We live in a culture that is full of advertisements that encourage us to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We all want to change or strive to keep things the way they area.  What you may be wondering is wrong with that? The messages are subtle: a mother who sits down on a park bench to take a well-deserved break eats a Nutrigrain bar. If you pay attention, most food advertising is selling and linking pleasure and reward with food. No wonder so many people associate food with a reward. This is one of the main reasons people find it difficult to lose weight. Successfully losing weight requires re-wiring the brain.  To find out more download my free EBook The Key to Successful Weight Loss.

The wisdom traditions have been suggesting the root of suffering is the constant striving for pleasure along with the desire to avoid pain and displeasure. We are very conditioned to think there is something outside of ourselves whether it is a pill or an Almond Joy that can give us pleasure and the happiness we are longing for.

The sad thing is that all these things do is to lull is deeper into a lifeless sleep. I feel very grateful that I am aware of how this conditioning negatively affects us and try as best I can to help other people to awaken and start making decisions based on their self-interest as opposed to mindlessly pursuing short term fixes in the form of candy bars and other distractions. I think my meditation practice has helped me to do this. That is why I created Meditation Made Easy. Try it you might like it or leave a comment to let me know how this resonates with you.

The most important piece of information I got out of watching The Weight of the Nation which was focused more on the consequences of weight gain than how to lose weight is the effect of watching TV on weight gain. Why would watching TV cause people to gain so much weight? The Weight of the Nation focused on children, and called the advertisements for soda and cereal predatory. Food companies understand how brand loyalty works. The younger you get them the more hooked they get. The more you eat junk food the more food you eat and the cycle is hard to break.

The other reason watching TV causes weight gain is that the commercials border on being hypnotic.  The continual parade of fast food and junk food commercials which now position Coke as happiness, or happy meals, or other subtle messages that link food with feeling good are having the effect of re-wiring the brain to think like that.

The other obvious reason watching TV causes weight gain is the couch potato syndrome. People tend to eat mindlessly while watching TV and the time spent watching TV takes away from other things you might do that cause you to be more active.

I think the writing is clearly on the wall. The first step you should take to lose weight may have to do with your TV habits. The second obvious step is to stop drinking sugar with which most drinks are loaded. The most remarkable statistic presented on The Weight of the Nation is how the obesity curve sky rocketed beginning in the 1980’s. This is also when food companies started putting high fructose corn syrup in everything. It is also saturated fat, hormones in milk the list goes on. The next step you can take is to stop eating foods that have ingredients on the label you do not recognize. It’s simple. Eat real food…preferably grown locally.  This is of course the genius of my program The Nirvana Diet.

Let me know what you think are some of the keys steps to take to lose weight.

There is a new documentary about to air The Weight of the Nation. This well researched documentary has come to the same conclusion I have on the weight problem in America. The best way and only way to lose weight and keep it off which to me is the only successful way to lose weight you must treat the way you lose weight as your lifestyle. That means the changes you make must be permanent and not viewed as a diet. This is hard to do because the brain tricks you into thinking its ok to eat this or that and not exercise every day. The problem is before you know it the weight starts to come back.

The other important piece of information you need to successfully lose weight and keep it off is to stop allowing yourself to be brainwashed about how the weight problem is an energy imbalance- you eat too many calories and expend too few calories. The problem is not just with calories in and out but the type of calorie you consume. Gary Taubes has written this in his bookGood Calories Bad Calories and in an article in Newsweek The new obesity campaigns have it all wrong. There is a different theory which says holds certain foods accountable- foods that contain refined sugar and grains which are loaded with them because of the affect it has on creating metabolic syndrome and their effect on the hormone insulin which regulates fat accumulation.  These foods also change the way the brain operates by increasing the production of ghrelin and decrease the production of leptin so you feel hungrier and are never satisfied. Sound familiar?

The single easiest thing you can do to put a stop to this is to stop looking at calories and low fat and start looking at the sugar or carbohydrate content in the food you buy. This includes the biggest offender which is soda, including diet soda. The other simple thing is to stop buying packaged food or fast food. This is why the nation is heavy and getting heavier.  This is really important that people start paying attention to this. It’s time to wake up. We as consumers can put a stop to what the food and drug companies are doing to us. Just stop consuming it.

So how do you ‘grow’ creative ability and lose your appetite for the things that do not serve you in life?

So we are born creative, to be creative and then we seem to lose it. To grow and reconnect with the creative spark within you must be willing to make  mistakes, and laugh at yourself.  Einstein’s quote is relevant here: “A person who has never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

Creativity can be re-cultivated. Creativity comes from using the “whole brain” that is left and right working together. Believe it or not meditation has been shown to increase creativity helping to connect left and right brain. Meditation and creativity go together and both can become your daily practice. To begin your daily practice check out the meditation made easy program I developed. You can also look at Julia Cameron’s groundbreaking book on creativity The Artist’s Way. Growing creativity is like exercising you have to do it everyday as a daily practice.

Something happens in school that shuts that down, favors and rewards left brain thinking.  I remember with my own children growing up and how different it was moving from kindergarten to first grade. My daughter came home from school one day very upset complaining  how the first grade and school was not fun anymore. There was the big push to learn how to read and from then on creativity was not honored but marginalized. I also think it has a lot to do with playing… children spend so much of their lives playing. If  you can bring more play into your life you may find yourself more focused to achieve your lifestyle goals whether it be to lose weight or find your passion.

Ultimately creativity involves the capacity to see relationships between things that are not related and to “think out of the box.” The problem is if one lives in a box, how does one think outside it? I also think creativity comes from the muses. It is about inklings, flashes of ideas that just pop into one’s head that may not even be one’s own.

Creativity is also about change and transformation. It is the process of  bringing something new  into being and making something of it. Does that sound familiar? Isn’t that how we change a habit?  To that  I would also like to add Amit Goswami’s definition: “creativity is the discontinuous exploration of new meaning in new and old contexts(s) of value. Looking for the link between creativity, change and values is a creative act.

What do you want to create? When you give some focus and attention to this drive, you may see that eating healthier food and exercising daily comes more naturally to you and watching TV are no longer interesting. Ultimately tending to our creative side makes us more stress hardy as well.

Tell me how some ways you can begin to activate and tend to your creative side.

Goswami, A. (1999). Quantum creativity. Creskill, NY: Hampton Press.

Let me just start out with saying stories and movies like the Hunger Games are not feeding the soul.

If you stopped to think about it, you might ask yourself what you hunger for that you cannot name or do not recognize? Some would say it is creativity that really feeds the sou. Creativity is what we really hunger for and the capacity for creativity comes from deep within… an authentic place the yogis and Carl Jung called the Self. To access this creativity requires you to know yourself differently. Most of us never go beyond the lens of the ego. The ego is a filter thru which you experience your reality that is based on the past, the culture and may not reflect who you really are. As creativity is denied in our culture and marginalized in the educational system, we feel a hunger we mistakenly try to fill by consuming things. For more information on how we are stifling creativity see Ken Robinson’s Ted Talk.

James Hillman the founder of what we call archetypal psychology said that “creativity is in and of itself an instinctual drive just like the drive to eat” This means that the satisfaction of creativity is a requirement of life. We all have the need to fulfill our creative drive. How you go about doing that is what you need to look at. Most of us focus on our work and the roles we play in life such as parenting. This may not feed the creative drive and cause one to feel a sense of dullness about life that also lacks meaning. If so you are not feeding your creative drive properly, this could spill over into other drives like eating, shopping and other escapist modes of behavior that do not fulfill or fill.

So how do you get back on track? First we have to redefine creativity. I love this definition: “The genie of creativity is bottled up for most of us-to liberate the genie is to become a genius” (Goswami, 1999, p. 17). Stay tuned to find out how to become a genius.

Goswami, A. (1999). Quantum creativity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Recently I came across a great Ted Talk by Dr. Bren Brown more on the role of shame as the root of addiction, depression and the tendency to be or feel small in life. Shame is something that is perpetrated by our culture to keep us down. All you have to do is to look at the advertising on that is on TV. Either one is being made to feel small, not being able to keep up the “Jones” or one is offered ways to dull the pain… food, drugs and various other ways to escape.

I would agree with Dr. Bren’s research, the most powerful thing that changed in me is my capacity to be and feel vulnerable. This is what led to be being loveable ironically. I just do not care what people think anymore. How liberating!  Really vulnerability is the key to freedom. But then, that is the problem for the capitalistic model, it needs people consuming. Consumption is driven by feeling not good enough. This really saddens me. What I have found is that without shame you do not need to consume as much… you lose weight, want to exercise, take care of yourself….feel happier naturally.

I would not say that guilt is a close second to shame and is no better in terms of its destructive abilities. The irony is that people want to be with other people who are human… vulnerable.  This means having the guts and ability to tell your story, be with the emotion, the vulnerability, and feeling like you are not defined by your story. I was given two books years ago when I got on the transformational journey that really affected me: Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw and Power vs. Force by David Hawkins, MD, PhD. The book gives you a way to move out of shame, and the second explains how shame is the lowest human emotion one can calibrate. The lower the emotions with which we resonate, the weaker we are. To me empathy and of course acceptance are the high roads.  To me acceptance is the real antidote to shame. I would also add to that laughter… having the capacity to laugh at it all.

Personally, I am still working on vulnerability because I learned to survive by not feeling certain emotions and just being in my head. I am happily still a work in progress  and I am ok to admit that is ok. Why not try the vulnerability diet… make sure you add a dash of acceptance!

Why is it so difficult to change established patterns of behavior especially when those patterns do not serve us? The answer lies perhaps in getting clear about what you value. Recently I made the acquaintance of a website www.kairios.com which has a very helpful interactive way to get in touch with your values.  Once you get clear on that, it helps you to tap into the right energy you need to bring about the changes you might be struggling with from losing weight, getting motivated to exercise and putting an end to procrastination.

I recommend you go on the site and take the values assessment. This will help you to see your priorities and understand why we do what we do that we are not always conscious. The clearer you get about what is important to you or what value, the more power you have to change a habit you want to change. This is what gives you the “stick to it-ness” you need to change those habits that are resistant to change.

Values are by definition something you feel is worth it. What is it that is worth it to you to catalyze you to stop eating processed and packaged foods? How can you use the energy inherent in the value of having self-control and self-respect that transcends the need to eat food that is harming you? Getting clear about what you value will empower anything you want to change. Taking action for three months doing something differently can actually  help you to change your brain chemistry.  What really matters to you?

We all know that exercise is one of the single best things you can do to lose weight, stay at a healthy weight, boost your mood, reduce stress and even sleep better. Exercise is also the best preventive medicine to ward off the life- style induced diseases that are now treated with prescription drugs…high blood pressure, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome and adult onset diabetes. This list goes on and on as to how beneficial exercise is to be healthy happy. Why do so many people resist exercise?  

The first reason is that when you get out of shape, overweight, or have not exercised in a while it does not feel good when you exercise. So people resist it. The key is never to let yourself go, never to let more than two days go by without at least going for a walk.

Once people are out of shape, they tend to overdo getting back into shape and this creates negative stored memories or associations with exercise. This is also the key of how you get back in. Build positive stored memories and let that work for you and not against you. This can be done using visualization and while lying in bed.

Athletes use visualization to rehearse their movements. Research has proven that the brain doesn’t make different between an imagined event and a real one, providing that you are able to visualize things with clarity and intensity. What you have imagined or visualized in your mind can have the same value as a real experience. This why you can mentally train for any ability and even for physical changes in the body, it was demonstrated by studies at the Manchester University that people were able to have muscles growth during one week of sessions of hypnosis, during hypnosis sessions the group were asked to visualize themselves having bigger muscles.

For sports performance enhancement, an athlete will use visualization to correct his weaknesses, improve his game and increase his motivation. Dr. Murray who wrote “The Essence of Imagery in Tennis  says “Imagery, also called visualization, is described as a mental technique that programs the human mind to respond as programmed, by using all the senses to recreate or create an experience. Imagery has also been described as one of four categories of cognitive skills important in athletic performance.”

So here’s how to start getting motivated to exercise. Wake up each morning and before you get out of bed imagine yourself doing some form of exercise you have chosen that you will enjoy. Focus on the immediate payoffs of not only how you will feel after exercising, but all the benefits you will receive as a result of incorporating exercise into you life on a daily basis. That is the key… doing some form of exercise every day.

To get started I recommend walking. You can download my E-Book The Key to Successful Weight Loss for a great plan to start walking every. Once you start doing it I guarantee you will feel so much better you will want to continue. The visualizations will make it easier and have been proven to have a physical effect on the body. Why not give it a try and let me know what you think?  You can also download my MP3 hypnosis on motivation for exercise. Here’s to your health and well-being.

It’s really important that we strike word diet from our vocabulary unless we use it the right way. Your diet means your manner of living, how you live, not a short term fix to lose weight. It is really a disservice to look at losing weight as going on a diet. Once you are on this diet you never go off. That is why you really have to avoid quick weight loss strategies and the diet mentality.

Here are some behaviors you can change that will really help take and keep off the weight. In creating this I was inspired by the article in Bazaar: Lose the last 5 Pounds for Good. I would say the tips given in this article are not just for the last five pounds but for any pound you want to lose and keep off.

1^st tip that helps you lose and keep weight off: It really helps to understand that when you eat real food it is a natural appetite suppressant. The more you eat packaged processed foods which are foods that contain sugar, flour and other addictive ingredients, the more you will think about food and feel hungry. Salad and green vegetables are something you want to grow to love.

2nd tip that helps you lose and keep weight off:  Foods that say diet or fat free usually contain artificial sweeteners that act on your body just like sugar. It is not so much about taking out the fat or looking at the calories, if you eat real food there is not a lot of fat. It is about focusing on the amount of sugar and calories the food has. This is once again mostly only a problem is you eat packaged food. Real food has the micronutrients that balance each other out and naturally suppress your appetite. Don’t be fooled by focusing on calories alone.

3rd tip that helps you lose and keep weight off: Yes it is true, by taking out or cutting back the alcohol and caffeine you will be surprised how much of a difference it makes. Now I am not saying you have to live like this but consider going on a three week cleanse. This will give your liver a rest and make you more efficient metabolically. Alcohol and caffeine can cause you to eat more, alcohol lowers your guard and contains a lot of sugar, and coffee can make you hungrier. So yes, if you stop for three weeks you may drop a few pounds but that means you have to mindful going forward when you resume.

4th tip that helps you lose and keep weight off: We’ve all heard this time again; you have to stay hydrated, get off the diet soda and other sugar laden drinks. Instead you can think about incorporating a regimen of hot water with lemon at least once a day. This works wonders for flushing out the system.

5th tip that helps you lose and keep weight off: Do something about your sleep if you have sleep issues. There is a lot of research that shows if you are sleep deprived your body produces more ghrelin the hormone that makes you feel hungry and less leptin the one that keeps you feeling sated. Getting enough sleep and dreaming helps keep us healthy, smart, and affects weight loss.    

6th tip that helps you lose and keep weight off: Learn a self-motivation technique. Why not wake up every morning and before getting out of bed tell yourself how much you like to exercise and see yourself doing it. This is called autosuggestion and yes it works but you have to do it.

You can also download one of my hypnosis MP3’s and give yourself a head start. If you really get serious and want to make progress order the Nirvana Diet for weight loss. You will have all the structure and support you need to succeed.

I found the conversation between Demi Moore and Amanda de Cadenet in Bazaar  to be very enlightening. Both of these women seem very knowledgeable in terms of how to live a more enlightened life. Demi Moore speaks about having a “nobody cares, an it doesn’t matter attitude towards life and about the importance of acceptance. She describes freedom as: “letting go of the outcome, truly being in the moment, not reflecting on the past and not projecting into the future.”  Demi Moore seems to be on top of her game in terms of what she knows intellectually and has obviously learned a lot by being a student of Kabbalah for the past eight years. The problem is, it does not seem to have sunk in on an unconscious level. This is what I would call the human condition… you know what to do you just can’t seem to do it. Why?

What also struck me about the Bazaar article and their dialogue is the brutal way in which they talk about their body. Andrea says how “it’s an ongoing challenge for me that I don’t think my body looks how I want it to.” Her dream is to be able to eat cake every day and remain a size 6. Demi Moore feels “her body is betraying me…struggling with my weight and feeling that I couldn’t eat what I wanted to eat…or get my body to do what I wanted it to do.” Losing weight and maintaining an “ideal happy weight” should not be such a struggle.

The problem is despite what we think, we do not have control over our body or our mind. It is  a misconception for us to think  “we have control over only ourselves.”  While this is an improvement from thinking we have control over others or life in general, we will only end up disappointed if we think we have control over ourselves. As a student of depth psychology which is the study of the unconscious, I can pretty much say the one thing that I have learned is that the only thing we can hope to have control over is how we react and respond. We are very much controlled by the culture, what we think is “perfect.” We are striving to be perfect when the only thing we have control over is how we choose to react to our life experiences.

Finally, the last thing I would imagine we want to be is what Amanda refers to as an alpha female. Thinking that this is something desirable is part of the problem. Alpha female means someone who is “on top of her dating game. She is obstinate, conceited and doesn’t make it easy for you to pick her up. She gives you a run for your money and makes you work overtime on her, so to speak. But all this only makes her more appealing to you.”

I do agree what we need to do to feel and be loveable is to be loveable to ourselves. This of course means as both Demi Moore and Amanda agree at the end of their dialogue is freedom or not letting your wounds defines you. This is our life’s work.

I have not studied Kabbalah but I know that there is a difference between understanding  something and internalizing it inside. I have found the best way to do that is by developing a meditation practice which I have humorously called Smart, Sexy and Sane how to make meditation easy. To learn more about this you can go to meditation made easy.  I can pretty much say the last thing I want to do is to eat cake every day. Something’s are best enjoyed when if they are special…not for every day. I do meditate every day though.

What we have to do is let go of immediate gratification. Meditation is not like taking a pill but over time it really works.