Red's Health Tips

What does it take to fail? If you had to prove in a court of law that you failed to lose weight on a diet, what would your evidence consist of? I heard this question from a CD recently; however, the topic was failing at your MLM business. It got me to thinking about failure in the things we do – intentionally, or by default. I applied this question to the presentation I gave Saturday and asked it rhetorically. I had a limited time to speak and I couldn’t afford the time to solicit answers from the audience and still make my next lecture ten miles away.

There are obviously things that you do to fail at losing weight. Allow me to list a few of them – choose to eat the wrong kinds of foods, choose to eat the more food than you should, eating when you are not hungry, not exercising, not getting enough sleep, not doing anything about the stress in your life, not getting balanced nutrition from your foods or supplements. You develop habits based on your lifestyle. You choose to live in a comfort zone and eat comfort foods and live the same day after day. You also did not choose to change your mindset. Your subconscious mind can defeat you faster than any food, drink, exercise program, supplement or anything else.

You need to start with the right mindset. I don’t mean that “I want to lose weight!” will automatically change your mindset. It took years, and maybe even decades, to develop your current mindset for food, exercise and nutrition. Your health habits have been established – in spades, so to speak. It takes a concerted effort to begin changing your mindset to equal your new lifestyle.

There are however, many things that happen to you that you might now know about and have not taken any action to counter. Allow me to list a few of them – growing older, degradation of your bodily processes and functions, imbalances, deficiencies, absorption issues, inflammation, oxidative stress, allergies, genetics, shift in sensitivities.

Your body starts out fully efficient and gradually degrades over time. You can stop a lot of that degradation by taking preventive steps before it happens, or by taking corrective measures after the fact. Most people do not know what is going on chemically, or biochemically in their bodies. Most don’t care. They would rather be told to do this or that than to know the ‘what’s’ and ‘why’s’ of how your body works.

I use the calcium example in many of my speeches. It’s not simply a matter of taking a calcium pill and having calcium deposited into your bones. You need the right kind of calcium plus magnesium, plus vitamin D3, plus vitamin K2 to actually get calcium deposited into your bones. If you are missing any of those other factors, then you are depositing your calcium into your toilet or into your arteries – neither a good place – in one case it’s a waste of money, in the other case it’s a potential health hazard.

My book explains a lot of the processes that happen in your body – maybe to some in more detail than they want. You are responsible for your health, which includes your weight. Your weight can contribute to many health issues as you grow older. I’ve met a couple of people recently and presented my four questions to them. They weren’t interested. They were happy with their lifestyle – even if they were approaching morbidly obese status. Their comfort zone would not even allow them to consider changing.

There are things that happen to us that catches our attention. Maybe it is a close call with a disease or accident. Maybe it is a close call with a family member or very close friend. Dr. Morris Massey did a series of training tapes initially called You Are What You Were When. He talked about how our values were formed based on when we grew up. He also postulated that we don’t change unless there is a significant emotional event (SEE) in our lives.

Other motivational gurus tell us that we choose either to avoid something bad or to select something good. There are triggers than compel us to change – overnight. How many times have you made a reasonable New Year’s Resolution only to see it broken within days or weeks? Once broken, then there is no need to consider trying to accomplish it anymore.

The problem with waiting until a significant emotion event or another compelling reason to take action is that you might be beyond the point of no return. It’s different when you want to do something and you fail along the way. It’s much different when someone forces you to do something and you don’t want to do it at all. Our sedentary lifestyle is an example. We hear from many health professionals to exercise. However, we don’t. We prefer to sit on the couch and watch television. Exercise is not an efficient or effective way to lose weight. It is a necessary process that should be taken to remain healthy in later life.

It’s easy to fail. We all do it. Our subconscious mind files it away and reminds us every time we try to do something outside our comfort zone. Our past history is consulted every time you want to exercise, to eat smaller portions, to eat a different food, to have than extra cookie or glass or wine or bottle of beer. Our past drives our decision processes in our subconscious minds. However, your past does not have to be your future.

Your subconscious mind has one prime directive in life – to protect you from injury or embarrassment. If you have failed at something in the past, then when you want to do it again, then your subconscious mind will decide for you whether you will succeed or fail before you ever begin. There is no such thing a will power. Your subconscious mind has flaws. It doesn’t know the distinction between right or wrong – or, between real or imagined. It’s the imagined part that you can take to the bank and cash it in for ‘new’ experiences (successes) to file in with your past failures. When your overriding history is clearly one of failing every time you attempt a diet, then you have to begin adding imaginary successful experiences to file on top of those old failures so that they begin to cancel them out. Once you get enough of those old memories blurred, then you can begin having your subconscious mind work for you instead of against you.

Red O’Laughlin
Your Prosperity Professor
281-437-8114 H/W 281-687-1188 C