Creative visualization is a great tool for losing weight. By visualizing your body as you want it to be, you induce your subconscious mind to shape your body to appear as close to your mental image as possible. This does not mean that creative visualization will completely change the shape of your body. It means that if you visualize in accordance with the laws of visualization, you will improve the way it looks and reduce its weight.

It's a known fact that thoughts and emotions affect the body for better or worse. Negative thinking, stress, fear, excitement, worry and anger hurt the body. Under these conditions the body releases toxins into the blood, which affect it adversely. In contast, positive thinking, happiness, love and confidence heal, strengthen and energize the body.

You can use the connection between the mind and the body to your advantage. The subconscious mind accepts and treats both real conditions and mentally imagined conditions as real. This means that if you visualize yourself as being slim, your subconscious mind will accept what you visualize as true, and will act to make your body conform to your mental image. Losing weight with the help of creative visualization can be termed as a "mental diet." Of course, the chances of success will be greater if you also reduce the amount of food you eat and exercise your body.

Tips for losing weight through visualization:
1) Two or three times a day, sit down for several minutes in a quiet place, and visualize your body as you wish it to be. Leave your worries, doubts and other thoughts behind, and concentrate on what you want.

2) See yourself slim and beautiful, with your ideal weight. Forget how you look now. You are creating a new reality. See yourself at the beach or pool wearing a swimming suit. See how gorgeous you look. Imagine yourself wearing all that clothing you've always wanted to wear.

3) Visualize your family and friends complimenting you about how gorgeous your body looks and how slim you look now. Look at the whole scene as real, and as happening right now at the present moment.

4) Construct in your mind any other scene you wish. You can see yourself exercising, dancing, with friends, with your husband or wife, at work, etc. See yourself moving and in action. Hear people complimenting you about your slim body, and see their admiring glances. In short, make the mental image as real as possible.

5) Construct mental images that ignite your emotions. Make them alive and colorful. Make the scenes in your mind interesting and real and see yourself the way you will look after you lose weight.

6) Never visualize that you are disgusted with food or with eating. By visualizing your body as you wish it to look, your subconscious mind will direct you to eat the appropriate food in the right quantities.

7) Do not tell yourself that "Visualization is all nonsense, I cannot lose weight." If you say these words you destroy all the work you have done. When thoughts of disbelief crawl into your mind do not listen to them. Let only thoughts of your ideal body shape enter your mind. As in everything else in life, persistence is required.

Creative visualization can help you lose weight in a most natural way:

• It can help you desire to reduce the quantities of food you eat.
• Your body can be taught to be satisfied with smaller quantities of food.
• Creative visualization can attract to you the diet that suits you most.
• It can lead you to desire participating in some physical exercises that will reduce your weight.

Think on what you want to achieve, not what you want to avoid. Think about how you want to look, not about being overweight. Visualize your body as you want it to look, not as it looks now. Do not concern yourself too much with what to eat or not to eat, but with how you want your body to be. Persist with your efforts, and you will start seeing results.

It is most important to believe what you visualize. Forget past failures to lose weight and reject disbelief, doubts and negative thoughts. Keep projecting your ideal figure on the screen of your mind, and your disbelief and inner resistance will begin to fade away.

By Remez Sasson