced with new, constructive habits. People get certain results because of their habitual way of thinking. I have read numerous autobiographies of some of the most successful people in the world and they all agreed that what people think about is absolutely essential to changing behavior.
I wouldn't say thoughts cause emotions. As far as I know Lazarus' theory hasn't been proven to be correct. What I'd really like to know is what are these good habits of thinking and what kind of habits one should avoid.
When you act on that step you will see another step, and so on until you accomplish your goal. There is very little motivation in setting a small goal (aka accomplishing the next step you can see) and then setting a new goal every time you accomplish something. Its important to know where you are currently and where you want to end up. You then act on the ideas that enter your consciousness by using the decision principle I discussed in one of my previous posts.
That pretty much sounds like exactly what I was saying. Focus on each step without forgetting your ideal, since you will not reach your ideal without completing each step.
We have to stay away from the 7 negative emotions. We have to marry the positive emotions. Think about what kind of emotions drive criminals verses what kind of emotions drive millionaires. In Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance he said, “Envy is ignorance.” In other words, to look at another person’s “Accomplishments,” or “Results,” and then to envy them, is truly unwise. For those people first chose their thoughts, in order to build the picture in their mind of the good that is now manifest in their life. That is what the great artist, Vincent Van Gogh, meant when he was asked how he did such beautiful work. He said, “I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.” In other words, he saw the picture in his mind first and then he made a replica on canvas—
I fail to see how this shows that emotions are thought up. If that was possible, why would anyone bother doing anything, if it's as simple as thinking yourself into ultimate bliss.
in oil, of the original in his mind. Now, I disagree with the last sentence in your paragraph regarding envy. Can you supply me with a biography or other form of documentation by somebody who had magnificent results in all aspects of their life and attributed it to envy?
Why would the results have to be magnificent? Would decent results not be better than no results? How can you truly know what someone is motivated by? Didn't ancient people fight wars over jealousy? A king being jealous over another kings wife or power. I'd use myself as an example for someone being motivated by envy, but that would be worthless in an arguement.
You ask me what drives criminals and millionaires. I could easily say greed or envy. It's just a point of view. If a person is unhappy and is trying to be happy, is he motivated by pain or pleasure?
When I discussed pain I stated that people who directly try to change their habits without changing their habitual way of thinking will not change their actions for a long period of time. They will soon revert back to their old habits, since they never changed those old habits. The old habits are still present. Therefore, an individual that tries to directly change their actions without changing their thinking will have negative associations to going after what they want. A person who tries to directly change their actions might see some results in the short run, but the results are eventually stopped by old habits and often times they gain the weight back. The OP actually said this was a problem for him in the past. When you lose weight and gain it back, that's probably not a very good feeling.
That's true, people looking to make a lifestyle change should try and identify the habits that caused all the bad stuff in their past and change them. However, that might be an incredibly hard task as some things are just wired so deep into a persons mind that changing them might be impossible.
I don't think emotions should be split into negative and positive. Emotions are something you should analyze as they are telling you something about yourself. Are you envious of everyone because they're all strong and you're weak? Maybe you should do something about it. You could train to become just as strong as others or you could ignore your emotions and try to change your way of thinking. (It doesn't matter if you're weak, you're still smart... etc.) Both paths have their pros and cons. Emotions can be irrational. Changing the way you think might not be beneficial, if the emotion you were feeling in the first place was rational. Do you see how any emotion can be a powerful motivator now?
OP's problem, like many others, is a mix of both. You have to listen to your negative emotions to motivate yourself into losing weight, but you can't let them take over you and make you lose all your motivation. I think this is what you truly wanted to say, but just couldn't put it shortly.
The feelings make people feel pain when they think of the idea of losing weight. Moreover, emotional pain isn't a very good motivating force. I really don't understand what you're trying to say here. Physical discomfort is what drives most people away from exercise and weight loss. You can't just shut that out of your mind, you can only deal with it and work out anyway.
Think about procrastination for a minute. People procrastinate because they associate more pain to an activity than pleasure. As their deadline for accomplishing the activity nears, the urgency to complete that activity increases the amount of pleasure this individual will get and eventually the individual does the activity near the time of the deadline. The idea of procrastination is easily analyzed if you look at students in schools. Students know they don't benefit from procrastination, but they do it anyways because they want pleasure in the moment. They are not thinking about what they want in the long term. These students are reacting to their physical environment. The cause of their problem (Procrastination) is their way of thinking. The action of procrastination is a side effect of their habitual way of thinking. To fix the problem they need to change their habitual way of thinking.
I sort of agree with this. Lack of motivation stems from the requirement of lots of work and no guaranteed reward. Sure you could work your ass off and get an A from that biology class, but if that's not something you are interested in and you know it's not going to help you in the future, why should you put any effort into it?
To discuss into further detail what spiritual growth is, we need to define spirit. To do so, we have to look at creativity. Creativity is expressed through the imagination. There are two forms of imaginations: the creative imagination and the synthetic imagination. Spirit comes from the creative imagination. The creative imagination allows people to originate ideas that didn't exist before. These ideas come from the reason faculty of the subconscious mind and are transferred into ideas by the imagination. is soirit. This is what causes people to get an inner urging or desire to make something better. They want to make the world better. This desire becomes stronger as the awareness of its presence grows. This desire to make everything better comes from spirit. Spirit is always for expansion or fuller expression. The nucleus of one's being is spirit. When the mind is extremely active your creative imagination kicks into action. Your creative imagination is what connects you with pure spirit. The mind enters this extremely active state through strong desire. The more you feed your desire with the food of thought, the stronger the desire becomes. It is when you are in this high level of mental activity with the creative imagination roaring that spirit presents you with a vision of something bigger, better, more beautiful, and more effective than the world has ever known. I define spiritual growth as the process of building this vision, thinking about the decision, then acting on the decision and eventually doing something extraordinary.
That sounds like any awfully long and messy way of describing motivation.
By the way, I would be interested in seeing you cover how people use pain to make their future more enjoyable in more detail.
It really depends on how you define pain, but I think you just generally mean the opposite of pleasure.
To put it really simple, work.
Work is usually something people don't like to do, so you could sort of classify that as pain.
You have to work, so that you can guarantee a future with less pain. If you can't think of a real life example, look at the OP.
What does losing weight require? Discipline and hard work. Is jogging fun or enjoyable at the beginning? Hell no, after running for 30 minutes you feel like your about to die, because you're so tired. You still keep doing it despite the pain and discomfort, because eventually it won't be like that. An ideal body also awaits you after months or years of work.
If you meant literal pain, take a look at plastic surgery. People go through weeks of painful healing to have a better nose or get rid of some unwanted cosmetic flaw.
|
On June 13 2011 14:34 SonuvBob wrote:Good luck to you sir! btw, if you ever need motivation for running, try Born to Run. Great book.
Fuck yes, this book changed my life. Definitely take the time to give it a read!
|
On June 14 2011 09:16 Sotamursu wrote:Show nested quote +On June 14 2011 02:11 tryummm wrote:
My main point is to alter the habitual way in which you think. This will alter how you feel, which will ultimately change how one acts. What most people do is try to change the action and they put little energy into the way they think. This often times doesn't work, especially in the long run, since people's old habits are not replaced with new, constructive habits. People get certain results because of their habitual way of thinking. I have read numerous autobiographies of some of the most successful people in the world and they all agreed that what people think about is absolutely essential to changing behavior.
Show nested quote +I wouldn't say thoughts cause emotions. As far as I know Lazarus' theory hasn't been proven to be correct. What I'd really like to know is what are these good habits of thinking and what kind of habits one should avoid. I never said thoughts cause emotions. I said thoughts cause feelings. Thoughts are impressed on the subconscious mind by the mental faculty of reason. They are expressed consciously as feelings. When you feel a certain way its because of what you are thinking about. As I have explained numerous times, people should replace habits that don't get them what they want with habits that get them what they want. Show nested quote +
When you act on that step you will see another step, and so on until you accomplish your goal. There is very little motivation in setting a small goal (aka accomplishing the next step you can see) and then setting a new goal every time you accomplish something. Its important to know where you are currently and where you want to end up. You then act on the ideas that enter your consciousness by using the decision principle I discussed in one of my previous posts.
That pretty much sounds like exactly what I was saying. Focus on each step without forgetting your ideal, since you will not reach your ideal without completing each step. Show nested quote +We have to stay away from the 7 negative emotions. We have to marry the positive emotions. Think about what kind of emotions drive criminals verses what kind of emotions drive millionaires. In Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance he said, “Envy is ignorance.” In other words, to look at another person’s “Accomplishments,” or “Results,” and then to envy them, is truly unwise. For those people first chose their thoughts, in order to build the picture in their mind of the good that is now manifest in their life. That is what the great artist, Vincent Van Gogh, meant when he was asked how he did such beautiful work. He said, “I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.” In other words, he saw the picture in his mind first and then he made a replica on canvas— Show nested quote +I fail to see how this shows that emotions are thought up. If that was possible, why would anyone bother doing anything, if it's as simple as thinking yourself into ultimate bliss. I don't understand what you are trying to suggest here? I never said that all you have to do is think about something and an instant later you will just get it from nothing. I said when people accomplish extraordinary things its because they started with an extraordinary picture. They then put the idea into action. I was discussing the first steps towards attaining what you want in that section of the post, I wasn't giving you the entire process. I was also providing you with information regarding ency that I have gathered from some brilliant individuals since you suggested envy was a positive emotion. Show nested quote +in oil, of the original in his mind. Now, I disagree with the last sentence in your paragraph regarding envy. Can you supply me with a biography or other form of documentation by somebody who had magnificent results in all aspects of their life and attributed it to envy? Show nested quote +Why would the results have to be magnificent? Would decent results not be better than no results? How can you truly know what someone is motivated by? Didn't ancient people fight wars over jealousy? A king being jealous over another kings wife or power. I'd use myself as an example for someone being motivated by envy, but that would be worthless in an arguement. The people who best understand human development are the ones who accomplished great things. People like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Napoleon Hill, etc...I don't see any reason why someone would strive for mediocre results when they can just get fantastic results? And when did I give anything specific that people are motivated by? People's habitual way of thinking comes from ideas fixated upon the subconscious mind. Moreover, the fact that jealousy has caused wars is a pretty good reason to avoid the negative emotion of jealousy. Show nested quote +You ask me what drives criminals and millionaires. I could easily say greed or envy. It's just a point of view. If a person is unhappy and is trying to be happy, is he motivated by pain or pleasure? Greed and Jealousy are 2 of the negative emotions I named. People seek to do things that provide them with pleasure, not pain. Go back to the procrastination example I provided you with. Show nested quote +When I discussed pain I stated that people who directly try to change their habits without changing their habitual way of thinking will not change their actions for a long period of time. They will soon revert back to their old habits, since they never changed those old habits. The old habits are still present. Therefore, an individual that tries to directly change their actions without changing their thinking will have negative associations to going after what they want. A person who tries to directly change their actions might see some results in the short run, but the results are eventually stopped by old habits and often times they gain the weight back. The OP actually said this was a problem for him in the past. When you lose weight and gain it back, that's probably not a very good feeling. Show nested quote +
That's true, people looking to make a lifestyle change should try and identify the habits that caused all the bad stuff in their past and change them. However, that might be an incredibly hard task as some things are just wired so deep into a persons mind that changing them might be impossible.
I don't think emotions should be split into negative and positive. Emotions are something you should analyze as they are telling you something about yourself. Are you envious of everyone because they're all strong and you're weak? Maybe you should do something about it. You could train to become just as strong as others or you could ignore your emotions and try to change your way of thinking. (It doesn't matter if you're weak, you're still smart... etc.) Both paths have their pros and cons. Emotions can be irrational. Changing the way you think might not be beneficial, if the emotion you were feeling in the first place was rational. Do you see how any emotion can be a powerful motivator now?
OP's problem, like many others, is a mix of both. You have to listen to your negative emotions to motivate yourself into losing weight, but you can't let them take over you and make you lose all your motivation. I think this is what you truly wanted to say, but just couldn't put it shortly.
Some conditioning is deep, however nothing is impossible to change. It may take a lot of repetition, but it can be changed. Imagine if you wrote down a new form of thinking you wished to employ and every time you used your cell phone or social media you committed yourself to read that card? Most people would probably be reading that card 100 times a day. Also, if people associate with the type of people they aim to be like they will be in a deductive conscious state and will change a lot of the conditioning even without repetition. I think your analysis of emotions is a limited way of thinking. What most people do is they look at their present results. They use those results to determine how they feel, then they let those feelings determine what they think. This is opposite of what successful individuals do. Successful individuals first employ thought to determine how they feel and consequently how they act. Their actions produce the result. I think you have the equation reversed. I would recommend you read Maxwell Maltz's book Psycho Cybernetics. Show nested quote +The feelings make people feel pain when they think of the idea of losing weight. Moreover, emotional pain isn't a very good motivating force. I really don't understand what you're trying to say here. Physical discomfort is what drives most people away from exercise and weight loss. You can't just shut that out of your mind, you can only deal with it and work out anyway. Show nested quote +
Think about procrastination for a minute. People procrastinate because they associate more pain to an activity than pleasure. As their deadline for accomplishing the activity nears, the urgency to complete that activity increases the amount of pleasure this individual will get and eventually the individual does the activity near the time of the deadline. The idea of procrastination is easily analyzed if you look at students in schools. Students know they don't benefit from procrastination, but they do it anyways because they want pleasure in the moment. They are not thinking about what they want in the long term. These students are reacting to their physical environment. The cause of their problem (Procrastination) is their way of thinking. The action of procrastination is a side effect of their habitual way of thinking. To fix the problem they need to change their habitual way of thinking.
Show nested quote +I sort of agree with this. Lack of motivation stems from the requirement of lots of work and no guaranteed reward. Sure you could work your ass off and get an A from that biology class, but if that's not something you are interested in and you know it's not going to help you in the future, why should you put any effort into it? Well if you force yourself to do a lot of homework for a class, you probably won't persist in doing the work. However, if you change your attitude, you can develop long term persistence. Attitude is the composite of your thoughts, feelings, and actions. I have been discussing attitude in pretty much all of my posts (Thoughts cause feelings which cause actions). If you changed your thinking about why you are studying Biology and get emotionally involved with positive ideas linked to studying Biology it becomes a lot easier and a lot more fun to study Biology. I actually took a Biology course in high school and absolutely hated it. A month into the class I wanted to drop it and I had absolutely no motivation to complete any of my homework or study for any of my tests. So what I did was I thought about how I could develop purpose, and hence desire, to study Biology. I came up with the idea of getting a book on memory development by Harry Lorayne and employed the 10,000 hour rule to developing my memory. At the time I knew memory was a faculty of the subconscious mind, but I knew very little else about it. I figured since education is the development of the mental faculties, I might as well develop them at school. I began to see Biology as a memory class rather than a boring science class. I ended up with an A, and I actually enjoyed the remainder of the course. The point is, when you see something as a negative what you need to do is change your perception. The law of opposite decrees that if there is a negative there absolutely has to be a positive. Just like you can't have an up without a down or a hot without a cold. When you think about the positives you will move towards your desired outcome. When you focus on the negatives, you are focusing on your physical reality (not your vision, or worthy ideal). When you are not focused on your worthy ideal you don't have a target to aim for and you consequently move backwards. Show nested quote +To discuss into further detail what spiritual growth is, we need to define spirit. To do so, we have to look at creativity. Creativity is expressed through the imagination. There are two forms of imaginations: the creative imagination and the synthetic imagination. Spirit comes from the creative imagination. The creative imagination allows people to originate ideas that didn't exist before. These ideas come from the reason faculty of the subconscious mind and are transferred into ideas by the imagination. is soirit. This is what causes people to get an inner urging or desire to make something better. They want to make the world better. This desire becomes stronger as the awareness of its presence grows. This desire to make everything better comes from spirit. Spirit is always for expansion or fuller expression. The nucleus of one's being is spirit. When the mind is extremely active your creative imagination kicks into action. Your creative imagination is what connects you with pure spirit. The mind enters this extremely active state through strong desire. The more you feed your desire with the food of thought, the stronger the desire becomes. It is when you are in this high level of mental activity with the creative imagination roaring that spirit presents you with a vision of something bigger, better, more beautiful, and more effective than the world has ever known. I define spiritual growth as the process of building this vision, thinking about the decision, then acting on the decision and eventually doing something extraordinary. You asked, I answered Show nested quote +By the way, I would be interested in seeing you cover how people use pain to make their future more enjoyable in more detail.
Show nested quote +
It really depends on how you define pain, but I think you just generally mean the opposite of pleasure.
To put it really simple, work.
Work is usually something people don't like to do, so you could sort of classify that as pain.
You have to work, so that you can guarantee a future with less pain. If you can't think of a real life example, look at the OP.
What does losing weight require? Discipline and hard work. Is jogging fun or enjoyable at the beginning? Hell no, after running for 30 minutes you feel like your about to die, because you're so tired. You still keep doing it despite the pain and discomfort, because eventually it won't be like that. An ideal body also awaits you after months or years of work.
If you meant literal pain, take a look at plastic surgery. People go through weeks of painful healing to have a better nose or get rid of some unwanted cosmetic flaw.
I don't agree with you that your work should cause you pain. In fact, your work should be your source of pleasure. People get their happiness from their work, not their leisure time. A lot of people do work at jobs they don't enjoy because they don't understand the concept of earning money. They were never taught how to earn money by their parents or in their schools. So they try to work long hours in order to make money, even though that's the absolute worst way to make money.
Moreover, the only way losing weight will require hard work is if you are trying to change your actions. When you change your habits and focus on positive emotions, losing weight will be an enjoyable experience. It will also become a natural experience. I'm not saying there won't be times where it won't be enjoyable..but for the most part losing weight will be an absolute blast. Your example regarding running for 30 minutes doesn't seem to make sense to me. I thought the outcome was to live in your ideal body? Why do you have to run for 30 minutes? Especially if you have never run before? A strength and conditioning coach I know has people who want to lose weight do 6-7 minutes of unweighted GTT instead of hitting a treadmill or running, especially if they don't have experience running. There are alternatives, you just have to employ your ability to think.
If you have to do something that you don't enjoy doing, just make it a habit. Once its a habit you won't think about it, you will just do it. Since you are not thinking about the activity, it won't bother you anymore.
Since our discussion has curved away from what the OP is discussing, if you would like to continue this conversation please do so through PMs. It will also be easier for me to give you complete responses since clearly I'm not an expert at formatting posts.
|
Good luck to you sir! I have been down this path and I'll say that if your mind is strong it's going to be somewhat easy although it's going to take a pretty long time. It took me one year to loose ~40kg ( I think that's 80 lbs ) with some amount of sports, no pills (obv) and a fairly loose diet. I did feel a bit weak at first but as I got used to the food and everything it became merely a routine I didn't ever think about.
You do need to be realistic though. I don't think there's any point in bullshitting yourself thinking that you will loose huge amounts of weight fast. This is a long process, after the initial shock where you suddenly drop quite a few kg pretty fast it's gonna stabilize to something a lot less spectacular. I my case I got to about 1-2 kg /week in the later stages. I will admit though that I took the lazy way and sports weren't that big of a thing so the process can most likely be accelerated but I'm sure ( my weight loss was done under a medical supervision ) that dropping a lot suddenly can get you into a hospital.
|
On June 13 2011 17:22 CaM27 wrote:
Hi.
I would recommend you to follow a program that mix a strict diet and workouts.
I just wanted to post to emphasize what CaM27 is talking about above. Weight loss, in and of itself is like 90% diet - it's all input vs. output. Exercise, while fantastic in strengthening your metabolism among several other benefits isn't nearly as important to general weight loss as proper diet. Most people would be quite surprised to see just how long they have to do cardio in order to burn off those 4 extra McNuggets. It's crazy.
Anyways, best of luck! I just wanted to make sure you're seeing posts like those from CaM and iMarshall and treating your diet with the importance you need to in order to reach your goals, as you didn't really mention it in your OP (or maybe I'm retarded and missed it).
|
I am reading all these posts and I really do appreciate the support and help! There are just too may posts to reply to them all! Thanks again =)
|
Good luck with it. I've been obese for 15 years of my life (now 20) but now I'm in okay shape, not really thin, but not overweight either.
I strongly suggest you visiting a dietician, as it was how I started my own journey, not only they know ins and outs of losing weight, but in some way they also help you about the mental part of it.
If you don't wanna do that, well I'll offer some of my own advice about what I've done:
1) Never stay hungry for more than 3 hours. Make sure you eat light snacks (a handful of fruit with some milk for example)
2) Drink 2-2,5 liters of water every day.
3) Have your breakfast within 30-1hour of your waking up. If you don't have time, grab an apple, take a slice of cheese, drink a glass of milk, you name it, but don't start the day hungry. Your body does not like it.
4) Exercise three times a week, anything to increase your cardiovascular activity is enough, I've lost one third of my body weight simply by walking(with a good tempo). Sports activies are also good. This is also really important: DON'T OVERDO THE EXERCISE! Yes, a lot of exercising (like 5 times a week or even more) will make you lose weight faster, but once you cannot maintain that level of activity, you will either stop losing weight, or it will slow down (worse case is gaining some or all of it back, which have happened to me, I've gained 10 kilograms and right now on a diet to deal with that). Try to maintain a schedule that you think you can more or less maintain for some time.
5) Take every meal you eat (and what you eat specifically for that meal) sort of like a quest. Remind yourself that "This is my portion to eat, anything more than that is not good for my aim, and this much is enough and healthy for my body." Once you realize this, mentally it'll be really tough to break away from your program.
6) Avoid alcoholic beverages. Some amount is acceptable provided that it doesn't happen too frequently (a glass of wine along with your evening meal which let's say, has some red meat with boiled vegetables) but in general, as a rule, you don' want to consume them.
7) Avoid sweets, fruits should be your only source (and they should be limited as well, a general amount is an handful)
7) Believe in yourself! If in doubt remember me, I've lost ONE THIRD of my body weight (40 kilograms) , with enough determination and effort, it is nothing to reach your goal!
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
