My Journey: How the Mind Can Affect the Body

So this last week has completed our fourth week on our weight loss journey. Seems kind of weird that it’s been that long already.

And in that time, things have become far easier. The necessary habits have more or less been formed, and things have been progressing at a steady, gradual rate.

But last week, I learned how much the mind can really influence this stuff.

I mentioned in a recent Readers Questions video the role of the law of attraction in weight loss and health.

And in that post, I said that the law of attraction, in this particular area of life, is primarily just a psychological tool (for motivation, persistence, etc), plus some minor effects.

Well, I saw those minor effects last week. So, I wanted to discuss that today, since I think it’ll shed more light on this subject.

Resistance

So the way I track my weight loss, I weigh myself daily, then take the weekly average at the end of each week (Monday through Sunday), and that tells me how I did on average for that week.

That average has been steadily going down every week, as you’ve been able to see in the last few posts.

But last week, the scale was not my friend. And I think somehow that it was because of my own resistance around it.

The daily weigh-ins, which usually I can be pretty detached from, were suddenly becoming kind of important to me.

The week started out pretty badly, too. The day before (Sunday, September 24), I had been 320.6 lb (145.4 kg).

But Monday, I was 324.8 lb (147.3 kg)!

Okay I know about water weight and all that, but still, it was a bad start to the week.

Even worse, when I compared it against the previous Monday, which was 324.2 lb (147.1 kg), it looked like I had gained, which really I had not, but still.

Tuesday was pretty good, at 321.0 lb (145.6 kg), but Wednesday, it had jumped back up to 325.4 lb (147.6 kg)!

So by this point I was really upset. I was halfway through the week and my weekly average was exactly the same as the prior week’s.

I knew that even if the rest of the week was perfect, it wouldn’t reflect very much in the average, so it’d look like I had a horrible week.

All that, even though I had been good calorie-wise.

Now again, none of this was real weight gain, just usual fluctuations on the scale, but last week it had really upset me.

Thursday through Saturday dropped a bit, but still not enough to really make much of a difference.

So on Saturday I was a bit perplexed. I was definitely feeling resistance, wondering what I was doing wrong, and all this time, Christine was having massive losses all week, which made me feel even worse.

Stop Obsessing and Trust

Then, I tried to take my own advice. 😛

I saw how Christine was having a great time seeing her weight drop all week. And even if it went up a bit, it was just temporary, and still better than before.

She was carefree about the whole thing.

Then I really looked at my numbers. I saw that overall, my numbers last week were better by at least a pound or two than the week before, saving a few outliers.

So Saturday, I determined to stop taking it so seriously. If my average only showed a half pound or so of loss, who cares? I was still approaching 10.0 lb (4.5 kg) lost in total.

So I chose to be happy about what I had accomplished so far, not focus on the minor struggle I had been having that week.

And do you know what happened?

Something that I actually couldn’t have expected at all.

Sunday I woke up, and my weight was 313.6 lb (142.2 kg).

Okay I know what you’re thinking: must have been a fluke with the scale. That happened to me once a few weeks before, and I just re-weighed myself and got a more accurate weight.

So I weighed again, and got pretty much the same: 314.0 lb (142.4 kg).

I did it several more times and got weights all around the same range.

I even tried moving the scale a bit just in case there was an issue with where it was sitting, and still, the same result.

So, cool! That definitely made a difference, and I felt great about my new progress.

Scientifically, I knew that I hadn’t actually been off track. It just took several days for my body to reflect that on the scale for whatever reason.

But I truly believe my own obsession with my seeming lack of progress had a huge part in that.

No, the LOA didn’t literally change how my body processed the calories I consumed, but it did slightly change things to make my body hang on to more water, plus whatever else goes into random fluctuations like that.

I don’t see it as coincidental that just as I started to relax about the whole thing, my significant progress was finally reflected on the scale.

Takeaways

The LOA can influence just those small components that make you feel either better or worse about your manifestation.

Obviously it can do a lot more than that in the long-term, but even day-to-day, it can influence little details you wouldn’t quite expect.

Today, I was somewhat in a bad mood earlier. I had a big programming bug crop up at my part time job, and was having trouble solving it.

Then, Christine had a massage client and had to temporarily steal away my home office, since her massage table is located in here.

And on top of that, I had received an email this morning that had kind of upset me.

So with all that, I was in a pretty bad mood. And, random annoying stuff started to happen.

Just small things. The quintessential case was when I knocked over my empty water bottle. It created a bit of a domino effect, and caused my other, thankfully empty, cup, plus a bottle of vitamins and another bottle of fish oil, to go spinning off in every which way.

Then I had to dig under the couch to fetch out the water bottle, and it kept spinning away from me deeper under the couch.

Thankfully I caught it before it got too deep, and crisis, as it were, was averted.

But seriously that was annoying! :O

After that I made myself calm down, and the day proceeded much more calmly.

My point in all this is that your manifestations, and just life in general, go more smoothly when you’re calm and can simply trust in the Universe for everything to work out.

When your tense, anxious, or even upset, well, the Universe finds little ways to bring your attention to that over and over again.

The best place to be is in the receptive mode, where magic and miracles can freely happen.

I’ve been trying to live more in that state, but sometimes it’s difficult, like today. 🙂

Progress Log

So here is the progress log for Christine and me with our weekly averages.

Brandon’s Progress

• Start weight: 332.0 lb (150.6 kg)
• Week 3 average: 323.5 lb (146.7 kg)
• Week 4 average: 321.7 lb (145.9 kg)
• Lost this week: 1.8 lb (0.8 kg) (0.56%)
• Lost in total: 10.3 lb (4.7 kg) (3.10%)

Christine’s Progress

• Start weight: 251.8 lb (114.2 kg)
• Week 3 average: 242.4 lb (110.0 kg)
• Week 4 average: 240.3 lb (109.0 kg)
• Lost this week: 2.1 lb (1.0 kg) (0.87%)
• Lost in total: 11.5 lb (5.2 kg) (4.57%)

Up Next

Well, this Saturday will actually mark one month since we started this whole thing, so I’m pretty excited about that, and will let you know what the month’s total was next week.

But, your comments have been so appreciated and very encouraging. I am glad to know you are supporting us. So please keep the comments coming. 🙂

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