Lifestyle Choices

Where behaviorist techniques can help change the outer things that affect your appetite and eating patterns, creative imagery can help your inner attitudes. And attitudes are important. For how you see yourself, how you think of yourself, and how you think of food, day after day, has a great deal to say about what you become—fat or thin, in control or out of control, truly responsible for yourself or at the mercy of others and circumstances.

In recent years, many useful techniques of meditation, often coupled with guided fantasy or creative imagery, have been developed. They can be helpful to the dieter in three ways. First, all of them demand the use of some form of deep relaxation practiced twice a day. This, even on its own, eliminates much of the tension-provoked eating that leads to weight gain and gives you another (less fattening) way of coping with stress and anxiety than turning to food for comfort. Second, many of these mind trips give you access to information from your subconscious and to insight, which make the process of slimming easier. Finally, directing your imagination toward leanness and toward the elimination of whatever blocks have been in the way of it helps to bring about the change in size you are seeking and to maintain it afterward.

There are two different approaches to mind-bending for weight loss—meditation and creative imagery. You can use either or both.

The Slenderizing Meditation

Using the relaxation response technique, substitute the word “slim” “lean,” “trim,” or “health” (whichever sounds best to you) for your ordinary mantra. Put yourself into a state of deep conscious relaxation for fifteen minutes, twice a day, preferably right before a meal. The best time is usually when you get up in the morning (even if you have to get up fifteen minutes earlier to make it possible). Then again just before lunch or dinner. If you can’t manage it then, take time out in the middle of the day, or do it in the evening after dinner.

This has the effect of stilling your mind and instilling the idea of slimness so that eventually it becomes second nature.

The body image of most overweight women is quite distorted. They think of themselves as overweight and picture their physical form as very large and bulky and without grace. This unconscious picture only further contributes to the condition of being fat. Used regularly, meditation technique slowly and steadily helps to alter this image for the better. Gradually you begin to see yourself as thin rather than fat. You begin to behave as thin people do in their eating habits and in how you dress and you find it easier to be thin than fat. This is something that you have to experience to appreciate but it is extraordinarily worthwhile and an essential part of any well-designed program for weight control.

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