If managing your weight feels like a struggle then you are fighting with yourself. Disengage from the battle and create your own freedom from your weight war.
1 Divorce your diet mentality and stop all forms of dieting – it’s the very thing that has gotten you into this mess – a complete lack of trust in yourself. All it takes to begin this process is a firm decision. You will no longer need scales, tape measures, clothing sizes, calorie counters, exercise programs, portion control, etc to dictate to you how to live your life and kill your self-esteem in the process. Make the decision that you are worth taking a chance on and the rest will flow. When you realize that none of these external programs have ever worked before, you can use your anger and outrage and direct it at creating the life for yourself that you have always dreamed about, without deprivation, restrictions or willpower.
2 Plant a seed of acceptance in yourself today. This is the beginning of growing real empowerment. Instead of looking outside yourself for answers, just trust that you are enough as you are right now and that you have everything you need inside you.Find a place of acceptance inside yourself however tiny, right now as you are today, even if you are currently much larger than you feel comfortable with. Body size is a transitional state. It changes when you change your beliefs about it. Consider how you have spent the previous few months – have you been doing a little bit more mindless eating every day? Have you been spending a little bit more time than usual seated at a computer for example? By planting this seed today, you give yourself permission to move on and embrace freedom, rather than staying stuck in the past.
3 Get out of your head and into your body. Start breathing deeply and often. Whenever we are “in our heads” it means we are simply reacting with our emotions. If we stay in our heads we will continue to feel anxious, panicky, disempowered – and we’ll be doing lots of emotional eating. By becoming aware that we have stopped breathing mid-chest level, simply bring your awareness to your breath and consciously take your breath all the way down into the bottom of your belly. Feel it there. Tell yourself “this is a safe place to be”. Remind yourself repeatedly to BREATHE. This is the start of trusting yourself and getting back in touch with your feelings and your intuition. There are no answers in the head, there are no questions in the heart.
4 Feel your fears, then release them anyway. Your fears are what has kept you imprisoned in this weight war. FEAR is only an acronym for False Expectations Appearing Real. Expect to also experience anger, panic and rebellion in releasing these bad guys. Say your goodbyes, mourn your ‘loss’ and just keep breathing. Remember fear of the fear is much worse than the fear itself. By bringing all your fears out into the open, they lose their power over you. Then you can challenge them and replace them with affirmations that remind you of all the choices you have available.
5 Do a Thinking Detox. Our thoughts become our deeply entrenched beliefs simply because we’ve repeated them to ourselves thousands of times over, day in, day out. The way we think influences the way we feel, and the way we feel influences our behaviour. Do a big written purge on all your destructive and limiting thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and perceptions and all the negative messages you have ever taken on board about your weight, your shape, your body, what you should or shouldn’t be eating, what you’re allowed to have, etc. It’s all emotional baggage that we carry around and if left unchecked, weighs us down and rules our lives! Replace them all with true and empowering alternatives. Change your thoughts first and your body will follow.
6 Try Emotional Healing instead of Emotional Eating. When you are no longer involved in the painful struggle that is the weight war: dieting, binging then hating your body, your real emotional issues will emerge. These will be some form of: rejection, abandonment, abuse, neglect, grief or loneliness. Instead of recognizing these issues for what they are, in the past all we have noticed is a void or emptiness. It is that very emptiness that we have attempted to fill with food. With emotional eating, it’s not what you’re eating that’s the problem, it’s what’s eating you? It’s worth trying to figure out what you’re really hungry for, what emotional needs do you have that are not being met, then brainstorm some non-food ways to meet those needs. Unresolved emotional issues will be the cause of your “emotional eating problem”.
7 Listen and Respond to your body’s signals – listen and respond, the more often you do it, the stronger your intuition gets and the deeper your trust in yourself will grow. At any one time, your body will be communicating with you, but it’s entirely our choice whether or not we respond to what it is saying. Many times we’ll get the message that we’re hungry at 4pm for a sugar hit, but if we ignore it, we usually binge later. Just like when our body tells us it’s tired and needs a rest, if we ignore it we usually end up doing a lot more angry, resentful emotional eating later because we “don’t have time to rest” and “must get this work done!” we’re in conflict with ourselves. In general women are shocking at putting ourselves first and so we usually don’t. The cost of this is feeling deprived and exhausted most of the time. We can’t keep giving out and nurturing others if we don’t take care of our own needs first.
8 Feed your Self-Esteem - Whichever side we “feed” gets bigger. Notice some of your own behaviours that either grow your self-esteem or diminish your self-esteem. The ones to focus on are the ones that make you feel good and do more of them – in this way you will be “feeding” your good side. It’s no challenge to feed the bad side, the challenge for most of us is when we’re having a bad day, bad week, etc to acknowledge this and ask ourselves what we can do for ourselves right now to feel better. Then consciously look for a pair of rose-coloured glasses that fit, allowing us to see everything in our world through a brighter more colourful filter.
9 Body Image Rehab – Just like a thinking detox, we all need to go to Body Image Rehab. When you manage to embrace a diet-free way of life and drop your emotional weight as a long term side effect, unless and until you challenge all your old beliefs about your body, your shape, your weight, your worth, etc that weight is going to come back to haunt you and will be the cause of your emotional weight returning unless you’ve completely rehabilitated your body image.
10 Wardrobe Makeover – Most of us are confronted with half a wardrobe full of “skinny” clothes every morning when we get dressed for the day, we keep them hanging in the cupboard to “motivate” us to lose weight. Actually this has the reverse effect on us and makes us feel depressed, hopeless and like failures – and then we go and eat more because we’re feeling so miserable. Put those clothes away in big bags up high so you don’t see them everyday or organize a swap party with friends of different sizes. Visit some charity shops and find clothes in flattering styles and colours that fit you today and make you feel beautiful, today. When you feel a bit better about yourself you will treat yourself a bit better and then you’ll start to look for more ways to keep that feeling.
By Karla Cameron founder of http://www.lifeafterdiets.com.au
