Look at me and look at Robby or Laura or Eliane, you will see I am the right person to have this topic. I know you guys may say: Nancy, you look good as a mother. Please save your breath, every girl has a dream of beauty and wants to reduce some fluffy parts and to tighten some key parts. I have tried many times but failed. Finally, I got three commanders to take responsibility of my failure. I hope them will make change and then push me to change.
The three commanders are the three parts of my brain. First is the reptilian brain, which lets us react quickly without thinking when dangers happen. Second is the limbic brain or emotion brain, which makes us have emotional behaviors, such as love, sadness, fear and anger, it cares about joys and benefits of ourselves, families and friends. The third one is the neocortex or rational brain, only human beings have this part, it helps us draw up plans and futures, it can jump out of the situation and observe what is going on.
If you have these three commanders in your team. Which one is your most accountable teammate? Actually, All of them are essential for us. But for losing weight, we should account on the third one and the other two may turn out to be the pig teammates.
The most common situation in which l may lose control by eating too much and giving up exercise is dinner time. After a full day working, I feel tired and want to refresh myself with yummy food. The first brain cast a glance at my full stomach and find no danger will kill me immediately, so it moves away without a word. But when I want to skip the dinner, The second brain keeps telling me: if you don't have dinner with your husband and your child, they will be disappointed, it would hurt the family relationship; or you are tired and the delicious food will make you happy, do what you want to! Or don't make change right now , let's do it next time. Such a bad teammate! At that time, What the third brain will do? This dude is empty and weak, it has not been filled with powerful dream. So, The emotion brain controlled my behaviors. It focus on present but not future, its duty is to satisfy the current desires. Changes are strongly resisted unless the emotion brain find the changes are profitable.
If I want to achieve my goal, all of them must work together and come an agreement. The first and the second commander are so primary that can't think about the future. So the third commander must strength its power by drawing attractive, clear and most-wanted pictures of future. Use the power of dreams to transfer the negative brain talks into positive ones.
For example, when the second commander says: your husband and child will be disappointed if you miss the dinner time with them. The third commander should say: your husband and child will be very delighted if you are gorgeous and dynamic. To do so, The third commander must be equipped with charming dreams. The reason I failed in losing weight was I didn't have this kind of dream. Or I never connected losing weight with my dream of being an awesome trainer strongly. Imagine I am in good shape, I will look good with any dress, I will be more energetic, professional and confident. Trainees will love me more and respect me more. I will be an awesome trainer.
To make my losing weight dream vivid, I recalled my adorable pictures which were taken ten years ago. I will watch them every day.
So my dear friends, if you have a problem with controlling yourself, please pay attention to your short-sighted emotion brain and use the power of dreams to keep moving forward. Let us have our dream come true.
