If all you did was just look for things to appreciate you would live a joyous, spectacular life. If there was nothing else that you ever came to understand other than just look for things to appreciate, it’s the only tool you would ever need to predominantly hook you up with who you really are. That’s all you’d need.

–Abraham-Hicks

Do you often feel deprived or guilty about the food you eat?

Do you stand in front of the closet and distress about what to wear?

Do you look in the mirror and criticize, or feel body shame?

These negative thoughts and emotions are generating catabolic energy that is actually sabotaging your ability to lose—and maintain—your weight.

Your negative thoughts—about yourself, your clothes, your food, about everything—trigger the stress response, releasing cortisol, adrenaline, and other chemicals that literally cannibalize your body at the cellar level.

Examining problems and experiencing the resulting negative thoughts is fine occasionally, but for most people this is a chronic state of being. Everything begins to look like a problem or crisis.

This chronic emotional and physical stress response is breaking down your immune system, straining your heart, and impacting your muscles. Over time, this catabolic energy can cause everything from painful trigger points in your shoulders, to inflammation, to heart attacks.

And it significantly impacts your metabolism and other weight-related systems making it easier to gain and harder to release weight.

This cumulative impact is the reason why it gets harder to release weight as you age.

Lose the chronic negative thoughts and responses and you more easily lose the weight—and regain your wellness and well-being.

But, if you have a long-time habit of focusing on the negative and feeling bad about it—particularly when it comes to your body—how can you begin to change to more positive, anabolic energy that rebuilds and supports your body?

What if all that you had to do was practice appreciation?

The good news is that in the powerful moment of now you can’t feel appreciation and guilt at the same time. Sometimes they can be so close together that you think you are experiencing them all at once, but vibrationally they are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

What’s really happening is that you are almost instantly bouncing from one emotional extreme to the other, which is one of the reasons it’s so exhausting.

The trick is to begin to string more thoughts of appreciation together so that you start to train your vibration more often in the positive direction. And focusing on things you appreciate is a powerful way to do that.

Here are 5 tips for practicing appreciation:

• Start with something simple. If you have been practicing hating your body, it’s going to take you a while before you can begin thinking loving thoughts and not feel like a big fat liar. So choose a different place to start. How about the pillow your sleep on, or your pet? Start with something that’s pretty easy to build up some momentum of appreciation about before you take on the topic of your body.
• Pick quiet times. Some of the best times to practice appreciation are just before you go to sleep and just after you wake up. This is a great way to set the energy for the day.
• Make lists. One of the best ways to begin practicing appreciation is to literally write lists of things you appreciate. This can be once a day, or throughout the day. It can be one list that you continually read and add to, or multiple lists.
• Use downtime. Anytime you’re waiting is a great time to practice appreciation. For instance, practice appreciation while standing in line at the grocery store, waiting for your dentist appointment or cable repairman, taking a shower, or waiting for a flight.
• Make it a game. What could you possibly appreciate sitting in traffic? Make it fun to try. It could be that you have a heater on cold days, the opportunity to listen to your favorite music, that it’s a good time to people watch. Who knows what you might find to appreciate if you look for it in odd places.

As you practice, look for changes in your life. Are you less stressed? Do you have more energy? Did you make your workout a priority? Did you choose an apple instead of a cookie?

What can you do today to reflect on the good things that happen and all that you appreciate? How can you begin to make this something you regularly practice? What difference does this make in creating the body—and life—you want?

Together we can do it!