Did you know it’s possible to accidentally lose 50 pounds? I did. My family and I dieted for years and it never worked, at least not for long. We experienced that wretched dieting yo-yo effect in which we regained more than we lost. We would get so hopeful and motivated, then when we ended up worse off, we would feel so devastated. It seemed easier to give up than to ever hope again. It felt like maybe something was wrong with me – maybe it was genetic. Maybe I was defective. Maybe other people could lose weight, but not me.
And the thing is, I didn’t look bad before I lost the weight. I carried the weight well and, even though I couldn’t see it at the time, I was super adorable. However, even in my youthful early 20s, I had low energy, digestive issues, brain fog, anxiety, irritability, clumsiness and I just felt energetically weak and heavy. I also had extremely poor self-esteem. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was not healthy, physically or emotionally. The weight was a symptom, not the core issue.
Then, I accidentally lost 50 pounds when I least expected it. I was living in Seville, Spain, adopted by a local neighborhood community, eating delicious food, walking everywhere, becoming fluent in Spanish, going dancing, having a great time and, in essence, becoming a different version of myself without even realizing it. One day, my Spanish girlfriends had an intervention. Unbeknownst to me, I had shrunk and was still wearing baggy clothes to hide my body. They insisted that I get a haircut and let them take me shopping. It was like the Spanish girl version of the “Fab Five” did a makeover on me, and it was indeed fabulous. My confidence shot thorugh the roof as did my desire to understand what had happened.
Warnng: This isn’t a Disney fairy tale. Althought I have never regained much of the weight, I have revisited weight gain and loss on and off over the years in tamdem with various health challenges like toxic mold, gut issues, extreme stress and just getting older. Each time, I have deepened my understanding of how to successfully address the underlying causes of weight gain. What has been consistent is that I only got the weight off and kept it off each time when I was not focused on trying to lose weight.
You see, this “accidental” weight loss wasn’t just me. This is human nature. Here is what I have observed in my personal life, my research and decades of professional experience as an integrative and functional health consultant. I have found over and over that it’s nearly impossible to lose weight and keep it off when weight loss is the primary focus. Why? Because when you focus on what you don’t want, “shouldn’t do” and “can’t have,” you create negative emotion, struggle and rebellion. You are also rejecting, not integrating, aspects of yourself.
Willpower is a joke. It does not work.
Most medically directed diets are driven by the food industry’s profit interests and not by your biological and emotional needs. They don’t work and then deflect responsibilty for their failures to you by telling you that you just needed to have more willpower. This makes people miserable, both on the diet and when they feel like failures for quitting. Please absorb this fully: Willpower is a joke. It does not work. Furthermore, you are bio-individual and fad diets are usually one size fits all. What works for one person may not work for you, and that’s perfectly natural.
Hunger, shame and loss of pleasure feel so bad that there is no amount of willpower in the world that will make you stick with self torment. This refusal to take abuse is actually your body’s innate intelligence and is meant to protect you. It’s perfectly natural, too.
The result? You eventually stop trying and are even more likely to stress eat from the disappointment and guilt. It also reinforces the false idea that other people can lose weight, but not you (which, if you’re honest, sorta makes you resent people who do lose weight). Then there’s feeling judged by yourself and others (real or imagined).
Is your focus on losing what you don’t want or gaining what you do want?
If you have dieting PTSD, please know that you were most likely set up for failure, which makes me sad, because you really did try. I’m so sorry you went through all of that. Please know you are not weak or a failure. You just didn’t find a strategy that met all of your biological and emotional needs.
This is why the most effective strategies are not focused on the numbers on the scale, but rather on overall health and happiness. If, instead of focusing on losing weight, you focus on gaining health and feeling good, not only do you reverse accelerated aging and disease, but you also experience weight loss as a delightful and inevitable side effect. Isn’t that a lot nicer?
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