You know that portion control, healthy food/drink choices and regular exercise can keep you trim and healthy, yet do you find yourself struggling in a cycle of diets and over-indulgence? Do you catch yourself sabotaging your best efforts? Very likely there are deeper level (unconscious) reasons for this. Through my work with a wide range of people, I’ve found these fall into three broad areas: Self Protection, Self Abuse, and Family Fat.
Once the deeper level reasons are discovered, it is so much easier to understand your behaviour and make those changes you want to see. Please read the following slowly, with an open mind, paying particular attention to those points which ‘push your button’. There is a clue there for you. Many apply equally to men.
Self Protection. In this category is the underlying belief that being overweight is sexually unattractive and therefore will keep her safe from unwanted advances. This is common in women who have developed physically before they could emotionally deal with the attention, who grew up with stories of attractive women ‘asking for it’, or who have been sexually abused. The fat is seen to cover dangerous curves.
It can be an act of defiance e.g. “You can control the rest of my life but not what I eat/how I look.” This is also common in anorexia, which also fits into the self abuse category. Fat can be used as an excuse for not being in a relationship, initially from fear of intimacy, then becoming Comfort Eating through loneliness. Comfort eating is to fill a hole in the soul.
Excess weight can be an excuse not to take risks and fully live life. It can make you dependent on others, binding those with obligations to care for you. It can be an unattractive buffer when not wanting sex within a relationship e.g. after the birth of a child. It can be a protective barrier to conception and all the associated fears of bringing a baby into the world.
Self Abuse. Excess weight, the failure of diets etc becomes confirmation of their own unworthiness. The beliefs are unworthy, unlovable, a failure. The fat becomes an excuse not to actively pursue dreams or relationships which would disprove those beliefs. It ‘unconsciously’ creates disease to shorten an unhappy life. Also in this category is the woman who stays with a possessive partner who encourages overeating so she won’t be attractive to others, and thereby reducing the risk she will leave the relationship.
Family Fat. Some have simply been fed ‘fat’ food from in the womb throughout their lives, patterning and being surrounded by overweight people. They have never experienced any pleasurable physical activity as it has always been painful, uncomfortable or humiliating and never ‘fun’. Their taste buds are used to high salt and high sugar foods, and certain textures. They haven’t learnt to cook healthy options, and have lifestyle habits centred around fast and snack food, and drinking soft drinks, juice, flavoured milk or alcohol instead of water.
They may or may not have Self Protection or Self Abuse unconscious beliefs too. Those in this category will need to spend more time re-educating themselves, and looking closely at how and what health problems and limited life choices they are passing on to their children.
If you are overweight and still reading, congratulations! I recommend you write down what stirred you up the most, and consider why. Then consider what next steps could you take, what do you need to do to support your move forward? Sometimes bringing an issue to light is enough to dissolve it, however if the underlying issue has been present for a lengthy time you will find it easier to clear with the help of a trained NLP practitioner. Be reassured that anything can be changed, if that’s what your heart desires.
p.s. “Lose” vs “Release” If you ‘lose’ something, what do you do? Go looking for it, right? And how do you feel about ‘losing’ something – anxious, frustrated, worried, guilty, annoyed? Our unconscious mind associates the word ‘lose’ and ‘loser’ with negative connotations, so ‘losing’ weight is also negative. And who wants to be the biggest loser in the country? Call it ‘releasing weight’ and notice the difference in how that feels. ‘Releasing’ is positive, implies choice and free will. There’s also no expectation to see it again!
When you are ready to release that excess heaviness in your life, call me, Sue Lester, and book yourself a time to change.
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