Inspirational Sunday: Meditation for Sugar Avoidance
Hello People!
Yes, yet another post about sugar being bad. Are you catching a theme here? Not that I have ANY PROBLEM with the white stuff! And by that I mean, hell’s yeah I do.
If you haven’t seen the video for Sugar the Bitter Truth, well get yourself a viewing ASAP! It really tells all the ins and outs of what sugar truly does in the body. Long story short, it purely gets stored as fat, well in most cases it does, by 100%. If you are trying to lose any kind of weight, sugar can be your greatest burden on that journey especially if you are past the age of 40. Remember too that “sugar” has other forms in addition to glucose or sucrose (white sugar) such as white flour, white rice, refined grain products, and alcohol.
We could take a few more liberties when we were young, right? Remember how you could eat a binge meal on the weekend and it really didn’t effect your weight too much? After you reach mid-life, the metabolism changes, especially in us women…and I don’t care what the research says on the matter (it says we lose muscle which slows it down, but most of it says the slowing of the metabolism is a myth!); it does change. Until you get to my age and are a woman, no one gets this! I hear a lot of younger women touting advice, but they have no idea what they are talking about. They are still young! This metabolism issue has been my problem since I started this blog. After age 38 I gained 10 pounds in a month and have been struggling for 4.5 years to take it off. Every meal, morsel and sugar crystal counts these days. It was never this hard before. Do you have the same issue?
I’ve been reading a book called Think Yourself Thin – Change Your Brain for Permanent Weight Loss by Darcy D. Buehler Ph.D. It is an interesting book on using mediations for focusing on your trouble areas of weight loss. There is nothing new in the book about how weight loss works, but she is a psychologist who understands that the brain needs a little coaxing in the area of the subconscious to change its old ways. This is a fascinating area of study for me. We consciously know what to do, but because of old habits and old ways of thinking, we repeat bad eating choices and continue to have eating issues despite what we know is right. Why? The subconscious is playing that old record of sabotaging good eating habits over and over and we won’t change the subconscious until it learns to think differently. Somehow, someway, the subconscious has learned to think along one path and it will take a bit of work to make it ditch it’s former beliefs. And actually, she tells in the book how you can literally change the shape of the neural pathways in the brain with new thinking patterns. As she puts it:
“The mental process you are about to embark upon will, over time, imbed the new thoughts into the brain. Once this is done, the new thoughts and urges will outweigh the old – and you will stay thin. Your brain circuitry will now support – and sometimes even initiate – the urges fundamental to your new healthy lifestyle.”
I leave you now with one of her meditation verses. It is written for you to do while laying down and relaxed. Focus on the phrases that speak to you and repeat them over and over until you really feel their solidity in your thinking. Mumbo jumbo? Try it…what have you got to lose?
Meditation: Sugar Avoidance (part 1)
- In a nice, relaxed position, begin to breathe slowly and rhythmically, inhaling and exhaling, as you relax your shoulders and soften your belly.
- Allow your body to breathe rhythmically and naturally.
- Notice the support of the cushions beneath you as you begin to relax. Notice a heaviness throughout your body as you become more and more relaxed.
- Over the next several days you will find yourself in many situations, many situations in which various forms of refined sugar will be available to you.
- You know the situations, so begin to see yourself.
- See yourself at home, out at your favorite restaurant, at work, at the grocery store, at the convenience store when you go in to pay for your gas -many situations- and the growing image you have of yourself is one of strength and confidence, feeling almost no desire for sugar.
- Your head is held high, your shoulders are thrown back, and in your eye is a glimmer of hope.
- You are feeling so good about yourself and your desire to limit refined sugar from your lifestyle.
- That’s right, you are going to limit refined sugar in your lifestyle because you know that sugar may be the number one culprit in lowering the quality of your life.
- You will go as far as beginning to see sugar as almost lethal when ingested in your body.
- You are becoming convinced that regardless of the situation, you will not allow yourself to overindulge in sweets.
- Continue to develop this image of yourself feeling strong and having no desire for sugar.
- With this image of yourself in your mind take two or three nice deep breaths.
- With the first breath just feel the confidence welling up in your chest
- With that next deep breath feel the psychological strength centering in your body.
- One more deep breath as the excitement courses through your veins — the excitement of knowing you will dramatically decrease your intake of sugar.
- You are feeling so good about your decision to limit that old-fashioned and embarrassing habit of eating sugar.
- You feel sure that you very often will be able to avoid refined sugar.
- You are becoming more and more confident that you have the strength to AVOID REFINED SUGAR on a regular basis.
- To assist you in developing an aversion to sugar, you will be doing a rather difficult visualization. This visualization will help you to gain the strength to almost completely eliminate refined sugar.
To be continued……HA!
To continue to part 2, click here.
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