Week 1—The Fundamentals: Chew, Hydrate, Stop!
“Grace is going to tell you to chew, a lot. At first my husband kept teasing me by saying, ‘By all means, Bessie, take your time, only when you’re ready.’ Bessie . . . as in the cow, because I was chewing for so long that it would take me ages to respond to a question at dinner! It was such a big shift from how quickly I used to eat. But I lost twenty-two pounds, and it’s been so easy to keep it off that my entire family is on the chewing train now. Dinner is a lot more thoughtful and a lot more comfortable. My husband and I have lost a total of forty-seven pounds between us!” —Latisha T., Camden, New Jersey
Start your engines! You’ve completed all the necessary preparations, and now it’s time to officially begin your twelve-week weight loss journey!
Ah, the fundamentals. These puppies are Weight Loss 101. The building blocks upon which you will build your success. Don’t let these steps deceive you. They may sound simple, but it’s going to take commitment for you to condition these new behaviors into your subconscious mind. Cultivate some energy using the techniques you learned in the previous chapter, and dive in!
Chew
You are going to spend a good deal of time teaching your subconscious the importance of chewing. It’s incredible how many challenges you can overcome by chewing correctly. I’m going to be a tad graphic in this chapter on purpose. You want to create negative subconscious associations with the things you don’t want to do anymore. “Negative associations” don’t mean failure or guilt—remember to always “Cancel, cancel!” those feelings. In this context, negative is simply the opposite of positive—what is not good for you versus what is good for you.
When you swallow big, thick chunks of food, they sit and rot in your stomach. You don’t realize you’re full when you eat too quickly. Your body has to work so hard to digest those massive chunks of food that it steals energy away from cognitive and healing functions.
To solve this, you will condition yourself to chew all your food until only liquid remains. You are turning your delicious meals into a juice so only liquid is hitting your stomach. This means you will begin to eat more slowly (it takes a while to chew until only liquid remains!), you will stop eating sooner (by eating slower, your body has a chance to get the signal that you’re satisfied—more on this in a moment), and your body can utilize the nutrients from the food you’re eating because you’ve already done most of the work. When the digestive system doesn’t have to work so hard to break down massive chunks of rotting food, there is energy left over. That energy is used by your brain to think and your body to function and heal. In fact, Dr. Harald Stossier, director of a prestigious medi-clinic in Austria, has said, “A well-chewed burger is better for your waistline than a badly chewed salad.”27
In an article entitled “Why Chewing Your Food Can Change Your Life,” Dr. Alejandra Carrasco writes about why chewing is so important:
1.It triggers digestion.
2.It promotes growth and repair in the body.
3.It’s a foundation for disease prevention.28
Do you find that after a meal it’s common for you to feel exhausted? It could be because all your surplus energy is now being spent on breaking down food. Randy Santel sheds light on this in the context of eating competitions:
All of your body’s energy is being used by your digestive system—your digestive organs, especially your large and small intestines, require a large amount of energy to work effectively and function properly. After a big . . . meal, your body is going crazy trying to digest and process the thousands of calories you just quickly consumed. To do this, your brain diverts most of your body’s energy and focus toward digestion . . . This is why you feel fatigued . . . Your body is exhausting all of its energy trying to digest the big meal.29
Could you imagine what it would be like to enjoy a meal and feel energized afterward? To feel light instead of heavy? To never be bloated again?! This is what chewing every bite until only liquid remains can do for you. An article in the National points out several reasons why chewing your food slowly is one of the most powerful things you can do for better health:
Undigested food takes more space in your stomach than digested food and creates bloating, thus slowing down the entire digestive process . . . Chewing slowly also helps increase the alkalinity of the food, which is extremely important. Many people suffer from acid reflux, heart burn, and indigestion, and while some foods—even if chewed well—trigger these problems, it is important to note that the longer you chew, the less acid is formed.30
I’m going to be a real stickler about this chewing thing, so let’s get all the objections (read: Resistance!) I’m used to hearing out of the way:
“It takes a while to chew my food until only liquid remains!” Yes. Yes, it does . . . And that is the point. Note that you’re not to chew every bite ten or a hundred times. Every bite will be different depending on what you’re eating. Regardless of how long it takes, you must chew it until only liquid remains. Imagine someone ripping off a massive bite of turkey club, chomping down three times, swallowing the huge glob of food with a massive gulp so they can continue talking, bits of food flying out of the mouth, burps escaping . . . Hey, I told you I was going to get graphic on purpose! How are those negative associations coming along?
Now, take a nice, deep letting-go breath and instead imagine someone taking a comfortably sized bite and slowly, thoughtfully chewing until only liquid remains, which makes it easy to swallow, and then speaking. Imagine how each of their bodies feels. Decide which actions you’d like to take not by what you’ve always done or by what society or culture dictates but by deciding how you would like to feel and which set of actions will support that feeling. Remember, if your meal takes longer, you’ll feel better.
“My jaw hurts.” That’s likely because you have tiny baby jaw muscles that were never trained to chew. Like any muscle, they’ll get stronger with practice. Chewing until only liquid remains will become comfortable so long as you stick with it. The hypnosis recording for this chapter will help you do just that.
“It’s hard to have a conversation over a meal if I’m chewing until only liquid remains.” Listen more, talk less. Enjoy your food more, scarf way less (ideally, scarf never). Chew more, eat less. Your chewing could improve the eating pace for everyone you’re with, and you’ll taste your food. The bonus is, by listening more while you chew, you simultaneously improve all your relationships! Monks don’t eat and talk; they eat or talk. This is called “mindful eating.” There’s no way to be mindful about your eating if you can’t taste what’s in your mouth. Slow down, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew.
“But, Grace, it’s been a few days and I’m still not chewing like a pro yet.” Let’s be honest. Most people have been scarfing down their food without chewing it for their entire lives. Cut yourself some slack! You’re learning something brand new here. The first step is awareness—becoming aware of how quickly you were eating, how big those unchewed chunks were as they sat there in your stomach, causing gas and bloating. Causing exhaustion as your body worked overtime to try to squeeze a few nutrients from those rotting globs. That awareness is such a gift. It’s such a transformation. It’s brand new. Take a nice, deep letting-go breath and release any judgment. Stick with it; it takes time to recondition the subconscious mind, but happily, with hypnosis, it takes a lot less time than any other method.
Learning to chew and sticking with it until it becomes an automatic behavior will change your life forever.
The hypnosis recording at the end of this chapter will begin to program your subconscious mind to chew like a pro, but in the meantime, jump-start your new automatic behavior with a round of self-hypnosis and choose from the following hypno-affirmations:
•Every day in every way I chew my food more and more.
•I chew every bite until only liquid remains.
•The more I chew, the faster I lose weight.
•The more I chew, the sooner I’m satisfied.
•By chewing my food until only liquid remains, I lose weight and feel great.
Hydrate
In your weekly foundations hypnosis recording you will program your subconscious mind to drink one eight-ounce glass of water before every meal. It’s simple, easy to remember, and you will lose more weight this way.
Researchers from Virginia Tech compared weight loss between two groups of participants. One group was instructed to consume water before eating low-calorie meals, while the other ate low-calorie meals without increasing their water intake. The researchers found that over a twelve-week period, those who drank water before meals, three times a week, lost about five pounds more than those who did not.31 Another 2010 study from Vanderbilt University found that water increases activity in the sympathetic nervous system, which causes your body to burn more calories. They also found that drinking three sixteen-ounce glasses of water a day increases calorie burning enough to help you drop five pounds in a year without making any other changes to your lifestyle.32
In addition to a bonus five pounds of weight loss, there are many other reasons to increase your daily consumption of H2O. The more water you drink, the less hungry you become. Often a “hunger pain” sensation is thirst. When dehydrated, we don’t think as clearly, and the digestive system starts to slow down.
According to Quench by Dana Cohen and Gina Bria, hydration is not just beneficial, it is the essence of our health: “You are a body of water. In fact . . . approximately 65 percent of you is water. If you’re not hydrated, everything else you do to stay healthy (exercising, eating right, stress management, sleep) is undercut.”33
Sources of dehydration include salt-heavy foods, moisture-lacking processed foods, a diet lacking in greens and fruits, fluorescent lighting, dry heat, air-conditioning, electronic devices, immobility, and medications used to reduce pain, stiffness, allergies, or any chronic condition.34 The authors share that chronic dehydration is a common health issue for residents of nursing homes, and it’s easy to see why when reviewing the list of contributing factors above. But that’s not all—the authors cite the European Journal of Nutrition, which states that some doctors think as many as 75 percent of Americans are chronically dehydrated!35
In addition to drinking the right amount of water each day, Cohen and Bria share many tips to stay hydrated. Here are some favorites that I learned from Quench:
•Eat the top twelve hydrating veggies: cucumbers, romaine lettuce, celery, radishes, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, spinach, broccoli, carrots, sprouts. Eat the top twelve hydrating fruits, which include star fruit, watermelon, strawberries, grapefruit, cantaloupe, pineapple, raspberries, blueberries, kiwi, apples, pears, and grapes.
•Instead of salting your food, salt your water with a pinch of sea salt, Celtic salt, rock salt, or Himalayan salt (never processed table salt) and you will have “a simple way to make sure you have the ideal electrolyte exchange to keep water balanced inside you.”36
•Add one tablespoon of chia seeds to your water or smoothies.37 Chia seeds help you to stay hydrated for longer periods. Similar to the ways in which desert communities stay hydrated by eating things like cactus, a plant that has incredible water-retaining capabilities, chia seeds expand when wet, so they help you retain more water for longer.
Bathroom Breaks
Despite all the benefits of hydration, one line of Resistance I often hear is, “I know I need to drink more water, but I hate getting up to go to the bathroom so often. Everyone in my office knows where I’m headed, and it’s annoying, embarrassing, and breaks up my work flow.” I feel you, but remember that everyone is focused on themselves 99.99 percent of the time. It’s unlikely your coworkers are tracking your bathroom breaks as much as you think they are. Are you tracking theirs? Probably not—I hope not, anyway! We’re all focused on ourselves all day long, and yet we worry so much about what other people think. It’s a terrible use of time. As far as breaking up work flow goes—a small break from one’s desk or computer screen is a positive! “The key to losing weight with a desk job is to look for ways to move more and sit less.”38
Your first way of overcoming this Resistance will be to repeat this mantra in your mind every time you get up to use the restroom: “This is great! I’m hydrated, cleansing my system, getting a quick break, AND losing weight. I’m so proud of myself!” Pretty soon you’ll have reprogrammed your mind to feel gratitude rather than Resistance every time you take a sip.
In summary, staying hydrated is not only important for weight loss; it’s important for your comprehensive health. The next fundamental for you to master is to stop eating when you’re “satisfied.”
Stop When You Are Satisfied
As a child, were you told to eat everything on your plate “because people are starving in [fill in a foreign country]?” I was. And most of my clients were, too. This is a 1950s, post-Depression, post-WWII, outdated way of training us not to waste food. While it’s wonderful to want to make a difference, eating all the food on our plates doesn’t affect the hunger of anyone else. At the heart of the saying is a weird association between being a good person and eating all the food on one’s plate; therefore, if one doesn’t, it follows that one is a “bad” person.
To teach kids not to waste food, it is much more effective to make less food in the first place and to put less food on their plates. Yes, you’ll need to chat with your Italian, Brazilian, Jewish, Greek, and [fill in your love-is-often-expressed-through-food heritage] grandparents about their propensity to scoop heaps of food onto unsuspecting plates and then become palpably hurt, shocked, or miffed when round three isn’t consumed joyously. Scooping on heaps of food, forcing ourselves to eat it, and then praising ourselves when we’ve finished it all is a lame way of getting a “win” for the day. We want to be praised. We want that pat on the back when the plate is all clean. Here’s a recipe for disaster:
Too much food cooked
+ too much food on plate
+ I’m a bad boy/girl if I don’t finish my plate
+ I’ve accomplished something if my plate is clean
= very unhelpful if you’d like to lose weight.
We have to switch the reward. The reward, the prize, will now come from leaving food on your plate. Not a ton, but some. A clean plate now becomes the “failure,” as far as the subconscious mind is concerned. Rather than racing toward the finish line of “Clean plate! Clean plate!” you’re able to slow down and with each bite assess if you want the next one. The goal is to leave food on the plate.
This is the winning recipe:
Cook less food so massive helpings aren’t an option
+ only take half of what you think you’ll want
+ chew every bite until only liquid remains
+ only get more if you are still hungry after mindfully eating the first portion
+ stop eating when you are 90 percent satisfied
+ feeling you WIN when there is still some food on your plate
= weight loss, feeling light, a lack of bloating, improved energy, and showing your body love.
Are your environmentally friendly Spidey senses shutting down this idea? I commend your principles! Let’s review: make less food to start (save the planet), eat less food (save your health), leave some food on the plate to retrain your brain that that is the “win,” and then save your leftovers or compost them! You don’t have to toss the uneaten food into the bin. While “eat all the food on your plate because there are starving children in the world” doesn’t change the world in any way, if you genuinely feel called to help fight hunger and make the world a better place, consider making a donation to Action Against Hunger (www.actionagainsthunger.org) or eating plant-based meals a few more times each week. As CNN reported, “An assessment by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations indicated the contribution of the livestock sector to global greenhouse gas emissions exceeds that of transportation. It follows that . . . adopting a plant-based diet is, therefore, one of the most powerful choices an individual can make in mitigating environmental degradation and depletion of Earth’s natural resources.”39
Another piece in HuffPost explains that “world leaders are set to endorse a UN goal to eliminate hunger by 2030, but . . . diets must feature less red meat, which consumes eleven times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions than chicken or pork, according to a 2014 study. The shift . . . must apply to both wealthy and developing nations, where consumption of ecologically unfriendly foods is growing fastest.” The same article quotes biologist Colin Khoury: “Sustainable and healthy diets will require a move towards a mostly plant-based diet.”40 Now that you’re armed with real ways to make a difference, you can happily retrain your brain to leave a bit of food on your plate with a clear conscience.
Feeling better already? Wait until you’re through with the next section. I wonder how much lighter you’ll feel.
“I’m Satisfied” Versus “I’m Full” Versus “I’m Stuffed”
At the end of a meal, my Brazilian husband says, “I’m satisfied.” In Portuguese, estou satisfeito translates to “I’m satisfied” and is used instead of “I’m full,” which to the Brazilian ear sounds pretty gross. And that’s already a vast improvement over “I’m stuffed,” which conjures images of a pig on a spit with an apple shoved in its lifeless mouth.
This cultural difference got me thinking. In the United States, we tend to believe that a “good meal” is when we leave “full” or “stuffed.” When we take a step back, that does sound pretty gross and uncomfortable, doesn’t it? What if we stopped eating when we were “satisfied” instead? Doesn’t that sound a lot lighter and more comfortable?
With this week’s hypnosis recording you’re going to begin training yourself to stop eating when you’re satisfied and remove “I’m full” and “I’m stuffed” from both your experience and your vocabulary. When you consume food in a helpful way, you stop eating as soon as you are satisfied. In fact, you stop eating as soon as you are 90 percent satisfied because that remaining 10 percent is typically satiated with time (the gut registering how much food it has had) or with hydration.
After a meal, your gut suppresses a hormone called ghrelin, which controls hunger, while also releasing fullness hormones.41 These hormones tell your brain that you have eaten, reducing appetite, making you feel satisfied, and helping you stop eating. This process takes about twenty minutes, so slowing down gives your brain the time it needs to receive these signals.
What time should you stop eating at night?
Even well-chewed food can disturb your sleep. If you want to get rid of those dark circles under your eyes, have more energy, and feel more full of life, chew every bite until only liquid remains and stop eating at least two hours before you go to bed.
In summary, training your subconscious mind that the helpful way to eat includes chewing every bite until only liquid remains, drinking water before each meal, and eating slowly enough that your body has time to register when you are satisfied will set you free.
Remember, there’s no shame allowed here. This is black and white: you’re either eating in a helpful way that supports your weight loss or you’re eating in an unhelpful way that supports weight gain or stagnation. You are programming your subconscious to choose helpful beliefs and actions so you can reach your goals faster.
Great job! I’m so excited for you to notice how good you feel when you commit to chewing every bite until only liquid remains, drinking a glass of water before every meal with a focus on staying hydrated throughout the day, and stopping eating when you are 90 percent satisfied.
Homework
A.Practice self-hypnosis three times a day, every day this week (right before breakfast, lunch, and dinner). Turn back to page 20 for a reminder of how to do self-hypnosis or head to www.CloseYourEyesLoseWeight.com to follow along with a tutorial video.
Week 1 Hypno-affirmations—Foundations (Chew, Hydrate, Stop)
•I chew every bite of food until only liquid remains.
•The more I chew, the more weight I lose.
•When I want the weight to go, I grab another glass of H2O.
•I drink a glass of water before every meal.
•When I feel 90 percent satisfied, I stop eating.
•Every day in every way it’s easier and easier to stop eating when I am almost satisfied.
B.Listen to the “Week 1—Foundations” hypnosis recording every day for the next week here: www.CloseYourEyesLoseWeight.com.
C.Use your journal pages daily to stay motivated, log your progress, and determine which pick-me-up hypno-affirmations you’ll benefit from most.
Great job! Now that you’ve begun the process of mastering the fundamentals of weight loss, it’s time to move on to a major detractor of weight loss success . . . limiting beliefs. You’ll learn about dozens of subconscious limiting beliefs that have to go so weight loss success becomes inevitable.
27 Laura Holland, “Chew on This: 7 Reasons Not to Gobble Up Your Food,” National, December 8, 2014, www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/food/chew-on-this-7-reasons-not-to-gobble-up-your-food-1.456600.
28 Alejandra Carrasco, “Why Chewing Your Food Can Change Your Life,” mindbodygreen, accessed November 4, 2019, www.mindbodygreen.com/0-7775/why-chewing-your-food-can-change-your-life.html.
29 Randy Santel, “Why Your Body Feels Tired After Eating a Lot,” Food Challenges, June 14, 2018, www.foodchallenges.com/after-the-challenge/why-your-body-feels-tired-after-eating/.
30 Holland, “Chew on This.”
31 Elizabeth A. Dennis et al., “Water Consumption Increases Weight Loss During a Hypocaloric Diet Intervention in Middle-Aged and Older Adults,” Obesity (Silver Spring) 18, no. 2 (2010), 300–307, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2859815/.
32 Vanderbilt University Medical Center, “Water’s Unexpected Role in Blood Pressure Control,” ScienceDaily, July 14, 2010, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100706150639.htm
33 Dana Cohen and Gina Bria, Quench (New York: Hachette Books, 2018), x–xi.
34 Cohen and Bria, Quench, 2.
35 Giannis Arnaoutis et al., “The Effect of Hypohydration on Endothelial Function in Young, Healthy Adults,” European Journal of Nutrition 56, no. 3 (2017): 1211–17, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00394-016-1170-8.
36 Cohen and Bria, Quench, 68.
37 Cohen and Bria, Quench, 187.
38 Julia Guerra, “17 Tips for Staying Healthy While Working a Desk Job,” Insider, January 29, 2019, www.insider.com/weight-loss-tips-for-people-who-work-a-lot-2018-11.
39 George C. Wang, “Go Vegan, Save the Planet,” CNN, April 9, 2017, www.cnn.com/2017/04/08/opinions/go-vegan-save-the-planet-wang/index.html.
40 Chris Arsenault, “Cutting Back on Meat Consumption Could Help End Hunger by 2030: Experts,” HuffPost, September 11, 2015, www.huffpost.com/entry/cutting-back-on-meat-consumption-could-help-end-hunger-by-2030-experts_n_55f3424ee4b077ca094f27a5.
41 Gavin A. Bewick, “Bowels Control Brain: Gut Hormones and Obesity,” Biochemia Medica 22, no. 3 (2012): 283–97, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23092061.