Fat Serves a Purpose - What's Yours?

Fat serves a purpose. I know a lot of women who are overweight think that it is the root of all evil, the bane of their existence, but it truly is serving a higher purpose.

For instance, a young girl is sexually abused as a child.
She puts on weight to make herself less desirable to distance herself from men. A man in corporate America is constantly being yelled at by his boss. He eats to put more space between him and his aggressor, to make himself bigger and therefore safer. A wife feels insecure in her relationship and eats to test her husband’s love, that he will accept her at any size. A child is neglected by his parents and eats to fill the void, to feel fulfilled in a way that he is not from his parents.

These are all very valid, very legitimate reasons for gaining weight. They all have an event that triggered their decision to eat, to feel that fat somehow meant safety. The thing is: we often end up holding on to the weight, to the habit of eating, to protect ourselves, even when the threat has been long gone. We eat because we have forgotten what made us eat in the first place.

When we address the underlying issues of why we started to eat more, to exercise less, to gain weight as a coping mechanism, we learn how to reverse the process. When we address the root of our problem instead of the resulting weight, we learn how to easily and effectively release fat from our body. This can be done with a simple meditation on the following:

Why does my body want to be fat? What purpose is it serving?

Do this as many times as it takes. At first, you may come up with superficial answers. Then, when you dig deeper, you may discover that you’ve gained weight so that you had an excuse for rejection: It’s not your personality that’s flawed, they don’t like you because you’re fat. You might discover something else. You might find that this is a lot more difficult than you thought it was. You might think that you should just give up, resign to remaining fat forever, and grab a bag of Doritos. You might come to the realization that you need a little help in digging deeper, in coming to terms with whatever it was that made you start gaining weight.

Here’s the miracle, though: Once you figure it out, it’s all smooth sailing. Once you realize that the reason you had no longer exists or isn’t logical, you’ve given yourself permission to just let it go. You no longer feel the need to eat to feel loved, nurtured, and accepted. You no longer need to be fat to feel safe.

What would that mean for you? What kind of things would that allow to open up in your life? What is it worth it to you to find the hidden cause of your heaviness? Think about it.