Can Visualisation Be An Effective Tool To Help With Weight Loss?
If you’ve been following my work you’ll know I’m a big fan of visualisation. I’ve talked about it as a tool for boosting your metabolism. And here I’ll be talking about using it as a powerful tool for achieving your weight loss goals.
Sure, I know it sounds unlikely, right? Picture yourself thin and you’ll be thin? Yeah, pull the other one I can practically hear you say.
But ironically, the number one hindrance I have found to losing weight is if you can’t see yourself as thin, then you’re going to struggle to lose weight. As you’ll see yourself as an overweight or fat person. And of course if you’ve been overweight for a long time, you’ll probably find this even harder to do than most. But stick with me here.
If you are continually going through the motions of yo-yo dieting, losing the weight and putting it right back on again, very often it’s because deep down inside, you don’t really believe you can be thin. And you can’t ‘see’ yourself as being thin.
If you spend your time ‘doing all the right things’ but ‘feeling all the wrong things’ then this will totally negate all the effort you’re putting in. Because if you ‘see’ yourself as fat, and ‘feel’ yourself as being fat, then your brain and body will do what they have to to make that a reality.
Now even though visualisation may sound a bit hokey, the best athletes have been using this technique for ages. Only they call it mental rehearsal, perhaps seeing themselves jumping further, swimming faster, lifting a heavier weight, throwing the perfect shot where the ball enters the basket every single time and then going ahead and actually doing just that. When Andre Agassi won Wimbledon in 1992 he said it was like déjà vu because he’d won it so many times in his head before.[1]
What If You Think You Can’t Visualise?
Some people tell me they’re not good at visualisation. “I just can’t visualise” they say. “I’m not a visual person”. “Wow, really?” I reply. “Lucky you, that means you must never worry about a single thing?” “Wait, what? No,” they say, “I worry all the time.” Well, that means you can visualise. You can only worry about things if you can imagine them going wrong.
If you couldn’t visualise, you’d never be able to find your car in the parking lot if you can’t visualise where you left it. Every time you go to do the weekly shop at your local store, you wouldn’t remember which aisles contain all the items that you need. Of course you can visualise, some of you just didn’t realise it until now.
If I ask you right now whether the towel rail is on the left or right of the basin in your bathroom, can you tell me? Of course you can. Which side is the door handle on on your front door?
See you can visualise.
Some people do use visualisation to lose weight. And they happily and successfully follow the rules and see themselves thin and then reach their ideal weight. Yay. But then what? They start putting the weight back on and that’s because they never practiced seeing themselves as staying thin. As being able to maintain their newfound ideal weight. Perhaps thinking how hard it is going to be to maintain and so they don’t. You have to keep working at it, even once you reach your goal weight. See yourself as thin and staying thin.
And for heaven’s sake, don’t hang onto your fat clothes just incase. That is just setting yourself up for failure. If you keep your fat clothes, then you are telling yourself that you don’t believe you can keep the weight off. You need to be strong. Strong and unwavering in your conviction and belief that you’ve got this. You can be thin. And you can stay thin.
So How Do You Visualise?
Most people think of visualisation as just seeing images in your mind. But it’s more than that. It’s also about what you feel, what you hear and what you say. Utilising all your senses for visualisation makes it much more powerful and effective.
Follow those 3 steps:
Decide what it is you are going to focus on.
Relax and spend time unwinding so that you are comfortable in body and mind. Take a few deep, slow breaths in and out.
Spend 5-10 minutes visualising the new thin you. Seeing it, feeling it, hearing it.
And it's important to be experiencing it as if you already have it. Not as something you want, but as something you already have. See yourself walking around in the tight black number you've been aching to wear. Hear the compliments from your friends and family. Feel how the clothes feel on your body as they slide on easily, effortlessly. See yourself looking a million dollars.
Spend time thinking thoughts of already having what it is you want. Not something that could happen, but what is happening right now. Like a film clip.
Here are some more examples of what might work for you:
Picture yourself getting dressed in the morning and feel your clothing feeling looser on your body.
Picture yourself walking around and feel how your body feels thinner, your tummy flatter.
Picture yourself standing on the scale in the morning, looking down at the number and seeing it’s at your ideal weight. Notice how this makes you feel.
See yourself fitting into that item of clothing you have hanging in your wardrobe. You know the one I mean, the one you bought a size too small that you’d love to fit into.
See yourself out shopping and picking smaller sizes off the clothing rails.
See yourself putting on your favourite pair of jeans and noticing how suddenly they’re too big and they slide down your hips and thighs.
Hear the shop assistant in your favourite store telling you that you need a smaller size.
Hear your friends complimenting you on how amazing you are looking.
What Not To Do
Make sure you don’t use any negative words. Words such as not, no, don’t aren’t descriptive and don’t form pictures in your mind. So saying to yourself, ‘I am not hungry’, I am not craving pizza right now’, causes your mind to lock onto the descriptive words in the sentence, words such as hungry, pizza.
You’ve probably heard this one before, but if I say to you ‘don’t think of a pink elephant, do NOT think of a pink elephant,’ do you see a pink elephant? C’mon be honest, you do right? Your mind doesn’t see or hear the NOT.
So make sure you only focus on positive phrases and images. And not as if it’s in some far distant future. But right now.
See yourself thin RIGHT NOW.
Feel yourself thin RIGHT NOW.
Hear other people complimenting you on how amazing you look RIGHT NOW.
Practice This Regularly
Practice. Practice. Practice. At a minimum, practice visualisation at least once a day. My favourite time is right before I fall asleep when I’m already tucked up in bed. I like to lie there visualising and feeling myself thinner, seeing the clothes sliding off me when I put them on as they’re now too big. Seeing myself walking into a crowded room in a tight black number looking amazing.
Feel it. Hear it. See it.
Believe it.
A great way of staying motivated? The next time you are in the supermarket doing your shopping, pick up a bag of something equivalent to the weight you have lost that week. E.g. a tin of beans, a bag of sugar, a frozen chicken. Whatever.
Feel that weight and notice how heavy it is. Know that this is how much lighter you are, how much weight you have lost. Walk around with it for a bit, noticing how heavy it is and telling yourself this is how much lighter you are.
Use this to motivate and inspire you to keep going.
The more you practice, the faster you’ll get results.
I promise.
Last updated: 24/06/2022
References:
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/trust-the-talent/201109/visualize-actualize
“There is no thought in my mind but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power and organizes a huge instrumentality of means.”
