Homework from my Therapist and other stuff..

First off I just want to apologize there were a couple people expecting me to post my homework yesterday and were looking forward to it and I didn't. My cat, by the looks of it ingested some anti freeze according to the vet. There isn't much that can be done for him, except make sure he drinks as much water as possible.The good news is, its most likely a small enough amount that causes him to get sick, and not die. I am really hoping not as he was my first friend I had when I moved to Canada and didn't really know anyone. So I am crossing my fingers.

O.k Now on to the homework. First I am going to talk a little bit about Neurolinguistic programming or "NLP". This is how it was explained to me: We know that we have the logic side of our brains (right side) and the creative or emotions part (left side). The idea of this type of therapy is that when you have a negative thought about yourselves, the world, or life in general, you touch your left wrist, or left temple of the forehead, tell yourself to "Stop" then touch the right side, and like pressing play, you activate the right side of your brain and logic kicks in, so this would be where you would use empowering thoughts. The reason this works is because when ever your touch one side of you you're activating that side of the brain, which in turn helps you control your negative thoughts and switch over to empowering. This has worked for me and helped me have more positive then negative thoughts, but just like losing weight and changing eating behaviors I am changing mental behaviors as well.

OK, so here is what I learned yesterday which is gonna help with weight loss, Kim is helping with my emotions and this journey too. O.k this is called Neuroassociations this is where we match up pain and pleasure.For example in the realm of someone trying to lose weight: 

Pleasure---------> Junk food, anything that is unhealthy but I binge on .

Pain---- Losing weight, working out, the hard work needed to do this.

This is why I binge, and probably most people do. We associate food with pleasure therefore are drawn to that. So the idea is switching the two.

Pleasure------> working out, being healthy

Pain------> Junk food, unhealthy food choices.

So here is what I am working on this week and what the process of switching them entails.

For weight loss and working out being pleasure, think about how it makes you feel in the end, clothes fitting loser, imagine the body you want and believe that its already you.

For associating the junk food into pain: Flash cards. I have to make up flash cards of all the unhealthy food I find pleasure in and make it disgusting and unappealing as possible. So I take a flash card with a picture of a bag of chips for example and on the back write down all the ugly thoughts about my weight gain are, so I associate those feelings of being over weight to the food that is unhealthy. Now if you choose to do this, you need to be honest, really write out on those cards all the negative thoughts feelings on those cards so that you can make it as unappealing as possible to you. For example a couple of mine are:

• Hating the image I see in the mirror, seeing that roll of fat over my my pants and looking like I am pregnant when I am not.
• Feeling uncomfortable whenever I have to sit close to someone, or sitting in chairs I can barely fit my hips in.
• Not being able to zip up any of my winter jackets and feeling like such a tub of lard about it, stretch pants feeling tight and realizing that pants that fit a month ago don't.

Your brain needs a direction to go, a map to go by. It needs direction and I am directing mine where I want it to go. This is a long post so I will save the other 2 homework assignments for a later date.

BTW I have stayed under my calorie intake and lost 1.5 pounds so far!!!! though the one that counts for Allan will be on Sunday, we will see then,

Hope you have an amazing weekend and happy thanksgiving to my American friends! I am off to go kick my own ass at the gym!

xox. Mrs. Crumpet