Overeaters: Are You Sabotaging Your Diet Through Fear?

Do you ever get the feeling that you are taking one step forward and two steps backwards?

You lose a little weight then it all gets a bit scary and you stop dieting? And then all the weight mysteriously comes back.

Or you stick to the diet all day but then in the evening you crave and long for food? And not just any food but the naughtiest, most calorific combination of foods.

Or you stick to the diet all week then go out at the weekend and find you overeat at a family gathering... then all the rest of the weekend?

All this is because your mind is trying to do two things at once. It wants to give you the pleasure and comfort of overeating, while at the same time it knows this isn’t good for you and it wants you to eat healthily and be slim.

In my recent Wellness Telesummit, I talked about night-time overeating and what can be done about it. But whether you’re specifically bothered by night-time overeating or if you are more of a weekend guzzler, it can be very dispiriting when you are good most of the time but then fail disastrously.

And you should NOT have to use massive willpower to eat well.

But perhaps the reason for falling off the dietary wagon goes way beyond food.

For example are you afraid of losing weight? Possible reasons are:

* When you become slimmer you’ll get more attention from admirers and you don’t feel secure enough in yourself to handle that.

* You’ve promised yourself (or someone else) that when you shed the 40 excess pounds you’ll also take up hangliding/master world class origami/ shed the husband. And this is taking you into scary places so it’s safer to stay overweight.

* You’ve lost weight before, but when you got to that weight, it no longer felt like you. If you see yourself as a slim person who has excess pounds, its easier to shed the weight because you probably don’t think of that excess fat as part of you. But if you see yourself as a fat person who has accidentally got slim the slimness may not last very long

* To you the world is a big scary place with too much to deal with, but food is always reliably there to help you out. Being overweight is a small price to pay for this safety.

What is your fear around weight loss?

Try this exercise:

1. Go into a quite place where you can be alone with your thoughts and just be quiet and in touch with your inner self (some of you will be scared already but hang in here).

2. Ask yourself “what do I gain by staying fat?” Stay quieter for a while and listen to the answer.

3. Ask yourself “What is the fat doing for me?”

4. Now acknowledge the feelings and emotions that come up for you. Just rest in being you and love yourself, in this moment, for what you are.

5. And end this exercise by making a promise “I will find a way of acknowledging and dealing with the fear in a way that aligns my feelings, emotions and my physical body”.

The Food & Joy Coaching Process addresses exactly these issues, showing you how to work through the fears to a better place, so you can be truly you, without hiding behind the fat. And when you are able to do this, there is no need for the fat, you can simply let it go!

But whatever method you chose to deal with this, I wish you the best for your physical and emotional wellbeing.

(c) 2009 Liz Copeland

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