Extra pounds are mainly in your head!
Losing weight is also taking care of your soul.
Here are ten mistakes not to repeat if we really want to lose those pounds that are heavy on us:
- Knowing how to make a selection:
Finding and focusing on whatever is negative among a set of data while forgetting everything else, to the point you see everything in black. - Excessive generalization:
The tendency to draw generalities out of wrong data while ignoring the other data. You explain a negative event like something that will never end. For instance: "This always happens only to me", "I will never get out of this situation". - Seeing everything in black and white: All or nothing..
The placing of the world (people, their behavior, experiences, consequences…) in two polar categories, while ignoring intermediary stages. Whenever things are not perfect, you consider them a failure. - Thinking we "must":
You are sure that life cannot go on, you have done all what you were determined to do, or that the future may not "be" if you do not succeed in something particular. For instance: "I must succeed in everything", "My appearance must be perfect", "I must complete my job perfectly, otherwise it will be useless", "I should have done something else".
Sometimes, we are mad at our circle of friends and relatives because they do not correspond to the criteria or to the norms, and we speculate that they do not think likewise.
Conclusion: you create difficulties for yourself and they encroach upon your functioning and the inner connection you create. - Drawing quick conclusions:
A way of thinking (mainly negative) without verifying authenticity. There are two main kinds of wrong thoughts in quick conclusions: to read thoughts, that is, for instance, being sure that someone talks about us, and thinking like a child; for instance, saying: "if I go out, I certainly will not enjoy it, so I'd be better off just staying at home". - Losing proportions:
Moderation or amplification of events, experiences, daily situations. For instance: "It is obvious that tonight, people will consider me as “this” and say “that…". - Labeling:
Providing extreme definitions and labeling behavior and situations, for instance, a man who had an accident will say that the world is bad because he has suffered this ordeal. - Seeing only the empty half of the glass, being pessimistic: We tend to reject positive experiences and positive attempts, and we focus on the negative aspects, while thinking that the positive ones have no weight and the negative one have more weight. For instance, we may say: "There is nothing good for me", "when I think of my life, I can see only failures". People who have this pessimistic tendency progress in an exaggerated manner regarding their imperfections and whatever they have not succeeded to prove and they give up on success.
- Feeling guilty:
Taking personal responsibility on something we are not sure about or perceiving it wrongly. - Emotional thinking:
The attitude towards our feelings and sensations is like proof of the real situation.
How may we cope with our errant automatic thoughts?
Firstly, we must identify them, and be informed: "What do I think?". It is important not to be satisfied with yourself with a brief outline of automatic thinking, but to physically take a piece of paper and a pencil and to describe where it comes from. This is the only way to understand these thoughts, to identify their distorted logic and to be able to introduce "reparatory" thoughts. You may use a blackboard on which you will write a column of wrong thoughts and another one for the modified thoughts, all according to events.
Identification of thoughts without writing them down may not always work.
The relation between negative thoughts and obesity
Some people tend to improperly analyze various life events and situations. Negative thought modes that allow us to analyze these events generate a very narrow field of vision. In those situations, we tend to look for a means to improve our spiritual mood that will lead to an immediate and rapid change. Around the year, some of us have created inappropriate logical relationships considering food as a haven, and we tend to turn to food in those very moments in order to find an answer; we eat and therefore we gain weight.
Sometimes, when you fail in something, you think you "are a failure". The consequences of this self-devaluation are that you will find comfort in food with no limits. If you think that you will never lose weight, that you are a failure, you will not feel anything but frustration, disappointment and guilt, and those feelings will lead to an immediate desire for food in order to "feel better".
This is how a vicious circle is being created: you turn to food in order to compensate. Then you experience a loss of self-control that will lead to frustration and to guilt. All this derives from a wrong interpretation of the events of life.
Since our childhood, we have created the wrong relationship with food and its virtues. We create a logical connection to food to be a kind of "sedative" if we feel angry, a reliever, something that fills emptiness and this wrong connection becomes automatic over the years.
