Weight Loss is NOT about Weight Loss

Weight loss is not about weight loss.

(If after reading this article, you feel you’d like to learn more, please join me for a free teleclass entitled: 7 Secrets to Lasting Weight Loss January 6th or 8th, 2015.
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Physical weight loss begins with emotional weight loss. Once you begin the journey to releasing excess weight by first liberating yourself from old emotional upsets, limiting beliefs, grudges and other old painful stuff you’ve been carrying around on your body, physical weight loss is amazingly easy.

So what is weight loss about? Here’s a list of few things that I believe have to happen for true, permanent weight loss to occur.

1. Stop Dieting! We all know diets really don’t work, but we just keeping trying again and again, only to lose a few pounds and gain back many more. So what if you made a commitment to yourself to never diet again starting right now? What is your reaction? Fear? Worry? Anxiety? All of these reactions are tappable reactions. (Not sure what I mean by tappable? Check out the What is EFT? page). Learning to be mindful while eating means paying attention to your hunger and fullness. You can learn to be with your food and only eat what your body truly needs to thrive.

2.Learn to accept yourself exactly as you are with love and tolerance. We happen to be human, so we will never be perfect no matter how hard we try. There are many ways to learn to accept yourself. Personally, I like mixing EFT and positive affirmations and doing it over and over and over. It’s very easy for us to be critical of ourselves and much harder to be loving and accepting, but it can be done. It just doesn’t happen overnight,  it takes patience and perseverance.

3. Face and release all the old emotional stuff. OK, here’s the really hard but transformational part. We all have “stuff” from our childhoods and earlier in our lives, some much more than others. But even those of us from the most wonderful families have stuff we need to look at and let go (again I prefer tapping to any other method). We may be holding on to physical or sexual trauma, old resentments and anger, or painful life events such as loss of a loved one or other traumatic loss. All of these painful memories can be lovingly healed with patience.

4. Get Honest with yourself and make changes where you need to. Getting in touch with “Your Truth” is all about being honest with yourself.  What do you really want out of life?  How often have you heard stories of people being in high power corporate jobs making big bucks but being miserable? Life is not all about making money; sometimes you have to let go of all that and make drastic changes to get the life and body you want. Jon Gabriel’s story is a great example of this (See Jon’s story here). Of course, there are many smaller changes that can be made to get closer to living your truth.       It all starts with being honest with yourself.

5. Have Fun!! How many of us look to food to give us the pleasure we seek in our lives? Food can be great in the moment but does it really give you the fun and pleasure you want out of life? Think of ways to put more fun in your life everyday. Maybe it’s taking a walk on the beach, building a sandcastle, calling an old friend, reading a delectable book in a hot bubble bath, going for a run, whatever you can think of. And if you don’t have time to do these one day, take a “one minute pleasure break”. Just close your eyes and imagine doing one of your favorite things for a minute or so; just the act of thinking about doing something fun will increase your pleasure hormones like serotonin and decrease your stress hormones such as cortisol.  Maybe try a pleasure break instead of a coffee break today.

When these things become the norm in your life, you’ll find that happiness comes from inside, not the number on the scale. True weight loss comes from a place of love, acceptance and happiness. Want to learn more about how to make these changes in your life? Check out my offerings page.