Aug
“How much weight have you lost?” This is the phrase I have been hearing recently, and it has given me great satisfaction.
I have recovered the exterior appearance I had wanted for years, I have regained a lot of energy, physical and interior well-being: in short, I am regaining my self-confidence, which had been undermined over the years by the extra kilos.
I have been working in the area of natural well-being for years
After trying various diets and reading all about them, I had resigned myself to the excess weight. But I was wrong: without any special effort or diets, I was able to lose 15 kilos in just 3 months.
It is likely that, like me, most of you are already aware, or believe you are aware, of many aspects of losing weight. It is therefore not my intention to bore you: rather, I would like to anticipate and share the excellent results of an intensive work project that began 3 years ago, and which is related to this subject.
It was the result of a special dedication, which emerged from having experienced this “problem” personally: I can confirm that, thanks to a new and easy approach, it is possible to lose weight in a short time with certain results and in total safety; all you need to do is follow a couple of rules that have already been tried and tested by a large number of people.
As I’m getting older, I’m becoming more selective in general: I love reading about things that interest me, but I don’t want to waste time reading things that don’t work for me, that don’t inspire me or don’t help me find the answers and solutions I’m looking for.
If you like to read and inform yourself about something that is close to your heart (such as “losing weight”), but, like me, you don’t want to waste any more time, maybe you are in the right place.
I’m not a doctor or a nutritionist, I have a degree in Education Sciences, intended primarily as self-education, and I have been dealing with natural well-being for years with dedication and commitment: what you read is mainly the result of my personal experience, but at the same time it remains correct and professional.
The need for losing weight is often an “obsession”
For people who are overweight, losing weight is not so much a desire as a need that is thought about almost continuously, an absolute priority! You would like to look in the mirror, see yourself as thin as you used to be and be told with surprise: “How much weight have you lost?“.
Seeing ourselves as “fat” represents a great distress, which almost constantly compromises our good mood. There is no shop window or mirror that does not give us a very unpleasant image of ourselves. Our movements are heavy, not to mention our clothing, which becomes a complete phobia: we look bad in everything and feel clumsy and insecure.
The constant frustration comes from a subtle sense of shame that we try to minimise with phrases such as “I’ve tried many times but I can’t be constant“, “I’ve already tried everything“, “because of the stress I can’t resist“.
Or they have convinced us that “it’s the metabolism’s fault” and so on, endlessly justifying the deep distress of extra kilos as if “being overweight” were a fault. But it’s not: thinking that being “fat” is your fault is absolutely wrong.
If you recognise yourself in all this, and try to live in silence with this frustration, almost resigning yourself to it, then this is not a first step, but the fundamental step. It is finally time to take care of yourself.
As women, we are all trapped by a great sense of duty, especially towards others: with children, with husbands, with grandchildren, at work, and the expectations on us never end. We should instead think that we also have a duty to ourselves, which is to feel good in every aspect of our being, mind and body.
Asking yourself “why can’t I lose weight” does not shift the problem; on the contrary, it paralyses you. You live with it and you don’t have the energy to look for and find new ideas and solutions.
What can I do to “lose weight well” is instead a question that allows us to proceed and view alternatives; and so different thoughts and new possibilities arise.
Can we delete the word ‘diet’?
From experience you already know that all diets we undertake and the great efforts we make also fail because of psychological problems, and everyone has their own.
In everyday use, when people talk about diets, they most often refer to low-calorie diets, i.e. eating very lightly in order to lose weight. The greatest difficulty a person faces when dieting to lose weight is psychological.
In fact, in order to lose weight it is often necessary to drastically reduce the quantity of food and also the quality, eliminating exactly what we like best and weighing everything with electronic scales.
From a practical point of view, it’s not easy at all: you have to be very organised to follow the food calendar perfectly and always have at home what the diet requires for all three meals and two snacks.
The day that you inevitably find yourself without the food required by the diet you fall back into old habits and therefore into the sense of guilt and anxiety that follow.
Eating in this way is eating only to survive, allowing yourself only what you need for your metabolism and daily vital functions.
Food, on the other hand, also has a psychological implication that we cannot underestimate, because it triggers very powerful emotional reward responses. Having said all this, it is easy to understand why dieting is very difficult from a psychological point of view.
Constant renunciation is an effort that is too hard, because it has to be done every day of our lives: why should a person, especially these days, already stressed by problems of all kinds, be denied the pleasure of food?
However, according to recent research, the number of overweight people continues to increase due to so-called nervous hunger, i.e. eating to fill the emptiness one feels inside, a sort of “eating to forget”.
After all, we live in a frenetic world, often superficial and full of dissatisfaction, and food becomes an escape valve for all this and the various problems of everyday life.
The fundamental question to be asked in the context of what has been described is: “can we lose weight without all these exaggerated sacrifices and related failures that lead to the typical, almost chronic, depression caused by dieting?”
The answer is that you can, simply, feasibly and fairly.
I’ll tell you how in my next post.
Thank you for your attention
Emanuela
