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“Life doesn’t come with one problem neatly separated from the rest. Specialization is helpful, but you’ve got to see the web.          Jeff Sach – Columbia University’s Earth Institute.


When we discover that we are heavier than we want to be, we have a natural inclination to eat less food.

Eating less actually makes it more difficult to lose weight.

The human body took shape millions of years ago, and at that time there were no diets. The only low-calorie event in people's lives was starvation. Those who could cope with a temporary lack of food were the ones who survived. Our bodies, therefore, have developed this built-in mechanism to help us survive in the face of low food intake.

Diets Don’t Work  by Geneen Roth   Prevention Magazine

Diets don’t work if they don’t help you understand and resolve the reasons you turn to food when you aren’t hungry.

For every diet, there is an equal and opposite binge.

The basic message of most diets is that you must repress and deprive yourself.

Long-lasting change can only come through kindness to yourself, mindfulness about what you are doing and why.

Diets are like having a mean, abusive parent inside your head.

Deprivation, fear, shame and guilt do not and never will lead to long lasting, positive change.

We should eat what we want and stop when we’ve had enough.

In Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki talks about giving farm animals big pastures in which to roam. . . when you fence them in too tightly, they become wild and restless, but when you provide wide-open spaces, they relax. The same is true for humans.

 Diets Don't Work   - We Don't Fail Diets - They Fail Us!   from Chad Tackett, Global Health and Fitness

Decades of research have shown that diets, both self-initiated and professionally-led, are ineffective at producing long-term health and weight loss (or weight control).

When your diet fails to keep the weight off, you may say to yourself, "If only I didn't love food so much . . . If I could just exercise more often . . . If I just had more will power."

The problem is not personal weakness or lack of will power. Only 5 percent of people who go on diets are successful. Please understand that we are not failing diets; diets are failing us. http://walking.about.com/cs/diet/a/dietsdontwork.htm

 Diets Slow Your Metabolism

The reason 95 percent of all traditional diets fail is simple. When you go on a low-calorie diet, your body thinks you are starving; it actually becomes more efficient at storing fat by slowing down your metabolism.

When you stop this unrealistic eating plan, your metabolism is still slow and inefficient that you gain the weight back even faster, even though you may still be eating less than you were before you went on the diet.

In addition, low-calorie diets cause you to lose both muscle and fat in equal amounts.

However, when you eventually gain back the weight, it is all fat and not muscle, causing your metabolism to slow down even more. Now you have extra weight, a less healthy body composition, and a less attractive physique.

 Starving Away Your Muscles

Diets require you to sacrifice by being hungry; they don't allow you to enjoy the foods you love. This does not teach you habits which you can maintain after the diet is over. Most diet programs force you to lower your caloric intake to dangerously low levels.

The common theory is that if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. But when you eat fewer calories than your body needs to maintain its life-sustaining activities, you're actually losing muscle in addition to fat. Your body breaks down its own muscles to provide the needed energy for survival.

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WHAT IS THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND?

The Subconscious mind: existing in the mind but not immediately available to consciousness
The unconscious mind (or subconscious) is the aspect . . . of the mind of which we are not
directly conscious or aware.

Our mind is made up of three parts:          http://www.jobbankusa.com/mind.html     

1. The Conscious Mind (The Perceiver)
The conscious mind is known as the objective mind. It is the base of perception, association, evaluation and the decision making area. We think with this part of our mind.

2. The Subconscious Mind (The Recorder)
Our subconscious mind, on the other hand, has been labeled the subjective mind. It is the storage compartment of the mind. Like the memory bank of a computer, all information is recorded and retrieved here. This is where we store and process events, feelings, beliefs, opinions, truths and expectations. The process of our circulatory, digestive, and breathing are controlled automatically by the subconscious.

Beliefs operate our subconscious mind. According to Dr. Joseph Murphy, "Your subconscious mind perceives by intuition. It is the seat of your emotion and the storehouse of memory. It will accept any suggestion and will respond according to the nature of that suggestion." Once our subconscious mind accepts an idea, it begins to put it into action. To the subconscious mind, our thoughts are realities. It is like an automatic pilot device that has been given a coded message about how to navigate a ship over the years.

3. The Creative Subconscious Mind (The Generator of Direction)
Our creative subconscious maintains our pictures of the way things are, keeps order, problem solves and is an energy generator (fight or flight). It is the creative rationale for our life. When you have a negative past experience in your data bank, it influences what you feel you can do in the future.

 History           http://www.answers.com/topic/unconscious-mind-1 

The idea originated in antiquity, and its more modern history is detailed in Henri F Ellenberger's Discovery of the Unconscious (Basic Books, 1970).

Certain philosophers preceding Sigmund Freud such as Leibniz and Schopenhauer developed ideas foreshadowing the subconscious. The term was popularized by Freud. He developed the idea that there were layers to human consciousness: the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. He thought that certain psychic events take place "below the surface", or in the unconscious mind.

Many modern philosophers and social scientists either dispute the concept of an unconscious, or argue that it is not an entity that can be scientifically investigated or discussed rationally. In the social sciences, this view was first brought forward by John Watson, considered to be the first American behaviorist. Among philosophers, Karl Popper was one of Freud's most notable contemporary opponents.

However, there is agreement among many, perhaps most, psychologists and cognitive scientists that much mental functioning takes place in a part of the mind inaccessible to consciousness.

Carl Jung developed the concept further. He divided the unconscious into two parts: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious.

Unconscious mental processes            Return to Home   


The fact that most bodily processes are not consciously controlled e.g. breathing, blood circulation, blinking.

The fact that something - not the conscious mind - creates the dreams that we wander around  in at night.

The mind spontaneously moving from one idea or recollection to another or Creative ideas that do not appear to come from conscious thinking.

o        Waking up in the morning with an insight or solution to a problem.

o       All memory is unconscious. The act of remembering something means bringing the information stored outside our conscious mind into awareness.

o       The fact that we forget certain things but later spontaneously recall them.

o       That we learn certain skills so that they become largely automatic e.g. driving a car, playing a sport.

The fact that we can run downstairs without thinking where we place each footfall.

·        The instincts, such as self-preservation and sex, originate on an unconscious level.

·        The origin of all the bodily urges, such as hunger and thirst, lies outside the conscious mind.

·        Physical reflexes.

·        With perhaps a few exceptions, nearly all our emotions are caused without our being aware of why at the time, though we may analyze them later.

·        We speak our native tongue without looking for words or consciously constructing grammatical phrases - this is done for us on an unconscious level.

·          Since without memory both thinking and learning would be impossible, the importance of the unconscious is far greater than may appear.

As some of the above examples indicate, material is constantly moving from the conscious mind to the unconscious and vice versa. The conscious mind only holds a small amount of information at any given time. In many cases information - especially easily accessible memories - can be called into awareness at will.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 
                     [b. Leipzig (Germany), July 1, 1646, d. Hanover (Germany), November 14, 1716]

Leibniz is best known for having invented the calculus independently from Newton; much of the notation and vocabulary used today comes from Leibniz, who had a flair for both symbolism and language. He also took the first steps in symbolic logic. The calculating machine Leibniz invented was the first to multiply as well as add and subtract. In physics he contributed to developing the idea of kinetic energy.

Schopenhauer, Arthur 
                    Scho·pen·hau·er (sho'p?n-hou'?r) pronunciation, Arthur 1788–1860.

German philosopher who believed that the will is the fundamental reality to which all knowledge and reason are subject, that following its dictates leads to illusion and suffering, and that the goal of the good life is its extinction.

Watson, John Broadus, 
                    1878–1958, American psychologist, b. Greenville, S.C.

He taught (1903–8) at the Univ. of Chicago and was professor and director (1908–20) of the psychological laboratory at Johns Hopkins. Watson emphasized the study of observable behavior, rejecting introspection and theories of the unconscious mind. He originated the school of psychology known as behaviorism, in which behavior is described in terms of physiological responses to stimuli. Watson's work influenced B. F. Skinner in his groundbreaking studies of operant conditioning, and had a major impact on the development of behavior therapy.

Hypnosis                                                                                        Return to Home   

hyp·no·sis (hip-no'sis) pronunciation

   1. An artificially induced altered state of consciousness, characterized by heightened suggestibility and
       receptivity to direction.

In popular culture and fiction, hypnosis is portrayed as a procedure which introduces a subject into a mental state where they can be made to recollect knowledge not consciously accessible, accept instructions and commands, or be given instructions ("post-hypnotic suggestion") that can be triggered when the subject has left the hypnotized state.

While hypnosis in the real world is often ascribed these characteristics to varying degrees, a consensus has not yet arisen in the scientific community regarding a precise definition. In the psychological community, there is much dispute and skepticism about hypnotism. Some perceive hypnotism as a valid tool of psychotherapy. Others feel that while it is a valid phenomenon, its nature is too undependable to be useful in treating patients. Still others believe that the phenomenon per se does not exist; but is instead a combination of a subject's expectations (based on the popular culture view of hypnotism) and their desire to please the hypnotist (see Hawthorne Effect).

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