There are two ways in which weight loss can change your life and your self-esteem. Firstly it can make you feel successful, elated and beautiful. It can give you high self-esteem and a body you love. With a life free from an obsessive battle with food, you are able to live life to the full, free from guilt, shame and self-loathing. Secondly it can devastate your life and psyche as the weight eventually creeps back on and you feel a failure again.
This is the devastating reality and experience for 95% -97% of people who diet. These are the people that weight cycle (yo-yo diet). Their life change through weight loss sees them put back the weight they lost and at least 10% more. And to make it worse, they blame themselves!
Having suffered weeks, months or years of food deprivation the body's natural survival mechanism kicks into place. With this comes an overwhelming need to overeat. Repeated dieting leads to more body dissatisfaction and, more often than not, a return to more dieting. With this come the accompanied lowered self-esteem, depression and psychological shift to the negative. It is a vicious circle
The key to understanding how to make weight loss, change your life positively and permanently is to learn how to truly love yourself and your body image. Without this, the chances are that when you reach your magical goal weight, you will still feel dissatisfied with your body image, unloved, unlovable and 'Not Good Enough'. That is after the original elation of success has passed.
The weight loss that can truly change your life, raising your self-esteem, is one based on the premise that it's not the destination but the journey that's important. The journey is one of life, self and food discovery and change. It brings with it a sense of real achievement as you learn how to create a life where you live in harmony with food and nature, and still lose weight.
The key is to realise what the journey entails and what it requires from you in order to really change your life. The period of weight loss is only the first stage of the journey, which lasts until your target weight is achieved. Within this can be found...
- A newly emerging relationship and skill with food
- A growing, true love of yourself and your body image
- A growing strength of belief that you are beautiful, uniquely special and deserving of all the love and joy life can bring.
The second period - the one missed out of the dieting mindset - is a stabilising period. This encompasses...
- A Time through which to cement new habits with healthy eating and enjoyable exercise
- New experiences in a new body that enhance motivation further - this is why learning to love your body image through stage one is so important
- Strong positive thoughts, feelings and actions that demonstrate the level of your self-love
- A time through which to experience the development of a life lived to the full with self-loving experiences, the love and support of others and exciting changes
This period lasts at least one to two years as it creates the underpinning foundations of your life changes.
The third and final phase is one where changes in beliefs, thoughts and habits are now strongly integrated into every day. There may be the occasional 'blip' but you have the tools, knowledge and skills to move smoothly and easily back into your positive patterns of habits and lifestyle...
- You accept and understand that you are not perfect and that the occasional lapse into inappropriate eating is something you can quickly and positively deal with
- You know there is no way you would return to your old habits with food and life that once gave you so much pain and angst
- Your life is one of balance between the foods you eat and the activity and exercise you do regularly.
For most people, their weight has crept up over many years, for others it may have been an issue since childhood. It therefore goes without saying that to achieve long-term weight loss and stability, positive changes in your life are not going to happen (for most people) within a time span of months. The reality is that for most people it does take 2-5 years, after the weight loss has been achieved, before you know you will never return to the battle that was destroying your life.
The great thing is that although it sounds a long period, it is not a hard one as it is filled with raised self-esteem and self-loving actions that fill your life with joy and feed your soul with pleasure and contentment.
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