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.
A lack of self-love in overweight women is almost omni-present. It seems that overweight women very often also have a problem to love themselves because they did not experience to be loved much during their childhood or in a marriage. They just don’t think they’re loveable, no matter how wonderful and lovely they are. And the worst thing is that they are so convinced that nobody can love them, that even when an entire class of 20 other workshop participants are doing everything to convince them how wonderful and beautiful they are, they find it hard to believe it. Their response often is, “You’re only saying this to be nice with me.”
But fact is that the more we love ourselves the more it’s natural that we take care of what we put into our mouth, what we eat, and what we do to our body. For many overweight women this is probably a far-reaching goal because they are not there yet.
For example, one of my interview guests, Oprah-featured author Laura Fenamore, used to call herself “big, fat, ugly drunk.” Despite being obese and an alcoholic, she had to learn to love herself first to heal both, her weight and her addiction.
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?”
How did Laura manage to go from being insanely obese and an alcoholic to being slim, sober, and successful? “Well the first thing that I had to do was really wake up to what I was doing. Because so many people are on auto-pilot that they aren’t even aware of their negative self-talk; they are just not aware that they can’t stop eating or that they are obsessed about food. Maybe they feel dissected like ‘there is something wrong with me.’ But often times people don’t walk around saying, Oh! I call myself an ugly person every day. They just do it. But what happens is, when they get somebody like you coming in their life, and you’re here to help people see another way, they all of a sudden start to notice, ‘oh my goodness, maybe I am not talking to myself so nicely.’ And they start to notice and from the place of noticing, then they can make a shift. I mean it’s really the first step. The first step is to really notice what’s happening, and when I notice that, ‘Oh my goodness, how I’ve talked to myself is just horrible.’ And people say this all the time. ‘I wouldn’t talk to a stranger or a dog the way that I talk to myself. I was really, really mean to myself.’ And that is not going to change until we become conscious of it.”
And then, once you become conscious of it, it’s just a process, the same way that all of the inner work is. It’s a process that is needed…not a pill. Although “…we want instant gratification, but instant gratification doesn’t come. It’s really a process to undo those thoughts and feelings and behaviors that we’ve been living with. It just takes one little step at the time…to undo that negative self-talk and to begin to start talking to ourselves with kindness, compassion and love. And even if we find that we’re hanging out with people that are just really talking nasty to us, or they are being just as abusive…a lot of things may need to shift in order for you to move forward,” Laura continued.
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Of course, “…that’s not easy for everybody to hear, but I am saying that I’ve had people walk away from jobs and marriages and all kinds of situations where they really were not there for the right reasons; because they were there because they felt like they had to be there not because they wanted to be there. And it was actually holding them back from their truth and what they wanted and valued.”
The problem is that when you’re being treated badly by other people – family, a spouse or friends – then it’s much easier to think negatively about yourself. And after a while you begin to believe that they are right…you literally buy into that lie. And the longer you live with such a lie, the more you begin to believe it and the harder you will find it to stop those self-abusive talks, because “…one thing feeds into the other.” It gets you on a proverbial downward spiral.
The really dangerous thing about all that negative self-talk is that it gets on auto-pilot. After a while you don’t even realize what you’re thinking about yourself. And even worse, what you think and how you feel about yourself, create a new reality and makes matters worse. The longer such a pattern lasts, the harder it will be to lose extra weight for good.
If this is you, then I’m urging you to get away from such negative self-talk. Don’t allow yourself or anybody else to talk badly about you. You are a wonderful being and loveable. The first step is really to become aware of your negative self-talk. Then stop it!
Stop it!
Just stop it!
The next step then is to be grateful to your body, to what it’s doing for you every second of the day, for years and decades without ever getting a ‘Thank you’ from you. It just does its job as long as it can, even though you often reject your own body. Just know that your body is an intelligent being and it knows exactly what you are doing. Don’t you ever believe that your body can’t be hurt by what you think or say about it.
After the gratitude comes love. Start with something you like about your body. Maybe you have beautiful eyes, great hair or nicely shaped legs. There is something beautiful in every woman.
Maintainable weight loss begins with loving yourself. I know you may think, ‘I will love myself once I’ll be slim.’ Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. You have condemned and abused your body so often and for so long, that you first have to stop that and give your body proof that it has a reason to cooperate with you and burn off that extra fat.
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.”
Having more self-love means coming from a compassionate place. The negative self-talk may not go away right away. “Again it’s a process, not a pill. It takes a little bit of time, and it’s that place at self-acceptance. Like ‘I appreciate myself now.“
Laura, “It was really another one of those turning points for me. I had to get that, oh my goodness, I have to accept myself as I am in order for me to release this weight and keep it off. And I really think that that was part of the magic, that I was in a place of self-acceptance and self-love, as I worked myself down the scale. Did I want to be 200 pounds or 220 pounds? No. absolutely not, and when I say to people ‘you have to accept yourself as you are,’ they are kinda like, ‘but I don’t want to look like this, I don’t want to be this way.’ I know. But if you walk around everyday saying, I hate my body, I hate the way I look, I want to lose weight, I hate to diet,” it’s not going to happen.
What if you’re just going to understand and feel that you can change slowly but surely? Then, while you’re changing, you begin to appreciate your body for what it does and you’re going to do the emotional and mental work that will lead you to feeling good about yourself on all levels. Would that be helpful? How fast do you think things would change for you?
Just try!
Just start somewhere!
It’s a choice.
I understand that such a process is not easy when you have to go through it alone. For that purpose I have created a closed Facebook group where you can be among like-minded women who have all the same or similar issues like you have. You don’t have to go through this alone. Both, Laura and I had to get help. It would be too big of an ordeal to do it all alone. So let us be in your boat so that we can assist you to lose your extra weight faster.
Happy slimming!
P.S. If you want to hear my interview with Laura in full lenght, you can go to https://cdm.weightlossexpertsrevealthetruth.com/oto1-weight-loss-experts-reveal-the-truth-membershiptjnoj5ns and try my Weight Loss Answers membership program for free.
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If you want to learn a process that leads you to constant weight loss success by baby stepping, check out my Facebook group.
You can get a feeling for the 4 Pillars of Weight Loss process for free. Simply join my closed Facebook group where you can go through the process by taking tiny daily baby steps completely stress free and still make tremendous progress.
Emotional eating is an issue many overweight women are struggling with. The problem is that they don’t understand the real cause behind emotional eating and thus try to tame the beast with willpower.
When I asked her what the reason for our obesity epidemic in the Western world might be despite of the fact that we have so much food to choose from, she said, “There is definitely something wrong in the system and there are a lot of factors that contribute to that. I think the whole world is feeling so much stress. People who work in corporate jobs are functioning with so much pressure and so much uncertainty. People are so overwhelmed with their lives; and overcommitted. There are so many demands and responsibilities and less support, and less social interaction; which is one of the keys to happiness. Stress is really equivalent to what smoking was in the 50’s. It’s killing us. One of our favorite responses is to overeat and I think that people just don’t make time for themselves and they just don’t pay attention. There is a lot of unconscious eating going on until something happens and then you say: Okay, I’ve got to do something about it.”
Stress causes emotion, tension, fatigue and a lot more…all reasons that are driving us to the refrigerator. A lot of times you don’t even realize what’s happening there and why you are looking for food.
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.
How do you feel about yourself?
People with a low self-worth break down when they lose the job, go broke, lose friends, lose a spouse, lose their status, grow old or experience any kind of loss. They feel less worthy because they measure their self-worth on external things, situations and on others.
If you have experienced lack of love, conditional love, setbacks, and restrictions earlier in your life, then it’s certainly easier for you to stay in that state of low self-worth. But that’s not the solution. You don’t need others to tell you what a great person you are. You don’t need others to love you so that you can love yourself. Simply start by treating yourself well. Take care of your health. Eat healthy. Exercise. Do something good for yourself. Pamper yourself from time to time. Pat your shoulders each time you have accomplished something or made another person happy. Be generous with your smiles when meeting others. Be of service. Make this world a better place no matter how humble the beginnings.
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. 
On the very first coaching call she brought up all her problems at once and it was a real challenge to dig through the clutter and to choose the most pressing issue to begin with. She had pretty much all the problems you can have: deep depression; financially broke; unemployed; she had no idea what kind of job she wanted – all she knew was that she no longer wanted to work as a nurse; she had no more energy left and has gained a lot of weight (close to being obese); a daily almost crippling head ache; in a relationship she was deeply unhappy with; having been abused by her father; an extremely dominant mother who thought that Giselle was not capable of accomplishing anything and thus made all the decisions for her and even took over the job of raising her child.
After some job interviews she realized that she no longer wanted a job and put an add in the newspaper offering her service as a caretaker for elderly people. Within only a few days she got two great engagements and now she is her own boss, deciding how much her work is worth and making the price. Now she earns more money than she has ever earned before as a nurse and has not to work any night shifts anymore. 
She began to be more careful about when and how much she would allow her bossy sister and girlfriends into her life and what she would tolerate from them. She learned to say ‘No’. For the first time in her life she could set boundaries and clearly say what is tolerable and what is not. 
Two weeks ago she met a lovely man who is 10 years younger than Giselle – the kind of man she always wanted and was certain he would not exist. They both fell in love with each other and both feel that the other one is just the “one”, the partner they have always been looking for and dreamed of but never found before. Very quickly they realized that everything fits. Beside the fastly growing love, they have many common interests, he treats her with the respect she deserves, and they have the best sex life ever. They both feel that they have arrived. 
In Giselle’s case, I did nothing else but helping her to transform her personal root causes which had led to weight gain. We never did anything regarding her weight at all. She always loved cooking and she is still enjoying it and has no food restrictions except those foods she is allergic to. What we did do for the sake of her health is eliminating a few bad habits. 
Root causes can be found on the physical level (e.g. food intolerances, diabetes, toxic overload, etc.), the emotional level (how you emotionally respond to circumstances and the world around you), the mental level (your mindset, your way of thinking, what you say, your belief system), the psychological level (your memories, your subconscious mind, past experiences, unhealthy boundaries, etc.), and even on the spiritual level (karma, stuck energy, etc.). They can be experienced in relationships with the opposite sex and the family, in your professional life, in your health or the lack of it, and whether or not your life is interesting, fulfilling and well balanced or not. 
Later we form habits by making daily poor decisions, mostly in an attempt to stay in our comfort zone and out of laziness. Most of the time these are the poor habits…those habits, which contribute to poor health and weight gain.
Therefore, the bad habit of being overweight is not only in the eating, drinking and exercising, but also in the thinking, behaving, and feeling. For example, one of my former participants used to enter the gate to her yard side-wise even long after she had lost all her excess weight with WW. That, of course, created a new reality of gaining weight back in order to fit into that old habit of entering the gate side-wise. Only once she realized how she had been creating that reality of being obese through her behavior and by changing that she began to get lasting results. 
Then they go on the next fad diet, take expensive weight loss products or get a gastric surgery done which create tremendous health problems and make matters worse in any regard. And at the end they gain that quickly lost weight back because it was not a sustainable method. Yes, they did have quick success…but at what cost? 
Since everything has two sides, good habits can also turn good genes on and bad genes off. Positive habits lead to a never-ending positive chain reaction leading to reduced stress, better health, financial freedom, longevity, happiness, good relationships, success, etc.
Sоmе оf these habits are simply about kеерing our body funсtiоning рrореrlу but a lоt оf habits have to dо with the way wе do things, move, behave, react to people, situations and circumstances; the way we think and perceive our environment. Unlеѕѕ we livе in a ѕоlitаrу wоrld with no intеrасtiоn with thе rеѕt оf thе wоrld оr thе people thеrеin, wе will аlwауѕ bе соnfrоntеd with ѕituаtiоnѕ where wе must mаkе сhоiсеѕ, and these choices often happen within a split second by bypassing our conscious mind. Sоmе are simple, ѕоmе are more соmрlеx like whаt tо еаt оr what not tо еаt, when to exercise and when to relax. Many оf them require nо thought though since our brain is already pre-programmed tо асt in a helpful wау in our body’s terms. We hаvе done something wеll or inappropriately in thе past and our brain hаѕ received fееdbасk (it wеnt wеll, do thаt аgаin; аltеrnаtivеlу thаt wаѕ rubbish, do ѕоmеthing differently). Cоnѕеԛuеntlу the unconscious part of our brain iѕ full of wауѕ of dеаling with situations that wе thоughtlеѕѕlу еmрlоу to make our lives easier.
You just can’t conquer habit with willpower. The only way to optimally dealing with habit is by understanding the way our subconscious mind works and using it’s own way of forming new habits. By the way, strong willpower is a habit as well. Your ways of aproaching weight loss, your ways of pursuing a goal, your mindset, your motivation (or the lack of it), these are all habits as well and can – need to – be trained.
