Fitness Affirmations: How Your Mind Can Take You From Fat to Thin.

October 29, 2007

If there is one key to fitness, one thing that can take you from ?so-so shape? to ?rock-hard and lean? it has to be, hands down, your mind-set. Now if you’re a regular reader of my site, this should come as no surprise to you. When you think about it, there exists nothing n the world that didn’t begin it’s existence in the form of a thought. Your body and the way it looks and feels right now are all a product of how you have viewed it in the past and how you are viewing it right now. Now let’s take a step back from that statement and qualify some things. Let’s move beyond the notion of any sort of law of attraction. Even a skeptic of attraction and intention manifestation can’t deny that the brain controls the body. Given that perspective, is it so hard to believe that your brain alone could make you thin, or build muscle? In her book The Intention Experiment, Lynne McTaggart has detailed how this ?mental fitness? really is the case.

?Where I am, is where my mind put me. Where I will be is where my mind will put me.?

–Billy Blanks, Tae-Bo Creator

In her book, McTaggart details an experiment that was done using participants between the ages of 20 and 35 years old. The participants were instructed to imagine flexing their bicep muscles as hard as they could ? not to actually flex the muscle, just to imagine that they were doing so. This was done daily, five days a week for a few weeks. At the end of the experiment the participants were measured and found to have increased the size and strength of their biceps by 13.5% without having done any exercise whatsoever! Even more impressive is that this increase in size and strength lasted for three months after the experiment was completed. If this isn’t convincing enough, go to your local gym and look around for a little while. You’ll find two groups of people: Those who have gotten fantastic results and workout with a concentration only seen in Zen monks, and those who lift weights like their in a race to see who can finish and get back to the office first. Needlesstosay, the guys trying to get back to the office, still manage to look deflated and flabby, despite doing the same amount of work as the first group. Why, because the more you concentrate on the work being done by your muscles, the more energy and focus you are putting into training them and the more energy and focus you are putting into increasing their size and strength.

Anorexia and the Mirror Effect

Anorexia, an eating disorder categorized by it’s victim’s need to starve themselves thin, is proof positive of what can happen when the mind sends the body terribly wrong signals. You see, this disorder isn’t just suffered by teenage girls with fashion model envy, it can strike everyone. Commonly called ?manorexia? (I don’t know why anyone felt the need to give it another name) many male celebrities, such as Dennis Quaid, have come forward to admit that they too have struggled with this disorder. But what causes it? It isn’t just a strong desire to be thin. Anorexia is a mental disorder, but nowhere near as irrational as you may think.

It’s almost gut wrenching to see someone who suffers from anorexia, weighing less that one hundred pounds staring into a mirror and telling themselves that they look fat. We can’t understand why they would think that, but they aren’t crazy, there is a definite logic that lies behind this unhealthy belief. You see, as I detailed in an earlier series of articles on the inner workings of the metabolism, when you starve yourself, you are actually lowering your metabolism and when you lower your metabolism, your body doesn’t burn fat, it burns muscle. Since your body fat percentage is based on a ratio of muscle to fat, we begin to see the problem. The more you starve yourself, the less muscle you have and the more fat you store. Sure an anorexic may weigh only one hundred pounds, but they have a body fat percentage of over 35% or more! Anorexics seeing themselves as fat isn’t just some obsessive need, it’s biologically accurate.

All Solutions Begin in the Mind

Whether you are an anorexic or decidedly overweight, the cause is, surprisingly, the same: Lack of nutritional knowledge and good self-image. Neither of these groups truly understand the way in which our bodies truly utilize food and neither of these groups thinks well of themselves. This type of negative, self-hating thought process is like a broken record of undesirable effects. Every time you look in a mirror and tell yourself, ?Look how fat you are!? you’re sending the signal to your brain that you are, and therefore must remain, fat.

I know you may find it hard to believe that the way you talk to yourself could really change your physical appearance, but I assure you that it can. It has been proven in numerous studies that your brain can adapt itself to what it is told to be true. If you consistently tell yourself that you are bad at math, your brain begins to physically adapt in such a way as to make you bad at math. Your brain believes what it is told to believe because it cannot distinguish between what is true and what it thinks is true. Because of this simple fact, the your body will fire the same neurons whether you look fat, feel fat, or think fat. It can’t tell the difference.

Bad Affirmations! Bad!

So often when we are trying to loose weight, trying to tone up our bodies, we pass by mirrors and get disgusted. ?EGH!? we silently scream. ?You look awful! How did you let yourself get like this?? Now, when used correctly, this disgust can be a powerful weapon. I written before about how this disgust with your current form can give you the motivation needed to make a permanent change. But there is most definitely a right way and a wrong to go about it.

When you tell yourself things like:

• ?I look so fat!?
• ?I don’t see any results!?
• ?I look disgusting!?
• ?I’m such a pig!?

These are bad affirmations. Why, because they are only reaffirming what you don’t like. Look at your affirmations this way: Your brain can only say ?Yes!?

When you say, ?You look so fat!? Your brain responds, ?Yes, you do!?

When you say, ?I don’t see results!? Your brain responds, ?You sure don’t!?

When you say, ?I look disgusting!? Your brain responds, ?Okay, you do!?

When you say, ?I’m such a pig!? Your brain responds, ?You got it!?

No matter what you say, your brain deems it to be true. It’s the ultimate ?Yes Man.? No matter what you tell it, it will agree and send the signal to the rest of the body that what it has been told is true. Given that, take a look at your self-talk, is it where it needs to be? If not, let’s look at how you can create some healthier options.

How to Create Good Affirmations!

When trying to create healthier affirmations, do your best not to out-right lie to yourself because that will never work. Telling yourself, ?I am thin!?when you’re 200 pounds overweight, isn’t going to help anything because you’re not going to believe that affirmation for one red hot second. You have to believe what you’re saying, other wise your next thought will only contradict the healthy affirmation you’ve given yourself. So how can you create healthy affirmations that will move both your mind and body into a thinner and leaner you? By using what I like to call, Transition Affirmations or Process Affirmations. These are affirming, not a static position, but a state of flux. In other words ?I am thin? becomes ?I am becoming thinner everyday.? This type of affirmation doesn’t say ?I am this state,? it says ?I am on my way to becoming this state,? which is infinitely more helpful to you.

Make sure that when you create your affirmations you are creating them with a sense of forward momentum. Always be sure to use the present tense and not the future tense. Saying ?I am? is much more powerful than saying ?I will.?

Now when I started my fitness journey, I did so because I became too disgusted to remain in the condition I was in for one more day and, like I said, that can be a healthy state of mind, so long as it’s followed by a Transition Affirmation. Take a look at these examples of affirmations I use:

• ?I look terrible, but I’m getting better.?
• ?I’m not seeing results, but I know I’m moving forward a little every day.?
• ?I’m fat now, but I’m getting thinner with every work out.?
• ?I’m feel so out of shape, but I’m that won’t last long.?

You see the difference? Being disgusted with yourself only results in having more to be disgusted with. Turning your disgust into a motivational thought will not only get your brain working toward the proper intentions, but also get you pumped up to keep moving forward with you work outs because something good is coming.

It Begins and Ends in the Mind

Changing the way your think about yourself can change the way you present yourself in real life and that’s not an exaggeration. I’m not saying you will feel thinner, I’m saying you will be thinner. When you look in the mirror and tell yourself that right now you may not be up to par, but you are well on your way to changing, you have put yourself in a powerful position to make the best of the power that lies in your own mind. Please, however, do not rely only on improved self-talk if you suffer from any type of eating disorder. If you suffer from anorexia, bulimia, or compulsive eating, see a professional who can help you learn the skills you need to recover properly, such as proper nutrition and exercise.

For those of you who have started your own workout programs and need the motivation it takes to make it all the way through and create serious, lasting changes in you fitness level, start using affirmations like these. Affirmations that will move you forward instead of keeping you stuck in the usual self destructive loop. Remember that before you do anything, you must get your mind right because everything begins and ends in your mind.

Posted in Being Proactive, Determination, Fitness, Goal Setting, Law of Attraction, Metaphysics, Motivation, P90X, Self Improvement, Success, The Mind