Weight Loss without Worry

     Hello to my fellow Biggest Loser watcher, On Wednesday mornings I typically take this time to blog about the attitudes of the contestants on The Biggest Loser and how those attitudes are affecting their progress, because as you know, I put a lot of importance on having the right attitude.  I am impressed with most of the players and I only noticed one contestant in serious attitude jeopardy, Amy.  She doesn’t seem to share the same attitude as the others and when the going gets real tough she has a tendency to walk away and give up or become teary and dramatic.  To me this sends up red flags.

     Joe Dispenza, in his book Evolve your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind, talks about patterns that we learn at a young age that become subconscious behaviors that follow us into adulthood.  These patterns are not necessarily bad because they allow us to do certain things without having to dedicate a lot of conscious thought to the process.  Riding a bike for instance, is something that took a lot of conscious effort when we first hopped on, but soon our body and mind worked it out to the point where most of us can hop on a bike today and go without much thought at all.  Our emotions can be learned in the same way.  We learn patterns of emotion and we associate outcomes with those emotions.  For instance, if we are very young and scared about getting on a roller coaster, we may start to cry.  This might result in our parent’s telling us we don’t have to ride it.  If this pattern of tears followed by not needing to act continues, it gets reinforced and we continue to do it on a subconscious level.

    Okay, that was a lot of psychology for the few minutes of air time surrounding Amy and I am not trying to do a deep analysis on her, but it does make me want to watch her progress and see if her emotions prevent her from succeeding long-term. 

     By the way, these learned patterns can change but we must first be fully aware of them and then have a desire to change.  Change happens by disrupting the old pattern when we notice it coming on and then consciously thinking and acting in a different way.  For more on how the change your pattern of thinking, I recommend Dr. Dispenza’s book.  It is in-depth so it is not like sitting down to read a novel but if you are into how the mind works it is a must read.