Could a simple decision help you lose weight?

When you DECIDE to lose weight, or DECIDE to make any sort of change to your health, you’ll never need to look back. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, it really is. The act of deciding to love yourself means you will love yourself, the act of deciding to lose weight means you will lose weight; the weight will just automatically, magically, go. - Katie Lips, Eatiful Founder

The quote is from the book “Love Yourself & Lose Weight”; a personal story of successful weight loss. More information about the book is available here.

While Eatiful is mostly about eating, it’s not just about eating. Eatiful is a psychology programme, as opposed to a nutrition programme so it makes sense we blend in some of the best theories of manifestation and the laws of attraction. That’s where this one comes from: the role of decisions in transformation.

A decision is powerful. A decision is a commitment. A decision tells your brain, and the universe for that matter, what is going to happen.

If you’re thinking this sounds too good to be true, it could be because you don’t yet fully understand the utter power of a decision. A decision is different from a desire, or longing, or a vague ambition; a decision is an absolute commitment, and a commitment means that whatever you decide will get done.

Unless you really decide to do something, anything, you aren’t really committed to doing it. If you haven’t decided to do something, you haven’t told your brain what to do. You’re still just thinking about it. Just thinking about losing weight and wanting to lose weight but not actually committing to the fact that this is absolutely what is going to happen, won’t be enough for you to achieve your weight loss goals.

Now, you may imagine that all this thinking about something would mean that change happens, but this is far more likely if you simply decide that it will happen. Thinking about things, longing for things, having a vague ambition that you might quite like to achieve things - generally doesn’t result in anything much happening at all.

So how is a decision different from just thinking about things, why will a decision, as opposed to vague thoughts make it happen? Well, it is all to do with your fabulous brain. It can perform all sorts of mindbogglingly complex tasks, but when it comes to multiple thoughts and desires, it might well need instruction; it needs specifics, and it needs focus.

A decision includes a specific set of instructions being sent to your brain. It also tells your brain that you have committed. You have decided; this specific set of things you want must be achieved. And armed with specifics, your brain will do all sorts of crazy things to make your wildest dreams come true - as long as you are specific about what your wildest dreams are. Your brain is like a magic genie - ask and it shall be received. Your brain will get you what you want, but first, you have to know what exactly you want, and how to ask for it. If you’re generally quite miserable about being overweight, and it would be nice to be able to wear a bikini one day, then your poor brain is unsure what to do with that information. The fact that you are miserable being overweight does not help the brain know what you want instead. The bikini request is also a bit too vague; I know I can pop to the shops and buy a bikini in a size 20 but you won’t see me lounging around the Costa Del Sol in one that size. So, you can see that your brain doesn’t really have much to act on here. It doesn’t know what you want. Worse, you don’t sound all that serious about your desires either.

So first, we need to be clear about the ask. Personally, having spent my entire adult life pretending bikinis don’t exist I genuinely have no desire to wear one, ever, so fitting into one, or even looking good in one for the five days I may get to spend near a beach each year really isn’t something I’m all that bothered about. I do want to look good in the clothes I wear every day, though. I would like to pull on a pair of jeans and a jumper and not have to wear shapewear, or a long vest to cover up my bum. I would love to be able to buy a size 12 skirt and tuck a top into it and feel confident.

I do want to be a healthy weight. And whilst I have a cynical disdain for government guidelines on such matters, I do want my BMI to be under 25. I do! But I can be even more specific:

“I want to fit easily into size “medium” clothes or smaller.”
“I want to feel confident in jeans and a top.”
“I want to feel great wandering along a beach in a floaty pink dress.”

Those are pretty exacting requests, aren’t they? Now you know how to be specific, it’s time to learn how to ask your brain to make things happen. I believe that by deciding to achieve your goals, you are effectively instructing your brain to do whatever it takes to ensure you achieve them.

The act of deciding is very powerful. Your brain now knows that this is a firm decision, you have spoken to your brain in a way that it can process the instruction. You can reinforce this decision every day, you can even reinforce this decision every single time you eat. As your brain hears your decision every day, it will start acting to help you implement it.

“I have decided I will fit easily into medium clothes. I will feel great wandering along a beach in a floaty pink dress.”

The decision is key, and I am pretty sure I would not have lost weight had I not decided to, had I simply wanted to, or tried to. Without deciding to, I would not have been committed. By deciding, I told my brain what it was I wanted. I told it, and it listened. By making a decision, my brain had been instructed. It then just had to get on with it.

So you see, Eatiful can help you not only learn to eat in a new way, but to do so effortlessly, because you’ll have made a decision to do so, a decision to achieve your goal, a decision to move into your new life.