Forget Willpower: Fun Family Fitness with Focused Imagination!

By Debbie Johnson

How can families work together positively, without forcing exercise and diet or denying food? Debbie Johnson is a former elementary teacher and best-selling author of Think Yourself Thin. She gained 40 lbs. dieting, lost it all Thinking Thin, and has kept it off over 25 years. Debbie has worked with families to help them find the positive, loving, uplifting answer to weight gain. It all starts with how we talk to each other in the secret language the subconscious hears and to which it responds. Learn with your Family: * What Really Controls Your Child’s Weight and Health? * Why Focused Imagination Works * How You Can Use Focused Imagination to Create Positive Changes for You and Your Children * Feel Good about Yourself and Your Child with a Positive, No-diet, No-willpower Method, based on Think Yourself Thin principles. *Create projects that you'll cherish forever as the foundation of your success. *Create a more loving family atmosphere, learn and grow together in your own spiritual way, and have fun doing it!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debbie Johnson
• Release date: Jul 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005520748

Debbie Johnson

Debbie Johnson is a best-selling author who lives and works in Liverpool, where she divides her time between writing, caring for a small tribe of children and animals, and not doing the housework. Her books include The Birthday That Changed Everything, Pippa’s Cornish Dream, and Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe, all published by HarperCollins. Follow her on twitter @debbiemjohnson, or at www.facebook.com/debbiejohnsonauthor – but be warned, she mainly talks about dogs.

Book preview

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Forget

Willpower:

Fun Family Fitness

with Focused Imagination!

By Debbie Johnson, Best-Selling

Author of Think Yourself Thin

Copyright, 2009, by Deborah A. Johnson

Second Edition, 2021

All rights reserved. With the exception of links to this book from your website, and not for sale, or for personal use, downloading and printing on personal computers, and not for sale, any reprinting or copying of this book either retail or wholesale is strictly prohibited, in whole or in part, including storage in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by an electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording means or otherwise except by written permission from the author. It is also prohibited to copy for use for marketing purposes either directly or indirectly in any way whatsoever without express written permission from the author and publisher:

Cover Design: Janet Edwards

Cover Photo: Kerialis

Deborah Johnson Publishing

A Subsidiary of The Golden Chalice, Inc., a Minnesota Corporation,

P.O. Box 277, Victoria, MN, 55386

[e-mail]

Table of Contents:

In the Beginning

Chapter One: The Obesity Epidemic – Why Parents Want to Take Action

Chapter Two: What Really Controls Your Child’s Weight and Health?

Chapter Three: Why Thinking Thin Works

Chapter Four: How You Can Use Focused Imagination to Create Positive Changes for You and Your Children

Chapter Five: What’s Next?

In the Beginning

You can do this! If I, and many others, have slimmed down using our minds, so can you and your family. I gained forty pounds dieting, lost it all Thinking Thin, using my own technique and eating whatever I wanted, and have kept it off over twenty-five years. So take heart, there is a way beyond willpower, beyond denying yourself through force or killing yourself with extreme exercise.

My story is like so many others, but with a twist. . . . I got frustrated enough to create my own method, and it worked! I have a degree in elementary education from the University of Colorado in Boulder, where positive reinforcement was encouraged, and I’m also Montessori-trained. I’ve always loved working with children, and with positive methods you’ll find in this book. I used all my positive thinking methods on my excess weight!

It All Started in Fourth Grade

I lived with an unusual family. My mother was overweight, and my father was skinny. My brother, who was adopted, like me, was also overweight. Even though I’d been adopted at age seven, a very skinny kid, I wondered whether I would turn out like my father or mother. I had a fifty-fifty chance of being overweight.

All went well until fourth grade. My mother was a hairdresser and she loved to cut hair. She loved it so much that one day when she was cutting mine, she just kept cutting and cutting until I was too stunned to speak. I was too afraid to say anything to my overbearing, very critical mom. I was appalled with how short my hair was, and I cried and cried after I looked in the mirror and thought I looked like a boy! What could I do? My subconscious knew: It would protect me with fat! The subconscious mind simply manifested the wall I wanted to put up against my overly critical mother.

I did lose the weight by the following year, judging by my class photos.

Puberty Hits and Dad Goes Nuts

I was coming home from somewhere when my father was walking behind me. I wore my favorite dress. It fit me perfectly and I felt very feminine in it. My heart was open and I was happy. But then Dad said these words that I will never forget, Gettin’ kind of broad across the beam there, aren’t you kid?

I was heartbroken! My brother had been overweight all his life and no one seemed to be too hard on him.

I loved my Dad, so my father started me thinking. I must be getting fat! Oh, what to do now, what to do now! I had no idea that my thoughts and emotions were programming my subconscious to gain weight. I decided to ignore his comment, until my pants shrunk in the dryer, only I didn’t know they had! So I figured I was really in trouble with my weight.

My mother had been on Weight-Watchers, which seemed very good for her at the time (an aside here: even though she lost fifty pounds, she gained it all back when my father died, but later lost it again— and kept it off—Thinking Thin). Since Weight Watchers had worked for her, I thought I would try it.

I hated having to put mustard in my tuna fish instead of mayonnaise. So, after two weeks of this torture, when my mother’s best friend walked in with her famous cheesecake, I decided something had to change. I did not have to be on a diet! I had to eat Babs’ cheesecake. After all, I was young and strong and healthy. Everyone kept asking me why I was on a diet. When I saw that cheesecake, I agreed with them all - I was just fine the way I was!

College and Engagement

High school sauntered forward without a hitch. I was in a play and got to wear a wonderfully romantic dress. I felt beautiful and slim. I was in love with a college boy! And the very next fall, I would be going to the same university he was attending in Boulder, Colorado.

Within a year we were engaged to be married. My father had died of a massive heart attack several months previous, and my mother was angry at everyone