Embracing Wellbeing - Designer Bodies

Chapter 12 for Radical Attraction is still baking in the oven. Sorry for the delay.

In the mean time here is another installment in "Embracing Wellbeing" Today's piece is on "Designer Bodies". I did promise a process for engaging the Law of Attraction, but that will have to wait for another day, as I have at least one more topic in the pipeline before I get there, so please be patient. i am intending to try and crack up the output.

Also have started posting "Embracing Wellbeing" at :

http://embracingwellbeing.blogspot.com.au/

Well that's the end apologies here is the latest installment.

There are 7 billion people on the planet which means there are 7 billion body types with 7 billion life paths, so why, when anybody decides they want to change their body to something they are happier with, do we almost universally  approach it from perspective that our bodies are merely machines and that the only way to lose weight is by reducing our input and increasing our output of energy. You see it on TV and hear it on the radio. Dieticians and health experts who are scarecrow thin being  superior about their thinness and sanctimonious to those who are not quite so thin. You can also it on those dubious weight loss shows, which take a group of people and torture them to lose weight. Extreme exercise,  vilification, humiliation and nasty temptation stunts are all standard fare as the contestants are bullied into weight loss. Invariably the successful candidates end up with gym junky and athlete type of bodies. Is there a another way? Is  weight is success irrevocably connected to the attainment of an athletic body.

What if you didn't want an a gym junky or athletes body? What other sorts of bodies can be created? 

Maybe you want a resilient, disease free body.A healthy body. A fun body. An adventurous body. A lithe body. A dancer's body. A spiritual body.  A gardener's body. A lover's body. A wiry body. A worker's body. A sleek body. A cuddly body. A handy man's body. A walker's body. A yoga body. A wonderful body. A happy body!

What sort of designer body do you want? How would it feel? How good would you feel?

A good body doesn't necessarily have to be low on fat and big on muscle to be perfect. Surely there are many styles of body that may carry you through life better than one that is sculptured in a gym or pounded into oblivion on the running track.

A good body should embrace wellbeing and be configured to carry you efficiently and effectively through the all the events that make up your life. Often just by doing the things you love will promote wellness in your life. Maybe you can build on your wellness by doing more with out the aid of machines, gadgets and cars. I believe activity promotes wellbeing, yet much of what we call progress is designed to make our bodies do less. But do a little more and your body will do a little more. This will promote wellbeing. You'll feel better. You'll do things better. You'll be able to do a little more.You'll feel better. You'll do things better. You'll be able to do a little more. You get the idea. Wellness and wellbeing attract wellness and wellbeing and life must improve.

There are many special occasions in life where we celebrate with the sharing of food. Weddings, parties, religious festivals and friendships. These are times when we commune with food and enjoy the pleasures of eating food. Sometimes we even eat food purely for it's own pleasure, which is supported by the large number of restaurants in many cities. Sharing food heightens our pleasure  and builds bonds between people and builds relationships. So we could define the difference between dining and eating. Dining treats food and the experience of eating and sharing it with reverence, respect and joy. Eating reflects the mere fuelling of our bodies.

Most of the diets in existence treat food as a mere fuel with no allowance for the pleasures that food might bring. Food is only appraised on its constituents and its bio-mechanical effect. This stance brings with it the concepts of good and bad food. This food is good fuel. This food is bad fuel. This builds resistance and this resistance can effect the way our body absorbs the constituents of the food we eat as because it means that our body is not in sympathy with the food we eat. In my previous blog offered the proposition:

"Food is my friend!"

This can remove us from this position of good or bad and allow us to focus on the wellbeing that food we eat promotes. This wellbeing can be the joy food brings us as well as nutrition.

If we accept there is a divine force, life force, life energy or supreme being, then it opens the possibity to treat your body as more than a mere machine. It allows us to engage the divine law of attraction in gaining the body we desire.The law of attraction tells us that "like attracts like" and so any resistance to food will attract the elements that we fear most. That is, it will hinder or eliminate our weight loss. So when you next sit down to eat consciously focus on the feeling you have about this food. It's very likely that the feeling is negative.

If the food is what we would nominally label "bad" you will probably have a grating, negative feeling.

If the food is what we would nominally call "good" the feelings maybe more positive, but you may have resentment because you feel compelled to eat this type of food so as to maintain your body.

So if you have these type of feelings try:

"Food is my friend!"

How does that feel? Better? So try it at each meal."Food is my friend!" Notice the wellbeing this promotes. How good does it feel?

When you're being active think of the "designer body" you desire. Feel what it would be like and good it would it feel. The   Law of Attraction will respond  to the vibrations these thoughts with like conditions. This is how we deliberately create change in our lives. Choose our desire. Think we want and enjoy and immerse ourselves in the way this feels.

Try it! Start creating your "Designer Body" now!

Wellbeing: A new approach to weight loss

Chapter 12 of Radical Attraction is still proving in the oven and progressing well. I had few moments of inspiration about weight loss and wellbeing which have spilled out here. I hope you enjoy it!

For the people that don't know me, these days, I'm a plus size kind of guy. I wasn't always this way and have had phases where I have been reasonably trim and fit. As this blog is a testament, I am a student of the Law of Attraction and so this year I have intentions to be the best I can be by changing the vibrations that I have been creating through my thoughts. If your you're not in the kind of shape that you'd like, it's probable that the thoughts you hold about yourself, are generally negative. With me, I just gave up on my body, in what was a very hard year personally last year.

Accepting the Law of Attraction rule, that "like attracts like', then the types of thoughts and feelings that you are having about your body, appearance, what you feed it and how you look after your body are not in alignment with the body you desire. In other words, the state of your body is a reflection of the type of thoughts you hold about yourself. I call them "I am" thoughts. I am good/no good at sport. I am smart. I am dumb. I am/not creative. I am good/no  good at maths.I am good/no  good at confrontation. I am good/no good at my job. I am able to eat what ever I want. I have to be careful with what I eat. I am fat. I am thin. I am fit. I am unfit.

So all these little loops of thoughts go round and round in your head, dictating what we attract into your life and how we react. If you don't believe me, take the time one day and watch these thoughts. As things happen during the day these little loops pop up in your head.

You're asked: "Would you like to have a game of tennis?" The loop says: "No thanks/yes please - I'm no good/I'm good at sport."

You're asked: "Can you help me with my maths homework?"The loop says: "No thanks/yes please - I'm no good/I'm good at maths."

You're asked: "Would you like fries with that?"The loop says: "No thanks/yes please - I put on weight really easily/I never put on weight."

You can see how these loops of thought have an effect on our behaviour and when you factor in our "like attracts like" rule, then you can see these loops of thought have a big impact, as they are key to what you are attracting in you life. So to make lasting changes in your life you need to change these thoughts.

On the weekend I read an article in "The Weekend Australian", which focussed on people who had been on diets, who after losing significant amounts of weight, almost universally put it back on. It described how researchers have found that:

 "A full year after significant weight loss these men and women remained in what could be described as a biologically altered state. Their still plump bodies were acting as though they were starving and were working overtime to regain the kilos they lost."

This got me thinking. Could it be because the "I am" statements they held about themselves were still the same as those that held about themselves before they lost weight, creating a misalignment?

You need to change the thoughts you are  having about yourself and your body, to achieve long term wellbeing. You can't be madly counting every kilojoule that enters your body and exercising like a mad person, when all the feelings you have about yourself are loathsome and unloving. The internal image you hold of yourself and the feelings about you body have significant effect on how your body manifests physically.

When you decide that you would like to change the way you look, you will find the "experts" come out of the woodwork."You gotta eliminate carbs. Don't eat after six. You must try Pilates/ Yoga/Boxercise"..... what ever! Going on a diet is like declaring war on your body because it treats food as the enemy. It's all the foods fault! It's too delicious and all it does, is end on your hips or you stomach!  Putting the weight back on, as described above,is your body fighting back.

You will notice there are people in the world, the "lucky ones", who seem to be able to eat whatever and how much they want and remain slim and lithe. How does that work? The regular answer is metabolism. Their bodies are just great at burning the food that is put into them, so there is no little extra bits left for the hips or the stomach. 

Maybe their attitude to food has something to do with it? What if instead of war we declared: 

"Food is my friend!"

It is food that gives your body all the nutrients and fuel that needs to do the amazing things it does. So if we make food our friend maybe we will no longer categorise different foods as "good " or "bad". They're not good or bad they just have a different composition of fat, nutrients and fibre. When we are at war with food we are focussing on those constituents that have the highest likely hood of ending up as fat deposits on our bodies. The Law says "like attracts like" and so a negative focus on what food will do to your body will actually attract this negative aspect into our lives and body. So it is counter productive to what we desire!

With food as our friend we are seeking to restore the balance in our eating, eliminating the guilt and fear that comes from focussing on the negative aspects of food. To label what you are about to eat as "junk" is not respectful of your body. Labelling it as junk emphasises the negative  aspects of this type of food, even though it still has some things that maybe good for you body. But of course there are some foods that ars better . Maybe we could re-label it "fun food" instead. We know the primary purpose of this food is not nutrition, but convenience and taste. Eat it. Enjoy it. Know it's fun. Know that you will eat other food for nutrition, but it can be fun to have a burger and fries with friends. Fun is an important element of life. It adds to our wellbeing.

What would happen if we focussed on the positive aspects of food.

Maybe the answer is to move to the place of: 

"I love food. Food is my friend. It is great for my body!"

Can you see the difference if we embrace such an approach. The emphasis is now what is good for our bodies. We can now focus on what will bring wellbeing to our bodies. Isn't that what we want!

Further in the article described earlier, a couple detailed the extreme lengths they went to maintain their weight loss. It included exercising for more than 100 minutes a day, weighing daily and recording all food eaten They had calculated their bodies burn rate for a number of  different  exercises and the exact numbers of kilojoules their bodies require each day. It sounds like war to me and is devoid of any fun or joy. Could a focus on the positive aspects of life have greater impact than an obsession with a particular number on the scales?

There is one question all this obsession ignores:

"What is the optimal condition or shape for what the body is going to be used for?" 

Do you need to have an athlete's or model's body to live well? Is all the stress this puts on your body good for you? An austere diet, like the one described above take all lot of fun out of life. 

So a strong resilient body with resistance to illness may serve you better in you life than a body than one that is built to run marathon or wear size 6 clothes.

When people hear I am changing things in my life so my body maybe more to my liking, the automatic reaction is that I'm on a diet or an exercise regime which focusses on making me like an athlete. I'm never going to make it to model status! There's all these rules and regulations which are apparently mandatory for losing weight.

So. I am not on a diet. I am not on exercise program. I am just making lifestyle changes that feel more in line with who and what I want to be. It's amazing when you look at your life that there are lots of opportunities to improve you wellbeing. Opportunities to eat foods that are fresher or more nutritious or even tastier than the foods that you  currently eat habitually. Food is you friend! Maybe you can go and find new friends that will increase you wellbeing.

You can also find opportunities to be a little more active and allow your body to become a little stronger. Today as I was coming home I passed a young woman who had parked her car in a no standing zone near a very busy intersection, across the road from a sushi shop. This caused great inconvenience to other motorists,but she had ensured she took the least possible number of steps to get her lunch. She just may have achieved more for her body, if she had parked 50 metres away and walked to the shop, because I have found if you gradually ask you body to do a little more, it will do a little more. Opportunities to walk a little more are great! Do you really need to park right next to the door at the shops. Could you walk instead of drive? What about early morning exercise? I know I have always been resistant but I am enjoying it now. My focus is changing small aspects of my life permanently, which make me more active, improve my nutrition and over all wellbeing. These are not radical changes but incremental and permanent changes to give small but permanent improvements to my body.

In 5 weeks I have become a little trimmer, a little fitter and a little happier. I am enjoying the improvement. I am using a very handy app on my Android phone to track my walking and weight and I find this helps keep me motivated and confirms the impact of the changes I have made. It's not so important what the score but that I continue to make progress.

I know it's radical thinking, but I think it's a worthwhile hypothesis.You need to love your body...even though it may not look how you want  right now. Think of all the good things it's done for you.

In closing remember, improving your wellbeing will put you in the best place you can be for fitness, health and self-esteem. This is more important than a number on the scales. If you feel great, you'll be great and you'll do great things. So, don’t focus on how bad things are. Instead focus on how good you’d like things to be.

Next week I'll talk about different types of bodies and detail a process that I have created that will help you change these "thought loops".

May wellbeing be with you!

Gray