The Little Thing in Your Head That’s Keeping You Fat
I have no doubt that a scientist somewhere just read the title of this article and said out loud, “YES! Venuto is right! That little thing in your head – the hypothalamus – it IS the thing that is keeping you fat! By George, that Venuto guy isn’t a dumb bodybuilder after all – he’s been doing his research!” At which moment, I will be shaking my head and thinking, “you need to get out of the laboratory and into the real world, with real people, buddy.” Okay, okay, to be fair, Neuro-endocrine control of appetite and body fat really is quite fascinating. But today, I’m talking aboutPSYCH-ology, not PHYSI-ology. The little thing in your head that’s keeping you fat is actually just a….
Limiting belief!
Self-limiting beliefs are among the biggest problems that people deal with in their struggles to achieve a healthy ideal weight. They’re also one of the reasons that so many people start to falter or fall off the diet and exercise wagon as early as late January or early February in their New Year’s goal pursuits.
If you’re that science guy I spoke of and you’re about to bail because you’re thinking, “Here we go again… another psycho-babble, self help article,” then think again. A belief is the force behind the placebo effect, which is well known by every scientist and medical professional. A respected doctor gives a patient a pill and is told it’s a powerful drug. The patient gets well immediately, not knowing that the “miraculous” substance was a dummy pill. Inert. Sugar. The miracle was in the mind.
But beliefs are not only involved in the mind-body connection, they are unconscious programs that control your behavior. The most important factor in whether you achieve the body and the health you want is NOT what diet or training program you follow. It’s what makes you follow your diet and training program. And guess what? What you believe controls your behavior – whether you will stick with your program or sabotage it with cheating, bingeing or inconsistency.
What to do about limiting beliefs
Ok, so now you agree that beliefs are psychological factors that affect you physically by controlling your behavior, including your eating, exercising and lifestyle. What now? 3 steps. 2 questions.
STEP 1: IDENTIFY LIMITING BELIEFS
You are fully aware of many of your beliefs. For example, beliefs about spirituality or politics are usually in the front of your conscious mind.
But the beliefs that hold back your health and physical development the most are usually the ones you don’t even know you have. They are like unconscious “brain software,” running silently in the background.
So the first step is to bring those unconscious and potentially damaging beliefs up to the surface so you are aware of them. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know you have one.
2 Quick Questions That Will Help Draw Out Your Beliefs
Beliefs can go back to childhood, but don’t worry, you don’t have to go to a psychotherapist and be regressed back to kindergarten. It’s simpler than that. But it does pay to do this questioning process as a formal “exercise” with serious quiet time, with pen and paper (instead of just thinking about it).
Question #1: What causes me to be overweight (or unhealthy, or not having the body I want)?
Question #2: What’s preventing me from getting leaner? (or healthier?)
Spend some time with it and see how big of a list you can create. Ask yourself whether each belief helps or hurts you. Does it move you forward or backward. Does it empower or disempower you? The ones that hurt you or hold you back will be obvious. You may come up with beliefs such as:
“I’m overweight and I can’t get leaner because”:
I have no time
I’m too old
I can’t stop eating
I hate exercise
You just can’t do it when you have 4 kids
It’s impossible after having a hip replacement
But the million dollar question is: are these beliefs actually true?
Beliefs are not facts. You may hold your beliefs as absolute reality, but when you deconstruct them and challenge them, you may see that they don’t hold any water.
Self limiting beliefs are false interpretations (negative thought patterns) that hold you back. And you keep holding on to them because making excuses and staying the same is a lot more convenient than changing, isn’t it? Change requires hard work, effort and leaving your comfort zone.
Your mission now: weaken the limiting beliefs and get rid of them
STEP 2: CHALLENGE THOSE BELIEFS
How do you challenge a belief? 4 ways:
(A) Challenge it directly: Is the belief even valid at all? See if you can find a “counter example” that disproves your belief. For example; if you think that after you’ve had 3 or 4 kids, it’s impossible to get a nice flat stomach, what will you say after I introduce you to a dozen of my clients and readers who had 3 or 4 kids and went from bulging belly to rock-hard flat stomach? If they did it, then how could your belief be valid? Answer: It WASN’T! You believed something false and inaccurate and it was holding you back!
(B) Challenge the source: Is it your belief, or have you been living what your parents, peers or culture handed down to you? Just the realization that a belief wasn’t yours to begin with is enough to shatter it.
(C) Challenge the usefulness of the belief: Ok, so you believed something when you were younger. Does still believing it has any usefulness today? Does it help you move closer to what you want in your life today? If not, then wouldn’t today be a good time to get rid of it?
(D) Challenging the belief by weighing the consequences: If you keep this belief, what is it going to cost you? What will the pain be like? What will you miss? And what will these consequences be if you don’t change it NOW?
STEP 3: INSTALL A NEW BELIEF
Nature abhors a vacuum, as Spinoza once said. You don’t simply get rid of a belief, you must also replace it. What things would you want and need to believe instead that would create positive behaviors that would move you toward your goal? Write them down, then massage them into an affirmation. For example, if you’ve hung your hat on the belief that you didn’t have time to exercise, could you write a new affirmation of belief similar to this?
“I’m a very busy person, so that means I must set clear priorities and I must keep my health and body on the top of my priority list. I always schedule time for my most important priorities, I am efficient with my training, and I use every minute of my day wisely. And if Barack Obama, the busiest person in the world, can train for 45 minutes a day 6 days a week, there’s no excuse for me. I can do it too.”
Write down your new belief affirmations and read them, right along with your goals, every day.
Then “activate” this affirmation by doing what Olympic and professional athletes do: engaging in mental rehearsal. Visualize yourself carrying out the behaviors that this belief would generate. Think about and feel what it would be like to take those positive actions steps and play mental movies of how your life would change by doing so. Involve all your senses: see it, hear it, feel it.
Keep it up until you start to see your behavior change and your habitual actions come into alignment with your goals/intentions. If you’re diligent, you’ll see changes in attitude and behavior with 21-30 days. It may happen sooner. It may take longer if you’ve carried deep, lifelong limiting beliefs. But in less than a month, the roots of the new belief pattern will be formed.
Then you can update your goals and affirmations to reflect your current priorities and move on to the next goal you want to achieve or the next limiting belief you want to change. Keep THAT up, and pretty soon, you will be LIMIT-LESS!
BELIEVE ME, spending quality time understanding and working on your beliefs is a lot more productive than spending time in forums arguing about whether a low carb program is better than a high carb program… or even whether the cure for obesity is found in the arcuate nucleus of the lower hypothalamus. It’s in your head all right… but most people have been looking in the wrong place.
Train hard and expect success,
Tom Venuto
Fat Loss Coach
Author Bio: Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and freelance fitness writer. Tom is the author of “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using secrets of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com
The Power of Goal Setting
Without goals we are like a ship on the middle of the see, just drifting away with no sense of direction. It just goes with the flow, so to speak, and if it ever gets anywhere it is just by mere accident. In order to achieve success in our bodybuilding program, our goal should be clearly defined and engrained in our brains. Otherwise, like the boat on the example above, if you get anywhere it will be by mere chance.
Have you ever noticed that some people go to the gym year after year and they always look the same? I have approached people like that and asked them about their goals. Nine out of ten times they don’t have a clear definition of what they want. Therefore, if you don’t know where your target is, how can you hope to shoot at it and get it?
As a small exercise, I would like you to take out a small piece of paper (or open up Word or your text editor in your PC) and I want you to write two things.
The first thing will be your long term goals. Be specific!
Write the measurements that you will have (Chest, Arms, Waist, Thighs, Calves, Forearms), your body fat percentage and your total body weight. Please, don’t limit yourself to what you think you can achieve; write down what you want (However at the same time, if you are a male bodybuilder and you want 28 inch Arms, know that such goal is unrealistic. Shoot for 20 inches instead).
Go get that pad out now…. I’m waiting..
So did you wrote down your long term goals? If not, stop reading and do so now! If you are reading this paragraph I will assume that you wrote down your long term goals. Now, the problem is that such goals look so far away. Well, every long trip starts with the first step, therefore, now I want you to write your short term goals.
Short term goals should be analyzed every 6 to 12 weeks. Obviously, short term goals are going to be smaller than long term goals. However, by adding smaller short term goals, you will get to your long term goals in due time. When you write down your goals, be positive and have no doubt in your mind that you can achieve them.
This is crucial! So go ahead and right now write your short term goals. Do it in the following format:
For the next _____ (choose 6 or 12 weeks) weeks I will:
Lose ______ pounds of fat
Gain ______ pounds of muscle
Weight ______ pounds
Have Measurements of:
Chest ______
Arms ______
Thighs ______
Calves ______
Waist ______
Once you have all of those goals written down, write down what ACTIONS will you take for the next 6 or 12 weeks to get there. For instance:
Action Plan:
I will eat 6 balanced meals a day (1 every three hours)
I will wake up to exercise and do cardio first thing in the morning three times a week.
I will do 5 weight training sessions a week.
I will get 8 hours of sleep (7 minimum) every day.
I will drink 1 gallon of water a day.
I will only have 1 cheat meal a week.
Also, if you want to, take pictures of how you currently look (be sure to also document, current measurements, bodyweight, body fat, etc….). This is a great way to stay motivated as when you look at your pictures from now, and then you look at pictures of yourself a year later, you will see a huge difference!
Now that you have written all of this down, it is time to get to your actions. If you follow your action plan religiously and you miss your goals by a bit, DON’T GET DISCOURAGED! You should have seen progress anyway (here is where pictures really pay off; get a digital camera) and this is what we are shooting for; constant progress as this is what will get us to the goals we want.
If you missed the mark due to the fact that you did not follow your action plan to the letter, don’t punish yourself for it. Just set your new goals and be more determined in following your action plan so that you get there this time.
If you mess up your plan for a day, don’t drop the whole thing and quit! I see this very often! If you encounter one of those days, just recover the following day by starting the plan again.
Now that you have goals, go ahead and put your plan into action so that you can go ahead and achieve them.
If your interested in more information about my complete Body Body Building & Fat Loss Program check out www.losefatandgainmuscle.com
Author Bio: Hugo Rivera CFT, SPN, BSCE. is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, multi certified personal trainer, industry consultant and fitness expert who not only knows training and nutrition theory, but also applies it on a daily basis as evidenced by the fact that he’s always in shape and by his awards and high placings at numerous national level bodybuilding competitions. He is also an internationally known best selling fitness author with a very successful franchise of books called “The Body Sculpting Bibles” which collectively have sold over a million copies. Hugo is also author of the very popular “Body Re-Engineering” e-book, which teaches you how to gain lean muscle mass and get lean without drugs, or fancy expensive supplements, using the secrets he devised after many years of weight problems as a child.For more information on Hugo’s Muscle Building / Fat Loss Program please click on the link below:
www.losefatandgainmuscle.com
Categories: Featured, Motivation Tags: goal-setting, hugo rivera
Count Down To Fitness Success And Keep Your Motivation Drive Alive
There are many fantastic ways to get focused and motivated to begin a diet or exercise program, but often the most difficult thing to do is keep that drive and ambition alive for more than a few weeks and see your goal through to completion.
Within just weeks of starting, many people have already hit their first snag or setback, and as a result, have slipped backwards in the mental focus and motivation department. Setting goals in writing is an essential step to success, but how do you stay focused on them? One technique I have used ever since my very first bodybuilding competition 18 years ago, is…
The “contest countdown calendar.”
I have used it ever since, through 28 competitions and it will work for you too, for any fitness goal.
I purchase a desk or wall calendar – the type that shows each week stretching horizontally across the page with an open block of space for each day.
After I set my goal and place a deadline on it, I do NOT stop there. I take out my calendar and start counting backwards from my target goal deadline to the present day.
T-minus 117 days….
T-minus 116 days…
T-minus 115 days….
I also fill in my workouts for the entire 3-4 month period, which is the typical length I allow for my mid-range goals like contest prep.
you would be shocked – pleasantly so – just how focused this keeps you. Even better still, you get MORE and MORE motivated with each passing day you countdown because the deadline is getting closer
Deadlines are absolutely critical to your success. Little gets done without deadlines.
There is a saying in management and psychology that “work will always expand to fill the time allowed for it’s completion.”
Remember term papers in school? when you were given a term paper assignment and you had the entire semeseter to do it, did you run home that first night and get crankin on it?
How about after a week? two weeks? A month? TWO MONTHS?
probably not, eh?
If youre like most people, you put it off until the last minute and you barely got it turned in on time. In fact, there are always a few people who pull all nighters the night before!
Alas, the power of the deadline!
In your fitness endeavors, if you dont have IMPENDING deadlines that give you that twinge in your stomach that says “take action now, or else!” then you find it very easy to say to yourself, ‘ I have plenty of time so this one cheat meal doesnt matter… it doesnt make much difference at this point if I skip this one workout… I have time to make it up…”
And then, just like the term paper, you are scrambling at the last minute to reach your weight goal. But in the case of a your body, the consequences are more severe and painful than just a bad grade or late penalty.
Inevitably, you succumb to crash dieting and overtraining or other unhealthy fast-weight-loss madness, which eats up your own muscle like a hungry cannibal and sends you spiraling into the dark pit of metabolic damage and the inevitable plateau and weight gain that follow.
But the solution is so simple: Count your way down to success!
Don’t stop with setting goals. Put your goal countdown on paper, review your goals every single day, AND know, every single day, how many days there are until your target goal date. You will stay more consciously focused and even better, your unconscious mind will go to work for you in keeping you motivated, on track, and on schedule. You’ll come in for a landing on your goal deadline date like an F-16 landing on an aircraft carrier.
I just did my countdown calendar earlier this week… T minus 117 days til my next bodybuilding competition, and thanks to this simple but powerful technique, I’m already focused like a laser beam and have been making steady progress without so much as a hiccup…
Don’t under-estimate this simple technique… Give it an honest test… because it’s often the simplest motivational techniques that are the most powerful of all!.
Author Bio: Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder and author of the #1 best selling e-book, “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to burn fat without drugs or supplements using the little-known secrets of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and turbo-charge your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com.
Categories: Featured, Motivation Tags: goal-setting, goals, Motivation, tom venuto
