Episode 88 - The Pleasure Point Game

Transcript

Renee Stephens: Welcome to Inside Out Weight Loss. I’m your host Renee Stephens and together we’re accessing and adjusting the control panel of your mind/body/spirit system, bringing ease and joy to your weight loss journey and fullness to the rest of you life. Inside Out Weight Loss is about changing the deep roots of the weight struggle. No surface work here, we go deep inside to discover the true causes of what’s making you overeat and under exercise, by changing from the deepest layers from the inside out. Behavior change itself – eating well and exercising and taking great care of you – becomes easy. Why? Because you’re not struggling with yourself anymore. When you’ve ended the struggle, the conflict at those deepest layers where there’s a part of you that say, “Yeah, I want to be slim and fit and healthy”, and another part of you that says, “Yeah, but get out of my way. I’m eating those cookies. I’m having those chips because I like them”, when you end that struggle inside and enter a place of inner alignment, of deep inner alignment, then behavior change truly does become easy. You start to prefer to take great care of yourself by eating well and getting healthy exercise. That’s what Inside Out Weight Loss is all about. But even beyond that, when we make these deep changes, when you learn that putting yourself first is the best way to help others, when you truly believe that you’re worth it, when you truly believe that you have something important to give the world, then well, you start giving it and the rest of your lives starts to open up in ways that perhaps you hadn’t even imagined yet. Well get ready. This is Inside Out Weight Loss, and it’s time to transform from the inside out.

Renee Stephens: And lets go ahead and drop inside, where the deepest work happens, where true and lasting change occurs. So go ahead and begin to center yourself. Take a moment to notice your breath. Breathing air deep inside of your lungs allows you to begin to come back inside of your body, to be aware, to turn your awareness down inside, into your body, into the present moment. If you could go right inside the present moment, if you could explore around your sensory experiences, your feelings, your sensations, in this moment. I’ll be counting from ten down to one and with each number that I count I want you to allow yourself to drop even deeper inside. Now just word of caution; if you’re operating heavy machinery – in other words, if you’re driving a car – then it’s time to pause this recording and stay present and alert so that you can arrive safely at your destination and listen at a time when you can really drop inside. Ten, going down a beautiful staircase that descends – nine - into a garden. Eight, the most amazing garden that you’ve ever seen. Seven, or experienced, because a garden is a multi sensory experience. Six, relaxing more with each number that I count. Five, down you go, and perhaps some of the air from the gardens wafts up and you get a delicious smell of the flowers below. Five, and there’s that quality of life, of nature that’s so indulgent, so full and relaxing. Four, that you keep going down and relaxing with each step as you descend into this place that is just for you. Three, full of your very favorite plants and flowers. Two, perhaps some that you didn’t know what they were or what they were called, but they delight you. As one, you drop inside, you’re in this beautiful garden and it feels so wonderful here that you notice your heart opening in this safe and sacred place just for you.

Renee Stephens: Now go ahead and set your intention for this episode. Allow yourself to think of what it is that would make the biggest positive difference for you; what single change would make the biggest positive difference for you, right now, if you could make it. If you could finish listening to this program and be transformed in some way, what would it be? What’s your wish list? What’s your order form? Go ahead and set that intention now as you notice with this beautiful energy of life all around you in the open heart, that there’s an energy so much bigger than even you, that you’re connected with. And that there are so many other open hearts across space and time, tens of thousands of them, listening to this program right now. And you connect with them, feeling almost as if you’re supported in a beautiful hammock of open hearts and beautiful life. Now I wanted to take this moment to answer a question that came in from a listener. Here’s the question:

Mona: Hi, my name is Mona. Seem not to be going forward and I’m curious as to her opinion about why I might not be. It’s about ten years ago I lost over a hundred pounds and kept it off for about eight years. And then it seem last two years I’ve put almost all of it back on, and it seems like I just can’t get past that barrier in my mind that says, “You can do this again.” It’s like I keep looking back and thinking, “Well, you know, I did that and I failed again”, so it’s kind of like it almost seems like I can’t do it again. I realize that I am self sabotaging myself, but again, I love this show and she is helping me tremendously.

Renee Stephens: First off, thank you Mona for calling in. And secondly, my goodness, congratulations to you for losing a hundred pounds and keeping it off for eight years. That’s eight years that you wouldn’t have had otherwise of being slim and fit and healthy, so fantastic. Well done! Now I can certainly understand from your vantage point now, having gained back most of that weight, that you feel like, “My god, I was a failure. If I go to do that all again maybe I’ll just gain it back. Oh my god.” But then again, you know, gastric bypass surgery, some of the surgeons and centers will tell you that it’s a procedure meant to last, I think they say three to four years, at which point you need to do something else. So you got eight years and it sounds like you did it completely naturally. So you’re already better off than people who undergo that major surgery for the same or a lesser outcome. So I think you’ve done great. Now again, I can understand that you don’t like it. You’ve seen the other side and you like it better, so you want that again. I’m also guessing that you don’t want exactly the same thing again; what you want this time is to be that slimmer weight in a way that’s completely stable, that is completely stable for the rest of your high quality, jumping around dancing and having a great time, life. So the first thing that I want you to do Mona is actually recast your perception of having lost the weight and maintained that loss for eight years, and then regain it. I want you to recast that and think about the diff. The diff is the duration, intensity and frequency of your overeating episodes. Now the duration of your naturally slender episode was eight years; eight fantastic amazing years of being naturally slender. Fantastic! Well, my gosh, if you can be slim and maintain that slimness for eight years, then I’m betting it’s really a small change, a small shift, probably something around what caused you to start on the gaining cycle again, that once shifted will make your slimness even more stable. So, wow, you’re so close; so much closer than you otherwise would be. So I’d like you to think of it that way. Forget about this whole failure idea, because the other piece that I’m guessing – I don’t know, I only have this short message to go on from you Mona – but I’m guess that there’s a piece that says, “Oh my god, it’s hard work to lose weight. I don’t want to go through all that hard work again.” So that, as we know, is a really common limiting belief, a really common misperception in our culture, because so many people find it hard to lose weight. Why do they find it hard to lose weight? Because they’re still struggling against themselves. They’ve got strong urges to overeat while they want to be slim, so it’s a struggle on a daily, hourly, sometimes minute by minute basis. Exhausting. That’s where the whole perception comes from. Does that mean that’s how it has to be? No, absolutely not. Look at all the naturally slender people in the world for whom it is easy, effortless, no brainer and automatic. We like automatic. Which leads me right to today’s topic, all about pleasure.

Renee Stephens: Now it’s time already for us to take a break. You’re listening to Inside Out Weight Loss on Personal Life Media. This is your host Renee Stephens and we will be right back.

Renee Stephens: We’re back now. Before the break we were talking about that perception that so many people have that’s so predominant in our culture, even in the medical community, that it takes hard work and discipline to lose weight. And I’m saying, “Hey, you know what, that’s just not the case.” What it takes is dedication to making it easy, but the actually being slim can, should and will be easy for you. Easy and pleasurable. Today I want to play the pleasure point game with you. And your goal is to earn to win as many pleasure points in your life as you possibly can. And the surprise is that by earning pleasure points you will actually be behaving like a naturally slender person. Hard to believe isn’t it? That all thos naturally skinny people out there, running around the streets, having their cake and eating it too, are getting more – not less, more pleasure out of the whole bargain. How can this be? So lets think about it. Say there’s your favorite food, lets just say, hmm, well I just made a chocolate tart for my daughter for her birthday and that was a pretty decadent indulgent sort of thing. So lets just talk about this chocolate tart. So here’s this beautiful creation with rich chocolate at the base and whipped cream and berries on top, really just quite a stunning presentation. And you think, “Gosh, you know, I would just love to gobble that whole thing up. It looks so fantastic.” And so you go to the tart and you eat it. You eat the tart, and gosh, it’s fantastic, the flavors are divine. Oh my goodness, the quality, the chocolate, uh, fabulous, oh love it so much, so great. Now this particular dessert turns out to be really, really rich. So you eat your piece, you want another one, it was so good, you have the second one, hey maybe even you have the third because it was so good. And then, oh my god, you’re not even done with the third piece and it’s starting to catch up with you. You’re beginning to feel heavy, almost sick to your stomach. It is so rich, it is so heavy and it is just sitting there. A half hour goes by, you’re just really feeling slow and lethargic now, and pretty soon the sugar crash happens and you’re feeling really lousy. Now couple hours go by and say it’s dinner time. Oh god, you’re not really hungry but you’re going to heat anyway because that’s what the clock says, so ugh, you’re going to eat, and you eat, and now you’re just feeling heavy. You go to sleep that night and you’re just tossing and turning all night. You have indigestion. You wake up the next morning and you feel heavy and hung over. Yuck! So what’s just happened here? You had a lot of what we’ll call pleasure points during the time of eating the chocolate tart – the dessert, the chips, whatever it is – you had a lot of pleasure points in those thirty seconds to three minutes, ‘cause next time you’re eating a lot time yourself, see how many minutes it actually takes for you to eat and you’ll probably have to count it in seconds, ‘cause it’s not that many. So lets be generous here; lets say it takes a whole three minutes to get through this thing, which is really quite an eternity and I’m doubting it takes you that long. But lets just say it’s three minutes of eating this and really enjoying it. Now certainly by about two and half you’re feeling kind of bad; it’s catching up with you. But again we’ll be generous and say it’s three minutes of unmitigated pleasure. Now lets say it was really, really great. So say we give you ten pleasure points for every one of those minutes; so you get thirty pleasure points out of three minutes of pleasure. Ugh, you’re loving that, you got your thirty pleasure points. And then what happens? You start to feel bad. Minute four goes by, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, fifteen; by fifteen, by thirty minutes out you’re feeling really bad. So you’re having to spend those pleasure points on the bad feeling; they start kind of falling out the other side, right. It’s as if you have a wallet that has a whole in the bottom of it; you’re pouring your pleasure points into a siv and out they come the other end of it. So now you’re starting to pay with misery. Misery wipes out pleasure points. So now you’re down those ten of the first minute, you’re down the ten of the second minute, you’re down the ten of the thirty, now you’re down to zero. And as the time goes by – gosh an hour, sixty minutes compared to three – an hour goes by, you’re feeling lousy; concentration is bad, guilt feelings are up, body feels sluggish, slow, heavy, digestion just isn’t doing what it’s supposed to. We will not, thank you very much, go into the details of that, but it’s not – it’s all stopped up – not good. Oh my god. So now you’re way indeficit. God, if three minutes was thirty points of really great feeling; oh my god, even if we said a minute of pain is worth only one point, we’d be, by the first hour we’re 57 points down. Second hour we’re another sixty points down. Third hour, down even further. We are just running out, we’re in serious deficit. And that carries on hours and hours and hours all the way through perhaps the next morning. So maybe we’re ten hours into it now and we’ve been losing pleasure points the whole time. But that’s not enough. We could end the equation there and that would be, that would be fine, but we might want to add in what it feels like to be carrying around those extra calories on our body everywhere we go, and not only that, having to house them in clothing, so we have to buy clothes that will cover those extra calories on our body, and the misery points just go up and up and up, and we are at this point, it’s like credit card debt; it just spirals out of control and even when you pay the minimum balance it just seems to multiply and breed over night. Not good.

Renee Stephens: Are you getting the idea here? So you had that moment of pleasure, you get a few pleasure points. Think about it. I’d like you to stop right now and think about one of the things that is your favorite, maybe your very favorite thing to overeat on. You just love this thing. And I want you to think about how many pleasure points you get out of eating this thing and how long it lasts for. Again, I do encourage the use of a stop watch or some kind of watch to time how long it takes you to consume this particular thing that you love to overeat on. Now time that, right. Even time how long you’re actually actively eating dinner. I’m sure servers in restaurants have an idea of what this is, and that’s supposed to be a slow meal. And figure it out. And then just notice those pleasure points; you’re spending them like it’s going out of style. The interest rate is unbelievable here, and it’s compounded by the minute. So each minute that goes by of unpleasantness, of misery, of suffering, of guilt, of heaviness, you’re paying with your pleasure points; you’re paying, you’re paying, you’re paying. And even by the time you get to the next meal… I mean lets think about it; do you really enjoy a meal if you’re kind of stuffed before you start? If you’re feeling heavy and lethargic before you start? How much do you really enjoy that food? Ever notice that when you’re really hungry, you really enjoy that food, everything tastes so much better when you’re nice and hungry when you eat it. The flavors are so much more alive. That all depends on your inner state; it’s not the food, it’s your inner state that determines so much of how much you enjoy what you eat. So now when you eat the next meal you’re not even getting your ten points a minute; you’re getting maybe five or three or two because you don’t really enjoy it that much ‘cause you’re so heavy, so now you’re still paying with your pleasure points. You’re still racking up those misery points, which cancel out your pleasure points, and you are mega in deficit. It’s not good and it’s not fun. For those of you financially minded out there, it’s like having an ROI that goes south and never recovers. Really bad. So if you want to maximize your pleasure points, then think about eating to a point of feeling just satisfied and eating those foods that really not just feel good in the moment, but make you feel good. Focus on how the food sits with you. How does it feel in your belly over time? Now this will be foreign to some of you because many of us have just kind of numbed out to our bodies, we don’t know what it’s like. But start paying attention. Start to notice. Start keeping a hunger diary of how food makes you feel over time. And pretty soon you’ll start to notice that you naturally want to have more pleasure rather than less. You want to have more enjoyment rather than less. In fact I think I will post my hunger diary to the blog at personallifemedia.com/renee, r-e-n-e-e, so that you can track down not just your hunger levels before and after eating, but also how food makes you feel over time. This is not a traditional food diary. This is a diary that encourages, that actually helps you become naturally slender by winning the pleasure point game. Now those of you that listened to the early podcast on the naturally slender eating strategy will know that the pleasure point game is none other than the naturally slender eating strategy. It is the way that many, many naturally slender people think about food. It’s how they make their decisions. Go to the blog, download the diary and then post a comment with your experience of this. I’d love to hear.

Renee Stephen: That brings us to the end of our show today. Thank you for being present. Did you know that if you have three unlistened to episodes of any podcast on iTunes, it’ll automatically unsubscribe you? Well that’s what happens, and you have to resubscribe. Now there’s a reliable way to ensure that you get the latest episodes of Inside Out Weight Loss the moment that they become available. Go to personallifemedia.com/signup and register for free email notifications of when the latest episodes hit the airwaves. I also encourage you to join the Yahoo group. Research clearly shows that those who establish a good support network around behavior change have the most success. And there is a group, it’s completely free, it’s a Yahoo group called Inside Out Weight Loss, and you can join, support and be supported. There are some amazing, amazing, amazing people sharing beautiful stuff on that group, so I so much encourage you to join. You can access a link to join that group at my blog, personallifemedia.com/renee, the same place that you’ll find the hunger diary. Scroll down the right hand side and you’ll see a link. And when you subscribe be sure and tell the moderators, who are volunteer listeners by the way, that you’re a real person who really wants to participate as opposed to a spammer. Can I help you with your personal journey? Feel free to call in and leave a message for me at 206-350-5333 and leave a message. I may play your question or comment on the air, just as I did for Mona today. I’d love to hear from you. And remember, if you’d like to change the world and truly make a difference, start by changing yourself.