The Zen Diet Revolution (7 page)

Starting at your feet, imagine that this light brings a cool, relaxing tingle wherever it touches and that, as it does, it commands your body to release the energy stored in your fat cells. Try to do this with a positive sense of command, the way you would draw out money from a bank account. Your fat cells are part of you, so you need to have a good attitude towards them and you want them to listen to you.

Picture this light spreading up through your body, slowly converting your fat cells to sugar in the bloodstream. Imagine as each area is covered that the fat cells are receiving
a command that, from this moment onwards, they will be your primary source of energy and that during the day they will be releasing all the energy they contain. This means that your sugar levels are going to be high so that you will not have to eat much at all to feel full on energy.

As the light moves up your legs and over your belly, imagine the fat melting away. Enjoy imagining that and, as the light moves off your chest, see the fat deposits dissolving and how that reshapes these regions.

Feel free to pause on an area that you feel needs some time. You may sense it takes a while for all the cells to absorb the light and all the signals to be made.

As soon as your body is fully covered with light, imagine the whole of your being shining as bright as the sun so you can hardly see your underlying form. Take this moment to imagine strongly everything you want to gain. Think of your urge to lose weight, be healthy and have more energy, and to change your life. Really focus on these goals and then take a deep breath.

Imagine that the light fades away to become invisible; see yourself as you wish to be revealed. Know that this is the real you and that the whole of your being is making this happen; it is just a matter of time before it becomes reality. Like a program in a computer or a law of nature, this will happen no matter what. Imagine yourself being healthy and fit and see your body shape and appearance just as you want it.

Enjoy this moment of success and then let it go. Let your mind move, relax and clear for a few moments. Now it is time for you to take a few moments to come back to the world around you.

When you are ready, slowly open your eyes and take in the world around you. Don’t reflect or think anymore about the exercise; just move on to the rest of your day and let it take its effect subconsciously. The ideal is in your mind’s eye and will be leading all your thoughts and actions.

The weight-loss visualization meditation is obviously not going to make you lose weight overnight but it is another powerful weapon in your weight-loss arsenal. It has been proven time and again that visualizing with intent can achieve real results; this is due to the unconscious mind being able to process the information you are giving it and helping to anchor and make it a reality. Jean Kristeller, PhD, a psychology professor at Indiana State University, and Ruth Quillian-Wolever, PhD, clinic director and clinical health psychologist of the Duke Center for Integrative Medicine, pioneered a study in 1999 looking at the effectiveness of mindful meditation in the treatment of those with eating problems and related weight loss. The on-going studies have increasingly shown that mindful awareness and a non-judgemental attitude are a crucial part of encouraging healthy eating habits. Dr Kristeller is co-founder of The Center for Mindful Eating,
see
http://www.tcme.org
.

Combining vizualisation with meditation is powerful as it also relaxes the mind and body, allowing any positive mental changes to take root. It is believed that meditation can help the brain become more ‘plastic’, possibly enabling it to create new neural pathways – in this way we can learn to reprogram our brain to assist us in making positive changes. Just as autosuggestion works on a subconscious level, so too does the message when given visually. It is important to view positively all reinforcing messages that you give yourself; regularly congratulate yourself on your progress and admire yourself for the discipline you are achieving with your meditation and your weight loss.

One way to keep motivated is to link each one of your Zen changes to a reward or indeed a step towards a bigger reward. This works really well for some people and is far less powerful for others. The kind of reward that works best is the one that is somehow connected with the goal. For example, you may love the idea of going to the Pyrenees, but have never had the chance to do so. You then can decide that you will make this your reward. However, there is a catch. You are going to go on a walking holiday of your life. You plan all the routes and get everything ready, but you also need to make sure you are fit for it. You may want to go for the walking holiday of a lifetime, but you don’t want to run out of puff halfway through it and have to struggle through the whole thing. So you are going to
walk every day and slowly build up your stamina. This is an amazing Zen change. You simply walk another couple of hundred feet a day until you are walking two or three miles. It may take you a few months to get there, but your weight will start to drop off and your god will love you. After two months, you will be used to a daily walk, and it will no longer require any effort. By the time you return from your holiday, you will be ready for the next Zen habit goal!

Another wonderful example of making the Zen change motivate the goal is to look at a snack that you eat every day. If, for example, you have a large frothy white-chocolate chilled coffee with whipped cream (750 calories and 21 grams of fat – no, I am not kidding, that’s the real figure!) every morning, then you can skip it and have a flask of green tea instead. Then you take the £2.95 that you would have spent on the coffee and put it in the new moped fund or the cruise-to-the-Caribbean jar! After a year, you will have cut out 273,750 calories! You have also burned 9½lbs of body fat! Wow – all this with hardly any effort, just switching a drink. Oh, and you have £1,076.75 in your jar to travel to somewhere warm. That’s the power of the Zen Diet – small change, big reward. Just be sure not to drink too much on the beach!

The important thing with the reward for your efforts is that it starts to associate your good actions with rewards. That way, it makes your Zen change more fun and helps make it a new permanent fixture in your life. You don’t want to go back to drinking the same calorie-laden belly expander as soon as you get back from your holiday. You
want to carry on with the green tea or diet cola and add another change that is just as powerful, like increasing your exercise or cutting out sugar on your porridge. Then you’re on the path to your ideal healthy body. So a reward helps by using what psychologists call positive reinforcement. Your subconscious mind remembers the reward and gives you the urges to repeat the action. Then your mind is working for you!

So what can your rewards be? They can be almost anything – gifts, holidays, spa treatments, days off, anything your heart desires … apart from food! That’s the one thing you should never do. If you start to promise yourself a cream cake as a reward for slimming, you really are setting yourself up for a fall. After all it’s the food-as-reward mentality rather than the food-as-fuel mentality that gets people into weight problems. Remember: the only way you can reward yourself with food is to eat something super healthy. You wouldn’t reward your car with rocket fuel instead of petrol. You only put into it what works best. You should treat your body with the same respect.

In this book, we talk about letting go of habits and replacing them with new ones. Detachment is the art of letting go, so it is logical to give some advice on how to let things go. Attachment is one of the laws of nature. We see it all around us.

Gravity is so strong that a rocket needs to build up a speed of 25,000 miles per hour to get into space. To get this kind of speed, it needs to carry a large amount of fuel, which makes the rocket very heavy and that means it needs more fuel to lift off!

Being a human is a bit like this. The more you want to be rid of something, the more you want it; we all want what we can’t have! However, we did manage to overcome the rocket problem by making it more light and aerodynamic, and producing a multistage rocket. It had a number of independent boosters that burned out and then detached from the main rocket, leaving it lighter with each burst. You too can overcome the problem of wanting what you don’t have by learning detachment. Our mind draws us to strong events, memories, fears, plans. We worry about things that we don’t want to happen again, and we fantasize about the things we do want to happen.

How do we get free from our desires? We want to feel emotions, but not let them control us. Time to deploy the detachable-booster-rocket strategy! This is achieved by withdrawing desire for things and letting it fall away. This way, we get to where we want to go, using the energy we once directed at the things we desired.

So we need to learn to let things go. If we view ourselves as being overweight, we have to leave that behind. If we are used to taking the bus, with the lovely warmth and relaxation it brings, we need to say goodbye to that if we want to walk every day. Most of all, we need to start letting go of the foods that are too high in calories or unhealthy. Sometimes,
if that’s part of our routine or social life, it is hard; also if we really love them. I, for example, love cola, but it’s melting my teeth; I know it, people know it, and my dentist knows it. The problem is that it’s so much part of my life and personality that I order it on auto. Now and again I reverse my decision to give it up or work out an exception. To be really free, I have to get rid of the whole thing completely. I have to let go of my connection with cola and forget the pleasure it used to give me. It is time to start ordering soda water!

But how do you master detachment? It’s a hard thing to describe the process and there is no direct answer. We have to make an effort and find our own way. There are, however, a few hints we can give you that may help.

When learning to detach and let go of things you no longer need, be they things that hurt you in the past or habits that you need to get rid of to slim down, you will find it gets easier as you go on. It’s the first few changes that are the hardest. You find that if you are not used to letting things go, it is very painful to begin with. It’s a bit like getting into cold water: it takes a while for your body to get used to.

When you start to let go of things, you will find a wonderful feeling of joy. It is empowering to see your life changing and you start to find the happiness inside. You start to find
the true you and are able to cultivate health. The ability to detach is the best health supplement in the world. You are able to keep yourself free of bad habits that take up your time and sap your vitality. Whenever you find yourself drawn to something you are wishing to detach from, make sure you feel the power of your ability to let go. Enjoy it, feel it and then move on to something else.

One of the most important skills on the path to self-mastery is learning to stop things when they are small and weak. For example, if your aim is to have a happy marriage, it is not a good habit to lust after other women or watch pornographic films. You may think that this habit in itself will not cause problems, especially if your wife has no objections. But as a natural tendency it will grow. The more you give in to unfaithful thoughts, imaginings and indulgences, the more you will want them. Your urge to be unfaithful will not be realized by these actions, but will rather grow. Remember that you always get more of what you focus on. Having habits like this that indulge a larger urge on a smaller level is like buying a baby tiger or crocodile. It looks really cute and seems like a wonderful idea, but it will grow up in time. Some readers may find this idea amusing, but many people in London have indeed bought such animals and been surprised when the animal gets so large that it tries to eat them. The sewers of London are rumoured to be full of crocodiles that are dumped as a result of this kind of stupidity.

We all laugh at such folly, but the truth is that we all often make this kind of silly mistake with our own life and habits. We can all see the kind of habits that lead to worse and larger sins. The most important point to remember is if you partly fulfil a strong urge or desire with a seemingly harmless habit, be very sure this is not a baby tiger that is going to grow up and eat you. Catch things when they are very small and you don’t have a struggle. The best time to weaken an oak tree is when it’s an acorn. If you are trying to give up overeating on weekends out, you have to say ‘no’ to going to that Chinese restaurant. That is the point when you need to resist. If you try to go and eat healthily, you have a major battle on your hands. Likewise, control your meals at the point of purchase, not the point of cooking. If you have ever tried to eat one square of chocolate or a couple of peanuts, then you know the value of cutting things off at the root. Don’t open the packet!

In spiritual traditions across the world, the art of detachment is symbolized by the lotus flower. The universal symbolism is based on the fact that the lotus flower grows up from the mud into an object of great beauty. The lotus flower starts its life as a bulb at the bottom of a pond in the muck and dirt, then it slowly but continually moves towards the light as it approaches the water’s surface. Once it comes to the surface of the water, the lotus blooms into a beautiful flower. Indeed, in a way, as all living things come from
the earth, the lotus flower could represent life in general. In spiritual paths, where the aim is to grow and change into something more beautiful and noble, this symbol represents the struggle for self-transformation perfectly.

The lotus seed already has within itself perfectly formed embryos containing everything it needs to grow, flourish and transform. In fact, it is said that, if opened, the seed even contains leaves and what appear to be whole miniature plants and flowers. This symbolizes the fact that the key to our own enlightenment lies hidden inside ourselves and that nothing external is needed. On a cosmic scale, this also points to the creation of the universe and the eternal great solar cycle that maintains the whole of life on earth. It also points to the ideal or spiritual world hidden within the material and the ability to access the former through the latter. Moreover, because it has buds, blossoms and seed pods simultaneously on the same plant, it also symbolizes the past, present and future together as one.