The Mind Over Body Matter Letter

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Hey all…

I’m in the process of doing some rather cool stuff to the blog so stay tuned.

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Brad Howard

I’ve got much more coming soon.

In the financial world, it’s not to uncommon to hear about the power of compound interest. After all, with the plight of social security and the reliance of some on the government to supply their retirement, many financial gurus push for people to get started early in their savings and investments to take advantage of this phenomenon called compound interest.

Compound interest has been called mankind’s greatest invention. Basically, it allows you to make interest on your interest and so on.

But what’s the fitness correlation?

Well, we’ve all seen the diagrams which show you the potential losses (or non gains) that you’ll have if you wait a year longer to get started investing in your retirement.

Would you believe me if I said that getting in shape is based on the same phenomenon?

I’ll have to find some, but I have seen graphs and numerical evidence that SOLIDLY proves that not only will you take longer to get in the shape you want to be in BUT that your probable rate of success ALSO goes down the longer you procrastinate.

How about that?

Moral of the story:

There’s no better day than TODAY to either get started or renew your interest in exercise.

After all, the power of compound interest is on your side.

Today’s Video

Make sure to turn the volume down on your computer if you are at work. Towards the end of this video, there are some words in the background music that aren’t exactly kosher.

Other than that, this video shows and incredible amount of information that you can put to good use. I picked up a few ideas myself. The best ones are about halfway through.

Here’s a great article by Tom Venuto, of Burn The Fat fame on the power of visualization in your fat loss journey.

Now, on with the show…

Understanding the mind’s role in motivation and behavior is one of the most critical elements in fitness success. If you struggle with changing habits and behaviors or if you can’t get motivated, then even the best training and nutrition program is not much help.

A fascinating fact about your subconscious mind is that it’s completely deductive in nature. In other words, it’s fully capable of working backwards from the end to the means. If you “program” only the desired outcome successfully into your “mental computer,” then your subconscious will take over and help you find the information and means and carry out the actions necessary to reach it.

(Oh, I forgot to mention that Tom has also had training in NLP as well, so he knows what he’s talking about here)

Many people are familiar with affirmations and goal-setting as ways to give instructions to your subconscious mind. But perhaps the “ultimate mental training” technique is visualization. In one respect, affirmation and visualization are the same, because when you speak or think an affirmation first, that triggers a mental image, being as the human brain “thinks” in pictures.

You can use visualization to plant goals into your subconscious mind. You simply close your eyes, use your imagination and mentally create pictures and run movies of your desired results. If repeated consistently with emotion, mental images are accepted by your subconscious as commands and this helps with changing habits, behavior and performance.

Although there are some new and creative ways to use visualization, (which you are about to learn), this is not a new technique. Visualization has been used formally in the fields of sports psychology and personal development for decades and philosophers have discussed it for centuries:

“If you want to reach your goal, you must ’see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.”

- Zig Ziglar

“The use of mental imagery is one of the strongest and most effective strategies for making something happen for you.”

- Dr. Wayne Dyer

“Perhaps the most effective method of bringing the subconscious into practical action is through the process of making mental pictures - using the imagination.”

- Claude Bristol

“There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.”

- William James, 1842-1910, Psychologist and Author

Despite these glowing endorsements and a long track record, some people can’t get past feeling that this is just a “hokey” self-help technique. Rest assured, however, that visualization is an effective and time-tested method for increasing personal success that has been used by some of the highest achievers the world.

The Soviets started to popularize visualization in sports psychology back in the 1970’s, as detailed in Charles Garfield’s landmark book, “Peak Performance.” They dominated in many sports during that period, which validated visualization anecdotally.

In the last 10-15 years, there has been some groundbreaking new brain research which has validated visualization scientifically. Here’s something that was written recently by Dr. Richard Restak, a neuroscientist and author of 12 books about the human brain:

“The process of imagining yourself going through the motions of a complex musical or athletic performance activates brain areas that improve your performance. Brain scans have placed such intuitions on a firm neurological basis. Positron emission tomography (PET) scans reveal that the mental rehearsal of an action activates the prefontal areas of the brain responsible for the formulation of the appropriate motor programs. In practical terms, this means you can benefit from the use of mental imagery.”

So much for being a “cheesy” self-help technique.

Although visualization is widely used today, even people who are familiar with it often don’t realize its many applications. Arguably the most common use of visualization is by athletes, musicians and other performers as a form of “mental rehearsal.” Research shows that “practicing in your mind” is almost as effective as practicing physically, and that doing both is more effective than either one alone.

A common use of visualization in the fitness context is “goal visualization.” In your mind’s eye, you can see yourself having already achieved your physique goal or your ideal goal weight. You can also visualize a specific performance goal such as completing a difficult workout or a heavy lift like a squat or bench press.

One creative way you can use mental imagery is called “process visualization.”Once you’ve set your goals, it’s easy to come up with a list of the daily habits, behaviors and action steps necessary to reach your goal. So write down the action steps and visualize them - the entire process, not just the end result. See yourself food shopping and grabbing fruits, vegetables and lean proteins, ordering healthy foods from restaurant menus, saying no to sodas and drinking water instead, and going to the gym consistently and having killer workouts. Some people visualize their entire “perfect day” as they would want it to unfold. When you do this as vividly, emotionally and in as much detail as you can, you will be neurologically priming your brain to carry out those behaviors.

The least known of all mental imagery techniques is called “physiology visualization.”An example would be picturing the fat burning process in your body or seeing the muscle fibers growing larger and larger. Using this technique, could it be possible that you might be giving subconscious instructions to your body’s cells, organs and tissues?

Well, consider the work of Dr. Carl Simonton, a physician and cancer researcher who taught his patients (as one part of a comprehensive program), how to visualize powerful immune cells devouring the cancer cells. I’m not suggesting that you can cure cancer or materialize a lean and muscular body just by visualizing, (there’s a step in between thought and manifestation - it’s called action - a step that many self help ‘experts’ forget to mention). However, thoughts and mental images are the precursors to action and the fact that a mind-body connection definitely exists makes this an exciting prospect.

Scientists have established the mind-body link in many contexts, and not just by the existence of a placebo effect. There’s also direct evidence as in the way emotional stress can contribute to physical disease. The mind does influence the body! The mere fact that a branch of science has been devoted to this area is proof that it deserves critical investigation and is not just the domain of infomercial self help gurus. The science is called psychoneuroimmunology.

Using “physiology visualization,” you could, even in the middle of a workout, imagine the fat burning process taking place, and visualize fat being released from adipose tissue storage in your abdominal region or elsewhere. You could see the free fatty acids entering your bloodstream, being carried to the working muscles and being burned for energy in the muscle cells. You could also visualize the physiology of muscle growth.

To make your imagery as accurate and detailed as possible, my best suggestion is to refer to an anatomy & physiology textbook that shows pictures of fat cells, blood vessels, myofibrils, motor units, sarcomeres, and cell organelles like the mitochondria, so you know what the structures look like. You could also get more details about the processes by looking up lipolysis, hypertrophy or beta oxidation.

Even if you had no idea what the internal structure and workings of the body were like, you could still use this method. Your body responds to mental imagery even if it isn’t anatomically correct. We know from the field of hypnosis that the subconscious mind responds well to metaphor – maybe even better than literal suggestions. Facts and logic are the domain of the conscious mind, while emotion and metaphor can slip right past the conscious and into the subconscious. Dr. Simonton often wrote about his young patients who created (metaphorical) mental images of immune system cells as “knights in shining armor”, slaying “the dragon” of cancer cells.

One of your greatest mental powers is imagination. You can visualize anything you want and you can embellish and exaggerate your imagery as much as you want. For example, you could imagine the free fatty acids being burned for energy in the “cellular powerhouse” - the mitochondria - and you could imagine the mitochondrion as a fiery furnace… “incinerating” the fat! I think it’s a pretty cool idea to “see” your fat cells shrinking and visualize your body as a “fat burning furnace.”

Should you not believe that there’s anything to the physiology visualization technique, that’s ok, because we know that the subconscious is deductive. Just give it a goal, tell it what you want and it will get you there automatically by altering your attention and behavior. Therefore, we can be confident that physiology visualization will be effective even if only as a subconscious directive about your desired goal. If science someday provides us with conclusive evidence that visualization actually does cause cellular - physiological changes in the body, well, that’s just all the better.

Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer, certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), certified master practitioner of NLP and author of the best selling diet e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle. Tom teaches you how to lose fat without drugs or supplements using the little-known secrets of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and turbo-charge your metabolism by visiting http://www.BurnTheFat.com , home of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle and http://www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.Com , the Internet’s premier members-only fat loss support community.

So there you have it, Tom Venuto drops another nugget for your dome… literally. Put your visualization to the test for a few weeks and see what happens to your life.

What do you have to lose?

I was checking out an article today that was once again touting the positive effect of exercise on depression.

Apparently, we’ve known that it DOES have a positive effect, but we just haven’t known exactly why.

From the article:

The researchers found that mice that had a week’s worth of workouts on a running wheel showed altered activity in a total of 33 genes, the majority of which had never been identified before.

In particular, exercise enhanced activity in the gene for a nerve growth factor known as VGF. Nerve growth factors are small proteins important in the development and maintenance of nerve cells.

Moreover, when the researchers infused a synthetic version of VGF into the brains of the mice, it produced a “robust antidepressant effect” in standardized tests of animals placed in stressful situations.

“The major finding is that we have identified a key factor that underlies the antidepressant effects of exercise — information that could be used for the development of novel therapeutic agents,” said senior researcher Dr. Ronald S. Duman of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Exercise “clearly has effects on the brain,” he told Reuters Health, and they are both direct and indirect. It’s possible, he explained, that the current findings reflect a direct effect of exercise on nerve cells in the hippocampus, or more general changes in the brain, like better blood flow or increased hormonal activity.

Source: Exercise may boost brain’s natural antidepressant

It seems like science has been doing different experiments on this phenomenon for years - with virtually no evidence in the reverse.

I don’t know if I personally care what mechanism it is, I just like the fact that exercise makes me feel good.

So, if you’ve been down in the dumps or have the Monday moo moos, go get yourself some vigorous exercise in. It’s a proven formula that WORKS.

More great info tomorrow including a great update geared for the men out there.

You know, I’ve got to thinking recently… I know… scary thought right?

I haven’t seen any product or service do a real, true to life documentary on fat loss progress. I mean, you’ve got testimonials, but what about legitimate proof?

Proof with pics and videos as we walk THROUGH the journey.

So that’s what I’m gonna do.

It’s no surprise that I’ve slacked off during the last couple of months… and my physique has suffered a bit.

No matter… because I was planning on doing something like this anyway.

Here’s the deal.

I’m the guinea pig.

60 DAYS of torture…

… and I’m going to document it every step of the way.

No more articles per say… just “journal” entries that show you EXACTLY what I’m going every single day.

What I eat.

How I exercise.

Do you think that would be helpful for you?

I thought so.

I’m gonna use every single tip and trick in the Fat Loss Black Book PLUS a NEW technique that I’m gonna try out once per week.

I’ll explain it when we get to it.

Tomorrow: Measurements and weight. Today’s exercise, today’s food intake.

Let me leave you with this cool video with more INSANE ab workouts: