Your Mind Affects Your Fitness Weight Loss Goals

So you don’t feel like exercising today; you are too tired, you are too hungry, there is a great program on television, you want to hang out with your friends, you need to respond to emails and social media contacts or maybe you just need to clean your house.  There are so many excuses we give ourselves not to work out today or this week, but are these excuses really worth the opportunity to lose unwanted pounds, sculpt your body and or improve your health?  You have to recognize what these excuses really mean, and that is that it is simply a trick of your non conscious or some say the subconscious mind.

Why would your subconscious mind want to trick you into skipping your workouts?  The easy answer is that it wants to keep you at your current self, to keep you in your comfort zone.  When you first made a conscious decision to lose weight or re-sculpt your body, you were all hyped and excited about your new goal.  Unfortunately, this excitement may last 1 -2 weeks before you start coming up with excuses not to work out or you may just start forgetting to work out completely.  One month later, you have realized you haven’t worked out in a month.  What happened? 

Too keep from getting too technical in this area, I will try to explain this as simple as possible.  There are parts of your brain that respond to change and it does not like when you change your routine or when you attempt something new or hard.  One part of your brain, the amygdala , will literally release chemicals into your blood stream to signal discomfort.   Your brain will then signal negative thoughts or anti – goal thoughts to prevent you from continuing this new uncomfortable task or goal.   That is why you seem to find excuse after excuse on why you cannot work out until you finally stop your mission to change.  You should not underestimate the power of your subconscious mind because this part of your mind is what controls your daily habits.

Now don’t get mad at your brain for doing this, your brain is just trying to protect you and keep you comfortable, which is a good thing.  But when you are trying to change a habit or develop a new skill, this protection mechanism can be annoying.  Your brain is wired to learn something consciously and once you have learned it, it moves to your subconscious so that you are able to function without consciously thinking about every step of a particular task, which would tremendously slow you down for everyday life.

So how do you achieve your goal of losing weight or re-sculpting your body?  You do this by showing your subconscious mind who is the boss.  One thing to be aware is that you are not your thoughts.  Once you become aware that any habit that you try to change or new skill you try to develop will be fought by your non-conscious mind, you will have the upper hand. 

You must prove that you are serious about losing weight, changing your body or getting healthier.  In order to do this, you must reach the subconscious mind. 

Here are a couple of ways to ignore those anti-goal thoughts that prevent you from working out, losing weight, re-sculpting your body and feeling good about yourself:

Do not entertain thoughts of skipping your workouts.  Whenever they arise, (be prepared because they will arise) recognize the anti-goal thought and then ignore it. You can override the anti-goal thoughts in your mind.  While your mind is giving you excuses on why you should not workout, just put on your work out gear, get in the car, put the key in the ignition and drive to the gym.   Or, if you work out at home, cut on the television, put the DVD in the DVD player and push play or take whatever steps you would take to start your exercise routine.  Just let your subconscious mind continue to whine and complain while you go through the steps.  Once you get started, you usually start to enjoy yourself; sometimes these days can be your best work out days.  You will feel so much better about yourself knowing that you are truly on your journey of your fitness goal.

Program your mind for success.  Instead of getting upset about your unwanted pounds, hating your body, seeing yourself as fat; start seeing yourself how you want your body.   Visualize or imagine yourself at the weight and fitness level that you desire.  Use affirmations, pictures of inspiration or whatever inspirational , motivational material because you are not limited to the ways that you can obtain a positive body image for yourself.  DO NOT allow yourself to think anything negative about your body.  You cannot program your mind for the positive and still think negative.  This not woo- woo stuff; it is simply how your mind works, it is really another trick or power of your mind. 

You are literally bombarded with millions and billions bits of data at any moment, you cannot consciously keep up with all of that data, this is where your Reticular Activating System (RAS) in your brain kicks in and filters the data for you.  Your RAS determines what is important to you in any given moment and it determines what is important to you but what you are “feeding” it day in a day out.  Whatever you focus on consistently or your most dominate thoughts is what your RAS will filter for you and interpret with your subconscious mind as your true desire. 

This filtering and interpreting is always on and happening automatically.  It will cause you to take automatic actions to help you attain your goals, if you are thinking goal oriented thoughts.  You will start doing things to help you accomplish your goal without consciously thinking about it.  In terms of fitness for example, you will start to eat healthier, you will start to notice all kinds of information that will help or improve your fitness regimen and working out will be an automatic habit without resistance. 

Again, this is not woo-woo magical stuff, so do not expect instant results, it takes time to reprogram your mind for success.  Give yourself at least 30 days of positive body imaging; you should start to notice yourself making at least a few minor changes.  Of course, if you have not improved significantly in 30 days, then do another 30 days, if you need 30 more days, then add another 30.  In 90 days you should definitely see tremendous results.  30 -90 days may seem like a long time but it is better than failing at your fitness goals for another 365 days or more.

In summary, your fitness goals are attainable, you just have to show your mind that you are serious so that your conscious and subconscious mind can work on your together.  Once you have a clear picture of what your fitness goals are, implement a daily positive body imaging routine to reprogram your mind for your fitness success.  Give yourself time to see significant results on your weight loss or fitness journey.  Start with at least 30 – 90 days to see real and exciting results.  Remember your are feeding your RAS all the time, so the more you think about your positive fitness and weight goals, the faster the results.

Commit to Daily Focus on Your Goals

"The only person who succeeds is the person who is progressively realizing a worthy ideal.  That's the person who says, 'I'm going to become this' - and then begins to work toward that goal." -Earl Nightingale, Author of The Strangest Secret

Do you wish you could accomplish a seemingly impossible goal?  For example:

*Reshaping your body
*Learning a new language
*Changing careers
*Making more money
*Learning a new skill

Well stop wishing, your goals can become your reality.  You have to show your subconscious that you are serious about accomplishing those goals.  Your subconscious will open your mind's eye to the answers to help you accomplish your goal.

But how do you show your subconscious that you are serious?  You do this by applying daily persistent and dedicated focus on your goals.

If you focus on your goal and do something , anything in reference to your goal, you can turn your goal into your reality sooner than you think.

Daily commitment to your goal causes you to:

• Knock down obstacles
• Breakthrough brick walls
• Breakthrough mental barriers

 By committing to some kind of daily activity and focus on your goal, you will:

•  Discover opportunities
• Find new technologies
• Discover new strategies
• Learn new skills
• Find new resources
• Meet the right people
• Open your mind's eye to answers that were already in your face but you just couldn't see because of mental barriers

 Whatever you focus on becomes your reality; your subconscious makes sure of that. Your subconscious can work for you or against you, but really it is up to you.  What are you focusing on; success, failure or laziness.



For more information and resources on your subconscious, visit: http://secretsofyoursubconscious.com/ .

Install The Nothing Is Impossible Program

This program comes with life changing and destiny fulfilling benefits. Unfortunately the majority of people don't believe in this mindset. They believe obstacles are not meant to be overcame, challenges are too hard or challenges mean that "it wasn't meant to be."

Unless we really have a strong desire for something, we won't use the power within us to continue to push through and accomplish what we set out to obtain. Or we may not even start to even proceed toward a goal because even though it start out as a good idea, further thought reveals to us that it is not logical, not a good idea and we need to face reality.

But fortunately, there are some people who have the "nothing is impossible" mentality and this teaches us that actually "nothing is indeed impossible" and to go for our dreams no matter what.

These people have broken through mental barriers, overcame extreme obstacles, tackled unbelievable challenges which have resulted in achieved and seemingly impossible dreams. It is a fact that many have became famous because of their unstoppable mentality and character.

Well, if they can do it, anyone can do it and if anyone can do it, you can do it too. Sure some people have that natural inclination or naturally have that kind of mindset. But it can be installed into our brains just like we program a computer.

How can some one install this program? Through repetition, continuous repetition...over and over until it becomes part of your core being. We can create or find affirmations and repeat them several times a day until we start to think and believe that "nothing is impossible."

Bill Marshall has a cool site called http://www.poweraffirmations.com/. He is giving away 488 positive life changing affirmations! He also has a Podcast that is pretty cool with affirmations and neat ways to incorporate them. I definitely recommend that you visit his site to see what he has to offer.

Using positive affirmations may not give you instant results but with repetition and patience, your mindset will begin to change. Stay tune for a future post about affirmations.

Another way is through reading Biographies. Biographies can be life changing. When you read about people going above and beyond and fulfilling dreams despite their physical and mental limitations; setting ridiculously impossible goals and achieving them, your mind will be stretched and your beliefs in the impossible will diminish.

Biographies inspire and motivate, so choose biographies where people have developed mental toughness that contributed to their fame. Biographies give you a peak into the person's mind and helps you use that knowledge to program your own mind with this type of mental toughness.

Michael Phelps's book, No Limits: The Will to Succeed, is an excellent example to confirm that nothing is impossible despite naysayers, history and logic.

Listening to Podcasts, self development programs, watching inspiring movies, reading blogs and websites, are all tools you should use to install the "nothing is impossible" program.

Listen, read or watch these tools as much as possible, do something everyday and you are guaranteed to grow into this new unstoppable mindset.