Women all around the world have experienced this: they go on a diet, lose some weight and after a while they gain the lost weight back. The harder the diet was, the more frustrating this is.
Yes, the awareness that diets don’t work is rapidly growing among women all around the world. But what is the alternative to the dieting/exercise approach?
That’s a great question and the answer is not obvious…unfortunately. There are many theories out there, and most of them are quick fixes which really don’t fix anything. This is very confusing for a woman who is looking for serious answers.
I personally had to grow into my sixties, work with over 10,000 women worldwide, I had to go through decades of struggling with my weight to detect at least 75 possible root causes of weight gain in women. This may sound like an intimidating number but it’s not nearly as hopeless to find your root causes as you may think. As a matter of fact, understanding your root cause will significantly speed up the weight loss process, and in most cases the result is sustainable, unless there is another root cause in effect.
So let’s first talk about root causes.
There are five levels on which a cause for weight gain can happen:
- Physical pillar: For example. toxic overload, hormonal imbalance, food intolerances, some auto-immune diseases, parasites, stress and many more. Actually, eating too much and a lack of exercise are only two of the 72 causes I have counted so far. So please forget dieting for a moment.
- Your emotions: When there is an emotional imbalance of some sort, this can lead to many behavioral habits. The habits in that case are only the symptom but not the cause. Especially for women, the emotional pillar is a big one when it comes to weight loss. Some of the most common emotional causes are a lack of love, not feeling valued, overwhelm, not being seen, etc.
- Mindset: Although the first two pillars are very important, the probably most important one to look at is the mindset. Especially women have developed a terrible mindset around food, weight and their body. They are often so fixated on what to eat and what to wear on any given day, that they think of their weight all day long. And after a while those thoughts become so automated that they run on autopilot on a more subconscious level. And that is really dangerous because the women are then not even aware of their thinking anymore. Therefore, uprooting a negative mindset is a very important and large part of my work because this is something most women can’t handle by themselves anymore.
- Subconscious Mind: According to psychologists, 80% of the problems are in the subconscious mind, why it is almost impossible for most of the women to understand what the real problem behind their weight issue is. The good news is that 80% of the solution is also on that level, and that’s where my expertise is. The largest part of the work is the digging and the finding. Once we have found the subconscious patterns, it’s easy and fast to transform them. And equally the weight loss process is also fast and relatively effortless. Even transforming past trauma is most of the time a matter of a few weeks or a couple of months.
- Spiritual level: It happens more and more that we can also see some spiritual issues and root causes behind weight problems, for example when there is some karma involved.
Imagine you never having to worry about your weight ever again!
Go and dig deeper.
Go look beneath the surface. The problem is not the stomach but the psychology behind the eating. The problem is not what a person eats but why she eats what she eats. Is she bored? Is she lonely? Is she unfulfilled? Does she feel under-valued? Does she feel abandoned? Is she with the wrong partner or at the wrong job? Has she been abused?
I can tell you that in my 40 years of working with overweight women I have seen and heard hundreds of different stories. Never ever did I recommend any of the over 10,000 participants to do a diet. Develop health eating, yes, but not a weight loss diet. What we do is learn to apply an overall healthy lifestyle just for the sake of a healthy body.
How on earth do you want to fix that with gastric surgery?
How on earth does anybody believe that it’s enough to get you on a diet?
Here are a few examples of women who lost weight simply by transforming their root causes:
- I lost 54 pounds and kept it off for 14 years after I transformed some childhood trauma. I didn’t do any diet and I did not exercise at that time.
- Trudy lost weight after she realized that her root cause was a rape. Once she had transformed that traumatic situation in our coaching, she lost weight without changing her diet or exercise regimen.
- Tina wanted to find the love of her life, and after we have transformed her invisible wall which has repelled the right men before, she not only found the love of her life, she also lost weight although this was never her goal or focus.
- Giselle lost 45 pounds withing 12 weeks without changing her eating habits nor did she exercise. In her case we had to deal with some family problems, she had to change the job and she too found the love of her life at the age of 55. Check out this blog post: https://www.angelabuhri.com/case-study-giselle-from-a-total-ruin-on-all-levels-to-having-it-all/
- As a teenager, Mavies found out that she is gay, and being raised in a catholic family she never learned how to deal with her feelings. So she closed up and did not allow anybody into her life and heart. When I met her, she had just survived two heart attacks and breast cancer, and her face seemed lifeless, like hidden behind a thick layer of fog. After we started working together she learned to love unconditionally regardless of the sex of a person. She has accomplished that within the first month of working with me and is still in the transformation process.
For many women, the extra weight serves as a protective shield. In those cases a coach should never take that away from her through a diet, a pill or a gastric surgery. The very first job of a coach in such a situation is to replace that protective layer with another form of protection and through helping their client to set healthy boundaries so that the weight is no longer needed.
Please, don’t be afraid of looking deeper. It’s so deliberating to break free from these invisible shackles and to find your true, slim you underneath these layers.
Although it requires a little bit more than changing your eating habits, it’s still the easiest, fastest, most sustainable and quickest way to lose your weight. Why? Because it’s the most direct way.
Start melting your personal ‘iceberg’!
Happy slimming :-).
Angela B.
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” – Plutarch
Plutarch’s words can be very helpful for busy women who want to lose weight. It’s like having a guiding light! Instead of struggling with strict diets or super hard workouts, you can make a big change by believing in yourself and realizing how powerful your thoughts are. Every change you make begins with your thinking. The journey to being healthy and slim is more about transforming your mindset and trusting in your own potential than anything else.
Did you ever hear the saying that once you can ride a bicycle you’ll never forget how to do it? Even if you would not use it for 20 years and then one day decide that you want to take the bicycle instead of the car, you would still do it the right way without having to think about. 
Improving the quality of sleep and getting enough sleep (7.5 to 8 hours every night) is another such power habit that creates a domino effect. You lose weight easier and faster, you have more stamina during the day, you are more focused and concentrated, and you have more energy to go out and so some exercise.
Our body always follows the rules of nature and is most of the time smarter than the person sitting inside of the body. But once we begin to understand the nature of our bodies, how it works, what it needs to accomplish, and how we can rather support our body instead of trying to force something onto it, we become a team and changes will be much easier and more effective. Then you will be the smart leader and your brain and body will become your enthusiastic partners supporting you in your weight loss goals.
I can’t count how many examples of negative self-talk I have heard from women in my 38 years of being a weight loss coach. Many of the things women tell themselves made me even cry. And these were all wonderful, lovely and loveable women. Yet they all found the worst names for themselves….worse names than they would ever call a dog, let alone somebody else.
These negative self-talks are so common among overweight women, yet they are far from being helpful. That way we can’t build a good relationship with our body and promote lasting weight loss. In order to lose extra weight for good, you need to be in a good relationship with your body to get its full collaboration. How would you like if somebody called you the worst names and then expected you to help them do something for them? Your healthy reaction would be to respond, “Since you can’t be friendly to me, why would I waste any time and energy helping you?” 
To that Laura says, “Well that’s another one of those components. It’s like life is happening now, it’s not a dress-rehearsal, and why would we want to start liking and loving ourselves once the weight is off? I mean, I understand intellectually why people go there. Because they think in their minds, ‘I am not going to love myself until after I get thin or after I stop eating so much.’ But the truth is that you are who you are now, not later. Now. So the love has to be and the self-acceptance has to begin now. And from that place you will stop the war.”
Can you believe it? There are only five more weeks left to the end of this year. This is the time when people begin to think about their goals they wanted to achieve this year but didn’t. Millions of women are beginning to realize that, once again, they did not achieve their weight loss goal. And once again they blame themselves.
The thing is that neither Dr. Oz nor Oprah or any other person who publically talks about a new weight loss program is wrong per se. Some tactics actually do work for some people for some time. That’s why they come across as so credible – because they truly believe what they are saying. But they are not the ones who work with clients for years and decades to see the long-term results. 
Just think about, seen in that light, how much sense does any tactical advice “Do A to get B” make? It’s like the follower who tried to convince me that for everybody the first step had to be a liver cleanse. But what if your root cause is a psychological one? What if one of your causes is a hormonal problem? What if it’s a lack of sleep? Yes, cleansing the liver is always a good idea early in the process, but it’s not the only tactic and it’s certainly not for every woman to use it as a first step. This is just an example. You can take every recommendation regarding weight loss you have ever heard and use that same logic.
So what can you do right now?
As soon as you come to the point where you are ready to leave the diet path and make new and better experiences, I’m here for you and I can’t wait to work with you. I promise this is going to be an exciting journey and you will love it.
Recently I stumbled on the following story which I find very inspirational. When I read it, I instantly had to think of you. So I decided to share that story with you today. 
For years I am trying to convince my readers and clients to practice appreciation toward their body, because appreciation can really heal many wounds, especially the wounds of the soul. I do get how hard it is to appreciate a body which is overweight or even obese, a body you don’t like. But sometimes it just takes a small step beyond the ordinary, a step into the unknown, an uncomfortable step, even a step that might seem weird at the beginning to make new and desired experiences and see better results. 
Write a list of everything you can be thankful for to your body and everything you like about it. Then keep writing that list for seven days minimum. Every morning after waking up and every evening before going to sleep you thank your body for everything it is doing for you. Try to be serious. Remember, you have plenty of reasons to be genuinely thankful for to your body. 
