How to THINK Like a Thin Person

Most diets simply do not work for most people most of the time, because they have not learned to think like a thin person. After we have been on a diet for a while and lost some weight, our body reacts to the diet as if it were a famine. Our metabolism slows down, we stop losing. and eventually we begin to eat more, in order to return to what our body had previously considered as our "normal" weight. Here's how to break the cycle.

Cognitive-behavioral psychology is the study of the relationships between thinking, feeling, and behavior.  Unless we develop the habit of taking all three of these into account, in the same way that thin people habitually do, we will continue living on a perpetual yo-yo of dieting to lose weight and then gaining it back to the level that our body has become used to. 

Cognitive-behavioral therapists often use a form called a thought record in order to examine just what goes on in the mind when we make those habitual decisions that keep getting us into trouble by eating the wrong things. You can obtain them at www.getselfhelp.co.uk. You can make copies of their sample form for your own use by using the print command on your computer, and you can also obtain different versions of the thought record for a host of other purposes. In addition, they have a free online self-help course and other materials on how to use the thought record effectively.

Here's an example of one way that a thought record might be used to counteract one common stressful situation which causes people to consume too much food. Let's suppose you are putting in long hours and having to do more than your fair share at work because other people have been laid off, and your boss is driving you crazy. You start to gain weight because you have gotten into the habit of consoling yourself by eating too much, and then you cannot keep the weight off for the reasons just mentioned. The thought record first asks you a series of simple questions about the thoughts that occurred when you gave in to the temptation to overeat, asks you how appealing those thoughts were, and helps you to think of more appealing thoughts, as illustrated below.  

Where were you?   Watching television on the couch at home.

Emotion or feeling.  Fatigue. Lethargy. Craving for a snack.

Negative automatic thought.  I want to go to the kitchen and get some pretzels and beer.

Evidence that supports the thought.  I will enjoy them after a long hard day at work.

Evidence that does not support the thought.  I'm becoming a couch potato.

Alternative thought or autosuggestion. "I'll find other activities to enjoy.

Emotion or feeling. Relief (rating:60%); discomfort at having to get up (rating: 40%).  

Of course, you don't have to chronicle every decision this way in order to learn to think like a thin person. It only takes a few such exercises to the hang of it. But it is necessary to make a good beginning for cognitive-behavioral psychology to help you to keep your feet on the right path As Confucius said, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!" 

 Print Sources

Barlow, D. H. (2008). Clinical Handbook of Psychological Disorders: A Step-by-Step Treatment Manual, 5th ed. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Beck, J. S. (2008).  The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person. Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House.  (Judith Beck is the daughter of Aaron T. Beck, the founder of cognitive-behavioral therapy, and one of its most widely respected leaders in her own right.) 

Moss, M. (2013). Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.  New York, NY: Random House.

 

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How to Get Thin and STAY Thin

 

Being overweight can be caused by a number of factors. When it is simply due to the habit of making bad decisions concerning food, then an approach such as the one described here may be useful. However, you should not make any changes in your regular eating habits without first consulting with your physician.  

A married woman in her mid-forties sought my help in order to lose weight. She had obtained clearance from her physician to proceed with a weight loss program, along with a recommend diet; and she was not currently taking any medication. She described her relationship with her husband and children as warm and affectionate, and told me that her life was fundamentally happy, with no major stressors which might serve to distract her from her weight loss goal.    

Her anniversary was some eight months away. She was going to surprise her husband by arranging a getaway weekend for him at a hotel. Her plans included dinner at a stylish restaurant where she would like to be able to once more wear a treasured dress which she had saved from her honeymoon.

I taught her how to to hypnotize herself by using the Best Me Technique and to pre-experience the attainment of her weight loss goal, using the anniversary restaurant dinner as one of the settings in which she could enjoy the multi-modal dimensions of its fulfillment. 

Belief systems involving suggestions of a change in place and time at the completion of the induction prepared her to pre-experience the anniversary dinner as if it were already taking place. 

Suggestions of Emotion included responses to both her husband’s admiring glances and the increasing physical attraction they felt towards each other as the evening wore on. 

Suggestions of many different Sensations and physical perceptions heightened the reality of the experience still further: the lighted candles on the dinner table, the soft music, the sight and smell of a bouquet of flowers, the taste of the dinner wine, etc. 

Thoughts and images included suggestions of the couple sharing their mutual declarations of love as they looked deeply into each other’s eyes. 

Motives became stronger as the evening wore on and their warmth became desire. 

Their Expectations for the rest of the night increased apace as the couple hurriedly paid their check and made their way out the door and took an elevator to the hotel room in the same building which she had rented for the remainder of the evening. . . . 

The client had a rich imagination and that she responded well to suggestion. Once she had mastered the technique of multimodal suggestion using the Best Me Technique for preliminary scenarios such as the one just described. To increase her motivation still more, she was able to devise multimodal autosuggestions for much more intimate experiences during the remainder of their anniversary evening without additional coaching from me. She reported that these were also highly effective in maintaining her motivation to diet at a high level.

Follow-up sessions were scheduled at progressively greater intervals as her self-imposed deadline drew near, to ensure that her progress continued and that her goal was satisfactorily reached, which it was. 

The secret of her success was that she was not just "fantasizing in a vacuum." She was selecting visualizations which would increase the meaningfulness of her life story as it unfolded.  These were changes that she could not merely believe, but that she could also believe in. 

Whatever personal goal you have set for yourself, look for ways to incorporate it into your own life story in such a way that you can believe in it as well as merely believing it.  If you can believe in it with your entire being, using a systematic, comprehensive method such as the BEST ME Technique, you can make it happen!