Weight Loss? 2 Basic Skills You Need

Laurel Mellin, M.A., R.D. Associate Clinical Professor ,
University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine
Director, Institute for Health Solutions Author, The Pathway:
Follow the Road to Health and Happiness The Solutions: 6 Winning
Ways to Permanent Weight Loss The Shapedown Program

If you have been dieting, there is a good chance you have lost
weight. Unfortunately, large numbers of successful dieters
quickly regain the poundage. If you wish to maintain the weight
you have lost without developing substitute excesses such as
overspending, overworking, excessive drinking or smoking, you
must satisfy the emotional hunger that causes people to overeat.
To do this you need to master two basic skills – self-nurturing
and setting effective limits. Self-nurturing is the ability to
check our feelings and needs throughout the day in order to know
and honor ourselves and better meet our needs. Setting effective
limits is the skill of having reasonable expectations and
following through with them. That enables us to take action and
have more power and greater safety in our lives. People who have
mastered these two skills are far more likely to be healthy and
happy. Learning them is not a quick fix and takes time. But,
from the first moment you use them, you will begin to feel
better and more satisfied. After these skills are used over and
over again, they become integrated into our brains, and the
changes are developmental, that is, we begin to feel as if we
have a new life. These are not new concepts. In fact, the
essential elements of self-nurturing and setting limits have
been part of the scientific literature since at least 1940. The
problem is that the current methods used to help people lose
weight, don’t involve these skills. So, people lose weight then
regain it and begin to believe that they cannot solve their
weight problems. They feel powerless and discouraged. All that
is unnecessary. Our patterns for self-nurturing and limits
skills were implanted early in life in the feeling brain. The
various healing methods for feeling better and turning off the
drive to overeat, which are based on insight, knowledge, or
analysis, are processed by the thinking brain. Unfortunately,
they target the wrong part of our brain. So, we know what we
should eat, but we can’t do it. The drives to overeat are too
strong. The Solution Method enables you to reach your feeling
brain and retrain it will the skills of nurturing and limits.
It’s just like learning to type. The more you practice it, the
sooner the skills become automatic. When they do, your inner
life naturally favors a life in which the whole range of
excesses (not just overeating, but overspending, overworking,
drinking too much and smoking) fades. What follows is nothing
less than a personal transformation. But, it requires time –
usually 18 months to master the basic skills. Group meetings,
such as the support provided by the Buddy system, are key. Until
recently, most people were unaware of this method. That proved
to be a blessing. It enabled us to study it in relative
obscurity. We have been able to train thousands of people in
this method. While using The Solution, you will become aware
that there are two worlds: the world above the line and the
world below the line. With training, you pump your
self-nurturing and limits skills so that you spend more of your
day above the line or in a state in which you are emotionally
balanced, spiritually connected and intimate with others.
Moreover, the annoying drives that cause your excesses – what we
call “external solutions” – fade. Life without the
self-nurturing and limit setting skills forces you to spend too
much time below the line. Life below the line keeps you out of
balance. Your excesses flourish, and your life has few rewards.
There are a few explanations for why you lack these skills to
nurture yourself and set limits. Modern life requires more
skills. Earlier generations were faced with far fewer choices
and a less changing society. Indeed, communities were more
nurturing. Further, your parents may not have had the ability to
teach you these skills. Because these skills are transmitted
early in life and are harder to learn later in life, the legacy
of imbalance is often perpetuated from one generation to
another. Self-nurturing and limits skills consist of clusters of
questions that we ask ourselves over and over – until they
become automatic. The following are the questions for the
nurturing skills: How do I feel? What do I need?
Do I need support? The following are the questions for
the limits skills: Are my expectations reasonable?
Is my thinking positive and powerful? What is
the essential pain? What is the earned reward? The questions
posed by the nurturing cycle enable us to access our deepest
feelings. The limits cycle contains our feelings and helps them
mature. The goal of the method is the interweaving of the
skills. Initially, you use the skills intentionally. That moves
us from an imbalanced state to one that is balanced. It’s
extraordinarily powerful to be at the grocery store, stuck in
traffic or home alone with the refrigerator packed with food and
know that all you have to do is reach for these skills, and, in
a matter of moments, you can move yourself above the line. Your
drive to overeat will fade. You’ll stop wanting the food. You’ll
still enjoy it. But, food becomes just food, not a fix. What’s
more, the groups are fun. We use a buddy system and a warm and
wonderful Internet community for support. (For more information,
visit www.thepathway.org or contact The Institute for Health
Solutions at 415-457-3331.)

Copyright © 2005, Weight Loss Buddy Press

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