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You may have been victimized by the medical model which says: If you keep sabotaging yourself and can’t lose weight on your own, then you must have a disease. As in, “Your obesity is a disease. Your eating is a disease, so we’d better give you some pills or suggest surgery. How about some staples in your stomach? That hopefully will do the trick. After all, it’s not your fault you have this disease, but we assure you that some medication or invasive treatment will cure it.”
EMOTIONAL CHALLENGES + OBSESSIVE BEHAVIOR = EXCESSIVE WEIGHT
You are not a disease. Do not allow any well-intentioned medically-trained person persuade you that you are. You are a person with emotional challenges that have taken the form of obsessive-compulsive behavior that has translated into excessive weight. That is where you must start, because form this honest premise you can move into a personal, self-corrective program where you can join the two percent who lose weight permanently.
We’re not going to talk about steps — twelve, fifteen, twenty, or one hundred. For weight loss, there is but one step in the right direction. People who lose weight permanently do not attend groups that treat them like victims, where they sit in a circle and talk about their powerlessness. What a disservice to say that we have no power!
Of course we have power, and plenty of it. (The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous make it clear — we have power through our Higher Power.) That’s what it’s vital to treat the whole person, not just a single part. Why does this work? Because rather than wallowing in a mire of powerlessness, people can learn to regain and reassert their power. They start to engage in a healthy self-focus, not narcissism. To become intimately acquainted with their deepest troubles and hurts means attaining a self-knowledge that allows them to look at their own souls with tender compassion, something they may not have done for some time. In the process, they learn that power has been given to them by their heavenly Father.
You become empowered when you provide yourself with four things:
- Discipline
- Freedom
- Acceptance of the truth that you are deeply loved
- Courage to face your fears
People who lose weight permanently move beyond blaming others for their weight. They take responsibility for their own actions because they know it’s the only way they will ever grow into the person God created them to be. People who lose weight permanently also learn to take full responsibility for their own emotional state of being. Blaming family is the easy way out, and it’s a dead-end street.
Perhaps the theme song of those who lose weight permanently should be the great spiritual that reminds us, “Not my brother, nor my sister, but it’s me, O Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer.” Yes, Lord it’s me … and it’s you.
ENCOURAGEMENT FROM GOD’S WORD
“Therefore, my dear brothers [and sisters], stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” ~1 Corinthians 15:58
SOURCE: Chapter 2, Losing Weight Permanently: Secrets of the 2 Percent Club by Gregory L. Jantz, PhD., founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources Inc.
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