Weight Loss: Permanent and Powerful. - Making Peace with Food and Your Emotions

Weight loss methods become more important as our nation proliferates diet gimmicks that cost lots of money and don't deliver permanent solutions. Perhaps more importantly, they most often cost the buoyed self esteem of the dieter once they "go off" and the pounds come back rapidly.

This kind of sucker weight loss system has been a thorn in my side for decades now. I've experienced it up close personally and professionally. But there is a solution and it offers you permanent weight loss.
The solution to people continually gaining weight back after dieting contains several considerations:

1. Do you really want to lose weight? Yes or No? If no, you can stop reading and talking about wanting it. Spare yourself the agony of the unaccomplished desire, not to mention the anguish of guilt. Eat and be merry!

2. If #1 doesn't sound promising, find out how you can authentically want to lose weight.

3. Resist the temptation of diet books, diet programs, even well-designed nutritionist-recommended programs if they do not contain a proven method of helping you manage your emotions without the aid of food.

4. Resist any "program" that is led by someone who does not have total freedom around all foods and ever mentions feeling "guilty" about eating certain foods or calls certain foods "bad."

5. Develop emotional neutrality around all foods; ice cream is the same as broccoli in your emotional world.

6. Clear emotional baggage that causes you to eat when you really wanted something more nourishing.

7. Hone your ability to identify what you really need in the moment [of your discomfort] - It's usually not food.

8. Learn respect for your body and it's ability to tell you when you're hungry and when you need some other specific thing to quench your desire.

If you've been dieting for a long time it's easy to want a "quick fix." Being overweight and the process you use to get there is very painful. But if you've been dieting off and on since high school or college and now you are in your 40's, 50's - well, you get the point. You have a long history of dieting and the beliefs you've honed so well. I have never, in over 22 years of working with many different kinds of people, seen such a fierce, terrorized loyalty to a set of rules that are so destructive.

I hope you'll consider a different approach to your weight loss and weight management. Your well-being depends on it. You, too, can enjoy the freedom to eat and the freedom not to! Having a slender body; being comfortable in your body is a true delight you deserve!