The Ten Core Philosophies of Weight Loss

Weight loss is first and foremost about personal growth. And much of this personal growth will be UNLEARNING what you’ve been conditioned to believe about weight loss! Frankly, much of what’s out there is just the same old thing repackaged. If you want a different outcome, you need to trade in this conditioning for wisdom. Here then are my top ten philosophies:

• Willingness determines energy

Resistance is a natural part of change. When you ask for weight loss, you’re invoking the biggest change there is – the very body you live in. Resistance is simply misdirected energy. Willingness is the degree to which you can be with the truth of what you’re creating, in directing your energy.

• Energy determines capacity

Your body is an energy system that’s constantly seeking equilibrium. Your capacity to make congruent choices – those in alignment with what you say you want – is inextricably linked to how well you regulate your energy. If you are constantly taking yourself out of balance, your capacity will suffer and negatively impact your choices.

• Everything’s accessible

Have you been so saturated with conflicting information that you’re not sure what to eat or how to exercise anymore? Too much “expert opinion” can have an incredibly narrowing effect on activities that are meant to be natural and effortless. This philosophy is about opening yourself back up to your body’s wisdom and letting its cues inform you.

• Enjoyment trumps all

Our wiring is designed for enjoyment. Moreover, we cannot sustain what we don’t enjoy. You are the sole creator of your own experience. Your words are the architecture of your experience. Your perceptions, not your circumstances, are what create the enjoyable path or not.

• Truth is neutral

Truth allows your natural choices to emerge, provided you can observe yourself objectively. When you label foods or actions as “good” or “bad”, you’re layering your own judgement on a situation, and this inevitably skews your choices. When truth is neutral, compassion guides your choices. Compassion enables weight loss with dignity.

• Weight loss is skills-driven

If you want to improve your driving, you know it’s not about finding the right car. But do you realize if you want to improve your weight loss, it’s not about finding the right diet or workout? Driving and weight loss are both skills-driven, which means first examining the thought processes you’re applying to them.

• It’s not about control, it’s about choice

Trying to control one’s life is one of the oldest and most futile of human obsessions. Control is an illusion – you never had it and you never will. Learning to be at choice is what offers enjoyment, sustainability and ultimately, freedom from your weight issue. If you’re hanging on tightly to control, you will never develop the trust needed to be at choice.

• It’s not about competition, it’s about personal bests

If you approach weight loss as a competition, whether with others, the calendar or the scale, it will remain external to you and your motivation will eventually dissipate. Focusing on your personal bests taps into a deeper source of inspiration and helps you internalize and build on your efforts.

• The authentic self has no need for excess weight

To be authentic is to learn who you are at a Soul level and to fully trust your essential nature. It takes courage to grow up and become your authentic self. Growing up means replacing coping mechanisms (e.g. using food as your drug of choice) with life skills. The amount of joy you experience is the amount of life skills you live from.

• Weight loss is fear loss

Excess weight is a state of imbalance, the cumulative effect of the stressors in your life, reflected on your body. That means the amount of excess weight you have is the amount of fear you live from (i.e. how you handle those stressors). Your unexamined fears are the fears running your life. Only when you address these will you see your weight respond.

Now, here’s a comforting footnote for you…personal growth always has a happy ending. Discomfort is one of the hallmarks of change. Thing is, everything you want is on the other side of discomfort and the only way out is through. But no matter what challenges you face in your weight loss journey, the insights and breakthroughs of personal growth eventually lead to transformation. Think of it this way: if you wanna morph into a butterfly, you gotta do your turn as caterpillar goo.

This article is courtesy of Kathrine Brown, Conscious Weight Loss™ Inc. Copyright © 2002 – 2010.
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