Peter Facinelli Put His Mind to Work and Lost 30 Pounds

Breathe

With hectic lifestyles and constant time constraints, we often find ourselves eating on the run with little time to think about what we are putting into our bodies. Likewise, during periods where we feel negative emotions such as stress, we may turn to junk food for instant comfort, but by slowing things down just for a few seconds we can put ourselves in a position to take more care with our nutrition. “You can calm your nervous system down very easily just by breathing in for five seconds, and breathing out for five,” says Facinelli. “And then you get less anxious.”

Stop Repeating Bad Behaviors

“It doesn’t take long to create a new habit,” says Facinelli. “It’s just that we get so stuck in our old habits.” The qualified hypnotherapist believes that in order to stand a better chance with adopting new, healthier habits, we need to make ourselves aware that we aren’t restricting ourselves by making positive these changes. So instead of mourning the loss of sugar, think about how much better you will feel, and all the things you will be able to achieve in a day, by not crashing from a sugar rush. Looking at alternative choices as better options, rather than a sacrifice, will reinforce that you have a lot to gain from making better choices. “You can be in the habit of being healthy, or you can be in the habit of being unhealthy,” says Facinelli.

Be Mindful

Many people have an impulse to get out of bed and have a late-night snack. But the director of “The Vanished” says he helped his sister with this very issue by giving her the tools to break the urge. “When you wake up and find yourself wanting to go eat, put your thumb on your forefinger, and squeeze them together, then count backward from 10,” says Facinelli. “Then imagine yourself going back to sleep and being relaxed.” This is a helpful way of slowing down the unconscious thinking that would otherwise have you halfway down the stairs before making a conscious decision. If you can catch yourself and be mindful of what you are doing with a trigger that gives you a choice, you stand a better chance of beating unhealthy impulses. “Giving yourself the physicality of touching your thumb and finger together helps with that trigger,” says Facinelli.

Manifest Change

“It’s not about saying, ‘I want, I want, I want,’” says Facinelli. “It’s about becoming that, which you want to be.” The actor says there doesn’t have to be anything supernatural in the art of manifestation. He says that if you understand what you want to be, you can then start to think about the behaviors and changes required to make it happen. “In “Cobra Kai,” there’s the nerdy kid (Eli), and he decides to grow a mohawk,” says Facinelli. “He became something else, and then after a while, people started treating him differently (and calling him ‘Hawk’). I mean, he became a bully in that storyline, but I look at that example and I realize that this is how it works.” Facinelli says that the same applies for making positive changes to your lifestyle or even your career: “If you dress for a certain job, the rest of the world will believe that you are that person. It doesn’t have to be magical. Sometimes in the beginning, you gotta fake it until you make it. When I lost that weight, I had an image in my mind, I printed pictures of people with physiques that I admire, and I would look at those for inspiration.”

Movie Magic

The charismatic “Can’t Hardly Wait” actor has developed an exercise in meditation and hypnotherapy that he refers to as “Movie Magic.” “Your feelings are driven by your thoughts,” says Facinelli. “We sometimes forget that we can choose our thoughts. Your subconscious mind may hold on to negative thoughts like ‘that person just cut me off,’ and you become like a dog just gnawing on a bone, but if you think of your mind like a TV, you can change the channel anytime you want. It’s about taking your subliminal pattern, and shifting it to something else that is more peaceful, and more calming.”

To try the Movie Magic exercise, Facinelli says to start with those five-second breathing techniques, then close your eyes, and picture a bright light around your heart. Grow the light in your imagination. This helps you to focus. As you breathe, the light grows to surround you. Then imagine a time in your life that puts you at peace, either with a pet or a person, or at a beautiful vacation spot. If you fully concentrate on that image and let the feeling of peace grow just like the light, it will give you a nice feeling, like a warm blanket.

“It’s really like changing the TV channel to this peaceful, meditational image”, says Facinelli. “Instead of the war channel that you had on before that was all about stressful things, and that’s why I call it Movie Magic”.

Next time you feel stressed and want to raid the fridge, remember that the urge started in the mind, so be mindful about beating those negative impulses