Enticing, not forcing...

I don't believe that torturing your body physically into something it inherently resists is a natural way to attain an ultimate physical shape. It may be the most obvious way or a way people were led to believe was true through centuries or what an official science believes is true - but I feel that there must be a better or more efficient way.

My explanation of why I think this self-torture approach sometimes works is because sometimes it brings you to a change of lifestyle or the entire mental attitude or frame of mind and that's what makes it successful - not extreme self-annihilating training by itself. In my opinion the very idea about hard, intense and merciless training being the only tool to transform your body is a major misconception (or rather misattribution) that we were blindfolded by for decades.

My feeling is that the body resists the changes we want to see not because it is inherently lazy or inert, but because it reflects our inner state of mind and energy balance. I believe that at each specific moment we have a body that fully corresponds to our current mental state - whether we realize it or not. When our body craves something that is not considered "healthy" I think it should not be treated as a bad habit - but rather as a signal that something may be out of balance in our inner energy field. In my opinion the problem often lies in the fact that when we discover a craving (for instance, for potato chips or french fries) we start treating it as a "bad habit" and then our response ranges from total acceptance and letting ourselves "balloon" to a shape we do not want to desperate attempts to "fix" it by employing willpower and trying to resist the craving.

But if we look in the mirror and discover that there's something we don't like about the reflection we see we don't go trying to change the reflection or fix the mirror, do we? We know that image in the mirror is merely a reflection of what we are (or what we look like for that matter) - and the mirror simply provides us with honest feedback about the way we look.

As it has been said many times in many ways: What you resist to, persists. To me often times the approach that we apply to our body is that same violent approach which mankind has been using to address many other problems for centuries. If you don't like what you see - simply use the most obvious way - through violence. If you don't like the cat hanging around your backyard - force it out of your yard (or sometimes even kill it). If you don't like that your child watches too much TV or plays computer games - ground them or deny their access to the computer. If you don't like that your body is getting flabby - starve it or put it on a restrictive diet. Seems so easy, doesn't it? Except that the method often appears inefficient and the results often prove to be short-lived, so we press even harder only to discover that the problem manifests itself in a different form later.

I think that there has to be a non-violent way of changing this "reflection in the mirror". A way that encourages or invites a positive change rather than forcing it. In the "cat" example: instead of forcing the cat out of your yard, try making it feel LIKE going elsewhere, make it more attractive to the cat to stay outside of your yard. Instead of denying your child of computer games or TV, try to understand what it is that drvies them to it and then try to make it more attractive for them to be "away" from it without manipulating them through the use of guilt or fear.

I believe that when we bring our inner energy field to balance and adjust our mental state we will discover that our body has stopped craving food that we consider "unhealthy" - it will simply be enjoying other types of food. Instead of craving "Doritos" we may soon find that our body wants an orange or an apple and feels happy with it just as much as it once craved chips. I feel that the same applies to getting rid of "love handles", unwanted fat deposits in the abdominal area, etc.