by JJ Smith
As you can imagine, doing a study to measure a person’s spirituality is difficult. After all, how do you measure what is in a person’s soul? However, most researchers agree that there is a positive relationship between good spiritual practices and better health outcomes.
A good spiritual practice specifically aids in weight loss by lowering stress, which reduces cortisol levels and reduces fat storage. It improves mental clarity and creates a higher commitment to tasks, which makes it easier for you to do what you planned and know how to do. Being healthy and strong spiritually will allow you to win in the battle against emotional eating because it improves the overall feeling of self-fulfillment and makes it easier to accept and deal with negative emotions.
It is great that science confirms our spiritual teachings, but the real confirmation should come from a place deep in your soul: your Spirit! You should know in your soul that you are a special creation with a unique purpose and connection to this world. It is your own personal spiritual journey to discover your life’s meaning and purpose so that you can live your very best life.
HOW TO ACHIEVE A STRONGER SPIRITUAL FOUNDATION FOR WEIGHT LOSS
There are a number of ways to tap into a greater level of spirituality. These practices apply to both those that are religious and those that are not. Religion does not conflict with these spiritual practices. For example, regardless of your religion, everyone can benefit from becoming more enlightened through study and quieting of the mind. Visualization, connecting with nature, art, and music are good for everyone’s soul.
Described below are various categories of ways to reach a higher level of spirituality. Some of them you will already be engaged in on a regular basis and others you will want to consider adding, as they will help you better connect to yourself and the world. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but will get you started and will have a positive impact on your weight-loss journey and overall well-being.
• Contemplative activities can promote deep, reflective thinking. Examples are meditation, prayer, journaling, visualization, and spending time alone. These are practices that connect you to your inner soul and bring you a sense of peace and promote clarity. As an example, you can start the day with prayer, meditation, or self-reflection.
• Enlightenment involves learning new ideas for the advancement of the individual. Examples would include reading Scriptures, deep study, and reading inspirational books.
• Physical involves any physical activity that requires movement by the body or physical exertion by your muscles. Examples include yoga, martial arts, exercise, or walking.
• Nature does wonders for the soul. When we spend time in nature, we are reminded that life is fleeting and sometimes we need that perspective in order to remember what truly matters. Additionally, views of the water, sunrises and sunsets, and mountain ranges all have a calming effect for most.
• Music/Arts inspire spiritual expression. Music and the arts are a creative expression that have a profound impact on the mind by allowing a person to connect with a deeper part of themselves.
• Fellowship is more than merely a time to get together for various activities and food. Every fellowship event offers an opportunity to connect with like-minded folks who are also trying to grow spiritually. It allows you to connect with others, interact, experience, observe, become more tolerant, learn, and share with others who are also on a journey to grow spiritually.
• Acts of kindness pave the way for spiritual growth. It allows you to show the tender mercy and kindness of God. Examples include volunteering, giving, or charity work of any kind.
CONCLUSION
The standard ways of addressing weight loss have too often failed or had fleeting results, so it is time to look for a deeper approach for long-term success. We have learned that good spiritual practices have such a positive impact on our health and weight, so by addressing spirituality as a necessary tool for weight loss, you are dealing with the root cause of why you have struggled with your weight for so long. You have to assess and apply good spiritual practices that work to support weight loss, healthy living, and happiness.
Permanent weight loss is a transformative experience because it is a spiritual battle, not just a physical one. For many of us, we truly need a miracle to get this weight off because we have tried every diet and weight-loss plan out there. You can break free of your unhealthy eating habits. Today, I feel I have a good relationship with food. I can have ice cream in my refrigerator and not eat it for weeks. I do not overindulge nor do I deny myself the ice cream, because the food is never the real issue. I give myself permission to eat unhealthy food from time to time and to enjoy it.
You can lose excess weight once and for all. By doing the spiritual work, along with changing your habits and your environment, eating clean food, and incorporating good exercise habits, you have no reason not to achieve your ideal weight. This is your new beginning. You are no longer the same person you used to be. Your mind and body are no longer the same. Always honor the spirit, and the mind and body will follow.
Part Three
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30-DAY MENTAL MASTERY CHALLENGE
Part 3, 30-Day Mental Mastery Challenge, provides thirty days of exercises supporting the strategies taught in the SUCCESS System to ensure you can create new habits and behaviors that create lasting and permanent weight loss for life. These thirty exercises will help you get your mind right, strengthen your mental focus, and overcome bingeing and emotional eating so that you can get to your goal weight once and for all.
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30-Day Mental Mastery Challenge
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ONE OF THE most important things folks need for long-term weight-loss success is Mental Mastery. Dieters know that there is more to weight loss than “eat less and exercise,” and this book provides the missing piece they need to win at weight loss once and for all. In this book, we teach dieters the SUCCESS System, seven mental strategies required for permanent weight loss.
The 30-Day Mental Mastery Challenge provides thirty days of exercises supporting the strategies taught in the SUCCESS System. This will ensure that you create new habits and behaviors that create lasting and permanent change allowing you to maintain a healthy weight for life. These thirty exercises will help you process toxic emotions, strengthen your mental focus, and overcome emotional eating so that you achieve your desired weight.
Although the path to losing weight is much more than a 30-day plan, I want you to apply the strategies and solutions in the SUCCESS System so you have a foundation to create and maintain a whole new way of living and relating to food and your body.
The purpose of this challenge is simple: to be a wake-up call that will challenge those who are committed to getting slim and healthy. The exercises and strategies in this 30-Day Challenge will help you produce specific, measurable, long-lasting changes in yourself so that you can live the life of your dreams.
WHAT YOU NEED TO COMPLETE THE 30-DAY MENTAL MASTERY CHALLENGE:
1. Journal (to capture your thoughts and feelings)
2. Pen/pencil (to write down your thoughts and feelings)
3. Open heart (to be honest about mistakes you have made in the past)
DAY 1: LOVE ME SOME ME (THE MIRROR EXERCISE)
Food for thought: Loving yourself first sends a clear message that you are to be recognized, celebrated, appreciated, and loved.
Exercise:
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Self-love is key to maintaining your healthy, ideal weight. The body has a natural ability to create and maintain the perfect weight for you as long as you are aligned with your true self.
Begin by standing in front of a mirror and looking deeply into your own eyes. Ask yourself if there is something you see there that you like. Can you look deeply into your own eyes and see yourself as God sees you? Can you see beyond your physical appearance? Can you accept the person you see in the mirror?
As you stare at yourself in the mirror, sa
y the following affirmations:
1. I will do my best to love and respect my body. My body is a gift and deserves to be treated with love and kindness. I am sorry for the pain that I have caused you.
2. I am beautiful inside and out. I am perfect in this moment as I continue to move toward accepting myself.
3. My body deserves love. My body deserves to be respected. My body has gone through a lot and continues to carry me through, and for that I am grateful.
4. I will choose to help my body stay healthy by nurturing it with self-love, healthy food, and consistent exercise.
5. I know that this journey is a struggle, but I am going to try hard and do the best I can.
The point is to focus on self-love and self-acceptance and let go of what you believe other people think of you. In doing this, you have so much more power. You cannot control how other people perceive you. In fact, it has nothing to do with you—it is in their hands. However, you can control how you perceive yourself and you can control how you care and love for yourself. In doing this, you embrace your own power.
DAY 2: KNOW YOUR WEIGHTS
Food for thought: Know that there is more than one number on the scale that can make you feel accomplished.
Exercise:
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Be careful of how you view the scale as it’s just a data point, a tool to determine your physical weight, but it has no measurement for determining your worth. Do you get on your scale, hoping for a certain number to appear? If that number is not there, do you lose all motivation? If so, you may be setting yourself up for continual disappointment. Rather than focus on just one number, consider other ways to think about the numbers on the scale. In your journal, note the following:
1. Dream weight: A weight you would choose if you could weigh whatever you wanted.
2. Happy weight: This weight is not the one you’d choose as your ideal, but you’d be happy if you weighed only this much. You would still feel accomplished if you hit this weight.
3. Acceptable weight: A weight that would not make you particularly happy, but that you could be satisfied with or feel some sense of progress.
4. Never-again weight. The all-time high that you never want to hit again.
In your journal, jot down your dream weight, happy weight, acceptable weight, and never-again weight. Please note that you can also use dress sizes instead of weights. Then write down your actual weight/dress size, as of today. How many pounds is your real weight from your acceptable weight? Assuming you can lose two pounds a week, how many weeks would it take you to get to that weight?
In your journal, how do you envision yourself feeling and behaving once you reach your acceptable or happy weight? How about your dream weight? Do you have any plans once you reach your acceptable or happy weight, such as a shopping spree or a weekend trip? How will your life be different once you achieve your weight-loss goals?
DAY 3: CREATE YOUR CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE
Food for thought: Surround yourself with like-minded, positive, supportive people who will help you achieve your weight-loss goals.
Exercise:
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You will have your greatest success at weight loss when you surround yourself with other like-minded people who are all working toward the same goal as you. Your chance of achieving your weight-loss goals greatly increases when you have people around you who understand your journey—what you are doing, why you are doing it, the challenges you are going through—and they can support and motivate you along the way. It is important to create a circle of influence that is filled with positive, supportive people. This circle of influence is called a support system and it is critical to your long-term success.
What kind of people should be in your circle of influence? Well, they should be motivational and supportive, with a winner’s mind-set and “can-do” attitude. They should be people who will lift you up and not tear you down. They should be people who will listen but accept no excuses from you.
You will need the support of the people closest to you to increase your chance of success. It can also be fun to have the support of an online support community, new virtual friends who you can watch and learn from as well as make mistakes and overcome challenges with. They can share with you what has worked for them and what hasn’t and keep you highly motivated.
Write down the names of the individuals (or online support groups) who are in your circle of influence. Make plans to share your goals with them and ask them for their support.
DAY 4: CREATE POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS
Food for thought: Allow your mind to work with your body to transform yourself, from the inside out.
Exercise:
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It’s time to start communicating to your mind. Positive affirmations are positive phrases you repeat to yourself that describe how you want to be. You can use positive affirmations to create the change you desire in your life, whether that is weight loss, quitting smoking, or any bad habit. Since we are focusing on weight loss, below are some positive affirmations that focus on the change you want to create in your life. You should repeat these affirmations for two minutes daily so that every cell in your body can imagine them.
To begin loving your body and your true self, post the following affirmative statements on a note card or in your journal and read them every day before you leave for work or go to bed:
1. I will have a loving relationship with food. I know that food is a gift from God that I am grateful for because it nourishes my body.
2. I will not be afraid to get on the scale because the number I weigh isn’t as important as the overall healthiness of my body. A healthy body is a beautiful body.
3. I will not be ashamed of my body, for it is just the house for my spiritual and mental self; it does not define my true self.
4. I will forgive myself and other people. No more arguing and fighting, only letting go of stresses, failures, and disappointments.
5. I am thankful for my body and look forward to a slimmer, healthier body as I become more enlightened about healthy eating.
DAY 5: CREATE MINI-HABITS
Food for thought: When you do something consistently, you become unstoppable, plain and simple.
Exercise:
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Your current habits are the reasons behind your current weight. You will need different habits in order to get a different result. A mini-habit is a small action or behavior that you do every day. It can be so small and simple that it can take less than a minute to complete. The body and brain change best at a slow pace over time. A mini-habit is designed to help you achieve lasting change by ensuring consistent action over time. Because it’s easy to revert to old habits, your mini-habits will be like a fortress that is strong and reliable, which minimizes setbacks on your journey.
Examples of mini-habits include:
1. Read one chapter in a book.
2. Listen to one song that inspires you each day.
3. Drink a green smoothie daily.
4. Do 10 jumping jacks every morning.
You may feel like you can do more, and of course you can, but by making it so ridiculously simple, you can get to a point where you always do it without fail.
The best way to know if you’ve created a good mini-habit is to think about whether you can still do it on your worst, most unproductive day. If you can, then you won’t fail and you’ll feel inspired by your consistency. You may start to naturally increase the habit day after day, week after week. If the mini-habit was to walk up one flight of stairs, you may find yourself walking up two or three in no time. However, you’re only required to do the mini-habit each day. Having a low threshold, but exceeding it every day, is great for mastering consistency. It propels you toward even better habits, which lead to greatness in your life.
List five mini-habits you can focus on and begin just one today. Do it consistently for an indefinite period of time. You are learning to create lasting change in your life by mastering consistent action
over time.
DAY 6: LEARN TO COMMIT TO LOSING WEIGHT
Food for thought: Making sacrifices and putting in the necessary work takes commitment.
Exercise:
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Are you interested in losing weight or are you committed to losing weight? If you’re truly committed, you’ll do what it takes and make the necessary sacrifices to lose weight. People fail not because of lack of interest or desire but because of lack of commitment.
In your journal, write down at least five ways to show you are truly committed to losing weight, not just interested in doing so.
Examples: Have you let your friends and family know you’re committed to this journey? Have you changed your circle of friends to weed out naysayers and doubters? Have you bought a water pitcher for your desk so you can drink water more frequently? Are you reading about health and nutrition every day? Do you connect to your support system? Do you plan your meals each week to ensure you eat healthy?
