Do It for Yourself Now! - Controlling the Body Weight

Written by Ilan Shalif, Ph.D.

Actually, the quality of the voice is mainly an external communication of the subjective emotional climate and a kind of side effect to the internal processes that load it. It seems that the best way to influence the quality of your voice is by introducing suitable changes in your emotional climate, whether momentarily or for extended period. A few of the trainees who are professional and semiprofessional singers were amazed to learn that so easily a new quality was added to their voice - enlargement of the range, enrichment of the "color", and improved control of all the parameters of the voice.

5) Controlling the body weight

A considerable percentage of people who live in countries where hunger is rare, suffer from overweight. Our basic genetic trend towards accumulation of fatty reserves is enhanced by a wide spectrum of internal signals, mostly of stress and distress. Some of the signals are related to natural processes like under-weight, pregnancy, aging and mourning, but most are the outcome of trash-programs. The most obvious example is a kind of obesity resulting from the activity of trash-programs related to depression, which is its known as "masked depression obesity".

As a result of various trash-programs, the pleasure derived from eating and satiety, especially if tasty food is involved, causes in so many of us the development of an addiction to overeating. Many other trash-programs and especially the cover-programs, include the behavioral component of eating that function as a "natural" means to achieve a "shift" in an unwanted felt sensation. These programs use the experience of eating, and its physiological results, to change the unwanted emotions, moods, feelings or sensations of the moment.

The outmoded-type trash-programs regulating the food intake are another reason for the accumulation of fats. Frequently we develop the appropriate habit of eating large quantities of food: during the intensive growth of the teenage years, during prolonged periods of intense physical effort, etc. When the conditions change, we are usually left with habits that need to be changed, but are often too rigid to adapt automatically to the new conditions.

The majority of people with overweight problems, and many whose problems are elsewhere, are not satisfied with their body weight. Sometimes, because of the weight itself or health considerations, sometimes for esthetic reasons and sometimes because of various trash-programs.

Innate programs that are responsible for two of the most important aspects of our eating behavior, can help us in the nearly "impossible mission" of weight control (and reduction if really needed). The first group of programs are those which announce, through the use of hunger pangs, that it is time to eat. The second group consists of those which announce through the use of satiation signals, that enough has been eaten.

Frequently, the focusing on these and the other feelings and sensations involved with our eating behavior frees the innate programs from the deleterious influences of trash-programs. For those who are lucky, this step, by itself, brings about a significant reduction in weight.

For all the others, at the beginning of focusing for the reduction of weight, the training only helps to discern between a real hunger and an urge which does not take into consideration the internal signals of satiety. Later, when other measures are added, combined with strong will-power and the investment of a lot of effort, a more substantial result may occur.

Part of the success is dependant on the focusing on the available sensations related to eating behavior. Another part, the harder one, is dependant on the application of a lot of effort in recycling these emotions, feelings, moods, sensations, etc., that are related to the trash-programs involved, but are usually outside of the awareness. The application of the sensate focus technique to the reduction of the weight involves a small investment of money and a number of steps that - how sad - cannot be redeemed by money.

First step
In the beginning, arrange things so you have good scales available for weighing yourself freely, whenever you feel like it. Then, as a preliminary act:

weigh yourself each day and a few times a day, for about a week.

This repeated weighing will acquaint you with your body weight and the changes occurring in it during daily and weekly cycles. It will enable you to find your minimal and maximal weight for the day. It will also provide you with a somewhat delayed feedback about the amount eaten each time. Though this feedback alone is usually not enough, it is essential for the process of adaptation and accommodation of the trash-programs involved and for enlisting the will-power. If you have not done it before:

decide at the end of this step the body weight you want to reach.

Second step

After you have got to know the daily variation of your body weight and decided on your target weight, it is now time for the systematic focusing on the problem. Pay attention to the sensations occurring in your body during the last few minutes before you start to eat, pay attention to the tastes in your mouth and to the scents you smell too.

Train yourself to sense and identify all of them even when they are very weak. Get into the habit of focusing on them for prolonged periods each time they occur. Pay special attention to changes that occur in the sensations, as the urge to eat begins to ebb while you focus on them. (Unlike the focusing on smoking, when the urge to eat ceases, even the first few times, you are not supposed to eat.)