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

A common diet myth is that exercise alone will make you thin.

Now before we get into this one, I do want to mention that exercise has massive health benefits and you absolutely should try and get some regular exercise into your day.

Benefits include reduced blood pressure, reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart attack. As well as lowering your risk of developing cognitive impairment from Alzheimer’s and dementia.

But, there is a common misconception that exercise alone will help you lose weight, and that’s just not true.

There are only two things that drive people towards change. We move towards pleasure and we move away from pain.

So if you are hungry (pain) you will seek out food (pleasure).

If being overweight embarrasses you (pain) you will make the changes required to lose weight and look great (pleasure). But the pain needs to be strong enough to drive you to do this.

Moving away from pain is a much stronger motivator than moving towards pleasure, but you can make use of both.

A lot of the beliefs and bad habits we’ve built up around food stem from our childhood. Well-meaning parents who were busy and doing the best they could, but who often instilled unhealthy patterns and habits we hold to this day.

Patterns and habits we likely don’t even notice we hold.

So what are some of these?

Everybody tells you that in order to lose weight you need to eat less and move more. And the way to do that is to count your calories.

And sure, consuming less energy than you expend is the key to weight loss. But counting calories is not the way to do it.

You might be surprised to know that calculating the exact calorific content of food is much harder than the boldly displayed numbers on food packages or menus would have you believe: