Let's get honest. Are you really just a little overweight? By 2030,
according to a Baylor University study, 100 percent of U.S. citizens
will be obese by current standards. For many, being overweigh is
stressful. For others, stress is a significant cause of extra weight.
It's stress that holds the key to shifting this paradox.
To
understand the importance stress plays, we need to understand that it's a
survival response that's always activated. To survive, we either do
fight or flight, so we need quick energy - sugar. We crave survival food
under continuing stress. Simultaneously, our bodies are shutting down
other functions such as digestion. Complex adjustment of body functions
makes us crave foods that we should not eat.
Then there is the
culture we live in, which shows anorexic models, and movie stars that
have lipo-sucked every once of unwanted fat. If that's not enough there
is Photoshop morphing of humans into super humans. These unreal images
create huge stress, particularly for our young girls, to the extent that
they are experiencing puberty earlier than ever and getting plastic
surgery to be perfect. These images become subliminal. Then we are
consciously blind - we don't realize we are seeing them. They linger in
our unconscious, drive us to spend our money on merchandise to be
beautiful, and stress out about our imperfections.
Whatever we may
stress about will impact our bodies. Often the influence will effect
the disposition of our fat. A new study will be based on the phenomenon
that stress creates a pot belly. Because of the hormone released under
stress, pot bellied people develop a more dangerous fat, a visceral fat
that lies between the organs.
Fat is a symptom of stress. We can
continue to treat the symptom as we have for the last 50 years or we can
shift to treating the cause. There are external factors, such as the
media, which we can't change. More powerful and more immediate are the
internal factors, our response to stress. After 30 years of working with
clients and students who often sought my help for addressing the cause
of their weight, I can say often reducing stress will take weight off
and create a body that you will inherently accept.
Here are 8
approaches to losing weight through reducing stress. Some of what I
discuss may not be comfortable to read. My goal is to assist you in
escaping your stress, not making you feel good.
1. Leave survival
behind. Begin to understand the power of stress. Fighting stress and its
response (craving survival foods) is a losing fight. You are going up
against your biology and genetics. You are hardwired to survive, so stop
trying to repress a natural behavior. Focus on taking yourself out of
the survival state.
Another view is to realize you are stuck in
post traumatic stress. The body is experiencing trauma when stress is
not actually present. You need to unwind tension and unlearn stress
behavior. Your body will transform itself when this occurs.
About
15 years ago, when I had a clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, a woman came
in asking if I could do for her what her friends claimed I did for them.
I told the woman that if she lost her chronic stress and learned to not
recreate it, after several months she probably would be thinner. She
saw me for ten weekly sessions. Her body changed some, but we both
agreed it was not transformed.
Six months latter, I saw a very
attractive woman in a black dress at the end of my long hall. Not until I
was close to her did I realize it was my former client seeing someone
else in my office. I told her I did not recognize her. She said few
months after finishing with me she started dropping pounds without
dieting or exercising. Her parting comment was, "this is the body I
always wanted, but thought I would never have." It was the body of an
unstressed woman.
When we release old stress, we learn to not
recreate it. The cellulite women often complain about disappears. The
fascia (the connective tissue which is also scar tissue) that holds the
stress also holds fat. When the stress is released, the fascia is
released and the fat can dissolve away.
Be aware of when stress or
tension is going into your body. Then breathe and express your
feelings. These two simple behaviors will change your life.
2.
Challenge your beliefs. What are your unconscious affirmations? What are
your mantras that you keep repeating? These internal voices become
self-fulfilling statements. For example, if you tell yourself and others
"I am fat," you will continue to be. I am not suggesting the opposite,
that you go around staying "I am thin" when you don't believe it. There
is a middle ground that allows for change. This ground is where you
stand in the present experiencing what is true while holding the
possibility and intent of change. For example, you might say to yourself
- "I am losing weight."
As you begin to accept being overweight,
along with the corresponding emotions, you hold the in you mind the
intent of being your thinner self. At first, your mind will want to
escape to the old patterns of denial, self-loathing and setting unreal
goals before it settles in a place of acceptance. This acceptance can
then lead to creating a vision of what you want while still maintaining
the experience of your negative emotions. The juxtaposition of
acceptance and goal setting may seem counter-intuitive, yet it in this
space you create an opportunity for something new to occur.
3.
Give up unreal images. What literal and metaphorical images do you focus
on? Do you have pictures of thin bodies on your fridge? Or are you
looking at magazines with "perfect bodies?" When we put what we believe
are unreal goals in front of us our minds say, "Who do you think you
are, you are not that person and never will be." These inspiring images
backfire. They reinforce our self-loathing and repeated failure at
losing weight.
Making the shift from seeing these images as a
finite state to a process can enable change. Rather than saying "I am
that image," try saying to yourself "I am in a process of becoming my
own person who shares characteristics of that image."
The mind
will know when something is not true and it will, on some level, fight
back. Hold images and use affirmations that are possible.
4. Lose
the secondary gains. These are behaviors or even illnesses we create to
achieve indirectly what we believe we can't get directly. In other
words, if you were not getting something out of being overweight you
would not be overweight. We all have some self-defeating behaviors. I
certainly have had my share. I can remember allowing kids to pick on me
because I convinced myself that was safer than standing up for myself
There
was a book a woman wrote 30 years ago, I think it was "Fat is a
Feminine Issue." If it was, I can't find it. Her thesis was that women
(the corresponding can be true for men) acquired fat to keep men away.
Dealing with the fat was supposedly easier than dealing with the
possibility of a relationship. The author challenged her readers to
address their issues around relationships as a means to losing weight.
My
challenge to you is to act as if your fat had a purpose beyond
reflecting the bad diet you may consume. If your fat was saying
something, what would it be saying? Who would it be saying to? Are you
angry with someone, even yourself? Are you attempting to get attention
from someone?
The first step to meaningful change is to admit were
we are and that we need help. This often is the hardest step.
Frequently much of what we have avoided comes home to us. When I began
to admit getting bullied was more about being afraid to take a stand, I
started to develop the courage to say no to the bullies. What amazed me
was that I did not have to prove it them as much as to myself. They
stopped picking on me when I stopped cowering.
5. Your body is
your ally. So often, we approach diet and exercise from a forcing
prospective. We deprive, punish and generally coerce our bodies to
conform to our wishes. We can produces change - but at what long term
costs? The constant binges of exercising and dieting train our bodies to
not find a healthy set point
You body is like a kid. It will
constantly fight back if forced to do things it does not want to do. As
we know, an angry kid will find a way to get back.
My intent here
is not to give specific advice about a diet or exercise program, but to
encourage you to find programs that are not forcing your body. Seek out
programs that support your total health. Of course if you have not
exerted your body in 20 years there will be some discomfort initially.
At some point, the discomfort should shift to more ease. If it does not,
you are back to the paradigm of punishing yourself for not being thin.
I
suggest starting easy. Even if it is a yoga class, start with the
lowest level of a beginning class. If you do not like what you are doing
or are hurting yourself, fine a new teacher or a new activity. A slow
walk in the woods can be more enjoyable and healthier for some than
going to the gym and running on a treadmill.
Just watch kids play.
A child can run around all day. She is not exercising; she is playing. I
encourage you to rediscover your play.
6. Step out of double
binds. These are mental and relationship traps we put ourselves into
where there is no way out. It has been said, "The only way to win at a
child's game is not to play." Once you are trapped in the maze of the
damned if you do, damned if you don't, you lose.
One double bind I
have seen around weight is "I can't have a loving relationship until I
lose weight." This person is always trying to lose weight to be loved,
giving the message to his body that he does not love himself. As I was
saying, not loving yourself makes permanently losing weight very
difficult.
7. Let others do your work. We often make change of any
kind harder than we need to. Being a lazy kind of guy and enjoying
being a rebel, I saw getting help as a way to further my cause.
One
huge way to shift the fat thing is to have others address the issue
directly. Good bodywork can crack open new possibilities for losing
weight. Bodywork releases chronic and acute stress and tells our bodies
that they are being loved through the gift of receiving someone's
attention. Having someone else's hands touch places that we are ashamed
of brings acceptance to those areas.
Find groups that support the
outcome, not the problem. This helps spread the load. So many illness
support groups support the problem, not the healing. On a few
occasions, I have been asked to speak to different support groups.
Virtually everyone in the audience was more committed to commiserating
about their shared problem then learning about the array of possible
means to alleviating it.
My suggestion is to find a group that
supports its members being successful, healthy or just happy. Not to
find a group that talks about losing weight or being thin. Yes, there
are the diet programs -- groups that have success in assisting their
clients in losing weight. I am encouraging you to step beyond them to
organizations or groups that encourage generating a fulfilling life. If
you're interested in some of these organizations, write a comment
expressing your desire and I will get back to you.
8. Enroll your
mind to transform your body. Being the advocate for mindfulness, I can't
do this post without mentioning mindfulness for transforming fat. By
now, everyone has come to accept the mind-body connection.
Having
your mind be your ally sounds simple. Achieving this takes some work.
Essentially, you begin using your awareness to witness what is
occurring. Witnessing is not judging, evaluating or criticizing. It is
just being an observer. When you see that picture of a thin body, you
observe your response. What is your first thought? What does your body
do? What is happening to your breath? These are just questions to get
you started. As you develop this skill, you will not have to ask. Your
body/mind will bring to you its response.
In the last 20 years,
mindfulness has taken off. There are excellent courses that I no longer
teach, but others do. Mindfulness works - there is a growing body of
research that supports the efficacy of mindfulness. The prior study on
pot bellies is organized around teaching a group of women mindfulness.
"Weight loss is not the goal," said Daubenmier, the lead researcher.
"But we are thinking we will find a reduction in the visceral fat, which
is really important. We're looking at breaking that stress -- eating
link."
In the development of mindfulness there always has been
mindfulness eating used as a natural means to enhance the practice of
mindfulness. The added benefit of mindfulness eating is that it can
shift your eating habits while increasing your eating enjoyment.
