Your Mind’s Crucial Role In Weight Loss! Are You Stuck?
Your Mind’s Role in Weight Loss
“Our limitations and success will be based, most often, on your own expectations for ourselves. What the mind dwells upon, the body acts upon.” — Denis Waitley, The Power of Flow
It is estimated that we have approximately 65,000 thoughts each day. Ninety five percent of those thoughts are the same thoughts we had yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that. And most of the thoughts we have, be they positive or negative, elicit specific physical responses. It makes sense to look into this.
Before we get into the science and specifics necessary to think your way to faster results I want to utterly convince you that success begins and ends between your ears. If you have any doubts as to the validity of this claim, read on.
The Mind and Weight Loss
Crum et al. (2007) studied whether the relationship between exercise and health is moderated by one’s mind. Eighty-four female room attendants working in seven different hotels were measured on physiological health variables affected by exercise.
Those in the informed condition were told that the work they do (cleaning hotel rooms) is good exercise and satisfies the Surgeon General’s recommendations for an active lifestyle. (This, of course, is not true.) Examples of how their work was exercise were provided.
Subjects in the control group were not given this information. Although actual behavior did not change, four weeks after the intervention, the informed group perceived themselves to be getting significantly more exercise than before. As a result, compared with the control group, they showed a decrease in weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-tohip ratio, and body mass index. These women thought they were exercising and consequently lost weight, despite the fact that they were doing nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever.
Beck et al. (2005) tracked 105 obese individuals. Sixty-two of them participated in three hours of cognitive therapy per week for ten weeks, while the rest served as controls. Cognitive therapy helps isolate negative thoughts, such as “I cannot lose weight” or “I will always be fat.” Eighteen months after the therapy ended, those in the cognitive therapy group had lost an average of 23 pounds, while the control group gained an average of 5 pounds.
The Mind and Performance
Marchant et al. (2005) wired test subjects up to weight machines that monitored levels of electrical activity in their biceps. Subjects were then asked to think in two different ways while exercising. One was not targeted while the other was specific to how the muscle was feeling and functioning during the movement.
Researchers found that the subject’s muscles worked more when they focused on what the muscles were doing. Results indicated that potentially greater strength would result from engaging in this practice of putting your “mind in your muscle.”
There’s more. Scientists in South Africa discovered something peculiar about fatigue: It doesn’t begin in the muscles. You know that burning feeling you get in your muscles toward the end of a hard set? It comes from your mind. Biopsies of exhausted marathoners showed plenty of glycogen (the body’s main fuel) and ATP (a chemical that stores energy); despite the fact they “hit the wall”. Their conclusion: Fatigue sets in not when your muscles run out of gas, but when your brain tells instructs them to conserve energy.
How powerful is the mind? Australian psychologist Alan Richardson chose three groups of students at random. None of them had any experience with visualization. The first group practiced free throws every day for twenty days. The second group basically did nothing at all. The third group spent twenty minutes every day visualizing free throws with no additional practice at all.
Twenty days later, the group that practiced daily improved twenty-four percent. The second group didn’t improve at all. But the visualization only group improved twenty-three percent—almost as much as the group that actually practiced! Richardson later noted that the most effective visualization occurs when the participant both feels and sees what they are doing in their mind prior to any physical engagement.
That’s not all—Smith et al. (1997) demonstrated that participants who weight trained over a twelve-week period achieve a 30% increase in strength. Those who only visualized themselves going through the same training circuit experienced a 16% increase in strength in the same movements.
Now do I have your attention?
Are you ready to find out how to fully maximize the power of that wonderful computer between your ears and use it to make greater gains in less time?
I thought so.
Your mind, properly focused for just seven minutes, will enable you to produce far greater physical, measurable results than sixty minutes of half-ass focus punctuated by cell phone use, gazing at attractive gym members, or reliving the day’s problems as you proceed to the next set. Hopefully this is common sense.
However, there’s more to this story—a part that is not so common. Specific thoughts trigger specific reactions in the body, and those actions have intense effects on everything from hormone secretion to mood. We will be looking at some of the science behind this phenomenon. For now, all I ask is that you fully realize the futility of merely going to the gym, working hard for seven minutes, and expecting incredible results without fully utilizing every tool at your disposal.
Your greatest tool, bar none, is your mind. Let’s dig in…
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