Is Your Brain Preventing You From Losing Weight?

Have you been struggling for years to lose weight, tried absolutely everything people told you to do and the scale just won't budge? Well, there’s probably a reason for that- your brain is creating chemicals preventing you from success. And the only way to achieve success is the interrupt the chemicals. 

What do we mean by your brain preventing you from losing weight? You’re probably thinking, “I know I want to lose weight, that's not the issue”. Well, there’s a lot to it, so we’re just going to jump right in. 

Our Three Primary Drives

Let’s kick things off with the Limbic brain. About the size of a walnut situated at the base of our brain, this little guy plays a BIG role in our daily lives, totally out of scale to its actual size and totally unknown to most people. This is a part of our earliest brain from a time when we were still living up trees. Most mammals have this, and it’s an essential part of our survival as a species. It provides our primary drives, and while it does play a role in activities such as protecting our children, it has three primary drives that affect our daily lives throughout our entire lives, and they are these:

1. Can I eat it? 

2. Can I have sex with it? 

3. Is it a danger to me?  

Drive 1: Can I have sex with it?

Let’s look at the middle one first. Can I have sex with it? This is a drive to reproduce, thus ensuring the survival of the species. Simply put, if no one wanted or had the urge to have sex, the human race would die out in a generation. No species wants that, hence the drive. And this influences things such as us being tribal and living in communities, so we have opportunities for sexual activity, which would have been harder were we all to have lived in isolation. But while it plays the least part in terms of weight loss or fitness, it can still be a drive for some people. An example would be after a divorce when people hit the gym or start a new diet plan; for some, at least, the idea of being back on the market may spur the activity. 

Drive 2: Can I Eat It? 

Here, you’ll probably think, given the wording, this is the one causing all your weight loss problems, but while it may contribute, it’s not actually the key issue. Throughout history, we’ve always had the drive to find food, again for survival. While lifestyle and scarcity of food would have played a part, we have to acknowledge that up to the late 70s, humans didn’t have major problems with obesity and being overweight. This was when processed foods became a mass market with the sugar added, so the incredible increase in the obesity and overweight charts has far more to do with the change in our diet than our primary drive to eat. 

Drive 3: Is it a Danger to Me? 

Now, this is by far the strongest drive in your body and is part of your fight-or-flight response. An essential piece of kit for us to survive in times of yore for sure, but very problematic in the modern world.

What Happens When You Enter Fight or Flight

So, first, let’s talk about the strength of this drive. When you enter the fight or flight stage, the limbic brain triggers a sequence of events that you can’t stop easily once started. The first of these is it alerts another part of your brain, the amygdala, to the threat. At this point, the amygdala basically switches off your pre-frontal cortex. This is where you think, it’s you as you actually know yourself, but your speed of rational thought is far too slow to deal with imminent danger; in other words, you must react, not think. At this point, it redirects the hypothalamus to produce massive quantities of both adrenaline and cortisol to allow you to be faster and stronger than you’d ever normally be. It also draws blood from the organs and pumps it to the arms and legs to aid you most in your time of need. Simply put, it’s a marvellous, ingenious mechanism we all have built into us. 

Creating Life or Death Chemicals

But let’s examine how this can cause problems in the modern world. Unlike our ancestors, for most of us, we thankfully don’t face life-or-death situations on a daily basis. But we do face challenges that may trigger at least a partial fight or flight response. 

Imagine you’re given a crucial project at work and told you have to have it finished by five. At the very least, this will probably trigger a cortisol and adrenaline release. Now, how do you feel about this deadline? Stressed, anxious, worried, under pressure? The truth is this is very far from a life-or-death situation, but the chemicals you’re releasing are the same chemicals you release in a life-or-death situation. You’re not imagining your feelings at this point; you’re FEELING them throughout your body. 

Feeling Threat in the Long Term

We all know the detrimental effects of stress on the body, and it’s important to note this in our earlier history: most life-or-death situations didn’t last too long. The lion came, we either got eaten or climbed a tree, and the lion passed on his merry way. In other words, it didn’t go on for days, weeks, months, or years. If a hostile tribe that outnumbered us came onto our territory, we most likely moved to another territory; we didn’t choose to stay in an environment in which it was likely we would be killed, so we used our flight response, and we moved away from danger. 

In the modern world, we often suffer these feelings for far longer than is healthy for us. When we’re in this highly aroused state of anxiety, taking care of ourselves will lose its importance and become a very secondary consideration, nearly an annoyance, as something else in our brain has now been triggered: your reticular activating system. This is basically your focus. In this anxious state, all your focus will be on the perceived life or death threat, which, going back to our previous example, is not getting the report in on time. 

The Connection Between the Brain and Weight Loss

So, let’s have a little look at how this incredible system can interact with weight loss. 

When you think of a diet or having to exercise, how does it make you feel? For many people, the answer is negative, not good. They will likely think of what they won’t be able to eat or drink or the nights out they may have to miss. They won’t enjoy the healthy food they’ll have to eat, and the thought of sore muscles and sweat will fill them with dread. 

Negative Thoughts → Feelings of Threat → Chemicals Causing Flight Response

So, it starts with a thought and moves to a feeling. In times of threat, it may often start with a thought, “Is that a lion coming?” Then moves to a feeling which kicks in the fight or flight process. Now, while the thoughts of exercise and diet will not release the same amount of chemicals, it will, however, at a lower level, stimulate the release of the very same chemicals. It will kick in your flight response to move away from that which you consider painful. That will be what you focus on (remember the reticular activating system is now working). How hard will it be? How painful will it be? The truth is your aspirations and goals are now dead in the water unless we change the flow of chemicals. 

Change the Chemicals, Change the Result

Your own body chemicals are sabotaging any chance of success you have, and the unfortunate part is that we are all hot-wired genetically to run this programme continually. So doesn’t it make sense to start running a new programme if we want success? Well, BodySlims is a programme, and it is one built around helping you overcome these in-built obstacles. We know it’s absolutely impossible to stop a primary drive and the resultant chemicals, so rather than try to stop them, we help you harness them. The chemicals that were previously working against you can become your greatest ally if you follow the BodySlims system. 

The Connection Between the Brain and Weight Loss With BodySlims

Moving From Flight to Fight

Right from the start, BodySlims asks you to dare to dream. What would your perfect weight and size be? How good will you feel when you get there? Let’s focus on this and not on what you have to give up or what might be hard. The chemicals you release when you think of your end goal are pretty much the same as were previously released, but what we now do is trigger your fight response. 

Are you prepared to fight for it? Are you prepared to fight for being the best version of yourself that you can be? Are you prepared to fight for your health, for your fitness and for the great quality of life you owe yourself? Put this way with a reminder this is the only life we are sure we have, and we don’t get do-overs. People are prepared to fight for themselves by the end of the first seminar. They feel excited; they feel the chemicals rushing through them, but now, instead of pushing them away from their goal, they’re pulling them towards it. 

Fighting on a Daily Basis

Then we break the programme down on a daily basis: this is the calories you need to be under, this is the walking you need to do, this is the sequence of steps you need to take today to win. These are challenges that, while not very hard, would previously (thanks to the chemicals) have stopped people in their tracks, but now, with the chemicals flowing and the fight sequence activated, those self-same people will no longer be daunted by the challenge but embrace it. 

Will it be easy? No, but it will be simple. Get today right, and fight to do that, when tomorrow comes, it’s today. We go again. Put enough days together, the results we want are an inevitable conclusion of the action we take in following the programme on a daily basis.

The Thrill of the Fight

 One of the other things people find is that the more they embrace the programme and the challenges, the more they enjoy it. The thrill of the hunt. We are nomadic hunter-gatherers in essence; again, this drive is hot-wired into us, so when we hunt, our fight mechanism kicks into top gear and starts to become the driving force behind our previously unimaginable successes. People will feel exhilarated, excited; they will feel alive again and feel alive to all the other opportunities in life they can make happen using this approach. 

Get Your Brain on Your Side with the BodySlims Programme! 

So, if you want to get the right result, it’s a must for you to interrupt your previous programme of having the strongest primary drive in your body working against you. With BodySlims, you can embrace the amazing power of the Limbic brain by harnessing your fight response so we can divert the chemicals to work for you rather than against you. And we know of no other programme other than BodySlims that both understands and uses these principles, allowing you to dream the impossible dream and not only enjoy it when you get there but also enjoy the entire journey along the way. 

So, sign up for our next programme intake today!