Today’s tip comes from Marc David from the Institute for the Psychology of eating. i’ve included a link to the full article at the base of the post.

‘Trying to get rid of weight by “losing it” is like trying to get rid of paying a bill by ripping it up and throwing it out. It seems like such a great idea. Just get rid of the bill. The problem is though, when you throw out the bill, another one comes in the mail, and this time with a late fee. Throw that one away and the consequences grow steeper.

The bills and the extra weight have something very simple and profound in common – neither has any real value in and of itself. Yet they both point to something. The bill points to the fact that you purchased your house with a loan from the bank, and you owe the bank gobs of money. Ripping it up then, is a silly and nonsensical act. Likewise, excess weight points to something else. To simply get rid of it for the sake of getting rid of it goes against universal law.

The billion-dollar question then, is “What does excess weight point to?” The answer, in my experience, is that there are an infinite variety of possibilities. Here are just a few common and compelling ones. Excess weight can point to:

Our poor food choices

Emotional hunger

Unmet needs

Repressed feelings

Confusion around self identity

A call for love and help

Self hatred

Our disconnection from the body

Past history of sexual abuse

Being wounded by love

Financial worries

Repressed creativity

Being someone we are not

The need to forgive and move on

The need to earn how to truly nourish and care for oneself

Loneliness

Fear of sensuality

Too much stress

Separation from one’s spiritual source

Too many foreign chemicals and toxins in our world that directly or indirectly lead to weight gain – fluoride, mercury, bovine growth hormones, xeno-estrogens, and many more

The sickness in our manufacturing world that would have us invent and sell junk foods in the first place

A nation that values excess and over-consumption

A culture that values speed, disembodiment, and lack of awareness

A world that is filled with fear, anxiety, and mistrust

Someone else’s belief that we need to lose weight

An obsessive need to lose weight where no weight actually needs to be lost

Each one of these is literally like a bill to pay. We can’t just avoid these life lessons, rip them up, or exercise and diet them off. We’ve got to question, self examine, look, listen, feel, get real, be truthful, and grow into a more mature way of listening to the body and honoring it’s wisdom, even when the body isn’t conforming to our humble demands that it be beautiful and hot and skinny. Of course, this isn’t easy. The process of self-examination is predictably a bitch. For this reason, far too many of us look for the quick fix. We don’t want to be uncomfortable as we face the tougher questions, so we’re easily seduced by the next diet gimmick that never works.

Just as it’s time to pay the bills, it’s time to pay homage to weight. It’s time to own that our challenges with weight require a whole new approach. No more quick fix. It’s time for the slow fix. Can we be brave enough to listen? Can we be courageous enough to be patient?

via A New Way To Lose Weight: Listen To It | PsychologyOfEating.com.’