The Winning Combination: Diet and Guided Imagery
What determines our body weight?
The first factor is our nutrition , meaning: what, how, and how much we eat.
When addressing the nutritional factor, it is important to tailor the meal plan personally to the individual, according to their daily routine and habits, and not the other way around.
Other important factors are our physiology and genetics, which dictate our metabolic rate, health status, and fat distribution.
Another highly significant factor is the emotional factor. Research shows that unbalanced emotions lead to overeating.
A high percentage of those carrying excess weight suffer from emotional eating. Emotions—both negative and positive—are what drive overeating: fear, anger, frustration, joy, shame, satisfaction, sadness, and more.
When one of the factors is emotions, they must be addressed using tools specifically designed for that purpose.
Another very important factor is our subconscious, which controls about 83% of our behavior.
This means that most of the time we act automatically at the subconscious level, explaining why we regain all the weight back despite all the willpower we manage to summon. In order to become thin and stay that way, we need to train the subconscious.
The subconscious, which is primarily responsible for fear mechanisms and conditioning, does not like change; therefore, every time a person makes a change, signals are sent to block the process. This explains why behavioral change is so difficult.
A thin person and an overweight person behave completely differently in their natural relationship with food. Their entire thought process regarding food is different: for a thin person, food is fuel for the body, a vital necessity. Food does not control them.
For an overweight person, there are conditionings and associations linking food with certain emotions—for example, 'I had a hard day, and I deserve to compensate myself with food.' To address the mental factor, we must develop other associations and conditionings, like those of a thin person—developing a 'thin mind'.
Any diet program that fails to address our subconscious part—our emotions and thoughts—will not solve the problem at its root, and the weight gain is likely to return.
We can communicate with the subconscious using guided imagery and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) techniques.
Guided imagery is essentially a 'conversation' with the subconscious. This conversation takes place in a state of relaxation and ease, with eyes closed, while our conscious mind 'rests' and allows this communication to happen.
Scientific studies have proven that the human brain does not distinguish between imagination and reality in terms of neurological and physiological phenomena. For example, when we imagine being by the shore of a lake shaded by trees in a serene atmosphere, our body relaxes in the exact same way it would if we were actually there.
Or, for instance, when we imagine a juicy steak or dish in our mouth, we salivate as if the real steak or food
were actually in our mouth. When we imagine situations in detail, including our desired outcome, neural connections for the experience are formed and stored in the brain. When the moment of truth arrives, the feeling will be the same, activating the same brain and body circuits.
With the help of guided imagery, internal motivation for change can be strengthened. The person envisions themselves as they wish to look—their 'optimal self'—and experiences through all their senses how they look, sound, and feel in various situations.
Through guided imagery, one can also visualize what difficulties might arise and try to prepare for them in advance in the imagination.
Guided imagery is a tool that allows us to solve problems. For example, if the issue is binge eating at specific times of the day as a fixed pattern, the client is asked to recall such an event and experience it in their imagination, just like in a movie, in a very detailed and clear way. Then, they try to formulate a desired behavior in their imagination; the client sees themselves behaving as they chose, rather than the automatic way they usually behave. In this way, the behavioral change can be established in the subconscious, creating new neural pathways and behavioral patterns.
Undoubtedly, weight management treatment that integrates this powerful tool of guided imagery can bring about a true and lasting internal change.