Fitness - Hungry For What

Hunger pangs are difficult to resist, You have changed your lifestyle, you are into the new reality, you know you have undertaken the fitness journey to health. Yet, those hunger pangs, that craving, that feeling of emptiness does return occasionally. There is nothing wrong in giving in to them once in a while. Some fitness books even give you a splurge list where you can eat anything you want on a weekend and count your calories the rest of the week. We are not sure how effective this program is.

In actual fact, it is your mental dynamo going back into time and making yet another connection.

Since childhood, you have always associated hunger with food. Your howling in infancy magically made a bottle full of milk appear at your lips. Later, you were always called for breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner. with a well­ meant remark like, "You must be hungry." At a picnic, you were often asked, "Hungry?

Mental dynamics play an important role in the hunger syndrome. The mind is a teeming mass of senses. A certain situation triggers off a sense and identifies it with an object. For example, you will always identify fear with a ghost, beauty with a rose, heat with fire and so on. Once the identification is made, the mind sticks to it. It narrows itself not leaving room for choices. Yet, choices are, ever present. If you have a minor cut on your finger, it will throb as long as you pay attention to it. But if at that moment, your neighbour rings your doorbell and exclaims, "There is a fire in the next building!" you will forget your pain. That is because your mind has got distracted and seized another point of interest.

Thus, sights, sounds, touch, are the media of the mind to make the abstract into concrete. Which is why most people turn away from an abstract painting saying, "I can't make sense of it." Only when there is an identification does the mind acknowledge it as real.

The mind also has the ability to be in two time zones at the same -time due to the memory-bank in the brain. You will find couples identifying a musical composition as their 'special song' since they had danced to it years ago in their courting days. In those few moments, they are twenty ­year-olds again gazing into each others eyes.

It is the all-powerful mind that decides your reflexes. Which is why you identify an abstract feeling of hunger with items like food. The mind has made the association and sticks to it grimly through the years.

Your mental dynamics can play a key role here. Suppose you could give. your mind something else to chew upon, suppose you could widen your mind's horizon, suppose you could now set a new trend in the process of identification, of association. You can do all these by asking, "Hungry for what?' The choices are limitless. Hungry for company. Hungry for work. Hungry for exercise. Bullseye! You've got something going for you there! Most often, hunger is only an abstract state. Eliminate food from your mind's concrete list. And you've got a whole new fitness philosophy working for you!

Try it. The next time you feel "hungry" tell yourself it is your body hungering for exercise. After 20 minutes of working out, your appetite will have disappeared. Practise it until it becomes a part of your mental dynamics. You will be surprised how easy it is once you make a habit of it.

There is much more to this process than banishing your appetite. Once you are able to change the process of identification, you will be flooded with an awareness of your mental powers. You will be able to guide your thinking, your reflexes into new channels. You will be freeing yourself from set old patterns that don't work for you. You will create newer vistas.

It is fascinating because the possibilities are endless. It is fulfilling because with your new realities you can be the eternal explorer - stretching your boundaries, going beyond existing limits. You will be able to set your talent in a new direction.

You will discover a whole new world. New paths. New maps. New destinations. The best part is that it will be all inside you, starting from you. And for that reason, they will work for you. In short, your mental dynamics are always at your service - they can be tuned for you. To help you grow. And, as we said at the outset, isn't that your mission?

To grow as an individual. And never having to stop?