Training the Brain by Ritualizing Practices Is Key To Weight Release

Posted by Freeman Michaels on July 1st, 2010 at 08:19am

Behavioral psychology studies have confirmed that it takes 21-30 days repeating patterns of behavior for the neural-pathways in the brain to organize and form what we refer to as a “habit”. This occurs in a region of the brain known as the “basal ganglia”. This is also the area of the brain where “procedural learning” occurs. New neural patterns can be established consciously and deliberately by consistently performing a particular action. The simplest analogy is setting an alarm clock to wake up earlier – after several weeks of setting the alarm for the earlier time, a person will no longer need the alarm to sound for them to wake up.

In the weight release program that I teach, I work with clients who use food to try and cope with stress, anxiety, frustration, and other emotions. I help clients examine their unhealthy eating habits to discover what emotional needs are triggering the behavior. We then work consciously to develop what we call “self-honoring choices” to attempt to meet the needs in a more positive way. We then ritualize these self honoring choices by creating what we refer to as “practices”. Over time the practices become habits.

The principle of replacing unhealthy habits with carefully designed practices has been highly effective. However, old habits do not disappear completely. The way I explain it is to describe a new road that one builds parallel to an old road. Over time taking the new road becomes habitual and it is much easier to stay off the old road. But the old road does not go away, under certain circumstances we find it very easy to slip back into the old pattern. Ann Graybiel, a Professor of Neuroscience in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences explains it this way, “It is as though, somehow, the brain retains a memory of the habit context, and this pattern can be triggered if the right habit cues come back.”

As a person who has struggled with weight, I know that relapses are part of the process. Just knowing that defaulting to old behaviors is normal can help a person recognize when they have slipped into an unhealthy habit and quickly correct their course.

The trick to releasing and maintaining a healthy weight involves having a reverence for the positive choices we are making. When we define a positive motivation for changing our lives, fueled by a sense of meaning and purpose, the changes we make or more likely to be lasting. Ritualizing the practices we create helps us stay on course as well as get back on “track” when we fall back into unhealthy habits.

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Freeman Michaels is America’s #1 weight release expert and coach. He is the author of Weight Release: A Liberating Journey. His groundbreaking program uses personal development principles to end the “diet cycle” and help people release weight forever.

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