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eprogramming the mind is easier, scientists now believe, than we used to think. All we have to do is replace old bad habits with new good ones, and the mind will comply, building newer, healthier pathways in the brain that soon become routine. This rebuilding begins with replacing habitual unhealthy thoughts like “I’m really in the mood for a double cheeseburger and fries” to healthier thoughts like “I think I’ll chop up a batch of fresh veggies.”
Bad habits, good intentions. I’ve got years of experience with both. I’m a reader and a writer, so the more I work, the less I walk. That’s my worst bad habit: lack of exercise. Then there’s the overeating thing. It happened gradually. I wanted to be kind to myself, and what is kinder than forking up a slice of chocolate cake?
After years of subtle cues, at the age of 52, various body parts gave rude notice: if I wanted to continue to enjoy a pain-free and independent lifestyle, my health needed a make-over.
Wanting to change bad eating and exercise habits is the first step toward better health, but my brain has had a difficult time receiving this message. Through the years, my fall-back routine of eating junk while reading or watching television was my method of choice for relaxation. If I could begin to habitually think new thoughts, I would actually change the structure of my brain, change the way I typically react to stress, boredom, or just a really bad day.
Since I’ve learned about my brain’s remarkable ability to learn to love healthier habits, I’ve tried a variety of ways to pave a new improved path. I set goals. I write out healthy lifestyle plans. I blog. I use affirmations and prayers. I regularly contact supportive friends to walk and talk with about our desire for better health habits. I read magazines and books by the dozens.
Each of these actions has had some positive effects, but none of them has worked as efficiently, quickly and effortlessly as hypnosis. A session with writer and certified clinical hypnotherapist Sara Lewis changed my mind about exercise and eating in a very short time in some amazing ways.
I live in Michigan. Lewis sees clients by appointment at her office in Solana Beach, California. Luckily, her hypnosis method, called Transformational Meditation, works just as well over the phone or by listening to a recorded guided meditation, available as a download or CD that Lewis personalizes according to each clients’ specific needs.
She can help people quit smoking or begin writing. She has cured insomniacs, inspired artists, and alleviated physical and psychic pain. And she helped me sustain, for an entire summer, healthy eating and exercise habits. She did this by replacing deeply rooted habits of mind with new, more positive thought patterns and images.
After an initial information-gathering consultation, Lewis wrote a 15 minute guided Transformation Meditation for me that zeroed in on my individual needs, which I’d nailed down to three: sleeping deeper, eating healthier, and exercising more.
The changes were dramatic and immediate. I listened to my guided meditation in the afternoon, and that night I slept for eight hours, double what I’d been averaging for several months before using Lewis’s meditation.
My worst diet issue involved sugar and refined carbs. Lewis’s meditation suggests not simply replacing these unhealthy foods with whole grains, fresh fruits and lots of vegetables, but that I was even now more attracted to fruits and vegetables and ate them all the time, really preferring them to other foods.
Everything in the meditation speaks as if my mind has already changed for the better, as if I’ve already begun and am succeeding brilliantly with replacing sweets and snack foods with fruits and vegetables. This powerful yet relaxed affirmation gives me daily positive reinforcement. As the persuasive words plant themselves firmly into my consciousness, my mind believes, and my body acts accordingly.
At first, I was not at all sure this aspect of Lewis’s program would work for me. I’ve always preferred my fruit in a pie and have never been a veggie person. I have a deep aversion to canned vegetables involving some childhood forced-feeding, but don’t despise the taste of fresh vegetables. It’s the washing, peeling and chopping of them that I resist. Ripping open a bag of potato chips is just a lot easier.
And yet a major change from chips to carrot sticks started only a few days after I started listening to my personalized guided meditation. As I entered the grocery store, I heard Lewis’s voice in my head, saying I preferred fruits and vegetables, and my cart turned toward the produce aisle.
As I shopped, I saw the other foods, the cookies and chips and chocolate, I had formerly craved and had every week tried with Xena-like effort to resist, but had no urge at all to reach for even one of those former treats. No inner battle to walk away from these foods, I just wasn’t interested.
Within a week, I had given up all sweets and refined carbs. The Farmer’s Market has now replaced the local bakery as my favorite place to shop for food. My previous ever-present longing for sugary, processed foods has simply disappeared. Even on nights at the end of the shopping week when the fridge is devoid of fresh veggies and luscious fruit, I settle for healthy leftovers, which satisfy my body’s hunger.
One such evening, after a particularly stressful day and uninspired dinner, I felt less than fulfilled, emotionally cheated because my meal had been simply satisfactory instead of delicious. My stomach was full, but I felt empty inside.
Without realizing it consciously, my mind went to the stash of brownies in the freezer. I remembered the hot fudge sauce in the fridge, too. My mind built a beautiful hot fudge brownie sundae. Before Transformation Meditation, I would have gone right to the kitchen to prepare the dessert. But on that night, despite picturing the brownie slathered in fudge sauce, despite imagining how that first bite would taste, I had no desire to actually eat it. The pictures I conjured produced zero mouth hunger. I hate to keep repeating myself, but I was amazed.
Lewis’s hypnotic suggestion had taken firm hold. Sweets had lost their power to soothe my emotions. They no longer compelled me to lose control of a healthy diet. This amazing breakthrough moment feels like a blessing and I’m happy to say it’s still in place.
My biggest challenge remains exercise, although I have doubled my weekly physical activity. When life gets hectic and I don’t take the time to stop and listen to my guided meditation, after a few days, I sleep fitfully, exercise sporadically, and crave those old emotional eating fixes.
One particularly stressful day, an incident involving a candy bar and a bag of chips left me feeling like a desperate failure. Lewis labels these slips normal, particularly if the guided meditation has not been used consistently.
After the chocolate and chips incident, stressful events, both professional and personal, continued to build. Huge time crunches, pessimistic moods and frantic anxiety made it even more difficult to talk myself into sitting down to listen to my guided meditation.
But one morning, I had a couple of free hours, and instead of doing chores, or reaching for a book and a bag of chips, I listened to my guided meditation.
Fifteen minutes later, I tied the laces on my walking shoes, grabbed my iPod, and headed out the door for a walk. And here’s the amazing part: that walk out the door wasn’t forced. I actually looked forward to the fresh air and the wonderful feeling I knew was coming with that physical movement.
If you’ve tried without success to change your bad habits, I suggest you give Transformative Mediation, or hypnotherapy, a chance. It will change your life and your mind.
– Read Cindy Harrison’s struggles and successes with healthy living at www.cynthiaharrison.com/losingit
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