• Do you often feel guilty after eating, or deprived if you can’t eat something you want?
• Are you frustrated trying to get dressed in the morning because you don’t feel like your clothes look good on you?
• When you look in the mirror, are you ashamed of all your physical flaws?

Negative thoughts and emotions like these are at the root of how you are unknowingly sabotaging your ability to lose—and maintain—your weight.

You are being predominately Problem Focused.

Your focusing on what’s wrong with you, your clothes, your food—about everything—triggers the body’s stress response, releasing cortisol, adrenaline, and other chemical reactions that literally cannibalize your body at the cellar level. (This is science, not woo woo!)

This wouldn’t be a problem if you just felt bad occasionally.

If you are caught in the rebound weight-gain cycle, your body is the physical evidence that you probably spend most of your time being Problem Focused.

I want to be clear that sometimes, you need to be Problem Focused.

You have to know what the problem is before you can then look for the solution.

But you then have to become Solution Focused.

Being Problem Focused and Solution Focused are like 2 sides of a coin. When you are focused on the problem, you literally cannot see the solutions, even if they are right in front of you.

The more you are Problem Focused, the more everything begins to look like a problem or crisis. As a result, your body is in a continual stressed state.

Here’s some tough love.

You are hurting you.

This chronic emotional and physical stress response is breaking down your immune system, straining your heart, and impacting your muscles. Over time, this can cause everything from painful trigger points in your shoulders, to inflammation, to heart attacks.

And it significantly impacts your metabolism and other weight-related systems making it easier to gain and harder to release weight.

This cumulative impact is the reason WHY it gets harder to release weight as you age.

Lose the chronic negative thoughts and responses and you more easily lose the weight—and regain your wellness and well-being.

But, if you have a long-time habit of focusing on what’s wrong–with you, your body, with life, etc.–and feeling bad about it, how can you begin to change to more positive, solution focus that rebuilds and supports your body?

There is a deceptively simple tool that will help you tip the scale.

What if all that you had to do was practice appreciation?

If all you did was just look for things to appreciate you would live a joyous, spectacular life. If there was nothing else that you ever came to understand other than just look for things to appreciate, it’s the only tool you would ever need to predominantly hook you up with who you really are. That’s all you’d need.

~Abraham-Hicks

The good news is that in the powerful moment of now you can’t feel appreciation and guilt at the same time. Sometimes they can be so close together that you think you are experiencing them all at once, but vibrationally they are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

What’s really happening is that you are almost instantly bouncing from one emotional extreme to the other, which is one of the reasons it’s so exhausting.

The trick is to begin to string more thoughts of appreciation together so that you start to train yourself to be more positively Solution Focused.

Here are 5 tips for practicing appreciation:

• Start with something simple. If you have been practicing hating your body, it’s going to take you a while before you can begin thinking loving thoughts and not feel like a big fat liar. So choose a different place to start. How about the pillow your sleep on, or your pet? Start with something that’s pretty easy to appreciate about before you take on the topic of your body.
• Pick quiet times. Some of the best times to practice appreciation are just before you go to sleep and just after you wake up. This is a great way to set the energy for the day.
• Make lists. One of the best ways to begin practicing appreciation is to literally write lists of things you appreciate, and then read them when you are stressed. Write your list once a day, or add to it throughout the day. It can be one list that you continually read and add to, or a new list you start every day.
• Use downtime. Anytime you’re waiting is a great time to practice appreciation. For instance, practice appreciation while standing in line at the grocery store, waiting for your dentist appointment or cable repairman, taking a shower, or waiting for a flight.
• Make it a game. What could you possibly appreciate sitting in traffic? Make it fun to try to find something. It could be that you have air conditioning on a hot day, the opportunity to listen to your favorite music, that it’s a good time to people watch. Who knows what you might find to appreciate if you look for it in odd places.

As you practice, look for changes in your life. Notice if you are you less stressed. Do you have more energy? Did you make your workout a priority? Did you choose an apple instead of a cookie?

What can you do today to reflect on the good things that happen and all that you appreciate? How can you begin to make this something you regularly practice?

What difference does becoming more Solution Focused  have in creating the body—and life—you want?

Together we can do it!