Facing Your Fears Can Help You Lose Weight

If you are anything like I was, you hate your excess weight, you don’t understand why you keep regaining it back, and you berate yourself every time you gain a pound or eat a “bad” food. All this adds up to a lot of negative mental energy going on around your weight.

Have you ever thought about any positive aspects to your weight?

At first, this can seem preposterous! How can excess weight possibly have a positive side?

From the day we are born, and we move through life, we develop certain behaviors and attitudes to help us get what we want. We all develop certain behavioral and thinking patterns in life as a method of responding, reacting, or just plain getting through specific situations. This process goes on our entire lives, not just in childhood. However often childhood coping methods can carry over into adulthood, often with complete unawareness by the person.

Here is a small list of some of the reasons that people carry around extra weight:

• To keep a partner
• To avoid a partner
• To get attention
• To deflect attention
• To avoid certain activities
• To ensure certain activities

In her book, You Can Heal Your Life, Louise Hay says that the probable causes of excess weight are: Fear; need for protection; Running away from feelings; Insecurity, self-rejection, Seeking fulfillment, and others She goes on to say, “Fat is related to Oversensitivity. Often represents fear and shows a need for protection. Fear may be a cover for hidden anger and a resistance to forgive.”

According to Louise, fat in the arms can mean “anger at being denied love.” Fat on the belly can mean “anger at being denied nourishment” and fat on the hips can be “lumps of stubborn anger at the parents”. Even fat on the thighs can be “packed childhood anger, often rage at the father”.

The next time you find yourself angry or frustrated, spend some time thinking it through and seeing what it is you are really afraid of. It might be of not getting what you want, of being used, of being ripped-off etc.

Everyone is different, and this is a really personal part of the process. There are no right and wrong answers here! This is really getting to know yourself on a level much deeper than you have probably ventured before.

These are some of the top fears I discovered in my own self –examination process:

Fear # 1: Being Abandoned. By staying fat, which I believed was preventing me from getting into a relationship, I was then protecting myself from potentially being abandoned one day.

Fear # 2: Not Being Good Enough. By staying fat, which I believed prevented me from getting a better job, I was protecting myself from not getting the job because I just wasn’t good enough.

Fear # 3: Not Being Likeable. By staying fat, which I believed was the reason people at social events didn’t talk to me, I was protecting myself from the possibility that I just plain and simply wasn’t likeable.

You are afraid of something, even if you don’t think you are. You are human, that means you have fear, probably for more than one thing. Awareness and realization usually come along in small increments. Each day you may learn something new about yourself and how you cope with the world. And as this new knowledge begins to pile up, you will find yourself (your autopilot) naturally making changes in how you think, react and behave.

The weight you lose will be more than body fat. You’ll feel lighter emotionally, mentally and spiritually.