a matter of weight.

[Jessica*]

" Hunger is very similar to sleep and breathing in that it's controlled by an unconscious part of our brain called the animal brain. This part of our brain determines how much sleep we need, how much oxygen we need and how much food we should eat. It also controls how fast our heart beats and many other things that we have no conscious control over. " You've got to understand: your body has a 'surviving program' which makes it want to be fat to keep you alive. “Your body has genetic survival programs built into it, designed to force you to either get fatter, or hold on to the fat you have whenever it feels that doing so will help keep you alive” explains Jon Gabriel Abrams, author of 'The Gabriel Method'. Our bodies also have a 'be fat switch'. This fat switch is turned on when your body feels that there's not enough good nutrition around. When this fat switch is turned on, there's nothing you can do to lose weight because your body will stop burning fat so that you don't die of hunger. Well diets make your body think you’re starving to death. So you start to lose weight, and then after some times you start gainning weight because the fat switch turned on. This is why diets don't work. "[With diets], you become hungrier and you crave fattening foods, your metabolism slows down and your body loses the ability to burn fat well." Abrams explains. You are then dieting, not to lose weight but simply to stop yourself from gaining weight. "But if you can turn this fat switch off then your body wants to be thin and weight loss becomes easy and almost automatic. You simply crave less food, your metabolism speeds up and your body becomes very efficient at burning fat. Your body starts working with you in your weight loss effort and you become a fat burning machine." says Jon Gabriel. You have to stop viewing your body as ‘the enemy’. “I thought, what if it wasn’t trying to kill me, but trying to keep me alive and going about it in the wrong way?” he says. Then he asked himself a key question: why would his body want to keep him fat?

If you don't lose weight it is because your body has a reason. “Your body’s the real boss, and as long as it wants to be fat it will” he says. “So rather than struggle in vain, all you need to do is understand why it wants to be fat and eliminate those reasons.”

THE GABRIEL METHOD
1. Stop fighting your body and get it to want to lose weight: learn how to “turn off” FAT programs, and weight loss will be automatic and effortless.
2. Don’t diet. It causes your body to think that food is limited, and makes it want to hold on to weight.
3. Add the good stuff. You may be eating a lot, but your body could still be starving nutritionally so feed it healthy food and it will eventually crave it.
4. Reduce toxins. Your body is using fat to help protect you from toxins, and to help insulate and protect your vital organs from the poisons in your food and your environment.
5. Don’t over-medicate. Certain medications can artificially activate the FAT programs, so only take medication that your doctor says is essential.
6. Reduce your intake of processed foods, artificial sweeteners and flavour enhancers. They are radically different from the foods our ancestors used to eat and our bodies don’t know how to handle them.
7. Handle mental and emotional “threats”. Your body treats them as if they were actual physical threats, and they can sometimes produce the same chemical signal in your body that starving and freezing produces. When this happens, your body thinks that you need to be fat in order to be safe.

“Thinking yourself thin is the most effective way to convince your body to turn off the ‘be fat’ switch” Gabriel says. “And by telling your body it’s okay to be thin, your body will start wanting to be thin.”

Need some examples?
« When my daughter's nanny, Carole Skabe, discovered what I have to share she lost 40 kilos (88 pounds) over a 6 month period – no dieting.
Her 14 year old grand daughter, Chantelle, lost 20 kilos in just 2 months. Chantelle is now speaking with me at seminars and schools, helping other teenagers solve their weight problems forever.
After Gabrielle Hart of XLR radio in Brisbane interviewed me for her radio show, she became so inspired that she lost 10 kilos (22 pounds). That was weight she had been struggling to lose for years, and she lost it in just four weeks. Ms Hart has now invited me to be the resident weight loss expert on her weekly radio programme. [...] »

You've got to visualize
« [...] I want you to imagine in your mind's eye the perfect body for you. What does it look like? What size clothing are you wearing?
How does your new body feel?
Now I want you to imagine what it feels like to walk with your head high - feeling confident and proud of your new body.
How does it feel to do everything you've always wanted to, but were not confident or healthy enough to pursue?
See the faces of your friends and family as they look upon your new slim body with surprise happiness for you.
Now fast forward six months. In fact, fast forward one year later...
Picture in your mind’s eye you easily maintaining your newfound weight. In fact imagine it happening automatically.
How does it feel for you to easily stay thin one year from now?

Here are the 2 sites where I took most of the text:
Jon Gabriel's site: http://www.jongabriel.com.au/ [ weightloss page here ]
Beachleyathletic: http://www.beachleyathletic.com.au/

[Lizzers]

//but your body could still be starving nutritionally so feed it healthy food and it will eventually crave it.//

This is what happened to me - I'm a celiac (just found out) and I'm one of those celiacs who gained weight instead of losing it... thank my insulin resistance for that one. But as I've been more and more in tune with my body and eating non-processed foods, I find that I'm healthier... I haven't lost a lot of weight, but I do feel better. The next step is eating enough food at regular intervals that I'm able to digest, so that my body can relax and release some of the extra stuff!

[Dillysmom]

Thanks Jess for the information. I think it is so interesting! I'm going to check out the websites.

Annie

[ThisPresentMoment]

Very interesting.
Thank you!

[Jessica*]

:-)

[Ajiv]

Very good I Love it ,Makes me understand all the times of trying to lose weight thank you

[Jessica*]

my pleasure :)

[Wonder]

Wow, I got really touched and realized how important it is for me to be a friend to my lovely body, instead of seeing it as an enemy. It brought tears to my eyes seeing that I´ve probably never done that.
Thank you for an eye-opener!
Yesterday I made a gordious montage of my perfect happy body and my face....I am happy!

I had a period last summer when I ate only cheese and honey on lovely bread (for two weeks!), I was so sure that eating was making me loose weight that it absolutely did.
Also, the first time I saw The Secret I thought wow, I really belive in this, but I want to try it on so I for sure knows, so I ate chips every single day as my dietfood, I really felt the chips was making me thin, even when I wasn´t that hungry for chips I ate it anyway for my diet, haha. And OH YEAH, I did become slim without even trying.
But it seems to me that I have to stay soooo focused and really know it in my heart and sometimes it´s hard.
This forum is inspired me to be kind to my body, to see it as a friend, to give it love and see that in it lays all potetial!

Love and awarness!

[Wonder]

awareness that is ;)

[Awesome]

Great sharing......