A popular phrase today is, “diets don’t work” but what they’re really talking about is that most people did lose the weight but gained it back. People invest a lot of time, effort and money into losing the weight…..so why do so many go backwards and place the weight back on?  Well, it’s because the reasons for the weight gain in the first place are rarely (if ever) addressed. Most diets rarely address self sabotage and teach the clients about what that means and how to make sure it doesn’t happen to them again in the future.

Today I start a series of articles on understanding why people basically can’t stop self sabotaging themselves. If you want to lose weight and keep the weight off for life, you have to learn this first. Doing every diet in town is expensive and hard on the body so it’s essential this be tackled before the next diet is started.

The first thing to understand about self sabotage is that it’s a behaviour pattern, not specific to putting the weight back on after a successful diet journey. Someone who self sabotages with their health will often self sabotage in other areas of their life as well. (with relationships, financially, at work etc) That’s the great thing about self sabotage, it’s easy to see if you actually start looking for it inside your patterns. Once you reprogram toward protecting yourself against self sabotage, it automatically becomes the new pattern of behaviour. With that occurring, all areas of the person’s life are affected equally……….meaning the self sabotaging behaviour starts clearing from everything a person does. That’s the great news. Once you know what you’re looking for and how to reprogram for success……….life gets better in hurry, on all levels.

Self sabotage is learned behaviour and is executed inside the subconscious mind. The conscious mind is the part of the mind that gets cued by words, talking, reading etc. The subconscious mind is a short cut master inside the mind complex, where the subconscious portion just fills in the blanks based on past experiences………in order to make the most efficient use of time.

Here’s an example. My wife looks at me and tells me, “it’s your job to take out the garbage“. That’s a verbal command and a very obvious one…….so I respond and take out the garbage. The next day she tells me the same thing and the same result is accomplished. The third day my wife is absent, so that means I’m not getting any verbal cue to take any action…..yet that day I find the garbage bag near my shoes. The subconscious mind quickly fills in the blanks and does so to be as efficient as possible. Although my wife has not told me anything, the job is executed and the garbage is taken out. That’s an over simplified way to describe how the subconscious mind works. That part of the mind also takes care of things like your bowel movements and heart beat because it would be too inefficient for you to verbally cue your heart to beat every second or tell yourself when to go to the bathroom. The subconscious mind is “thinking” on cruise control and the cruise control is based on what experiences you were exposed to in the past.

What you don’t know is that some teachings (common in our society) are very good at making people hurt themselves when they start becoming a better person and with that type of subconscious programming….. no verbal cuing is needed to initiate it. Just like me taking out the garbage when my wife was not around, my learned behaviour clicked in as soon as I found the “cue” (which was the garbage bag near by shoes). After that the subconscious mind takes care of the rest.

Imagine someone being programmed in a way that when they see themselves becoming “better” they need to stop it immediately and self sabotage. So again no talking is needed, just a cue and that cue in this case would be looking in the mirror and recognized any improvement at all on a personal level. You start to see the improvements and you’re set to take it down and make it stop…..but you don’t really understand why or even see it really happening. All you know is that you can’t seem to change the final outcome, regardless of how many times you take a run at the issue you want to change in your life. This is where understanding self sabotage starts. It’s easy to see that people indeed do participate in it but you may have a little harder time believing how it all comes about. Most people also just believe they’re too smart to have a part of the mind drive them to the ice cream shop on the same day they vowed to eat healthy and lose weight……but the evidence speaks for itself.  Here’s another way to look at it.

Do you remember that over eating course you took when you were in high school? How about that self sabotage course you took in University? How about the course that taught you to waste money on home fitness equipment you would never ever use more than 5 times? Well, I don’t know you but I do know that you never took any of these courses. No one ever did………….BUT……….many people have those behaviours and all behaviours are learned. So if no one is taking courses on self sabotage, over eating or wasting money………..who’s teaching these people to literally take abusive runs at themselves on a regular basis? The answer I will leave you with today is this, “someone is certainly teaching these people to self sabotage or they would not be doing it and someone is certainly teaching these people to self sabotage because the great majority of people are indeed self sabotaging on some level. It’s not just a couple of people. It’s the majority and they just can’t treat themselves well to save their own lives.”

Lets leave it there for today. For home work, look at the patterns of behaviour regarding your health. Do you make head way and then fall backwards but it happens over and over again even though “verbally” you promised yourself it would never happen again. Does what you say often not match what you do? (your actions) That’s the first sign that the subconscious mind is running the show because the subconscious mind controls the actions. Have a great night and I will continue this series in the next article.