Have you been struggling with your weight for a long time already? Have you even talked to your doctor about it and he just said, “Eat less and exercise more”? Have friends and family members given you “good” advice on losing weight? Have you followed so many diets and weight loss programs that you can hardly count them anymore? Have these methods worked for you at the beginning but then you gained your weight back – sometimes even more than you had previously lost? Do you feel like a failure and helpless?

This situation alone is not a small problem. If you have tried everything and nothing helped in the long-term, you start losing faith. First, you lose faith in your doctor. Then you start distrusting your family and friends because obviously, they don’t get you. And last, but not least, you begin to distrust yourself. And this is probably the worst problem of all. Because it’s YOURSELF you need to trust in order to undertake such an endeavor and to reach your goals. But when you start distrusting yourself, you will run into bigger problems, and this is where a waist trainer can help you with your weight training as well as in boosting up your confidence. 

Defending the unwanted state

The sad thing is that many overweight people start defending their weight. They search for proof of why they can’t lose weight. This is quite understandable, especially since, God knows, most of them have tried just about everything to lose weight but couldn’t make it. Nonetheless, it’s extremely counter-productive to defend and justify being overweight. You’re using up—and most likely wasting—a lot of time and energy-consuming.

Why?

Because a person who has not walked in your shoes can never ever truly appreciate your situation and how it feels to go from diet to diet, from sacrificing to starving, and eventually ending up with more weight than you have lost. A slim person will never get that, no matter how much you defend your weight. In fact, you will sound quite unreasonable. But worst of all is that you’re doing yourself a tremendous disservice. By defending your condition you’re exacerbating it. You heard me right. Where your focus is, there you are. The more you focus on your weight, the worse it gets. If you don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you right now, don’t worry.

On the other hand, maybe it’s time to make a drastic shift in your weight loss approach.

Shifting from what did not work to what will work begins with how you deal with your weight and your body.

Dealing with overweight and obesity

People have several ways of dealing with any problem. Most of them choose the wrong way. Well, there is actually no ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ way. They all lead to results. But there are results that are desirable and those that are not. There are ways that lead to more weight gain and there are ways that help you lose it. The way most overweight people choose to deal with it is exactly the way that makes matters worse. They focus on their weight, hate their body, hate food, think of all the reasons why they haven’t been able to lose weight so far, condemn themselves being a failure, then give up and feel desperate, lost, helpless, and depressed.

All these behaviors consequently lead to more weight gain and less self-love. But what you probably don’t take into consideration is that what you fight increases; what you resist will persist, what you focus on will grow. But I’m taking a wild guess that this is not what you really want. So what can you do?

Accepting vs. fighting

First of all, stop fighting against your weight. Start accepting your body as it is. Fighting increases what you don’t want. So there is absolutely no sense in fighting your excess weight or even your body. Just keep in mind that your body has a job, and in your body’s understanding, gaining weight is the best solution to save your life. (Please read my main essay in Issue #4 about acidity.) In fact, you should be very grateful to your body that it has been doing this for you. This is life-saving.

It’s important to understand that whatever you resist, fight against, or focus on will increase. If you want more fat to accumulate in your body, go on fighting, focusing, condemning yourself, hating your body, and resisting. This is definitely the way to go. But if you want to LOSE weight, I recommend you start accepting your weight as it is right now.

It’s very interesting that most people tend to believe that accepting something automatically means that the accepted circumstances would get worse, that acceptance would result in the negative condition persisting. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite. This may appear counter-intuitive at first. But fighting against something makes matters worse because you give the negative condition more energy. Accepting what is, on the other hand, takes energy away from what you don’t want.

Of course, acceptance alone is not enough. But accepting is the very first step – and the most crucial one. Everything starts with accepting. Accepting is letting go. Accepting is no longer holding on to the negative condition. Accepting is no longer giving negative condition power and energy. Accepting is taking responsibility for the current condition. Accepting gives you your power over your own body back. Accepting is the beginning of shifting your focus from failure to what you really want.

Accepting also means recognizing your own role. Although I would say that your overweight is not your fault, what you do with your body is still your responsibility. I know you have been told the lie that dieting helps you lose weight, and you’re not to blame for believing that lie. But it’s still your responsibility that you listened more to some false authorities than to your own body. I’m not talking about taking the blame, condemning yourself, or accusing yourself. Quite the contrary.

What I am saying is that you are not to blame for whatever may have happened in the past, but you are still responsible because it is, after all, your body we’re talking about. Your body is your responsibility. It’s the same as when you adopt an animal – it’s your responsibility to take care of it. Your body is your “animal” you have to take care of. It was you who allowed some false prophets to rule your life in the past while ignoring your own intuition and your body’s messages. Now it’s time to make some new decisions, take the responsibility back into your own hands, and start creating the body you want. It’s all in YOUR hands.

Taking responsibility vs. blaming

Once you are living in a mode of acceptance, you can begin to stop seeing yourself as a “victim” of your genes, the false “experts” you have listened to in the past, your bone structure, your parents, your diabetes, your hormones, your fibromyalgia, your childhood, and whatever or whoever else you blame for your weight problems.

What you want to understand is that by blaming other people or circumstances you are – once again – giving away your power over your own body and life. You’re giving power to your genes, to your parents and grandparents, to your doctor, to your past, to your bone structure, to the false weight-loss experts, to your diabetes, to your childhood, or to the criminal who has abused you. Just ask yourself, do they deserve to have that much power over you, your life, and your body?

Here again, taking responsibility back into your hands is the best remedy. Remember, this is not about you having made a mistake or you taking the blame. This is only about taking the responsibility and thus your power back. Without knowing better, you have “allowed” some people or circumstances to rule your life for a short while. Now that you know better, you can send those people and circumstances where they belong – but certainly not into your life.

Making or not making this simple shift can make or break your weight loss process. Take back the responsibility! Take back the power! Lose weight for good!