Weight Loss without Worry

There are stages of temptation and if you become aware of them you will be able to short circuit your tempting thoughts before they cause you to act in a way that sabotages your diet.

The first stage of temptation is when ANTS Show Up (stage 1) - ANTS are Automatic Negative Thoughts and everybody has ANTS living in their head, while you cannot prevent them from popping up you can keep from acting on them.

For instance have you ever told yourself you should lose 20 pounds and then immediately afterward you hear a tiny voice inside your head say, “You’ll never be able to do that.” That is an ANT and it has the power to keep you from taking action toward your goal.

If you don’t dismiss the ANTS as soon as they come up (I will show you how at the end of this article) then you move into the next stage which is

Entertaining the ANTS (stage 2). This means you allow yourself to focus on the Automatic Negative Thought and you search for evidence as to why it might be true. This moves you into the next stage which is…

Believing your ANTS (stage 3). If you tell yourself over and over again that something is true, then you are likely to start believing it, even if that something is negative and potentially harmful to your health. Let’s say for instance that your doctor told you to lose 20 pounds or else your blood pressure would be dangerously high. You might be motivated to diet and exercise initially but if your ANTS show up and say, “You have been fat all your life what makes you think you can do this now?” And then you Entertain that ANT by allowing yourself to focus on it and you search your memory for evidence as to why it might be true…You start to Believe your ANTS.

There is only one place to go after you begin believing this negative thought and that is the final stage - You ACT (stage 4). You abandon you diet and exercise and go out for a greasy burger because “there is no point in trying to change, you never could do it before and you won’t be able to do it now”, at least that is what you tell yourself.

This is the predictable path of temptation and it is one that will destroy your best laid weight loss plans, unless you short circuit it, and here is the simple way to do that. Learn to identify your ANTS, you might have so many ANTS running through your head that you have stopped paying attention to them, so your first step is to tune in. Remember ANTS are Automatic Negative Thoughts and they show up right after you set a goal or tell yourself you should do something positive.

Once you are good at identifying your ANTS, replace them with APTS or Automatic Positive Thoughts. This is simple yet it takes practice but just like learning to play a musical instrument, the more you practice the better you get. If for instance as soon as you hear an ANT say, “You never stick to a diet.” you cancel it by inserting an APT that says, “I absolutely know I can reach my goal.” It is that easy.

ANTS will sabotage your best intentions but only if you allow them, practice changing your ANTS into APTS and you will find it easy to reach your weight loss goal.

(Credit is given to Daniel Amen author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life for originating the idea of ANTS and APTS.)