If you’ve ever tried to lose weight and keep it off, you know it can be a bit of a conundrum. And if you’ve done just a little scientific homework, you’ve likely discovered the show-stopping fact that over 98% of people who lose weight via dieting gain it back within about a year. For this reason, it doesn’t take a nutritional Einstein to figure out that what we’ve been doing to banish body fat simply doesn’t work. So if you count yourself amongst the weight loss refugees who feel as if there’s nowhere to go, it’s time for some good news. It’s time for less hype and more light – the kind of light that uplifts us and guides us through what has been some very dark weight loss terrain. I’d like to offer you a specific piece of weight loss wisdom that has the potential to change everything for you:
If you truly wish to lose weight, you have to own it first.
No kidding. Most people attack their excess weight, and do their best to starve it away, exercise it into oblivion, beat it with a stick, hate on it, judge it, and shame it into submission. If this has been your approach, then welcome to the 98% failure club. From the perspective of simple, elegant clinical nutrition and mind body neuroscience – the stress of self-attacking our own body tissue creates a powerful and consistent stress chemistry. This means chronically elevated cortisol and insulin – two hormones that in excess will signal the body to store weight, store fat, and not build muscle. In other words, weight loss strategies born from and fueled by self- hate are metabolically destined failures.
So instead of hating your body into weight loss, it’s time to love it into the shape shift that you long for. And loving the body means, first and foremost, having a holy moment where you accept it as it is. Own it, embrace it, hold it like a cherished child, welcome it like your beloved soul mate – all of which will gently nudge your body into the physiologic relaxation response, which is the ideal state of day-in day-out calorie burning. Think about it: if you wanted to lose $100, you’d need to have $100 first. Ownership is a prerequisite for loss.
The real weight loss program, the kind I’ve seen over the years that truly yields success and inner peace with clients and students is this: relax into your weight loss journey. Call a cease-fire on the fight against self. Stop promising that you’ll love yourself for real when you have the perfect body. Is that what you’d tell your little infant who has a bunch of baby fat
– “Sorry, I won’t love you until you have more muscle and less flab.” Sounds terrible doesn’t it? Yet that’s how so many of us communicate with self.
“Owning our weight” by the way, means listening to it and using it as a doorway to understand the wisdom of the body. It means hearing and decoding the deeper messages that excess weight may be holding for us. Every disease, symptom, unwanted habit, or extra pound of weight is the brilliant wisdom of Life speaking through the hidden language of the body. It’s time to stop attacking the messenger and instead, make more room for her at the table. This may sound like a counter-intuitive approach to weight loss, yet it’s the only strategy I’ve found in over 30 years of clinical work that has any hope of yielding a real, lasting, loving and humane result. And it’s the kind of approach we teach at the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. It’s time for a new paradigm when it comes to weight, body and self. It’s time to make the shift from the old and outdated way of weight loss into a world where we can love ourselves into the change we want. Welcome to the light at the end of the weight loss tunnel.
Guest blog by Marc David
Marc David is the Founder & Director of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, a leading visionary, teacher and consultant in Nutritional Psychology, and the author of the classic and best-selling works Nourishing Wisdom, The Slow Down Diet, and Mind Body Nutrition. He has held senior consulting positions at Canyon Ranch Resorts, the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, the Johnson & Johnson Corporation, and the Disney Company. The Institute for the Psychology of Eating is the world’s only teaching organization dedicated to a forward thinking, positive, holistic approach to nutritional psychology. IPE is unique and revolutionary in its approach – teaching students and professionals how to effectively work with the most common eating challenges of our times. Learn more at www.psychologyofeating.com and be sure to get their FREE audio gift.
Marc David and Jena la Flamme are the co-creators of the Weight Loss Pleasure Camp home-study program. Click here to learn more.
New York, New York
Marisa
Great article! Marc, reading your book Nourishing Wisdom really changed the way I look at food, and only after owning my weight and body exactly the way it was, and then loving it to give it the best nourishment possible, I began to lose weight and keep it off.
Roo
This is written so well and explains the concept in a concrete way you can understand. So many people say you must love yourself first before you can lose weight. It becomes like, yeah, yeah I do love myself so why isn’t this working? The example of how you must first have $100 to lose $100 helps to explain it better. Thank you.
Mary Ann MacKay
It is so true that conventional weight loss methods are ineffective. That’s why we are continually struggling to lose weight, often, the same weight over and over again.
I’ve found following a healthy lifestyle – eating right, getting enough exercise and taking good care of myself – it a much more effective means of managing my weight. It’s also been critical to examine my beliefs about myself, and, yes, change a few of them!