NLP For Weight Loss

Ok so what the heck is NLP. Well if you haven't heard of it before, NLP is short for Neuro Linguistic Programming, I know, It sounds weird right? Well essentially it is part science part art developed in the 1970s by a psychiatrist called Richard Bandler and a linguistics professor called John Grinder, their work was developed from previous work by Virginia Satir, family therapist, Fritz Perlz who developed Gestalt Therapy and Milton Erickson famous psychiatrist and hypnosis specialist.

NLP has developed and evolved significantly since the 1970s and now often appears the science of human achievement, in other words, getting your brain to behave the way you want it to by changing your mood, state and thoughts to produce the outcome you desire. I do find NLP to be excessively complicated when really it is not, a lot of jargon is used, much studying is advocated and some of it is just plain ineffective. Having said this though, there is a way to use some of the principles of NLP to help you develop that desperately need self discipline or more commonly called willpower that all of us dieters seem to be sorely lacking.

How to use NLP to help you lose weight.

You already have everything within you that you need to achieve any goal you want. Its a bold statement I know, but it is the truth, it is just a question of believing it.

NLP is about programming your brain to do what you want it to do and altering conditioned behavior, in this sense it is very closely allied with hypnosis, the main difference between the two is that with NLP you are making the changes consciously and deliberately, with hypnosis you are putting yourself into a relaxed state whereby you can communicate directly with your subconscious and actually bypass your conscious mind - it is more automatic. Personally I find that hypnosis always works better better as it is more intuitive and natural, but you will find plenty of people who prefer the structure of NLP.

OK so how to do it.

1. Language. The language you use is extremely important. If you keep saying to yourself, "I wish I wasn't so fat, I can never seem to lose weight, I just have to look at a donut and I put on 10lbs" (and there are plenty of overweight and obese people who talk to themselves that way). you are programing your brain to believe that you are fat, that you can't lose weight, and that you put on weight really easily. Our brains are amazing. Dr Maxwell Maltz, in his fantastic bestseller Psycho-Cybernetics, calls it the Automatic Success Mechanism and describes how our minds are set up to achieve exactly what we believe. If we believe we are fat and can't lose weight then we will achieve exactly that. If, however, we believe we are slim, love to eat healthy food and enjoy exercise, what you know, we will achieve exactly that.

So what all of us overweight people need to do here is make sure we re-program our thoughts from fat thoughts to thin thoughts.

The language you use should always be positive and in the present. For example 'I will lose weight', or 'I am going to lose weight', suggests that this might be something you will achieve in the future, with the emphasis on might! What would work better in terms of reprograming your thoughts is the following "I am slim", "I am happy at my ideal weight". This suggests to your brain that this is what you are and it will quickly work towards making it so. I know sometimes it feels as though you are lying to yourself, but your subconscious mind does not know that. It is possible to convince your subconscious of something when consciously you believe the opposite. Its called self image, there are plenty of gorgeous thin people who think they look ugly and overweight - even though consciously they know they are fine their self image, based in their subconscious mind compels them to think otherwise.

Self image is essentially the key to achieving your ideal weight, by focussing on the kind of language you use to define yourself you can go a long way to changing your self image from fat to thin, weight loss then becomes automatic.

2. State and Anchoring. Your state makes a huge difference to your results. If you are feeling, despondent, demotivated, depressed you are going to find it really hard to stick with your goal plan of eating healthily, exercising and reaching your ideal weight. No way, when you feel that way you are going to be reaching for the first candy bar you find. it is however possible to alter your state very quickly so that you are motivated, energized, happy and focussed on your goal. (The best person out there training people to change their states is Anthony Robbins and I would really recommend that you try out some of this stuff, it is really powerful). Anyway, if you are feeling low, rather than changing your state by eating chocolate you can do it this way:

1. Stand up tall
   
2. Put your shoulders back
   
3. Force yourself to smile
   
4. Think of a time you felt really motivated (if you can't think of a time make it
   up and imagine how it would feel)
   
5. Exclaim Yes! as if you have just achieved something you have been trying to do
   for a while.
   
6. Anchor that state, you can use a word, or physical anchor such as making a fist, or squeezing our thumb and index finger together - whatever works best for you. This physical gesture or word becomes associated in your mind with the state of being motivated, and with practice you will be able to use this anchor to re-activate this state whenever you need.
   

3. Reframing. This is literally looking at things from a different point of view and therefore changing the meaning for you. You can often change your point of view simply by changing your state and discussed in the point above. Things can appear almost impossible when you are in a depressed frame of mind, but they can seem effortless when you are motivated and positive.

Here's an example of re-framing, what do you feel when you think about dieting, commonly people will think, deprivation, hardship, misery, problematic, time consuming. This frame is not exactly going to help you lose weight. What if you deliberately reframed your view of dieting. Think about the results you will achieve, think about all that good food you will be feeding your body, whole, natural food is so much more appetizing than junk food, think about how much energy you will have, and think about the sense of achievement, think about learning new cookery skills and recipes if that appeals to you. Your weight loss plan looks so much better now, in fact I want to start right now!

Now don't make the mistake of thinking you are just lying to yourself, because that is not the case, your original view of dieting, is no more real that the positive view of dieting, it is simply a case of picking the one that serves you better.

This is is a very brief foray into the world of NLP for weight loss, if you want to learn more about changing state and reframing you should check out anything by Anthony Robbins, he has developed his own Neuro Associative Conditioning technique, and is a well know presence in the field of personal development, success and motivation, he is probably the best person to teach how to master managing your state, getting rid of your limiting beliefs, reframing and goal setting and many more powerful personal development techniques.

Check out my articles on Hypnotherapy, Affirmations and Creative Visualization which are all relevant to this article.

by Dianne R Maurer
Weight Loss Success Coach