How to lose weight

If you have any thoughts inside you of “I don’t want attention” or “Standing out in front of the crowd is scary or dangerous and makes me a target” you are likely going to have a harder time trying to lose weight.

Gaining weight is a good way to hide yourself from unwanted scary attention. Gaining weight CAN BE, but not always a fear response and a survival mechanism to feel safe. (Losing too much weight can also be a survival mechanism with a potential motivation to gain the approval of others, however this is a different but related topic.)

Here are some examples:

• If you are a female and do not want the attention of men, or do not want sexual attention from men, then gaining weight is a good way to become “less attractive” according to our current social norms. It is a good way to get over looked and avoid this scary attention
• If you start a business, you may experience a range of business and survival fears which can cause you to gain weight. Not only do businesses have to stand out in front of a crowd to survive and thrive by pleasing people, but they come with a lot of future money worries too. If a business makes poor or non-customer pleasing choices, future cash flows can dry up. The fear of the future survival can sometime create business owners to store extra calories for a metaphorical winter in case food runs out when the money runs out
• If you compete in a sport in which you need to overcome a physical fear in order to compete in it, sometimes the fear can become so large you feel you need an emotional excuse to bow out of competition or attendance in order to avoid the fear. Sometimes the creation of weight gain, injury, or health issue is almost welcomed in order to escape the fear of “I am going to physically die if I do this sport”

If the above holds any truth for you, then what do you do?

The answer is you can try a couple of things.

First, identify all of your basic fears. Theses fears may or may not at first feel like they have anything to do with weight gain. All you have to do is identify them or make a list of them.

Second, identify all the things you want to do with your life but you don’t do. After this step, identify the underlying emotion on why you do not do them. (This step might bring up even more fear-based emotions, in addition to the other emotions you have on why you do not do them.) This step might also bring up other reasons why you make yourself “less attractive” and other reasons you have to “hide yourself.”

And then lastly, find a quiet space to sit down.  Once you are relaxed, think about each of your basic fears individually. For each fear, allow the fear emotion to come up and feel the fear until it is completely gone.  Repeat this step for all the reasons you do not do the things you want to do.

Every emotion as a start, middle, and finish. Often, we start to feel emotion, and then shut it down before it finishes, which means we get to carry it around with us.

Feeling an emotion is different than expressing it (with words or actions.) Feeling it means nothing is happening other than holding one thought, and then feeling its “feels” until the feelings are gone. Note: you can also do this with memories until the negative emotions in the memory run out.

Tip: start with a small fear. DO NOT START WITH A LARGE FEAR.  Think if it this way, a good massage is one which starts light, and then slowly goes deeper into the muscle. If you go too deep into the muscle before the muscle is warmed up, it will hurt too much. Go slow.

If you decided to try this, did your reasons to stay hidden go down or disappear? If none of the above feels true for you (and it may not because this article is a vast generalization listing a limited number of emotions), did you have any other emotional thoughts come up by reading this?