Lose Weight Through Creativity: 5 Powerful Tips

I’m an artist, not a nutritionist. So why did I write a book about weight loss? Because quite by accident I stumbled upon one secret how to lose weight. And it works!

For 25 years I have taught others how to unleash their creativity. From there, from behind the teacher’s desk, I saw firsthand how the lives of my students are changing. And surprisingly, their bodies also changed. Of course, I did not immediately pay attention to this, but many of those who came to me plump, by the end of the class, became noticeably slimmer and more graceful.

Losing weight is a fairly common “side effect” of being creative. After all, overeating suppresses the imagination. The reverse is also true: turning on the imagination, you can turn off the appetite. Believe it or not, creativity is a wonderful, underrated, and incredibly powerful way to lose weight.

I can’t say that I have never tried traditional, well-known diets. On the contrary, in this area I can be called an amateur specialist. I followed the Atkins diet for many years – but my cholesterol level in my blood only increased. I used the South Shore diet, but the weight came back as soon as I slightly veered off course. I hung a memorandum from the Society of Anonymous Gluttons on the refrigerator, but the lack of proper food was driving me crazy, and this scared me almost as much as the extra pounds on the scales. I switched to a weight watcher diet, but the constant scoring of food turned out to be insane.

And then I realized that I had to look for some other way. Everyone knows: we eat too much, we eat bad things when something gnaws, devours us. But what if every time before a meal, constantly, when there is a desire to “snack something”, ask yourself: “What is it that is tormenting me now that I wanted to eat so sharply?” And take the time to quickly write down your feelings about it? What if, instead of regular food, you give yourself “brain food”, food for thought?

Since we can drown out feelings with food, why not do the opposite, drown out our appetite with words? After all, calories are just units of energy, and words are worse?

This idea fascinated me. Rich writing experience told me that creativity is a way to “digest” life, a kind of “life metabolism”. If I can write about something, then I can do it, and often very gracefully.

It turns out that just creativity can regulate the metabolism of your own body? Yes, you can. Creativity makes us aware. And when we realize what exactly is happening, it is already difficult to pretend that we do not understand anything.

Once we understand that overeating is a jamming mechanism, it becomes easier for us to find words and harder to reach out for food. When the desire to have a bite covers, it is better to look into the manuscript, and not into the refrigerator.

Creative Diet Tools

1. Morning pages. Write down three A4 sheets every morning. Just move your pen across the paper and write whatever comes to mind. No “high art”, strictly stream of consciousness. Even the “absence” of thoughts will do. Be angry, upset, worry, swear or rejoice.

Morning pages cannot be written wrong. Your pages may grumble and whine: “I woke up, but I want to sleep for another two hours. I hate my job. I really don’t like my life.” Your task is simply to “write out” yourself on the pages, no matter how you feel. By doing this, you become aware of the current problems. You are “outside” to “catch” yourself and determine with pinpoint accuracy what you are feeling and thinking.

A burst of creativity is one of the early results of the morning pages. The walls in the apartment are being painted. New curtains are being hung. Letters are being written that should have been written long ago, but everything was put off. Morning pages “charge” for the whole day, and also – put everything on the shelves. As we write them down, we gradually realize that each of our days is made up of many “choice points” and that we have the freedom to decide how we will live.

The morning pages help us to realize what exactly in our activities leads us to a dead end, and what brings us a feeling of health and well-being. One day you will write: “I need to exercise more.” The same is written on the second day. And in the third. And on the fourth, you suddenly realize that you can spend 20 minutes from your lunch break on a walk. You walk, and the next day, the morning pages record this small victory.

Morning pages help to get in touch with feelings. Our emotions are often crushed by the weight of busy days filled with work, relationships with people and, of course, food. Very often, as soon as we touch our own feelings, we jump away from them like from a hot stove. We get angry – and we feel that it is wrong to be angry. We get upset and stare at some pointless TV program to ignore the sadness. We rejoice and we eat.

An attack of hunger can cause any strong emotion. When we start writing morning pages, we leave behind a meaningless, thoughtless life. Day after day, page after page, we become attentive to ourselves, we begin to perceive our own feelings sharply.

2. Food diary. You write the morning pages in the morning. But you will have to engage in creativity not once a day, but much more often. During the day, you will write at every meal – and each time you will write down exactly what you ate.

This is not to judge yourself. Many of us do not know exactly what and how much gets into their stomach during the day. We lose heart when we see that the weight is only growing, despite our best efforts, although it should be the other way around. A “food” diary saves us from guesswork and guesswork, does not allow wishful thinking.

Thanks to him, we have accurate data. We know what exactly we ate, and gradually, gaining experience in keeping a diary, we begin to understand why we ate it. The principle is very simple and clear. You write down in a diary every bite you swallow. And describe how you feel when the food still manages to seduce you.

3. Walks. Creativity makes us move. The daily habit of writing morning pages gives us the opportunity to reflect on our own thoughts, to “feel into” our own feelings. We learn what gnaws at us, what “devours” us. Thanks to the diary, we understand what exactly we eat every day. This in itself is good, but not enough.

In addition to expelling demons from the soul, body training is needed. The easiest and best way to do this is to walk. “But I have absolutely no time to walk!” You will surely protest. This is resistance. It, and not ourselves, tells us that we do not have time for walks. They seem to us something frivolous. You have to think about children, about your husband, about a career, finally. What’s worse, walking takes so much time! How to snatch half an hour for a walk when life forces us to run all the time?

Time is what we all need the most…or is it? 20 minutes can be easily carved out of even the busiest day by simply moving the worries that need to be considered to the time of the walk. By the way, walks teach us not to worry in vain!

“During them, the legs relax, the thoughts too,” says Jay, a graphic designer: walking often brings new ideas to his head.

“Walking invigorates me, makes me younger,” says 60-year-old Katherine. Step by step, calorie by calorie, we burn the ailments that prevent us from living and activate our metabolism.

4. Four questions. An attack of hunger is a cunning enemy. It takes us by surprise precisely when we weaken our defenses. Let’s say we ate right all day and only healthy food. So, an attack of hunger will ambush us right before bedtime. We will be commended for our willpower and courage and told that “just a little something sinful” as a reward won’t hurt us. But this “just a little something sinful” often leads to something very harmful.

Therefore, it is very important to have time to ask yourself four questions in time.

“Am I hungry?” It turns out that very often the answer to this question is unequivocal: no. No, I’m not hungry, I’m just bored or disappointed, and a slice of cake promises a wonderful culinary adventure. If you still want to eat, ask yourself the second question: “Do I want to eat this?” You may be constantly drawn to cheeseburgers, but by asking yourself this question, you will realize that you do not want to cram so many calories, fat and carbohydrates into yourself. And it all ends with the fact that you eat a juicy, ripe peach.

The third question is “Do I want to eat this right now?” Many people complain that a bout of hunger overtakes them late at night. But you certainly don’t feel like eating in the middle of the night. And you tell yourself that you can always eat it tomorrow.

The key to freedom is question number four: “Can I eat something else instead?” It paves the way for thoughtful substitutions. Often the result is a refrigerator filled with only those products that can be eaten at any time of the day. It’s much better to have a late-night snack of jelly or light cottage cheese than to have a midnight ice cream meal. Or take a plum instead of a chocolate soufflé.

5. Culinary creative dates. Most of us are terribly afraid of diets, associating them with indispensable difficulties and hardships. But what if healthy eating is actually fun? What if the diet was not just abstinence, but turned into a real culinary adventure?

The “creative diet” suggests that once a week you make sure to make solemn creative outings. A culinary version of a creative date could be going to a restaurant, for example. Or a trip to the famous kitchenware store. Or a master class with a chef. Or shopping at a farmers market. After all, food in itself is not our enemy. The problem is its abuse.

By dining out, carefully considering the dishes we order, we acquire a social skill that will serve us well. It takes a lot of energy to say “no” when a basket of bread looks so tempting – but it’s better to think it over and say “yes” to something else. That’s why it’s good to study the menu beforehand. It often has appetizers and salads that are easy to miss when browsing the restaurant menu.

Many who take creative culinary dates seriously will find that these little adventures add flavor to life. We are not “sitting” on a diet. We comprehend a new, extremely diverse life. You can use the Creative Diet on its own, or combine it with any other diet to make it even more effective.

success stories

1. “Laura, a kindergarten teacher, came to my class rather obese. This tall beautiful blonde was 20 kilograms overweight. Laura dressed in black to appear slimmer. She was the kind of woman that people often say, “She has a pretty face. Too bad she’s so fat.”

Having endured a harsh childhood, Laura learned early to drown out her feelings with food. Starting every day to write morning pages, she was able to “face” her turbulent experiences – and the desire to get rid of them with the help of food began to melt. The kilos also melted away, and after 12 weeks, Laura finished my course as a slender woman with swan-like grace.

She associates weight loss with creativity. “A lot of things in life constantly annoyed me,” she recalls. “The morning pages have become for me a showdown with myself. With their help, I realized what exactly I was dissatisfied with and was able to fix it.” When Laura figured out what was eating her, she no longer needed to seize it.

2. “Charlotte, an economist, said that at first it was very difficult for her to arrange creative dates for herself: “I was terribly scared to go to restaurants alone. When I first decided on this adventure, I had to gather all my courage so as not to back down from my plan.

Of course, it seemed to me that everyone would see that I was alone. They think I’m weird. Or even a failure. But to my joy, no one seemed to think anything of the sort. Looking at the people in the restaurant, I saw that I was not alone. It gave me courage.

I took a book with me in order to cut off the sounds of the outside world in this way, but I found that it was interesting for me to listen to what was happening around: what the waiters were doing and saying, how the visitors behaved.

Dinner at a restaurant alone has been a real adventure for me and I look forward to doing it again. Perhaps it was these “creative dates” that helped me lose weight.