Creative Visualization is a tool for mental rehearsal. It involves creatively exploring mentally what it would be be like to engage with being in a potential situation. It’s a way to mentally get practice in without actually needing to practice. The interesting thing is that the brain doesn’t exactly know the difference between creative visualizing something and actually doing something!
You can use creative visualization to help you get in visual practice doing something or NOT doing something that you are working on as part of your weight loss goal. You can visualize what it would be like to eat when you are physically hungry, or not eat if you are not physically hungry. You can mentally relate to all of the nuances of those situations; how it would feel, what you might think, and how you would engage even if it feels hard in the moment step by step.
You can also creatively visualize what its like to be wiling to stop eating when you’ve had enough. You can visualize how you want to handle the situations when things don’t go as planned and how you want to handle those instances too. You can think about how you want each part of your day to go from the moment you wake up until you go to bed. You can visualize how you want to eat on your vacation or any other ususual type of day. You can even imagine what it would be like living at your goal weight and all of the enticing aspects that go along with that as a way to connect you to your compelling reasons why you want to get there and what that means about who you have become in your relationship with food.
I encourage you to creatively imagine as another tool in your weight loss tool belt. If you know what to do, but you don’t know why you can’t do those things often enough; creatively imagining desired actions can be a great way to focus and get more practice in.
You coach assignment this week is to schedule 5 minutes 2-3 times this week to experiment with this powerful tool! See if it makes a difference for you to creatively visualize one aspect you want to get better at with your weight loss this week.
Visit me @thriveinmidlife on Instagram on the episode reel and comment with your ah-ha's, takeaways, homework, and/or questions from this episode, and let’s keep the conversation going.
Join the VIP subscriber list to be the first to learn about my upcoming book release this summer and get your free daily food planner.
