If Only I Was Skinny – Put an End to Weight Waiting – Part 1 of 2
We’ve all seen those diet commercials where a beautiful, happy, slender woman talks about her weight loss alongside a life-size photo of herself “before” going on the diet. In the photo, she looks sad and miserable. Then, at some point, she looks at the “before” picture of her with such disgust and disdain and pushes it away from her, out of her sight, showing that she has no feeling or connection to that picture. Can you relate to that?
My experience of wasting over 33 years waiting for perfection
Of course I can. Even though I’ve felt this way in the past, having wasted years hating and resenting my fat thighs and curvy body, now when I see those commercials it makes me want to cry. Like most women, I was raised to believe that my worth was related to my appearance and ability to be attractive, which is why I was so intent on losing weight.
For years, from the time I was 11 until a few years ago when I turned 43, I pinned all my hopes on the belief that losing weight would make me happy. So I procrastinated, procrastinated, and avoided so many things. I canceled the vacation because I didn’t want to be seen in a bathing suit. I avoided parties, weddings, dances, social occasions, because I thought I was too fat. I never had anything nice to wear, because I didn’t go shopping until I got down to my ideal weight. I kept waiting and saying, “If only…”
During those 30 years I wasted a lot of precious time thinking about how much I weighed, how I looked, how big I was, how much I was eating, if and when I could eat. All the things that had nothing to do with what my real problem was, a painfully low image of myself.
Being fat is just a symptom, not the real problem
For most of my adult life, I was completely fooled into thinking I was miserable because I had fat thighs. I never considered the possibility that I had fat thighs because I was miserable. How about you? If you are struggling with being overweight and you are not happy, do you know why you feel so miserable? Well, I’ll tell you what. Depriving yourself of the foods you love won’t help, it will only hurt you. Here is the proof:
Why Diets Don’t Work For Most People
According to the latest results of a composite study conducted at UCLA, Traci Mann, associate professor of psychology at UCLA and lead author of the study, said: “We found that most people regained the weight, and more. Loss was found sustained weight loss in only a small minority of participants, while the majority fully regained the weight. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits in most people.” push yourself to eat when you’re not hungry.
In the last few years that I stopped dieting and committed to focusing on managing my emotional eating and changing my life from the inside out, I have learned several truths that have successfully freed me from my body/food hatred. feeding beliefs that I would like to share with you. Are here:
It’s not what you’re eating; It’s what’s eating you! In her book, Breaking the Link Between Abuse, Stress and Overeating, Doreen Virtue, Ph.D, says: “Every extra pound you carry on your body is equal to a pound of emotional pain you carry in your heart.” If you consider the excess weight, those extra pounds and inches that you carry on your body, as a measure of the emotional pain that you keep in your heart, you are more likely to find ways to be more compassionate with yourself.
Food is not what you really want: Your cravings are really unmet emotional needs in disguise. When your brain fires up with the urge to eat, it’s not because you lack willpower or discipline, it’s an instinctive, survival-based response to dealing with your stress. Your desire is not to actually eat the food, but to recreate the happy emotions you have associated with the foods you enjoy. As an emotional eater, your brain is wired to recognize that eating those foods will relieve your stress. During those times when you overeat, forgive yourself, let go, and move on, being willing to start again, and again, and again.
it is a process: Unfortunately, there is no magic wand or quick fix that will get you to your ideal weight in an instant, short of sustained torturous deprivation. And 9 times out of 10 your weight will come back up after a long period of deprivation. Losing weight will take time. To do this successfully, his body has to reorganize itself to think and feel differently about food. Since it is a learning process like riding a bike or dancing, you will have to fall many times before you get it right. Diets keep you focused on thinking like a dieter, which only perpetuates the deprivation response, feelings of scarcity, and the focus on food. Dieting reinforces the diet. They do not encourage self-control around food.
No more diets: As long as you continue on the diet, you will continue to be afraid of certain foods, thinking that they make you fat. Desperately trying to avoid them, you will only want them more. Diets focus on depriving you and that only feeds the compulsion to get more of what you don’t think you can have. I recommend learning to feel safe with real food and eating in response to your body’s natural hunger. Eat the foods you crave, guilt-free to break out of diet prison. Legalize all foods.
Make peace with your hunger: Contrary to what your diet has probably taught you, your hunger is nothing to fear. It is completely natural. It is a physiological response that indicates that your body’s energy reserves are running low. It is not dangerous and if you do not eat something instantly, you will not suffer. And there’s no benefit in trying to avoid it by constantly snacking and eating all the time. Doing this will only dull your senses and make it harder for you to tune in to your body when it’s actually hungry. To lose weight without dieting, it is important to eat when the body is very hungry. Generally speaking, the three squares a day + snacks rule is too much food for the average person. It is important to remember that our bodies only need to recharge every 6-9 hours. This is the amount of time that food remains in the stomach after a meal. If you feel the need to eat more often, your hunger is not physical. it’s emotional
Be willing to go deeper – To break the link emotional food = comfort, you must start to be aware of when you are eating to calm your emotions. Unless you address why your body has a need to unconsciously hold on to your weight, your voracious hunger and tendency to mindlessly eat will continue to be a problem. That means that even if you lose weight like 98% of the people in the study, your body will find a way to regain it. You have to be willing to dig deeper to find out what’s really behind your emotional eating. To get to the bottom of why you’re eating, be curious, not judgmental.
Really stop to consider what additional benefit you are getting from being overweight. For me, as a woman who was sexually abused, being fat created a protective barrier and allowed me to feel safe and invisible and avoid all the attention I didn’t want from men. In terms of my relationship with my husband, because I felt so uncomfortable just refusing and saying “No” to sex, I used food to set boundaries for myself. At one point, I had gotten used to eating a pint of ice cream every night. By smiling and saying, “Not tonight honey, my stomach hurts,” it was my way of distancing myself and feeling safe without having to risk rejection. And as a businesswoman, being overweight allowed me to create the illusion of being strong enough to deal with the big guns by ‘throwing my weight’. Consider that there is more to your thighs than meets the eye.
Put the emphasis on how you feel: To break the comfort eating connection, you need to reset your focus and become aware of the emotions you are experiencing. Many people like to keep a journal to be more aware of what is going on in their head. This can be helpful as long as it is done without judgment. Your goal is to look for patterns and notice when your eating gets out of control and what events in your life preceded the binge.
Cope with your stress: No matter how you look at it, it’s still about dealing with your emotions instead of cramming them. Instead of keeping a journal, I prefer to use a process called the Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT. It is a simple tapping process derived from the ancient healing art of acupuncture. It works on the basis of breaking the energy blocks in your body that are the cause of all your negative emotions that push you to eat when you are not hungry.
The bottom line is that in our rip-and-throw, thin-is-in, beauty-in-a-bottle culture, we’ve come to devalue the person in favor of the packaging. Remember that you are much more than a number on the scale and there is a lot of life to live between the spaces where you are now and where you want to be. Please don’t waste a moment waiting for it to be perfect.
The truth is that none of us is perfect; We all have our flaws, and accepting them means we have the power to overcome them. As I continue to learn and teach my clients every day, if you open your heart and accept the ‘before’ girl you are right now, you will be ready to love the ‘after’ girl you will be. I urge you to take my advice and use the tips I have shared. They will help you melt away your resistance and fear of losing weight by giving you the time and space you need to slowly and effortlessly lose weight without dieting once and for all.
