Weight and Health

The Weight of It All

The road map for self-healing is within you. As a weight management coach, my job is simple: to guide you in accessing your natural ability to heal from the inside out. I show you how to be happy and healthy with and within yourself. Erase the old self-sabotage programs placed in your mind by individuals in your childhood. Who placed those bad programs there? They are seeds that were planted in your head and are keeping you from being healthy, happy, and successful today. By recognizing what and where they are, you can begin to accept them and start the healing process.

There are seven chapters in this book, and this one is by far the most important to my personal survival. This is the one subject that has been eluding me for the past several years. I do know that I turn to food to avoid pain. At the start of writing this chapter, I still did not understand why I chose food. There are so many other ways to avoid feeling hurt, so why was I insisting on sticking to that which I knew did not have my best interests at heart? Why did I continue to eat foods that were dangerous to my health?

What is health? What contributes to poor health? What are the key components for optimal health? What are the effects of weight on health? What's the best health plan for me? In this chapter we will explore these and many other questions, ensuring we all have a clear understanding of how being overweight affects our overall health. I believe that in order to make a healthy permanent change, we must first understand our behaviours.

As mentioned in my first book, Weight Loss for Life, I have been concerned about my weight since the age of 13. As a result I have tried most fad diets on the market today, and yes, they all worked for me. The problem is that I was not able to maintain the permanent weight loss we all want—until now. Today, managing my weight is not an issue because I no longer go on diets. I finally realized that staying on that weight-loss roller coaster would lead me to an early grave. This is the opposite of why I first got into the health field: to save my own life.

It all started on September 2, 1997, when my healthy mom went to bed and did not wake up. She was only 51 years old and was in reasonably good health. After the funeral I was obsessed with living a long and healthy life. I then left my well-paying job to go back to school and study nutrition. After completing the program, I realized that part of the puzzle was still missing. After much research I realized that the reason I was still struggling with my weight was because of my hidden, unexpressed emotions. These are the thoughts and feelings that I have been hiding from for years, though they were hidden in plain sight. I disguised them as something else. For example, after 3:00 p.m. I would turn to processed food instead of taking a nap because my body craved rest. At work when I was angry, I would ingest high-calorie coffee drinks instead of acknowledging my feelings of being stuck. I was in retail, a profession that I knew was not right for me, and I was having difficulty transitioning into the health field, which was where I desperately wanted to be. Health was a field where I could help women on a deeper level, guiding them to live happy, strong, lean, healthy, and balanced lives.

Over the years I've learned that my food cravings were always telling me what my body needed in order to live a long, lean, and healthy life free of pain, aches, and diseases. We are overweight because we use food as medication to cover up and suppress our past hurts and feelings, as well as what direction we should take. As humans we are hard-wired to avoid pain and seek pleasure. This chapter focuses on health and not weight loss, because I believe when we experience optimal health, our weight will not be an issue.

Many times I've been asked what the secret to weight loss is, and I say it's very simple: there is no secret to losing weight. Things have not changed over the years; it's the same today as it was centuries ago in that all we have to do is burn off more calories than we take in. There are no new ways, only recycled concepts with a new spin. The only thing that has changed for this millennium is making sure we eat less packaged foods and more natural ones if possible.

What has changed is how to keep the weight off. Instead of focusing on weight loss, we must instead focus on what we should do to maintain our weight on a daily basis. We must look at and determine which life centre is out of balance. We should determine personal wants, needs, and desire and then act on them. It's about identifying the root causes of our unhappiness. If we focus on what we need to be healthy in mind, body, and spirit, the weight will normalize itself.

Congratulations—you've lost the weight! You are finally at your goal weight, and you look and feel amazing. Now, how are you going to keep the weight off? Writing away my weight, along with studying and teaching weight management, is what works for me. This is how I will continue maintaining my strong, lean, and healthy body for the rest of my life. The other part of my plan is to travel to spiritual retreats and spas throughout the world, learning and experiencing the different healing modalities. I'm starting here in Vancouver and am working my way outword and upword. To be happy you must have a goal, something to work toward.

How did I come to this conclusion? Keep reading and find out. To start, I've lost and regained much too much weight over the years. Three times I lost more than 65 pounds each time. After years of searching for my reason for this weight gain, I've come up with this hypothesis: Living on purpose inspires us. When we are feeling inspired, we eat nutrient-rich food that nourishes our mind, body, and spirit. It's about living the life we are here to live. So what does this mean?

Let's look at what you are passionate about. What is the one thing you want more than anything else in the world? What is the one thing at which others have been saying you would excel! This has to be something that you are good at, that you enjoy doing, and that comes naturally to you. It may also be the one thing in this world that scares you the most.

There are likely lots of things you are good at, but you lack passion for the work. You are more likely to stick to it if you are extremely passionate while thinking about it, talking about it, and doing it. You lose track of time doing it, and it replenishes your depleted energy. When you are living on purpose in your life centres, then every decision you make is for your own good. Whatever you do, you must have love for it! If you are doing it out of guilt, obligation, or simply to pay the bills, then it won't work, and you will never be happy living that way. Most important, instead of maintaining a strong, lean, healthy body, you will instead gain more weight, leading to obesity and other life-threatening illnesses that could lead to death.

I believe that we experience specific challenges...