Are You Sabotaging Your Own Weightloss?

Are You Sabotaging Your Own Weightloss?   

Picture the scenario €" You have had problems with being overweight for such a long time €" that you've actually organised your life around being fat!

It's not as ridiculous as it sounds actually, it could well be that subconsciously you are so comfortable with your size that you are keeping yourself fat!

Mary is a good example of what I'm getting at here. She says €I'm constantly dieting, but I seem to also do things to kind of, well, sabotage my own efforts. A couple of years ago I managed to lose 2 stones which got me down to almost the weight I need to be, but then almost straight away I regained all the lost weight and got back to where I am today.€

The problem for Mary is that she's adapted her life to being fat. Naturally if you were to ask her if she liked being overweight she would say NO! The strange thing is that although being fat wasn't the world she wanted to live in, it was the world she was most used to. She knew all the downsides and found a few benefits too.

When you're overweight, you already know you should lose weight. If someone were to say to you €Do you like being a size 18 and do you want to stay that way?€ I don't think the answer would be, €Yes it's really lovely thank you!€ But as we all know, when somebody really wants to do something, they just go ahead and do it! On the other hand, when people say they want to do something, but don't, then certain fears, uncertainties and unresolved emotional issues are stopping them from achieving their goals. Or maybe staying fat is meeting important needs, quite possibly left-overs from childhood, it's even possible that one is still reacting in a way that made sense as a child.

Another lady had the feeling that her mother only gave her attention because she was overweight. Every mouthful of food she consumed was remarked upon and watched over.

She very stubbornly held on to her extra stones for 30 years, until this leftover childhood need was uncovered.

There was another woman who's family always called her fat, because she was just a little less thin than her sister. So to end them picking on her she had to become thinner. A lot thinner. Sadly, many years of anorexia followed.

Do you think that your weight issues could be linked with childhood needs for approval and affection?

Other emotions could also be at play here, making dieting much harder than it really is: You may blame yourself for being fat, after all it's your fault. You must be weak and self-indulgent. This negativity could most likely have been laid on you in childhood, or reinforced by unpleasant experiences in life. But these feeling still have the power to dominate the way you behave today.

A good way of revealing these underlying self-sabotaging issues is to listen to those quiet €buts€ in your mind when you are thinking about all the good reasons to lose weight. Meaning that you can be on a diet, and voicing that you believe dieting works, while in another part of you it just €knows€ you can't. Don't just push these €buts€ away. Take them seriously and explore them. Find out what they are trying to tell you, go deeper into yourself. Here are some questions to help you:

Who do you think you would be without your fat? Would you know yourself? Your family, friends and workmates, would they be able to relate to the new you? What do you think it would be like to learn to make new and different relationships with all these people?

If you didn't have your extra weight and all the €problems€ and €issues€ that go along with it to make you stand out, would you stop being special and just be too ordinary? A bit too much like everyone else?

Imagine that if weightloss wasn't your main purpose in life, would you feel at a loss €" without any meaning or purpose to life?

Think about facing the world as the fat-free new you, would you need a boatload of fresh excuses? Scary eh? After all at the moment, you can let your flab hold you back from all sorts of stuff, perhaps a new romantic interest or sports and achievements, discovering a new individual dress style, or learning a new skill, maybe even asking for promotion at work?

Wouldn't it be terrible if you tried some of these things and failed? Or maybe you might find that your abilities are only limited.....perhaps you had better hang on to that cushioning layer of fat that keeps your dreams from becoming reality!

Have a wander back through the last week in your mind, things you've done, relationships you've had. Can you now imagine yourself living this same week as a slim person who has never needed to think about dieting or weightloss. Does that strike you as being frighteningly strange?

This time, imagine someone you know and respect who has no weight issues, going through that same week. How would she do things differently? What do you think she would be feeling and thinking? Try to imagine that you are her. It may help you to pinpoint particular areas of difficulty.

Remember times when you were dieting, got to your target weight or could see yourself getting there. On the surface, those times were the best weren't they? But look for anything scary and worrying and bring that memory out into the light of day.

Now, a little exercise for you! Go get a pen and paper, GO ON NOW! Good girl, now, write down all the reasons to stay fat and why they don't make sense, or are outdated, or point to needs that can be dealt with in other ways. Then Tomorrow, write them down again and keep on challenging the secret €buts€ and hidden saboteurs within this information. After three or four weeks, you'll find that the way you see yourself is changing, and your weight issues are decreasing. And so is your weight.

by Helen Kaye