In my experience, there are four elements that are essential to losing weight and maintaining a weight that you’re happy with. There’s tons to be said about each of these, but for now here’s a summary of each:
1) Identity
Obviously there are many different layers to our identity. I mean, really, is there a deeper question than Who are you?
And while I believe going deep is the solution to weight loss, with this question we’ll keep it shallow….. as in, are you thin or are you fat?
Because how you see yourself determines your behavior. As Tony Robbins says:
“The strongest force in the human personality is the need to stay consistent with how we define ourselves….Once you lock in on that identity, your brain finds a way to keep you there.”
If you’re a “thin” person, and you happen go nuts at a delicious meal, stuffing yourself to the point that you’re physically uncomfortable, you probably laugh about it and lightheartedly complain to your friends how you stuffed yourself and it hurts. It’s no big deal, and the next time you eat, you do a better job of listening to your body’s signals.
If you’re a “fat” person, and you happen to go nuts at a delicious meal, stuffing yourself to the point that you’re physically uncomfortable, you probably go to the dark side and start retelling painful stories in your mind about how you can’t control yourself and you’ll never be thin. You’ve failed again, and feel even more like reaching for the comfort of food.
We can replace this scenario with dozens of others that somehow revolve around food and/or exercise.
The point is, you’ve got to find a way to see yourself as “thin”, or at least “thinner”–moving in the direction of a weight you’re happier with. If you feel you’re making progress toward your goal weight or fitness level, you will be more inspired to move your body and feel less like using food for comfort.
2) Joy
How much joy do you feel day-to-day?
In her fabulous book, If I’m So Smart Why Can’t I Lose Weight?, Brooke Castillo asks,
“How much of your total life joy comes from food or eating? If you find that your answer is over 50 percent, you have the answer as to why you eat more than your body requires for fuel. It is no wonder you don’t want to cut back on eating. It would mean reducing more than half your total joy from life! Ouch!”
She also suggests,
“Of all the joy in your life, less than 20 percent should come from food.”
So how can you add more joy to your life? This is one of the most important questions to ask yourself if you’re trying to lose weight.
And what if you could just totally shift your focus from “losing weight” to “adding joy”? After all, only “fat” people are consumed with thoughts of needing to lose weight, right?
So finding more ways to feel joyful that don’t have anything to do with eating is essential to healthy weight loss, but we absolutely can and should feel real joy when we eat consciously. In fact, the more you truly, deeply enjoy your food, the closer you will be to a weight you’re really happy with.
But there’s no joy when, as Brooke Castillo says, we’re “fog-eating” (unconsciously eating) or “storm-eating” (deliberately overeating). The impulse that drives these behaviors is actually perfectly normal–it’s simply the desire to be happy. But like Eckhart Tolle says, when we think our happiness comes from something in this world rather than through us into the world, we’re setting ourselves up for addictive behaviors.
You don’t need to find joy outside of you. Who you really are is always joyful. You just need to find a way to allow that joy to come through you into this moment.
3) Body Connection/Awareness
When we’re out of touch with our bodies, unconscious behaviors (like overeating) quickly ensue. Taking a moment to feel the life force within our bodies helps remind us to be present, to connect with our true nature–to bring joy to the moment instead of grasping for joy outside of us.
Moving our bodies gets the life force flowing within us. We breathe more deeply, our circulation improves, and we tend to drink more water (people often mistake thirst for hunger), among oh, say, a billon other benefits. We know this stuff.
But if you’re not connecting to your body and giving it the movement it naturally craves, why not?
The primary reason people give for not exercising is that they don’t have enough time. This is a classic example of what Martha Beck calls the “lizard brain” in action. The reptilian brain is a primitive brain structure that constantly broadcasts survival fears–specifically fears of attack (something’s out to get me!) and lack (there’s not enough! as in time, food, money, etc.).
Our lizard brain will never stop talking, but we can get better at tuning it out, by tuning into the deeper part of ourselves–our inner being, or soul (body awareness helps direct our attention here). This part of ourselves will simply observe lizard fears rather than react to them. In fact, Martha also notes that “the neuron pathways that carry lizard fears become weaker the more we observe them”.
Oh, and speaking of observation–paying attention to the breath is a fantastic way to connect to our bodies, and since our breath is intricately linked with our brain state, it’s also a great way to calm the lizard brain.
Brain states are hugely responsible for overeating as well. Martha’s book The Four Day Win brilliantly explains how dieters develop something called “famine brain”. It occurs when food deprivation “creates structural change in the brain so that cravings come to dominate our thoughts and behavior–even if we get food.”
There are countless ways to increase our awareness of and connection to our bodies (a recent favorite of mine is Yin Yoga), but as far as why this is so helpful, one of the primary reasons is that:
Body awareness leads to emotional awareness–which points to the thoughts that cause the behaviors which result in being overweight. (whew!)
Notice, calorie-burning was not mentioned. This is because, as Brooke Castillo says,
“Exercise, but don’t ever exercise for the result of losing weight fast. It takes too long and you’ll quit too soon….Many people “take” from exercise what they can get and this usually leads to not liking it and doing activities that are not enjoyable. I want you to use exercise as a way to give to yourself. The distinction is crucial.”
4) Alignment
Funny that this one would be number four, since it’s actually the most important element in successful weight loss. (Or anything at all, actually)
No matter how much it seems we want something (like losing weight), what we really want is the alignment with our own inner being. So with weight, what we really want is how we think we will feel when we’re thin.
And we can give ourselves that feeling quite easily–simply by using our imagination to feel thin now. (Oh, hey, we seem to be wrapping back around to number one—the identity thing. Funny how that works…)
There’s a subtle but important distinction here, (pointed out by Brooke Castillo) because imagining what it might feel like to be thin is actually different than, in this moment, feeling the feelings of having reached your happiest weight.
With the latter, we’re imagining simply because it feels great to feel the feelings of having what we want. But there’s no graspy, needy energy, since at the level of our mind, we’ve already achieved our desire.
Abraham-Hicks says,
The goal must exist to summon the (Source) energy, but the goal can’t matter that much—or it stops the energy.
And just as our alignment with the deeper part of ourselves is not, as Abraham-Hicks says, like a degree we get and then we’re done, but rather a moment by moment process indicated by how we’re feeling, maintaining the weight we’re happiest with is not something we’re ever really done with either. But making these four elements habits makes it a much easier and happier process.
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