Often the pursuit to loose weight turns into a “body-battle”. It’s easy to begin separating yourself from your body. This is especially evident when you step on the scale and the number you were hoping for does not pop up – you become frustrated with your body for not losing the weight, you plan to attack your body more the next week so that YOU win this battle with your body.
Even though you must struggle with your body in order to loose weight REMEMBER that your body is not the enemy. You and your body are on the same team. So berating your body or self-loathing are not the answer to loosing weight. If shame and self-loathing ever worked to promote weight-loss, we’d be a nation of thin people by now.
A blog I read puts it this way: “Often even people who are doing their best to lose weight in a way that isn’t punishing or unsustainable see losing weight as a constant battle with themselves. There is the knowing self which says that there are simple rules to follow. And then there is the fat self who is there only to refuse to follow those rules. Fat self refuses to be satisfied with less food. Fat self refuses to drop weight even during caloric deficits. And you have to beat fat self. You have to ignore fat self. Fat self is your enemy and must not be allowed to ‘win.’
It’s all horse-crap of course. Your body is not fighting with you. It’s not sabotaging you. The more you see yourself at war with your body, the more likely you are to punish it, to ignore health in favor of weight loss. And, in the end, that’s both ineffective for weight loss and damaging to your physical and mental health”
You need to remember that you didn’t become overweight because you loved yourself and your body. Rather, your weight stood as a physical testament to the conflict between you and your body.
Therefore, in order to lose weight you must rekindle your relationship with your body. You must view healthy eating as nourishing your body, and being physically active as allowing your body to do what it was made to do – MOVE!
Sustained weight-loss is most achievable when you begin thinking of your body positively as an ally and not a foreign entity to be conquered, and tamed into submission. It’s hard to focus on the health of your body when you’re busy viewing it as the villain in the battle of you against your fat self.
Work with your body - giving it the calories and nutrients it needs, giving it the rest it needs, giving it the exercise it needs.
One great way to change the way you think about your body is to write a letter to your body. I realize you may think this sounds “hokey” but hear me out. Having to verbalize your thoughts about your body forces you “see” what you really think. Without having to put thoughts into words we tend to excuse or disregard our true thoughts. So take 15 minutes and write a short letter to your body telling it how you feel about it, how you’ve been treating it, how you want to feel about it and how you are going to treat it in order to be on the same team as it.
No one has to know that you’re writing letters to your body – if they did they might emit you the psyche ward. This is just for you, so write whatever you want. If you fee like a freak doing it, go ahead and destroy the letter afterwards. If you kind of enjoyed being able to voice your feelings, keep the letter to read as a reminder to love your body.
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