Negative self talk is often out of our awareness and we don’t realize the impact it can have on mood. Affirmations are a great tool to help you decrease negative self talk or binge thinking about your body, food or your weight.

Thoughts influence feelings. And the more frequent and negative our unconscious or conscious negative self talk is the worse we can feel, and then we are headed down the slippery slope where an increase in self criticism leads to an increase out-of-control eating.

By adding affirmations in your life you can decrease the constant harangue of self criticism and create a millisecond of peace. Experiment with making them in your own voice, in the positive and in the present. Here is a list of a few that you can change up to make them your own.

• I TAKE CARE TO LISTEN TO MY BODY’S SIGNALS
• I CONNECT WITH WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO ME EACH DAY
• I USE MY INTUITION AND THINKING TO MEET MY CHALLENGES
• I AM IN THE MOMENT
• I AM SAFE; CHANGE IS NATURAL
• I EMBRACE SELFNESS
• I AM BEAUTIFUL INSIDE AND OUT

If you want to work on changing your brain by creating a new neural pathway, practice your affirmations 300 times. You can do 10 a day for 30 days or 30 a day for 10 days.  If it helps, identify a time and place where you’ll do your affirmations, or use your own affirmation room. Even if you don’t quite believe the affirmation, by repeating it again and again you are interrupting the negative self talk and eventually it seeps in so that you can start believing it.

Affirmations might feel formulaic or contrived when you first start, but remember many of us have an allergic reaction to anything positive about ourselves. Keep on practicing and it gets easier.

Do you have an affirmation that might help someone else? Please share it.  Thank you.