The Thought Diet

I was watching a PBS show the other day and there was man talking about changing your brain and he presented four questions that are designed to challenge a limiting belief. I did not catch his name and I cannot find the original source for who first presented these questions but thought they were worth repeating anyway.

Before I repeat the questions I want to take a second to help you understand what a limiting belief is and how it can affect your life and your health. A limiting belief is simply a thought that you have been thinking for some time that causes you to feel negative emotion. It is a thought you picked up from someone else or something you decided when you observed something from a limited perspective. Think of thoughts as a huge part of your creation process. If you belief something limiting, you are actually using that thought to create future experiences surrounding that subject.

For example, if you believe that you can’t change your body or your health or that it is going to be a lot of work for you to get the body you want then you are creating a greater potential for things to fold exactly that way. The more you think it, the more it shows up in your experience. The more it shows up in your experience the more you believe it to be true. The more you believe it to be true the harder it gets locked into a way of being for you. Your belief is what sets the tone for your future experiences.

So, how do you eliminate a limiting belief? The four questions presented in the PBS show is a great place to start. Here are the four questions:

1. Is it true?

2. Can you absolutely know it is true?

3. How do you feel about that thought?

4. Who would you be without that thought?

The first question is designed to get you to challenge this belief you have. For example, if you believe you changing you are too old to make changes by asking if it is true you are checking to see if this is really a fact. If at that moment you do not believe it to be the truth then you have already dismantled the belief. If you say “yes it is true” then ask yourself question two.

Asking question two is really challenging yourself to see if, without a doubt, can you say this is 100% true. Chances are, like with most things in life, there is no absolute with this subject. Even if you do find yourself questioning the validity of truth in your belief, move on to question three.

Question three will help you challenge this belief even further. By asking how you feel about this emotion you are using your emotional guidance system as further indication as to your alignment with this thought. Any negative feeling emotion is an indicator that you have been thinking a thought that is limited in nature and keeping you from thoughts that would provide the appropriate solution for you “problem.” If it feels bad then it must lack a deeper truth and your higher brain (higher self) does not agree with your limited perspective. In fact, your higher brain (higher self) is trying to come up with a solution for your problem but as long as you continue to harvest this belief you won’t have access to it. Your emotion at this point is like a navigational system trying to tell you that your current path (thought) is not leading you toward where you have asked to go (remember, every time you know what you don’t want you create the unconscious intention to create what you do want).

The last question will help you see where you would be or who you would be if you didn’t practice this thought. It is a great way to see what is on the other side of this thought and it is a great way to see where this thought has kept you.

Once you have answered those thoughts then you can ask yourself what the opposite of that belief is. To use the same example, you might ask what is the opposite of being to old to make changes in my health and body. Your answer could be: I am still young enough to make changes in my health and body or I am never too old to make changes in my body, so long as I am still alive.

Your next question is to compare the two statements and ask yourself which one is truer? You can also ask yourself which one feels better. Your goal is to try to find as many thoughts that move in the direction of this opposite thought. The more you practice this new thought, or thoughts in this direction, the more your body will reflect your new point of focus. If anything, you will no longer be sending negative chemical signals to your cells telling them that there is a problem. By virute of eliminating the problem signal, your body can now provide you with the solution you have been asking for.

One thing that has become very apparent to me is that the way our body currently looks and feels is purely feedback about the input it is getting. Some of it relates to how we eat and how we move (exercise and activities) but it has more to do with how we think. Your body is mostly a reflection of how you think mostly because of all the actions we do (including eating) are a result of the information your body is receiving from the outside world–and you do that mostly through interpretive thoughts.

What you choose to eat and what you crave to eat are usually a product of what you are programming your body to want and need. How much you move and are inspired to move is also a result of the programming your body has received.

This programming happens from how we interpret our bodies and our other physical plane experiences. Every time you have an experience in your physical environment you have a conscious interpretation of that event. The way you interpret that subject leads to an emotional response. Some big, some small, and some that feel pretty neutral (usually from those mundane things we do on a daily basis – brushing our teeth, putting our shoes on, etc.). Point is, every time you have a reaction to an observation in your experience and you create an emotional response you cause a chemical cascade to happen in your body that your body then responds to based on the feedback. Where this should be of interest is when your body is receiving messages of stress.

The part of your brain that responds to signals of stress does not know the difference between emotional stress and physical stress. So, if your body has extra body fat there may be a very good chance that you are programming your body, via negative emotions, to store fat. You may very well be creating a chemical blueprint from an emotional response that is the same blueprint that tells your body that you are physical starving or in a state of famine, which is one reason why your body would want to not only crave more food (because it is being told that it is starving–just emotional starvation, it doesn’t know there is an abundance of food) but also store what you eat in the event that you will go long periods without food. Your cravings also might be driven by the need for your body to refuel itself with calorie dense foods. And since your brain knows what your likes and dislikes are it will help you go after food by creating a craving for the foods it knows you like.

Your desire to move, or not to move, can come from this programming as well. If your body is getting the signal that it is “starving” then less movement would be essential for survival–again, based on the signaling the body is getting. So, not liking to exercise or move around may have more to do with your bodies needs than it does your willpower. Especially if you were a kid who ran around a lot and did a lot of physical activities. Your body was getting different programming then.

So, what are the thoughts that could create this false signaling that is causing your body to crave foods, want to store fat, and not move as much (remember, these things are just indicators)? Feeling bad about your body is the biggest one I can think of. Judging yourself for where you are or where you are not can create the same chemical blueprint as actual starvation. Just from the fact that every time you identify something you don’t like you create another point of relativity, that being what it is you would like as your solution or improvement, and if you don’t give attention to and move towards what it is you now want you create a sense of lack or deprivation–lack of having what you want or depriving yourself from what you asked for (even if you are not clear on what that is yet because you are so focused on what you don’t want). You can then imagine just by creating this sense of emotional lack and deprivation (by not moving toward your new desire) creates a similar chemical blueprint as real-life starvation. And every time you are thinking something negative about your body you reactivate this signal and your body responds to this even if you are eating an abundance of food.

Another situation that can cause this same chemical blueprint would be neglecting your craving because you are on a diet. If your body feels it is in a starvation state (this would be a chronic starvation state, not an acute situation where you haven’t eaten for a little while) from bombarding it with negative signals and you don’t eat because you don’t want to go off your calorie restricted diet, you create another sense of deprivation–both emotionally and physically. And if you did eat you could have two situations active. One would be that your body, being in starvation mode, would store this food as fat (this being the result of the chemical blueprint, not necessarily causing it unless that stored fat has you responding negatively later on). The other situation would be that you felt guilty for eating the food you did (especially if you ate at the level of your body’s asking). This sense of guilt can create the same chemical response that tells your body it is starving or that there is big trouble.

However you look at it, your body is an indicator of how you have been thinking. It is also an indicator of what you have been eating and how you have been moving but both of those could be an indicator of how you are thinking. What you desire to do and eat as well as desire not to do and not to eat comes more from a primal instinct to survive.

If you don’t like where you are and are forcing yourself to do things you aren’t inspired to do (diet and exercise), then you might want to take a look at how you are thinking about your body and your eating as well as other things in your life.

One way to tend to this to see if in fact you have a negative chemical response that is going on is to sit for a few moments with your eyes closed. Think about something you really enjoy (love, appreciate, etc.) and while you do that pay attention to how you feel. Once you notice the sensation that comes along with your positive focus, turn your attention to how your body looks now. Notice where you feel the negative emotion. Most people feel their negative emotion in their abdomen area. This, to me, could be a false sense of hunger. It may or may not feel like hunger to you but it could be the beginning of a hunger signal. If you feel any negative emotion, regardless of where you feel it, you want to use that negative emotion as another indicator. It is indicating a thought that is working against you. Do your best to challenge that thought so you feel better. Once you remove the negative (limited) perspectives that surround your subject you will be de-activating the fat storage mode your body is in. Not to mention, you will also stop your body from producing all the extra calories that comes with the release of cortisol (mobilized blood sugar), which is the result of stress–both physical and mental.

Experiment One
About a month ago I was doing a presentation and I brought up the idea that every time we are stressed we activate the “fight or flight” response, which is done through something called the HPA axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis), and that causes a release of cortisol. Cortisol is then responsible for mobilizing blood sugar from your muscles and liver. This blood sugar is designed to help you with your ordeal (to fight or flight) but if you are not “fighting or fleeing” then the extra blood sugar just gets stored as fat. So, I made the comment that every time you get frustrated, whether it is in traffic or looking at your body in the mirror, and since your body doesn’t know the difference between real stress and imagined stress (creates the same chemical reactions), your body will have created the equivalent of a doughnut that you didn’t get to enjoy. I didn’t know if that would be a whole doughnut or a doughnut hole but the idea stuck either way with the audience.

Having really peaked my own curiosity I decided to check to see what happens with my own blood sugar when I am stressed. I have a device that measures blood sugar (the same one diabetics use) and I thought this would be perfect for before stress reading and during/after stress reading. I bought this device years ago to see the effects of physiological over load stress on the production of blood sugar (assuming that blood sugar would be the beginning indication that the body is sensing a problem and needing to take action to help with the impending threat/problem) so it had been a long time since I pricked my finger to draw a drop of blood. Interestingly, I was really nervous the first time I went to prick my finger. Since I forgot how little the pain was I was hesitant to create pain to myself. It took me about a minute to get myself psyched up to shove the pin in my finger. Needless to say I was already anxious and stressed from the anticipation of pain. My blood sugar reading was 137, which is way above what my normal reading was (I got that a bit later since I couldn’t recall where my normal blood sugar was from my readings years ago).

I then sat in my office and deliberately worked myself up into a frustrated state. One of my pet peeves was getting behind slow drivers or people who don’t use their turn signals so I focused on that for a few minutes really getting myself annoyed. Once I felt I was sufficiently annoyed I measured my blood sugar once again and it read 157 this time. Even higher then when I was stressed from pricking my finger the first time just moments ago.

Later figuring out that my normal blood sugar levels are in the 90’s, this was a significant raise in blood sugar in a short amount of time. About 65 points.

I was then serious how this related to eating an actual doughnut. Once my blood sugar was at normal levels I ate a doughnut. Within less than a minute my blood sugar immediately dropped from 92 to 80. I assume this is my body preparing for the sugar that is coming by immediately reducing the natural blood sugar production from my body. Within fifteen minutes (I gave a little time for the food to start to digest) it went up to 130. Within another fifteen minutes it went up to 145. I checked fifteen minutes later and my blood sugar started to go back down–it was at 95 by then.
So, I found it interesting that being frustrated got my blood sugar up further then eating a doughnut did. Now, I don’t know how many calories this increase in blood sugar from being frustrated equates to but in any event it showed that there is a spike in blood sugar when frustrated. I could only imagine how much would be there if I was worse than frustrated–like angry or resentful or feeling disempowered. And then I think about how often we get frustrated in a day (most people don’t even recognize they are frustrated anymore as they are used to feeling negative) and I can only imagine, even this little spike was more like a doughnut hole than it was like a whole doughnut, that this extra blood sugar that doesn’t get used would add up pretty quickly.

You then throw in the fact that the body thinks it needs to replenish the blood sugar stores (not knowing the body didn’t use it to deal with impending stress) thus creating cravings and hunger so you would eat, you can see how easy it is to get into a huge calorie swing in the wrong way.

Experiment Two
After doing the blood sugar experiment I had a concept as to how negative thinking affected my body but I was curious as to how positive thinking would effect my body. The best way I know how to check this is to measure my resting metabolic rate (RMR). I do this using a calorimeter device (made by BodyGem), which measures your rate of breathing, the amount oxygen uptake, the amount carbon dioxide output, the amount of moisture in the breath, among other things I am sure.

With that, I took a measurement first thing in the morning on an empty stomach after sitting for about ten minutes relaxing. My first reading was 1500, which was fairly consistent to other times I have read it in the past. After that first reading I took about fifteen minutes to coach myself on some minor things in my life that had me frustrated or irritated. The result of that coaching was a change in perspective that allowed me to see what it was that I did want (rather than focusing on what I didn’t want/like) along with knowing why I wanted it (for the sense of love, joy, freedom, etc.–high emotional reasons). Once I had my positive points of focus I started my RMR reading again. While breathing into the calorimeter I focused on the new desires and looked for evidence of already having had the same successes, not only with the subject matter at hand but also having had the same feelings in my life (those feelings being the reason why I wanted what I now realize I wanted–knowing what having what I wanted would provide for me that I don’t already have in my life). I also wore a heart rate monitor to make sure my heart rate wasn’t going up (and potentially increasing my body temperature–increasing the thermodynamics)–in fact, it was lower then when I did it earlier. After my ten minutes of reading was up my new RMR was 1830 (330 points higher than normal). This is significant to me. I was taught that your RMR could not change that much from day to day. The only thing I told that would affect that would be food, movement, increase in heart rate and temperature, as well as adding muscle (I’ve read that each pound of additional muscle adds about ten calories to your RMR total and have heard upwards to fifty calories but feel ten is more realistic) but never just positive points of focus.

I then started to wonder if the device had some natural variances (a natural level of inaccuracy) so I decided to check my RMR back-to-back without changing my point of focus to see what that might be (how big the natural variance would be with no other distractions). So, a few days later I did the same thing in my office (same scenario–no food, same time, sat for ten minutes, etc.) and my first reading was 1590, which is to me is an acceptable variance from 1500. I then took it again ten minutes later and it was 1630. Again, to me this felt like a consistent and acceptable variance.
Curious as to whether or not negative thinking would make it go down, I decided to do it one more time. This morning I set up the same scenario and measured for the regular RMR with no distractions. My baseline was 1560, which felt consistent with my previous neutral readings. I then got myself all worked up with little pet peeves and used that as my focus during the reading ten minutes later. My reading was 1620, not a huge jump–maybe just normal variance in the machine. I then decided to do it one more time to see if I could get it to rise again. I then used the next ten minutes to come to new conclusions about my pet peeves by coaching myself. I then started my next RMR reading by just focusing on breathings and feeling certain parts of my body for about five minutes (heart rate about 53). I used the last five minutes to focus on things I enjoyed and now wanted as a result of my self-coaching. My final reading = 1850. This final reading was similar to the same reading when I did the positive focus the first time (1830).

Both these experiments signify that my focus changes the landscape of my body. I have to imagine that negative thinking causes my body to create and crave for extra calories whereas positive thinking causes me to expend extra calories. I could then see how going from focusing on something negative to something positive could create a pretty big calorie swing (from storing and begging for more calories to burning extra calories).

Consider that every time you get upset, frustrated or feel any negative emotion at all your body reacts as if there was an impending danger. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between a real threat like a bear running after you and you being angry at yourself for gaining five pounds. Physiological stress and psychological stress both stimulate a “fight or flight” response which results in a release of Cortisol (among other chemicals), which is a hormone that stimulates the mobilization of blood sugar. This blood sugar was designed to give you energy during your flight or fight ordeal.

This extra energy is great if you use it for fight or flight but if you are stuck in traffic and are upset or you are looking in the mirror and feeling insecure you create the same stress response but have no real need for the energy. If you have no real need for it your body will just store it as fat.

Now let’s say that every time you stress out about your body (for example, you feel disappointment) you produce 20 calories worth of blood sugar. Not a huge number considering you are producing energy to help you with your impending danger. Would 20 calories be enough for you to escape danger (remember, the part of your brain that is reacting to stress doesn’t know the difference between you being stressed out mentally or if you have a real impending danger–it’s going to respond the same way)?

Now consider that you have 2,000 to 10,000 thoughts a day (most of which you don’t consciously pay attention to) and let’s say 5000 is the average. Is it possible that you think about your body, which is the center of our physical experience and the main way in which you relate to the world, at least 1% of the time? This would be 50 thoughts about your body in one day. It could be when you are in the shower, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, looking in the mirror, seeing your reflection anywhere, putting your seatbelt on, standing in line, seeing someone attractive and in shape, being with your partner, sitting in a chair, eating food, getting undressed, etc. If it is possible for you to have 50 thoughts a day that reflect how you feel about your body (negatively) and you are unaware to most of those thoughts (thoughts that create an emotional response that you no longer notice) and each of those thoughts creates 20 calories of blood sugar that doesn’t get used, you can see how quickly having a negative perspective would create up to 1000 extra calories that your body produced and didn’t use.

I am not saying this is exactly the way it works or that these are the actual amounts but it should give you some perspective as to how much we might be working against ourselves when we think negative thoughts. If you were even at half of this amount is it possible to see and understand why your body is where it is?

Just understanding that your thoughts have contributed to your current body and health should be enough to help you ease up about where your current body and health is. It is most likely a reflection of how you have been thinking. If this is the case, imagine what kind of body you would have (as a reflection) if you change your thinking to something more positive–like what it is you DO WANT, instead of focusing on the problem, which is what you DON’T WANT.

If you learned you were eating something you didn’t know was full of unwanted calories you would not be surprised that you were in your current predicament with your body. You would simply chalk it up to a learning experience and move on to make the appropriate corrections. This is the same thing here. Most people don’t understand how much their thoughts have an effect on their body. I give you permission to claim ignorance on this one and let your self off the hook for being where you are. Now move on and figure out what your current body has helped you to determine you now want. From what you don’t want arose the desire for something new, an improvement. Figure out what that is an give you undivided attention to that.

Consider that for everything that you don’t like there is a preference born out of it. For every negative there is a desire for the positive. The question is, which side of the coin are you looking at.

For every problem there is a solution. If the problem was big enough and important enough (you know this by the amount of time you think about it and how negative it feels to you when you do think about it) you might very well have a really big desire building. So, from the problem comes a desire for something new. That desire for something new could now be your new life purpose. There is nothing like having a perceived problem that helps you get present to something that is important to you. When it is viewed as a problem it is in the beginning stages of creation. You are determining what you don’t want. From there, it should move into knowing what it is you would now prefer. Life has helped you to determine something specific.

Now, this is relative to what you have lived thus far in life. If you lived in poverty your desire would be different than someone who didn’t. If you lived where there was poor water your desire would be different than someone who lived with good water. Point is, what you prefer, which came from your perceived problem, is specific to what your individualistic and specific life has helped you to determine.

Once you understand what life has helped you to determine what it is you would like–whether that is a healthy body because you were ill or a lean body because you were overweight–it doesn’t matter what it is so long as you are asking for an impovement, for evolvement and expansion of “what is.” Life is about expansion and right now any problem you think you have is nothing more than the beginning point of a new solution–the expansion from “what is.”

This new improvement, if it is important enough to you, may have given way to a new purpose in your life. There is nothing more life-giving than having a life that has purpose–regardless of what that purpose is. Purpose is purpose. And when that purpose is aligned with a positive end result, nothing becomes more enriching when you are on task to accomplish it.