Losing Weight
Most women today seem to be unhappy with their bodies and are trying to lose weight. They have probably been on at least one diet in their life. Diets do not help you lose weight. In fact thinking about losing weight, does not help you lose weight. To reduce your weight to a level that makes you happy involves a number of strategies. Just following one of the steps below will not work. You need to follow all the steps in order to reach your ideal weight.
When you are born you are happy with your body. You do not lie in your cot thinking “This nappy makes my bum look big”. Life is interesting and you are too immersed in what is going on around you to pay any attention to your body. That is the way you need to start to think about your body. You need to believe that you are naturally slim and focus on enjoying your life. Thinking about losing weight takes up a lot of your energy, so that you do not enjoy the wonderful things that life has to offer. When you start to believe that you are slim, you will see exactly how great life is and be amazed at how your weight will just drop off. Naturally slim people do not even think about losing weight. You need to think like a naturally slim person who has never worried about their weight in their life. The following strategies will help you get to this stage.
Step 1 – Making positive changes to your life
The first thing you need to do is find out how to make yourself be more positive. When you have issues with weight, there is something in your life that is upsetting you. Your reason for feeling empty or in pain is not always so obvious, especially when you have a busy life trying to juggle everything around you. The main thing to remember is that those surrounding you should treat you with respect, kindness and non-judgement. More importantly you have to allow your inner thoughts to be supportive and encouraging.
The chapters on “Relationship with you” will help you work on yourself and help you to value and appreciate yourself. Too many of you have put your own needs and wants aside to care for others. The chapter on relationships will help you look after your spirit so that you can be happier within yourself. At the very least, it will help you realise that you need to take care of yourself first before you can really help anyone else.
The chapter on “Relationships” has tools to help you identify any relationships in your life which you need to work on. Most of the time you are so involved and busy in your day to day life, that you do not even realise how unhealthy your relationships with other people in your life may be. Once you realise which ones are not working, you can then try and see if you can resolve the issues yourself or seek help from a trusted professional counsellor. Just remember we all deserve to be treated with respect, kindness and non-judgement from all our family and friends. If they truly love and care for you, they will ensure that they come to a compromise to make you happy. However if they continue to treat you with disrespect then you have to look at the options of either reducing contact with them or removing them from your life. You will find that once you remove people who make you feel dreadful, then you will meet more positive people.
There are other reasons which may cause you to be overweight. Sometimes there are so many issues in your life that you are unable to narrow down just one reason. However the main way to track down the actual cause of your weight gain is to look around the time you started to put on weight. What happened in your life to suddenly make you feel troubled and gain weight? This will require you to pause, take a step back and try and identify what was the cause for the extra inches. Once you can narrow down the ‘trigger’ for your weight gain, you can then get some professional counselling on how to cope with the negative feelings from that experience.
Chantelle was overweight and she had tried to lose weight by herself without any success, so she tried hypnotherapy with a psychologist. At her first appointment, Chantelle discussed her past history and mentioned that she had a miscarriage a couple of months earlier. Chantelle also had an abusive childhood and had stopped having contact with her parents. The psychologist tried to hypnotise Chantelle to lose weight and during the session they talked about what type of diet Chantelle needed to follow. Six sessions later, Chantelle had not lost any weight and she still felt depressed, so she stopped seeing the psychologist.
A few months later, Chantelle fell pregnant and had a healthy baby. Six months after the birth of her baby, Chantelle lost her weight without any problem. She was back to her weight prior to her miscarriage. Chantelle then realised that the psychologist should have treated her for depression, not weight loss. She was grieving and had not made the connection with her weight gain. It was only after she had stopped grieving was she able to lose her weight easily.
Sometimes when you do see a professional they are trying to treat the “weight” problem when the increased inches is just a symptom of some other experience which is making you unhappy. Take a few deep breaths and look at your life. Think about what has happened that has caused you to gain the weight? This may be over a long period of time or over a short period.
Here is a list of possible experiences which may cause you to feel bad and put on weight:
• Childhood abuse
• Growing up in a home with domestic violence
• Neglected childhood
• Miscarriage
• Relationship break up
• Death of a friend, family member or pet
• Bullying
• Sexual assault /rape
• Relationship with domestic violence
• Relationship where you felt your partner neglected you
• Low self esteem
This list is not exhaustive, but I hope it gives you an idea of the events that may have happened in your past which caused you to gain weight.
Most of you may have tried to deal with the situation yourself or just ignored it. You may even believe that you have recovered from the event. However, if you are still unable to lose weight then chances are you have not recovered from it and you need to talk to someone. In all these cases it may be helpful to see a counsellor whom you can trust to help you. Sessions with an expert may help close the chapter of your past and allow you to focus on what is happening now and in the future.
Step 2 – Focus on being healthy – Stop trying to lose weight
Starting today, you are to stop trying to lose weight. No, this is not a typo. Instead focus on being ‘healthy’ and this will help you take your mind off food and the whole idea about ‘losing weight’. The more you focus on your eating issues and keep thinking that you want to stop eating, the worse it will get.
By focusing on something else, you will eventually forget that you even have any weight issues. It may take a while to work but the first step is to forget about your eating habits and focus on just being ‘healthy’.
What do you think naturally skinny or slim people think about? Do you think they are sitting there thinking about losing weight? The answer is no. They are busy with their day to day lives and are not even giving a second thought to losing weight. Their main focus is on being healthy and enjoying what life has to offer. So starting today, focus on having a healthy body now and believe that you are naturally slim.