One of the main keys to successful weight loss, and the ability to keep it off, is that you first understand yourself.

Why did you become overweight over the years?

What is your relationship to the foods which you secretly overconsume on a regular basis?

Face it, there are certain things which you need to come to terms within yourself. Some of the realities you must face are likely to bring about some pain. However, you must address the issues which have driven you to overeating, or, you are most likely to become another statistic in the 95% of failed dieters.

Permanent Weight Loss has no End Goal

People often mistakenly think that since I am fit, trim, and in good athletic condition, somehow I do not understand their struggles with weight loss and how it feels to be fat. Well, I have news for them all – at five feet seven inches tall, I have weighed in at 250 pounds with a 42 inch waist. Or in another perspective, I am 67 inches tall and my 42 inch waist has 63% as many inches as my height. I have been there with you in the battle of the bulge, and I know that it is not an easy life to be fat and out of shape.

I have been there in thinking about how nice it would be to take a carving knife and slice off the unsightly portions of my stomach, chest, and everywhere else there was an abundance of too much fat. I too know the feeling that if only the newest diet or fitness trend would work for me that I would finally find a place where I could be forever at peace.

Face it, you are not alone if you are of the mindset that the promise of a diet is that not only will you have a different body, but that you will also have a different life. If you hate yourself, you will learn to love yourself once the unsightly fat is gone. If you torture yourself enough through restrictive eating and obsessive exercise, you will then find yourself a peaceful and relaxed individual.

Nothing could be further from truth than that kind of thinking!

The dreamy thinking that the means to the end with all the crazy diet and fitness trends only serves to bring further disappointment and self loathing. It is only once you understand yourself fully that you can lose weight for good. There are reasons that drive you to the overconsumption of the wrong foods. You have to bring yourself front and center and face your demons in order to conquer them. Once they are well on their way to defeat will you finally accept what it takes to remove that unsightly fat from your body. And, you had best understand that this is going to be a lifelong war which is made up of many smaller battles along the way to victory.

Have you ever questioned why it is that you have a relationship with food?

We at David’s Way, have been asked many times over the years how our relationship with food can be changed. First you might want to ask yourself why you have a relationship with food in the first place – after all, food is not another person where true relationships are forged – food is only meant to nourish our bodies. Food is only a soulless substance that we must consume for good health. While it is good to enjoy the foods we eat, they do nothing in the way of nourishing our soul. If you truly want to lose weight, then you must begin using food as it is designed rather than for comfort and/or entertainment.

If we are to be intellectually honest, most of us who have ever suffered from obesity have viewed our own bodies with disgust – I know that I am not alone in having felt this way. We can go on diets that seem to punish us, yet no amount of warring with our bodies have ever led to long lasting change. We can keep attempting quick weight loss schemes to which we will never prevail. Therefore, again, in order to lose weight for good, we must understand exactly why we are suffering from obesity in the first place.

Until we understand who we take ourselves to be, true change is not possible. If you do not address your underlying issues, you will still feel miserable and fat even if you have lost down to your goal weight. Brenda Sue and I have counselled many a person who had lost all of their excess weight, only to put it all back on soon afterwards. It is the things that you think of yourself deep down which will toss you back into the familiar patterns which caused you to become fat. When we lose weight too quickly, we can still see and feel as if we are still that chubby face peering back at ourselves when we look in the mirror. If you have not addressed your destructive personal issues, it is likely that you will feel like an imposter once you have reached your goal weight. Then once again, you will inhabit the skin and life of unlove in whatever forms you find most familiar.

If you persist in keeping yourself wedded to compulsive eating and all the associated problems which come with it, no change will come for you because you will be working against your natural tendencies of self destructive behavior. You will be overriding your deepest convictions about being alive and healthy by reverting back to old habits. Which is exactly why we teach, and insist that you must create a new lifestyle that will keep you healthy for years to come.

The Shape of Your Body Shapes Your Beliefs

The shape of your body obeys the shape of your beliefs about love, value, and possibility. You might want to outwardly disagree with that, but deep down you know this is true. To change your body, you must first understand what is shaping it.

You will not be able to force or coerce it to change. Deprivation and shaming isn’t going to change it either.  All of us who have ever suffered from a weight problem have done these things to ourselves – but no amount of self abuse is ever going to create the changes we need for healthy bodies. Our own self abuse causes depression, stress, and other problems which only serve to cause us to want to eat even more garbage for comfort. Losing weight on any plan or program which leave you with the impulse of devouring the universe is like building a skyscraper on a foundation of sand rather than a foundation of stone, or concrete.

Change must come within yourself, no diet or gimmick is ever going to produce positive and long lasting change. When you quit believing that eating will save your life by making you feel better when exhausted, overwhelmed, or lonely – you will stop with the mindless eating.

When you believe in yourself more than you believe in your food, you will stop using food as if it is a magical substance that keeps you from falling apart. When the shape of your body no longer matches the shape of your beliefs, the body fat will disappear.

It truly is this simple.

Once you stop struggling, pushing, and pulling yourself around food and your body, you can begin to make positive changes for yourself. When you stop manipulating and controlling yourself in how you view food, you will become able to relax and get in tune with what your body really requires. Food is there to nourish our bodies, it is not for our comfort. It is when we learn to understand our deepest problems in life that we become able to defeat the demons that lead us to obesity and poor health.

Please, next time you decide to diet, make it a point to first work on understanding yourself.