A 16-step mind, body, spirit approach to sustainable weight liberation
To change your body, you must first change your mind. How To Heal Your Weight offers a 16-step spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical solution for permanently releasing excess weight.
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How To Heal Your Weight provides an empowering spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical solution to the challenge of permanently releasing excess weight.
The book offers insight and practical tools for finally getting off the miserable merry-go-round of dieting and self-blame that has dropkicked the world into a crippling and unprecedented obesity epidemic.
Millions of women and men have spent decades on depressing diets. About 95 per cent of them have failed to lose weight permanently because their efforts are based on the flawed premise, sold by the billion-dollar diet industry, that weight-loss is all about calories and exercise. Of course, the failed dieters blame themselves for their lack of success. They tell themselves ‘I must try harder,’ they start another doomed-to-fail diet, and the cycle of self-blame, self-shame, self-punishment, deprivation and general misery continues.
Shaming ourselves thin does not work. Nor does treating our bodies like a maths problem. Permanent and sustainable weight-loss is not about how long you can survive on cabbage soup and grapefruit. As spiritual beings, we are profoundly more incredible and complex than that. Weight-loss must be addressed from all four sides of the human experience - the emotional, mental, physical and spiritual, as well as from the perspective of individual and collective consciousness that incorporates the rise of global obesity and childhood obesity.
The global epidemic of obesity and lifestyle diseases is a red herring. The real epidemic facing the world is disconnection, isolation, despair, and loneliness through separation from our spiritual selves.
Excess body fat is the physical manifestation of emotional and psychological baggage — both our individual separation from Spirit or Divine Source as well as our collective consciousness separation. When you lighten the load on your soul, this is reflected in your physical body.
When we release our emotional baggage and get connected back to who we really are, the extra physical weight will resolve itself. This is true at both the individual and collective consciousness level. When we lighten up emotionally, we lighten up physically. When we connect to Spirit, we enlighten. We let light in.
As spiritual beings, our physical bodies are a reflection of our emotional, mental and spiritual selves. Successfully releasing excess fat stored on your body involves uncovering and uprooting reasons you subconsciously have at these levels for keeping it there.
The purpose of How To Heal Your Weight is to show people how to do that. Featuring channelled guidance from Spirit, the latest scientific research into metabolism, my own personal story, and practical tools based on dowsing, muscle testing, kinesiology and EFT Tapping, this book offers people a clear path out of the dead-end diet trap in order to finally have the body they desire. I offer my own original tapping scripts and healing methods.
I’ve been on this journey myself. I wasted decades of my life on the flawed and punitive directions of the billion-dollar dieting industry. I was nine years old when our family doctor put me on my first diet of 1,000 calories a day. Ten years later I had dieted myself into morbid obesity when I hit my highest ever weight. It also triggered a host of real issues – from eating disorders and binge-purge eating to hormonal havoc, hypothyroidism, leptin and insulin resistance. Not to mention misery.
I dieted myself fatter and that’s what millions of other people don’t realise they’re doing. I wasted years beating myself up and not understanding why my body seemed to be fighting me to keep the weight on. This impacted every part of my life from relationships to career to self-worth and it got in the way of simply enjoying life and food. Don’t do that, it really sucks.
How To Heal Your Weight reveals that the bottom line for anyone carrying excess body fat that just won’t shift is that some subconscious part of them wants the excess weight. The body-brain does not judge excess adipose tissue (body fat) as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it simply stores the amount it believes is necessary to keep its human alive and safe. The body-brain considers any attempts to get rid of this so-called excess fat as an attack on its human’s survival and will fight every step of the way to keep the weight on the body. To do so, the body-brain has a powerful arsenal of weapons at its disposal. It can slow your metabolism, trigger powerful cravings, switch off your fat burning and switch on your muscle burning processes, silence your satiety signals, and make you feel like you have no energy.
So eat all the grapefruit and do all the Zumba classes you like, it won’t make any difference to your weight in the long term if that subconscious part of you sees a benefit in having the extra body fat. Even if you have your excess fat surgically removed, your body-brain will simply replace it over time as long as it still perceives a benefit in having this weight.
What’s the secret then? The critical key is to deal with the reasons why your body-brain believes the extra weight is protecting or helping you. Once the body-brain no longer has a use for the weight, it will change your body chemistry to melt it all away. Instead of going into battle with the body as though it’s some kind of enemy determined to keep us stuck in a fat prison, we need to work in partnership with the body-brain and realise that everything our body-brain does for us is out of unconditional love.
How To Heal Your Weight explains how the latest scientific research shows that the mainstream belief in ‘calories in calories out’ is woefully, laughably flawed as an approach to sustainable weight-loss. In fact, this approach is well on its way to being seen as the Flat Earth theory of the 20th Century.
For about 50 years, the weight-loss industry has insisted that the only way to be svelte and healthy was to reduce calories and fat consumption and increase exercise. Anyone born from the 1960s onwards has been indoctrinated with this flawed theory and as a result millions of people have wasted decades of their life trying and failing to achieve their ideal body. As individuals and collectively, we have paid an enormous price for this misinformation. Billions of dollars spent on gadgets, books, memberships, ‘lite’ food products, coaching, surgery and more but the unseen cost has been psychological. Year after year of feeling like a failure and having this message reinforced with every failed diet, with every glance in the mirror, with every tweak from tight clothing… all resulting in a slide into lethargy, despair and depression.
As it’s primarily women who have been obsessed with their weight and body image, it becomes a feminist issue as body and fat shaming is turned into a weapon of female oppression and control. How much human potential has been wasted? How many women would have soared and positively contributed to the world if not so much of their time and energy had not been given over to hating their thighs, upper arms and bellies? If their self worth had not been eroded by the idea that something was inherently ‘wrong’ with them?
How To Heal Your Weight shows how there is not one cookie-cutter approach to permanent, sustainable and effortless weight-loss. Different bodies respond differently to the same thing. Just as some people can die from eating a single peanut, other people thrive on the nutrition provided by nuts. Happily, with muscle testing and pendulum dowsing, it is possible for each person to discover what suits their needs – and what does not. Then, using tools such as EFT Tapping, writing exercises and visualisations, it’s possible to shift, clear and remove the beliefs and programmes that are keeping the excess weight in place.
How To Heal Your Weight is divided up into five sections, four of which focus in turn on the emotional, mental, physical and spiritual aspects of healing the issues manifesting as excess weight. Guidance channelled from spirit is weaved throughout the book. Each of the four parts includes four steps for finding and clearing beliefs, programmes and patterns that are keeping weight in place.
The introduction to the book tells my personal story as well as debunks the myth of a low calorie and low fat approach to weight-loss.
The book also explores how the global obesity crisis reflects a broader crisis of spirituality within the human collective. How our disconnection from our true spiritual selves is reflected in the rise of obesity and so-called lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. We have become disconnected from Mother Earth and rejected her natural rhythms, kidding ourselves that we are not part of this planet and its cycles. We have become disconnected from Source Energy and so we look for happiness and purpose in the accumulation of material things and the feeding of insatiable appetites to fill the holes or numb the pain we have inside.
PART ONE: THE BIG FAT TRAP
Chapter one: A fat girl’s tale
My personal story of misery, obesity, dieting failure, thyroid dysfunction, and metabolic resistance before understanding that success lay in shifting the focus from mouth to mind.
Chapter two: The diet industry’s epic fail
A look at how the diet industry’s profits have skyrocketed in line with the rise in global obesity rates in the last 50 years.
Chapter three: How dieting makes you fatter
The sciencey bit that explains what scientists are now admitting - that low calorie and low fat dieting is a sure-fire way to put your body into fat storage mode. ‘Calories in calories out’ is on its way to being seen as the flat earth theory of the 20th Century.
Chapter four: Your subconscious wants the weight
If you’re carrying excess fat on your body, it’s because your subconscious mind has really good reasons for keeping it there and it will fight tooth and nail to hold onto it. Contrary to popular belief amongst dieters, your body-brain is fighting your efforts to release the weight because it loves you and believes keeping this weight is in your best interests. Your body-brain does not see the excess adipose as a problem; it sees it as the solution to a problem. It sees this weight as essential for your safe navigation of the environment you now live in - both the internal and external environment. The harder you try and cut calories, the harder the body-brain will fight back. The question therefore is; what problem is the weight solving?
Channelled guidance: The scuba diver
Guidance from Spirit on how the body-brain views adipose tissue and its role in our lives.
Chapter five: Your body is a barometer to your soul
Our physical self is a mirror for our psychological self. This chapter offers an explanation of how everything that manifests in our physical reality - including our body fat - has its roots in our energetic bodies. We are spiritual beings experiencing ourselves in this physical Earth plane and as such our traumas, fears, limiting beliefs, anxieties, and programmes, are written on our bodies in illness, health, aches and pains, rashes, disease, dysfunction, behaviours, gestures, facial expressions, clothing choices, hairstyles and so much more.
Channelled guidance: The language of body fat
Guidance from Spirit on how the body communicates with us and expresses for us in every moment.
Chapter six: The weight of the world
How does the rise in global obesity and the childhood obesity epidemic fit with the theory that physical weight has its roots in our mental and emotional energy bodies? Both individually and collectively, we are out of alignment with who we really are and out of harmony with the rhythms of Mother Earth, this condition is being expressed through a range of physical and mental dis-ease epidemics from diabesity to dementia. This chapter looks at the connection between individual and collective consciousness, how our disconnection from our spiritual and natural selves on both an individual and a species level is contributing to the many forms of pain and suffering now manifesting on Earth.
PART TWO: EMOTIONAL HEALING
Chapter seven: Unpack your emotional fat baggage
Self-blame, self-loathing and self-criticism is never, ever, the path to self love, self acceptance and happiness. This chapter explains that if the desired outcome is loving and accepting oneself and being happy in one’s skin, then constantly telling yourself that your body is unacceptable will never get you there. Following on are the steps to start changing the default setting of internal criticism
Step 1: Put down the self-blame whip
Before you can get on the right path, you need to stop going in the wrong direction and back the truck up from dead-end dieting alley. So, pull hard on the reins of dieting, self-loathing and criticism and stop that horse in its tracks. This first step involves being truthful about your feelings and fears now so this part includes tapping meditations such as ‘I hate being this fat’ and ‘I don’t know how to stop criticising and judging myself’.
Step 2: Break the dieting addiction
For people who’ve been on diets for decades, it is almost impossible to imagine living life without operating through the dieting filter. Dieting is a form of self-abuse and dieters cannot imagine how to just eat without angsting about calories, fat grams, carbs and portion sizes. They cannot imagine not having constant cravings. Or ever-present guilt about the cravings. Worse though, they are terrified that, if they take their foot off the dieting brake, they will be engulfed in a tsunami of fat and end up being lifted out of the house via a crane. To address this, we use tapping meditations such as ‘I’m terrified of gaining weight if I stop dieting’.
Channelled guidance: Stop battling the bulge
Guidance from Spirit on how what we resist, persists. It is a universal law that an on-going battle with excess weight will be met with on-going excess weight.
Step 3: Constant cravings and eating your feelings
From food/fat as a substitute for love to using food/fat as a distraction or an excuse, to using food/fat to suppress pain so we can feel comfortably numb, to using food/fat to feel safe and protected, this chapter is about how we eat our feelings. It will also cover cravings and eating binges. When we crave that chocolate fix or we inhale a bag of cookies even though we’ve just had lunch, it’s not hunger that has possessed us and turned us into sugar fiends so what do we do when those urges hit? We tap it out with a tapping meditation about cravings.
Step 4: Taking off the body fat armour
Food might equate to love for some people but for others it’s a weapon for self-abuse and neglect as well as anger and defiance. For many, it’s both. There can be a rebellion aspect to being fat. Especially for women who’ve grown up being told from every angle that they must be a certain weight and shape in order to be approved of and loved and therefore offered the security of marriage and a place in society. This is the ‘screw you’ aspect to excess weight. As soon as someone says ‘you shouldn’t eat that’ or ‘you’re not allowed to eat that’, the impulse to eat whatever it is becomes overwhelming. This is one of the ways that sneaking food and secret eating habits can form. Tapping meditations and exercises include ‘Food as a weapon’, ‘Clearing hurtful comments’, and ‘I’m sick of weighting/waiting’.
PART THREE: MENTAL HEALING
Channelled guidance: Weight is never about weight
Guidance from Spirit on how when we are not comfortable in our own skin we therefore create the excess fat as a reason to be uncomfortable in our body.
Chapter eight: Introducing the fab fat four! Beliefs, Events, Emotions, and Benefits
When it comes to healing and transforming your life, the four foundation stones are Beliefs, Events, Emotions, and Benefits. In other words, the BEEBs. The limiting beliefs and programmes that are buried in our subconscious profoundly shape our lives. Most of these are formed between the ages of zero to seven years old when our brains are in Theta and act like sponges, soaking up everything around us to form the structure of our life and experience. These Beliefs can be formed by Events (for example, being beaten by our mothers, abandoned by our fathers, or receiving extra attention and care whilst in hospital) and they have Emotions entwined with them (anger, hopelessness, despair, fear…) and there is always a Benefit to holding onto these Beliefs - even if it’s a dysfunctional Benefit such as being ill to get more attention.
There are hundreds of thousands of subconscious beliefs that can result in excess body fat. These root beliefs operating in your subconscious can be anything from: ‘Being fat protects me from sexual abuse...’ to ‘I’ll never be happy until I lose weight so I will never lose weight because it’s not safe to be happy’ or ‘I need to punish myself’... and the list goes on.
What do you do? The crucial, life-transforming key is finding the bottom beliefs, also called core or root beliefs, and replacing them with beliefs that do support what you want in life. This chapter will teach the reader how to dig for the bottom beliefs that are keeping their weight in place. It will include a series of questions aimed at helping the reader zone in on some of the causal roots for their excess weight and start thinking about their weight from a different perspective. For example, ‘what was happening in your life when you started gaining the weight?’ and ‘who first told you that you were overweight?’
Step 5: What happened? Healing the past
In this chapter, we pin down some of the events and traumas, as well as the people associated with these events, which are contributing to the excess weight. For example, a very common one is abuse of some kind, this can be sexual, physical, emotional, mental or a combination of them. This step includes tapping meditations such as ‘This thing that happened’, ‘Forgiving someone who doesn’t deserve it’ and ‘Feeling worth less as a woman’.
Step 6: Feel it to heal it
All events and traumas - minor to major - from the past have emotions attached to them and it’s these emotions that can hold the trauma frozen in the body. To truly process and release the event, the emotions must be allowed an outlet of expression. If we continue to deny or suppress our emotions around a past event, they will fester and eventually express themselves in some other way, for example, via illness. This step includes tapping meditations aimed at finding, feeling and releasing suppressed emotion. Releasing our emotional weight releases its manifestation in the physical.
Step 7: How does being fat serve you?
This step teaches someone how to better understand how they’re benefitting - albeit in a dysfunctional way - from holding onto excess weight. Then we explore how to keep the benefit without needing to manifest the excess weight. Exercises include tapping meditations called ‘It’s not safe to be happy’, ‘releasing resentment’, ‘It’s not safe to be sexy’ as well as a cleansing visualisation.
Step 8: 111 limiting beliefs to muscle test or dowse
This step teaches the reader how to dowse with a pendulum as well as with their body in order to check the list for beliefs they hold at a subconscious level that are contributing to excess weight. It also offers a tapping meditation template for uprooting these beliefs and replacing them with positive ones.
PART FOUR: PHYSICAL HEALING
Chapter nine: Undoing the diet damage (aka A Bittersweet Hormonal Symphony)
Years and years of on-going yo-yo dieting can do a huge amount of damage to the body’s systems. Like a dieting domino effect, when someone reduces their calories for a few days in a row, the body perceives a threat and fires its ‘save the fat’ missiles via activating the famine response. It lowers metabolism, burns muscle for fuel to preserve fat, and triggers cravings for high carb and high fat foods that can be as strong as those for an alcoholic or a drug addict. Your brain silences satiety signals, and slows down functions like digestion and defecation - in other words, you’re constipated and lethargic, you develop food intolerances and digestive issues. The body is flooded with stress hormones, you feel anxious, you get mood swings, you can’t get to sleep at night and then you can’t get up in the morning, and your organs struggle to process all the sugar, adrenalin and cortisol. Meanwhile, the body jealously guards all your fat cells and grabs as much more as it can the moment you weaken and have that muffin or cookie. Your body-brain is now set to ‘store fat at all costs’ and over time your metabolic system runs on slow motion, your hair thins, your skin dries out, your memory declines, and you feel generally permanently lacklustre - after a while you think that feeling this way is ‘normal’ or you put it down to ageing. This chapter takes you through the steps to reversing this hormonal nightmare.
Step 9: Sugarholics Anonymous
A look at how sugar addiction develops and how it affects the reward centres of the brain as well as the catastrophic effect that processed sugar consumption has on the body.
Step 10: Reverse leptin and insulin resistance
This step looks at how you’ve dieted yourself into a state of metabolic resistance to weight-loss and how to switch this off. It explains the role of leptin and insulin and how bringing leptin levels back to normal means the body-brain can then ‘see’ how much fat is on the body. When the body-brain is insensitive to leptin signals, it is basically ‘blind’ to the amount of fat stored on the body and even if someone is carrying 100kgs of excess fat - the body-brain can’t ‘see’ it and so does nothing to release it.
Step 11: Heal your thyroid
Thyroid function is a critical part of the equation and for women who have even a mildly underactive thyroid it is virtually impossible to lose weight without healing their thyroid function. It also considers the connection of the thyroid to the throat chakra - there are eight women with a thyroid disorder for every one man, could this reflect the silencing of women’s voices in most societies? This step looks at the physical and energetic healing of the thyroid and includes the impact of toxins and heavy metals, sugar, gluten, dairy and trans fats, as well as the power of whole foods from turmeric to kale, garlic and oily fish, to name but a few. A number of dowsing charts can be used including charts to dowse for which heavy metals may be impacting the thyroid and detox solutions.
Step 12: Reducing stress and inflammation
How ongoing low-grade stress effects body fat through the flight-fight-freeze response as well as by causing inflammation in the body. This step offers exercises and tapping meditations to release the stress.
PART FIVE: SPIRITUAL HEALING
Chapter 10: Dieting, disconnection and domination
This chapter zooms out to take a broader view of the obesity epidemics now raging through the developed or western world. It looks at these so-called ‘lifestyle diseases’ as the result of our disconnection from our true spiritual selves on both an individual and collective level. It looks at the how this myth that we are separate from each other, from the planet, from Spirit has manifested as profound abuse of Mother Earth as well as ourselves.
Somewhere along the way, many of us have bought into the lie of separation. We’ve swallowed the idea that we are just individual bags of flesh and bone whose purpose is to consume.
Rather than seeing ourselves as part of the Earth and intrinsically connected to her seasons, cycles and rhythms, this ‘I am separate’ mind-set causes us to behave toward the natural world as if we are not connected to it, as if it is something to own, use, and dominate, resulting in unlimited resource extraction, pollution of our environment, degradation of our food and water, climate change, the extinction of species, and more.
It is a mind-set that has allowed everything from slavery to colonisation, capitalism, and environmental destruction to flourish.
It is too easy to point the finger. We are quick to blame evil multinationals, greedy politicians and powerful media interests. We blame the oil and gas industry, the fossil fuel industry, the sugar, tobacco and pharmaceutical corporations, the banks, the white-collar criminals, the organised crime syndicates, and more.
These entities could not exist though if we were not complicit in some way. We hand over our power to them. They thrive in an environment of fear, division, despair, and judgement. We cannot love, respect and honour the Earth if we don’t love and honour ourselves. When we poison our own bodies with junk food, cigarettes, alcohol and drugs, we do so to drown out the emotional and spiritual pain of feeling powerless and disconnected.
When we pollute our minds with fear-based news, tabloid gossip, online gambling or porn, we are feeding the ‘us and them’ and ‘I am separate’ lie. Thankfully, there is another way to live. The first step is owning the situation at both the micro as well as the macro level because the way we treat our world reflects the way we treat ourselves. We need new answers and new solutions. We need reconnection with Mother Earth and Spirit. We are drowning in more information than ever before when what we most need now is wisdom. The answer then is to reconnect. Reconnect with each other and with the cycles of the Earth including the movement of weather conditions, and plant and animal behaviour. Most of all though, we must reconnect with our true selves and the spirit that resides in all of us.
When we understand that we are all connected, then it is difficult to be stingy with our love and care for others, because we are all part of that abundance. In living the balance of our connection to people, earth, and spirit, life will renew and renew and renew. The power to create happiness and joy is in each of us. It is individually ours and it is ours collectively.
Step 13: Food vibration and blessings
If everything is energy (and it is) then the energy of what you put in your body has profound consequences - this includes both food for the body and thoughts for the mind. This step involves the significance of giving thanks for the nourishment provided by Mother Earth, understanding how the energy imprints of others effects our food, as well as understanding how the energy of sunlight in our food nourishes us and how food grown by hand in nature differs so dramatically from food grown in an artificial environment that is harvested by machines. It also considers the thought forms we are imprinting on our food just as we eat it, for example, ‘I know this will make me fat but…’ or ‘I’m breaking the rules by eating this…’. An exercise is offered in how to energetically clear food of negative energies and bless it with positive energies.
Step 14: Genes, ancestors and past lives
This step looks at how to clear your DNA of ancestral famine or past life experiences that may be contributing to a strong famine response in this life. For example, if your great great grandmother starved during the Irish potato famine, this experience and fear of starvation may be written in your genetic coding, making you more susceptible to holding excess weight. Ironically, it is dieting that can trigger this dormant coding - the act of reducing calories raises the internal alarm of famine.
Step 15: Nourish your soul
Ultimately, the only path is unconditional love. Emotions are energy in motion and excess fat represents stuck energy and stuck emotions. In which areas of your life do you feel stuck? How do you nourish your soul? Where do you deny yourself pleasure? It is now your job to find what it is that lifts your spirit and fulfils your heart. Exercises include inspired or automatic writing and vision boarding. Tapping meditation: ‘I know what it feels like to honour, love, appreciate and respect myself’.
Step 16: Step fully into your Divinity
When we step fully into the power of who we really are and experience our oneness with All That Is, this profound shift of consciousness is reflected on our physicality. We understand the awesome and infinite power of the intelligent consciousness that runs this universe and that we are part of this consciousness. This infinite divine force is flowing through us and is available to us at any time. It is we who have chosen to believe the myth of disconnection and turned off the tap of this consciousness. Tapping meditation: ‘I know what it feels like to be unconditionally loved by Divine Source’.
How To Heal Your Weight is best suited for and will be purchased by women aged 35-65 who have grown up in the age of the diet cult and who have become disillusioned with its punitive message. Many of these women will already be on a spiritual path and so understand the concepts of energy, manifestation, and law of attraction. They will be familiar with the idea that we create our reality with our thoughts. Many of these women will have been exposed to some form of alternative healing modality be it hypnotherapy, EFT Tapping, acupuncture, Reiki, or angel healing while others will have a more advanced spiritual practise. Perhaps they are students of A Course In Miracles, Abraham Hicks, or The Seth Material.
In addition to this core group, How To Heal Your Weight will also appeal to various sub groups:
1. THE SILVER SLIMMERS
Aged 50 to 75, this is the massive army of women who’ve spent decades going from Weight Watchers to Jenny Craig, Slimming World, the Atkins Diet… and more. They did aerobics to Jane Fonda back in the 80s and now they’re doing Pilates. Women like my 74-year-old mother who has been on a diet for 60 years to lose that “last few kilos”. They’ve had the ‘low calorie, low fat, more willpower, more exercise’ mantra hammered into them so deeply it’s engrained in their thoughts and decisions throughout the day every day and has impacted their self-esteem and self-belief. Like my mother, their tag phrases include ‘I don’t understand why I haven’t lost weight, I’ve been so good this week…’ and ‘I’ve ruined my diet today so I’m going to eat nothing else for the rest of the day…’ along with ‘I’ve ruined my diet today so I may as well eat the rest of that cake and start again in the morning…’
2. THE DISPIRITED DAUGHTERS
Aged 30 to 50, this is the other massive army of women who grew up immersed in the diet culture of their mothers. These daughters absorbed the rules of the dieting cult through learnt behaviour from their mothers as well as the messages of mainstream culture regarding women and body image and now also have these patterns engrained. Like their mothers, these women have gone through the same ‘round the houses’ route of diet after failed diet. They’ve tried Paleo, ketogenic, and FODMAPS. They’ve gone raw, vegan, pegan, and paleovedic, they’ve quit sugar and they know what gut microbiome is. They’ve given up gluten and dairy but nothing gets the results they desire. Then they berate themselves when they ‘fall off the wagon’ or when they manage to lose some weight but it comes back again. Or they manage to keep their weight in a manageable zone but they obsess about this day in day out.
3. THE LIFELONG MORBIDLY OBESE
This is the group of people that break my heart and who I am especially motivated to offer an alternative or complementary solution. This group of people are truly imprisoned and whose lives have been ruined to some extent by the crippling cage of fat within which they exist. They are on the waiting list to have some sort of bariatric surgery in the desperate hope that it is their last chance to have some kind of normal life. (In the UK, this surgery has skyrocketed 600 per cent in a decade. In 2016, the NHS carried out 6,500 weight-loss surgeries, which is up from 1,000 cases in 2006. Eighty per cent of patients are women.) They carry deep self-hatred, shame and despair as well as profound trauma from the past. They are in constant physical and emotional pain, they feel hopeless and even suicidal at the idea of living the rest of their lives in this way. They are profoundly wounded people who, rather than being offered love and compassion, are being still being told that that the answer is extremely dangerous and invasive surgery along with a low calorie liquid-only regime of slimming shakes. Society’s message to them is that they should be ashamed of themselves for their weakness, that all they need to do is eat less, and they should be ashamed of themselves for not managing that. These people often have chronic ailments such as hypothyroidism and PCOS. Just to be clear, I am not anti-bariatric surgery, I have three close friends and two cousins who have had this procedure and another close friend scheduled to have it. Long-term results vary though and I believe that it needs to be complemented with a mind-body-spirit approach if it is to be offer a permanent solution.
4. THE WELLNESS ARMY
This includes the hipsters, the vegans, the yogis, the psychologists, life coaches, EFT Tappers, the gym bunnies, the environment activists… people who inhale every piece of new information about health, wellness and fitness. They’re the ones who subscribe to daily emails from MindBodyGreen.com and avidly follow wellness teachers like Kris Carr, Mark Hyman and medical medium Anthony William. This group chant affirmations, drink kale smoothies, eat chia seed pudding, do sun salutations and practise mindfulness but you’d be surprised at how many also have an ongoing low grade anxiety about their weight. Many are recovering from eating disorders and they understand that there’s a connection between the mind, body and spirit and are eager to learn more about it both for their own benefit and for their clients. From people like Jon Gabriel, they have already been exposed to the idea that the ‘calories and willpower’ approach to weight-loss not only doesn’t work but actually makes you fatter and they are hungry for more of this more ground-breaking and empowering information.
5. THE SPIRITUAL SEEKERS
Just because you’re a lightworker doesn’t mean you’re not keen to be slimmer. The spiritual community has embraced the idea of receiving guidance and help from Spirit. They understand that we are all spiritual beings having a human experience and they already use spiritual principles to change what’s manifesting in their physical reality. They see the connection between the massive rise in global sugar consumption and global rates of diabesity with the rise in consumerism and disconnection from the natural world. They also angst about the damage being done to the planet by the human species’ insane pillaging of natural resources and creation of toxins. They are looking for a way to connect the dots between individual suffering and the collective experience. They already accept that excess weight is emotional pain and limiting beliefs made manifest but they’re not sure how to uproot the particular issues that are keeping their weight in place. Plus, like everyone in the western world, they’ve been so well indoctrinated with the message of the diet culture that they still fall back at times on this self-judgement ‘just eat less’ type of thinking.
6. OBESE CHILDREN
Childhood obesity is a global epidemic and it is the mothers and fathers of obese children who are searching high and low for something to help their children (and often themselves). They will buy this book because they are open to anything that offers a glimpse of hope for their child. It causes the parents great distress to see their child suffering, they’ve tried everything they’ve been advised to do without significant results so, with the mainstream options exhausted, they’re willing to consider an alternative approach.
7. THE AUTO-IMMUNE ARMY
The widespread issue of thyroid dysfunction is gaining massive coverage now in alternative healing and allopathic medicine circles. It’s becoming more accepted that millions of people, mostly women, have been suffering for decades with undiagnosed auto-immune and thyroid issues due to the inability of modern medicine to recognise these subclinical conditions. I am one of these women and when it comes to weight loss, correcting thyroid dysfunction is a crucial part of the puzzle. However, unlike the western medical profession, I do not believe that an under active thyroid, even one caused by a defective gene, cannot be successfully managed and without medication.
How To Heal Your Weight will be shared via seminars, face-to-face groups, online groups, workbooks, webinars, and the internet (social media).
I will leverage all the platforms and influential contacts I have made in the last 25 years from working in mainstream media in the UK, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. These contacts include journalists, writers and editors across a range of media in these countries as well as owners and managers of wellness centres, and a large network of healers and therapists. Many of my media friends and former colleagues now hold influential media positions in London, New York, Sydney, Dubai and New Zealand. Most of whom are in the world of women’s print and online titles, which is my target market. I would of course be taking hold of every string to which I have access and giving them all a good yank.
Back to the present day, I have a website called howtohealyourweight.com and I have my own website at tamarapitelen.com. I will blog, offer workshops and webinars, as well as seek out speaking opportunities. I have recently started and will continue to launch related online courses via platforms such as Thinkific and Udemy and then seek out wellpreneur friends with large email lists to be affiliates.
Through my experience of having launched and run Awakenings Middle East magazine for four years in Dubai, I understand the basics of building a platform. I built the Awakenings Facebook page to 10,000 real-not-paid-for followers by the time I handed the business over. I also had an associated MeetUp group to run monthly offline coffee mornings and events, which were very popular.
In addition to platform building via social media and the website, I will do what I’ve been doing throughout my career, which is pitching and writing stories for other media channels, magazines and newspapers. I will also hire a PR agency for launch promotion.
Ultimately, I would like to see online and offline Heal Your Weight support groups spring up anywhere and everywhere in the world that use the 16 steps in the book to offer guidance and help to people still stuck in the dieting trap and feeling helpless about how to shift their lives. I would like to run an online Insiders Club and would also like to host week-long retreats and ongoing programmes.
To this end, I will create an online community with a free monthly webinar including meditations and healing. Each month a new webinar topic will be advertised via Facebook ads, Twitter and newsletters. The monthly webinar will become an international platform to grow my tribe.
I will also launch a bimonthly vlog offering plus practical exercises such as Tapping or dowsing to clear blocks to releasing excess weight. Such topics will include: Kill those cravings; What are you weighting for?; What are you really hungry for?; Clear ancestral famine in your DNA; How to love yourself when you loathe your fat; How to stop dieting when you’re terrified of ballooning; Am I a glutton or is it my thyroid?; Reversing leptin resistance… and more.
Currently I have a free eBook on my howtohealyourweight.com website as an incentive to new newsletters subscribers, the eBook is called Five Beliefs Keeping You Fat And How To Clear Them, which is also for sale on Amazon.com. The newsletter list is at about 200.
How To Heal Your Weight offers a spiritual, emotional, mental and physical solution to weight loss. The premise is that if you are holding onto excess body fat then your body-mind has valid reasons for having it there and will fight every effort to remove it with tools that are infinitely more powerful than willpower and calorie regulation. The key is in uncovering and uprooting the many beliefs, benefits, patterns, fears and traumas that are holding the weight in place. When the body-mind no longer perceives a benefit in keeping the weight, it will reset the body’s chemistry and hormonal dynamics to release it all as quickly and effortlessly as possible.
How To Heal Your Weight would fit well in the Self Help, Weight Control, Personal Development, Alternative Healing, Complementary Medicine, and New Age bookstore categories such as the books listed below.
1. The Gabriel Method: The Revolutionary Diet-Free Way to Totally Transform Your Body by Jon Gabriel (2009)
The Gabriel Method is an international best seller that’s been translated into 14 languages and is available in 60 countries. Jon Gabriel himself and his book has been featured widely in the media for both his incredible weight loss story and for his success in helping others lose weight.
A wonderful book, The Gabriel Method is a “mind-body approach to permanent, sustainable weight-loss” and is based on Jon’s experience of losing 220 pounds without restrictive dieting but instead focusing on adjusting his body chemistry and releasing the reasons his body had for keeping the weight. That initial book has birthed numerous spin-off products such as the Fit Kids Revolution, online courses, one-on-one coaching, recipe books, and visualisation meditation CDs. I could not agree more with Jon’s approach and have huge admiration for the work he is doing.
How To Heal Your Weight moves in the same circles as The Gabriel Method but goes further with the spiritual aspects of weight loss as well as with tools for uprooting and clearing the subconscious reasons for the weight. How To Heal Your Weight makes the connection between our actions and thoughts as individuals with what we are seeing happening in our world on a macro level. How To Heal Your Weight explores the impact of past lives and ancestral influences. It asks the reader to consider dieting as a form of bullying and abuse directed at the self and wonders if we were kinder to ourselves, whether we would see this kindness reflected in our external world? If that’s not a reason to give up dieting and self shame I don’t know what is.
2. A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever by Marianne Williamson (2010)
Marianne Williamson looks at weight loss from a spiritual perspective and, as a long-term student of A Course In Miracles, this book is based on its principles. Marianne writes, “weight that disappears from your body but not from your soul is simply recycling outward for a while but is almost certain to return” and I could not agree more.
In her book, Marianne offers 21 lessons that can be done separately or in conjunction with any other serious spiritual path. These lessons have nothing to do with diet or exercise and the promise is that they will retrain the reader’s consciousness in the area of weight in order to break the cycle of over-eating, dieting, and shame that rules so many lives.
As with the method of Jon Gabriel, I am a huge admirer of Marianne Williamson and completely advocate her approach and her perspective on weight. However I believe that, as we live in this 3D physical reality, a holistic approach to weight requires guidance at a physical level as well as the spiritual, emotional and mental levels.
How To Heal Your Weight also involves a series of 16 steps and lessons that gently leads the reader out of the diet culture trap and into a kinder and more profound understanding of their weight and what it reflects about themselves and their lives. It also addresses some of the more practical questions that ‘recovering dieters’ have, such as ‘but what do I actually eat?’ and what to do if you have very real physical issues impacting weight such as hypothyroidism, food intolerances and leptin-resistance.
3. The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss and Body Confidence: A Woman's Guide to Stressing Less, Weighing Less and Loving More by Jessica Ortner (2014)
Producer of the successful documentary on meridian tapping, The Tapping Solution, Jessica Ortner advises using EFT tapping to help tackle the stress that leads to weight gain. Her book relates her own struggles with weight loss, along with success stories from women with whom she's worked. Jessica walks readers through the process of discovering their personal power and self-worth. Her programme is based on research into tapping and the hormones involved in stress and weight gain. As well it covers the emotional aspects of over-eating and cravings, how to find joy in exercise, the power of pleasure, and how our families and friends may inadvertently add to the problem. I love the work of Jessica and her brother Nick Ortner and I think Tapping is a powerful self-healing tool. In How To Heal Your Weight, I also offer many tapping scripts as well as an explanation of how this modality can be used to address the underlying limiting beliefs that keep excess weight in place. My approach to Tapping, though, spans a broader range of subject matter and introduces the reader to a deeper understanding of how everything is connected at an energetic level. Tapping is a wonderful tool but I believe it is even more empowering as part of a larger self-healing tool kit that includes visualisation, creative writing and inner guidance, but most effective for finding limiting beliefs is muscle testing and in How To Heal Your Weight I offer several DIY muscle testing methods.
4. Thyroid Healing: The Truth behind Hashimoto's, Graves', Insomnia, Hypothyroidism, Thyroid Nodules & Epstein-Barr by Anthony William aka the Medical Medium (2017)
Anthony’s book was already a bestseller based on pre-launch sales. I am one of those who bought the book pre-launch and I have read his previous bestseller Medical Medium, which is excellent.
In his latest book, Anthony promises that, “I share the true reason you’re still suffering with thyroid symptoms and illnesses, and it’s not because you have a faulty thyroid, autoimmune disease, hormonal problems, or a lot in life as a woman to experience hot flashes, thinning hair, weight gain, and other so-called menopausal symptoms.”
All of Anthony’s advice is provided through his connection to Spirit.
Currently, some of the buzzwords in the healing world are ‘autoimmune diseases’ and ‘thyroid disorder’. It seems that millions of people, particularly women, suffer from undiagnosed subclinical thyroid issues, which are severely impacting life quality and health in a number of ways. I was one of these women and healing my thyroid was a cornerstone in healing my weight. However this was no easy task and there is a huge amount of misinformation. In How To Heal Your Weight, I outline how I healed my thyroid naturally and without having to spend my life on pharmaceuticals. I believe this is a crucial part of the weight-loss resistance conundrum.
After decades of failed dieting and self-criticism, journalist Tamara Pitelen finally found the way out of depressing diet prison by uprooting the subconscious reasons she had for keeping the weight.
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INTRODUCTION
Are you ready to break free from diet prison?
Are you ready to finally get to the bottom of your struggle with your weight?
Are you open to the possibility that the ‘advice’ you got to “just eat less and exercise more” is horribly missing the point?
Are you ready to break the dieting cycle of self-blame, self-shame, self-punishment, deprivation and general misery that comes with it? Not to mention failure.
I was on that miserable hamster wheel for decades, I’ll tell you my story in the next chapter but the gist of it is that you been sold a lie, my beautiful friend. Diets not only don’t work – they are a sure-fire way to get fatter, sicker and crazy obsessive! (Oh yeah, I’ve got that t-shirt…)
So if you’re ready to let that calorie-counting nonsense go and uncover the spiritual, emotional, and mental solution to your physical issue of excess weight, let’s do it.
It's going to be a wild ride but I'm here to hold your hand and I'm here to tell you that you've done your time in what I like to call the Guantanamo Bay of Calorie Counting. It's time to walk free.
The boiled down gist of this book is that if you're carrying excess body fat, it's because a subconscious part of you wants it there. Badly wants it there. And it will fight hard and fight clever to keep it there because it is doing this to protect you in some way.
This subconscious part of you has very good reasons for keeping this extra fat padding on your body. In fact, this deep-down-well-hidden part of you believes it's doing this for your own good. So you can count your calories and tot up your carb grams till the cows come home but you're not going to permanently shift this fat unless your subconscious mind decides the weight is surplus to requirements.
So what do you do? To change your body, you must first change your mind.
Healing your weight obsession is about taking on a radically new way of looking at health and wellness. It's the idea that everything - absolutely everything - is profoundly connected.
Your entire body, and all the core systems within it, interact as a single sophisticated symphony. You're one whole person and all the pieces of your biology and your unique genetic code, interact with your environment to determine how sick or well, fat or thin, you are in this moment.
The body is a whole dynamic integrated living organism where every part affects every other part and everything's irrevocably intertwined.
Your weight 'problem' does not exist in isolation to the rest of your body, brain, life, environment, and ancestral lineage. So it cannot be successfully tackled by only focusing on the physical aspect, namely food consumption and exercise.
Your body and mind are connected. What you do to one, has enormous impact on the other. What you do to your body, you do to your brain, and what happens in the brain impacts the body.
We know that our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, traumas, life experiences directly impact our biology. We know that stress and other psychological factors have a major impact on our health. We now know that 95 per cent of illness is either caused by or worsened by stress. What you think can influence how sick or well you are – the mind influences the body. This is known as mind-body medicine.
Successfully and permanently shedding this excess body fat is about uncovering all your various and valid subconscious reasons for holding onto it and transforming them. Those subconscious reasons are rooted in your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual bodies. They are written on your core, genetic, history and soul levels.
It's only by accessing the different layers of your subconscious self that true transformation and weight liberation can occur. I'll go into very specific detail about how you can do that but this conundrum is actually just the beginning.
What you and I will also explore, as you gently peel back your weight layers, is the connection between the rise of global obesity and our disconnection from our place in the natural world and from ourselves as spiritual beings.
For about three million years or so, our ancestors managed to maintain a normal weight without diet shakes, low fat muesli, calorie counting phone apps, and Zumba classes. Our ancestors knew how to live in harmony with the natural world but we've lost our way. We're out of harmony and disconnected from each other, from nature, from the land, the seas, the animals, the air, the planet, God... and ultimately from ourselves.
We think we are alone and separate and so we behave as though our actions have no impact on the circle of life. We fill the soil with poisons and dump plastic and chemicals into the oceans. Just like the boomerang though, we're now getting whacked in the head by the consequences of our actions. Unfortunately, other species that we share this planet with are also suffering immensely from the consequences of our actions.
The micro is the macro. Everything is connected and our global challenges with the explosion in rates of obesity, and other 'lifestyle' diseases like diabetes and cancer, reflect just how disconnected we've become from our natural selves.
Our ancestors did not need someone to tell them how many grams of protein they should eat at each meal nor how often they should eat. We've now got more information about dieting, food, nutrition, and biology than ever before in history and yet we're collectively fatter than at any time in human history.
I believe this is because addressing obesity with all the focus on food and exercise is akin to manually pulling a dog's tail from side to side to make the dog happy. It works the other way around. Make the dog happy and the tail will wag. The epidemic of obesity and lifestyle diseases is a red herring because the real epidemic is disconnection and separation, isolation, despair, and loneliness. When we get connected back to who we really are and to the rhythms of Mother Earth, and when we find a sense of meaning and purpose, get happy, and release the emotional baggage... then the extra physical weight will resolve itself.
Based on my own research, many years of study, and life-long experimentation on myself, here is what I now believe in a nutshell:
How do you start turning the good ship HMS Fatty around? For a start you need to back the truck up from dead-end diet street and quit with all the beating yourself up that you've been doing for so long.
Instead of criticizing and always finding fault with your body, change the filters through which you are viewing yourself. It's time to start appreciating your incredible body and listening to it in a new way. Time to begin a new and kinder dialogue with your amazing body and brain. It's been trying to get your attention for ages. It's got so much to tell you.
When you start really seeing this suit of flesh and bone that you live in as the miracle it really is, you'll start to support and heal your body so that it is well enough to automatically regulate your weight and you won't have to even think about it.
So dump the diet, change the self-hate record, snap that 'must try harder' whip over your knee and throw it away.
Happiness, health and weight-loss does not come via whipping or criticising yourself nor from punishing yourself with deprivation. So, are you ready to jump off the joyless dieting hamster wheel?
Are you ready to turn your back on the miserable merry-go-round of self-blame, deprivation, punishing exercise regimes, obsession with counting calories, points, grams, yada yada?
Are you ready to hear that the advice you got about 'calories in and calories out' is woefully, laughably flawed and on its way to being seen as the Flat Earth theory of the 20th Century?
Are you willing to consider the possibility that sticking to a traditional calorie controlled diet is actually a sure-fire, can't-fail way to get you fatter in the long run?
Are you ready to take your first steps on a journey of self-love, self-acceptance, and self-exploration so that you can give your incredible body the opportunity to truly heal from a cellular level?
Most importantly, are you ready to put on your 'big girl pants' and do the work to find and release the real, subconscious reasons for your weight issue?
If your answer to these questions is, ‘Gosh darn it, yes I am!' then high five Sista because you've just taken the first step to finally freeing yourself from the prison of the dieting myth and the cycle of self-blame, self-shame, self-punishment, deprivation and general misery that comes with it.
Even if you're not feeling ready yet, that's ok, hear me out and then just mull it over for a while. The diet industry isn't going anywhere. They'll happily welcome you back with open arms if you still think that's the answer for you and if it is I wish you well, I really do.
Or maybe you like some of the ideas in this book but others seem like a load of woo woo talking-to-angels nonsense*. No problem. Take the bits you like and leave the rest.
Before we continue though, I do want to make one thing crystal clear. Right now, exactly as you are in this moment, you are brilliant, courageous, beautiful and inspiring. I see your pain and I see your shame and I see your despair and I see your fear of even daring to hope that this might be a way out of the prison. I see all that because I lived it too. For decades. Let's do this, you beautiful soul...
* Full disclosure: I do talk to angels, spirit guides and other non corporeal or discarnate entities who exist in alternative dimensions. For this book, I channelled information from Spirit through automatic writing, which you will see throughout the book in italics. Or I just have an over-active imagination. You pick whichever you want to believe.
CHAPTER 1: THE FAT GIRL'S TALE
"Weight that disappears from your body but not from your soul is simply recycling outward for a while but is almost certain to return." Marianne Williamson
I was aged just nine when a doctor put me on my first diet.
"You're too heavy for your age," said the doctor. "Let's try putting you on a calorie controlled diet..." and so it began.
It was the late 1970s and the billion dollar dieting industry was just starting to get into full swing. We were all buying into the theories about how low calorie diets and low fat Frankenfoods were the answer to weight loss. 'Fat free' 'low fat' and 'lite' were stamped on everything from sausages to crisps, cake and cola.
On the surface, it seemed to make all the sense in the world - just stop eating fat and you'll stop having fat on your body, we thought. We were all happily chowing down on fat-free cookies, fat-free cereals, fat-free muffins, skimmed milk, zero per cent fat yogurt, and so on. The fat in these foods that had been removed was replaced with sugars and starchy fillers but we thought that was ok back then.
How wrong we were.
If the past 40 hysterical, fat-phobic years have taught us anything it's that such a simplistic view of the human body and metabolism is just wrong.
Fast forward 40 years to today and where has all that calorie counting and zero per cent fat yogurt got us? It's dropkicked us straight into a global obesity crisis that's unprecedented in human history. Despite about three million years of managing our weight without aspartame-sweetened fizzy drinks, it's taken us just 40 years to momentallly screw it all up.
Let's go back for a moment though to that fateful day when the nine-year-old me was walking home with my mum from that doctor's surgery.
My mum had taken me to the doctor because she was worried about my supposedly inexplicable weight gain over the previous few months.
Being fairly obsessed with her own weight, having a fat daughter was simply not acceptable to my mother. I don't mean that she was ashamed of my size (she probably was a little but she'll go to her deathbed denying that, bless her), what I mean is that my mum's main motivation for me losing weight was so that I wouldn't go through the wretched misery that she'd gone through as a young woman who got teased about her weight.
Anyway, as we walked home from the doctor's that day, I remember feeling chastened and a little ashamed. But sitting alongside the shame in my little breast was also a newly formed flicker of hope that this might get be the answer to getting thin.
In my hand I clutched a joyless bit of paper that ordered me to eat half a grapefruit for breakfast, or one thin slice of toast with a scraping of butter, and a cup of tea, ideally black but a small dash of milk would be permitted if absolutely necessary for the weak-willed fatty guzzlers who couldn't manage without it.
This diet allowed me about 1000 calories a day – which was the accepted wisdom in the 1970s. Never mind that I was rapidly growing into a young woman with all sorts of nutritional needs for the development of my brain, my bones, my organs, nervous system and more. Nutrition? Pah! No, that didn't matter in comparison with the holy grail of thinness.
‘Just consume 1000 calories a day,’ the experts told us, ‘and you will lose weight. We guarantee it,’ they said.
'It's that easy, no arguments, it doesn't matter if you're nine years old or 79.'
The subtext of this message was that, if you can't do it, there's something wrong with you – you're lazy/ not trying hard enough / lying about it / in denial / kidding yourself / have no willpower. It was the lie we all bought. Today's massively profitable diet industry was built on that premise.
So what was the result of that low calorie, low fat dieting?
At 19 years old, after 10 years of dieting, I peaked at my heaviest weight, which was about 20kgs (45lbs) more than I weigh today. And I picked up a host of eating disorders and neuroses along the way.
Instead of helping me shift that little bit of excess fat off my nine-year-old body, all that angst and dieting triggered real problems -- physical, mental and emotional. Plus it ignored the real reasons for the extra weight that had so quickly manifested: reasons that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with love and security. I actually dieted myself fatter, sicker and obsessive.
The nine-year-old me could never have foreseen that those first tentative steps into the world of dieting started a journey that was to unfold into decades of deprivation, calorie counting, and punishing exercise regimes. This journey would make me compulsive and miserable and make me feel like a failure. It would trigger a storm of eating disorders, cravings, and binges that led to metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, leptin resistance, famine response, thyroid and hormonal disorders, sluggish metabolism, digestive disorders, lethargy... it was a cascade of knock-on issues that led to more weight gain as well as a load of other conditions that came with the territory of an under-functioning thyroid, such as brittle nails, dry skin, acid reflux, digestive issues, and memory loss.
I didn't know all that back then though. Back then, I put my faith and trust into the medical establishment and the health experts. So I stubbornly and blindly persevered with the low-calorie-low-fat dieting advice because that was the accepted wisdom of the time – and still is in many quarters. 'Eat less and exercise more' was the mantra. 'It can't fail,' we were promised, 'it's all about calories in and calories out, simple maths...' they said. But it's not and it did fail.
Over and over and over again this approach failed to get me the results I wanted. However, instead of blaming the advice, I, like millions of others, blamed myself. Every expert and authority and media platform told us that more dieting and more exercise was the only solution to excess weight so I spent about 35 years following that 'advice'. The promised results obstinately failed to transpire permanently and I kept blaming myself for the failure. Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. By definition, I was insane.
On top of the low calorie and low fat dieting, I also engaged in excessive and rigorous exercise for years and years. I ran marathons, completed triathlons and clocked up thousands of kilometres in my running shoes. I dragged myself out the door in all weathers to pound the pavements almost every day in the name of elusive thinness. I also certified as an aerobics teacher and taught classes at a local gym a few evenings a week on top of my marathon training and my full-time day job – a day job to which I cycled usually via a 7am stop at the gym for 30 to 45 minutes of treadmill running.
Along the way, I also did long distance cycling and once spent three months cycling around a whole country (albeit a smallish one – Ireland). Did I lose weight? No. And I just couldn't understand why the excess weight wouldn't budge.
'What am I doing wrong? What part of the puzzle is missing?' I asked myself for the millionth time. 'How on earth could I even fit more exercise into my life without giving up my job?' And I came back with the usual answer, 'I'm obviously not trying hard enough or I'm doing something wrong...' which is something I hear today from the people that come to me for help with their own weight issues.
In their first session with me, I can just about guarantee that a new client will blame their extra weight on 'needing to try harder' or 'not having enough willpower'. These are all intelligent, hard-working, resourceful and motivated people. These are people who get up at 6am to do a gym class before taking the kids to school and then going to their own workplace. They raise families and hold down demanding jobs. These people are amazing. They just don't see it.
Like them, I was trapped in a vicious cycle of self-blame, self-punishment and self-criticism. I put parts of my life on hold until that glorious day when I would be thin (cue angelic choir singing in delight) - and I was darned if I was going to let myself relax and enjoy life until I was. I was obsessed with my weight, with calories, with what I ate. Ironically, this was why I could never enjoy or appreciate good food because I was always thinking of it terms of guilt and calories.
Every single morning I'd tentatively step on the bathroom scales, praying for the needle to shift downwards and yet no matter how 'good' I'd been the day before, it wouldn't move or it would even show a gain. On the rare occasion when the needle did move downwards, I was rapturous with joy but as sure as the sun sets in the west, it would have pinged back up again in a week or so. And if I ever did just let go and indulge for a celebration such as Christmas Day, I could gain two to three kilograms in a single day.
'It's not fair!" I would cry, wiping away hot tears of despair and frustration and anger because it felt like my body was battling with me every step of the way... and therein lay the clue. My body was battling me every step of the way. Or, more precisely, my subconscious mind was battling with my conscious mind and my body was simply following orders from the vastly more powerful of the two. And this is at the heart of what needs to be addressed.
Before we get into that though, let's just go back for a moment to that doctor's appointment when I was age nine. I was at the doctor's because my mother couldn't figure out why I'd suddenly gained a noticeable amount of weight. It was a mystery!
Then again, maybe it wasn't really such a mystery when you looked at what was going on in my lifes at the time - trauma, divorce, abandonment, bullying, and abuse.
Back in the 1970s and 80s, mainstream western wisdom did not generally make any connection between emotions and the physical body.
Conventional wisdom was that you had emotions on one side and the physical body on the other and never the twain shall meet. In fact, there was still the suggestion that there was something 'wrong' with showing or having emotions. Women had emotions; men did not. And as we all knew in the 1960s and 1970s, men were far superior to women so what they did must be better. Having emotions must be wrong and weak. God must have made some sort of mistake when he gave them to us and we all needed to deny and suppress our emotions as much as possible. The good old British stiff upper lip.
At any rate, no one thought to wonder if the traumatic events and huge upheaval in my young life may have played a part in my rapid weight gain. No, I was simply a greedy little girl, said my doctor. At least that's the impression I got. In fairness to him, he perhaps wasn't so unenlightened and may not have used the word 'greedy'. I just remember feeling humiliated and chastised. Even if the word 'greedy' wasn't actually uttered, it was hovering heavily in the air. The message I heard was that my weight was 'wrong' and it was my own fault. I was doing something wrong, I was lazy and I ate too much. I was unacceptable as I was. I needed to change and I needed more self-control and discipline. That was what little nine-year-old Tammy heard. This made me sad and anxious and ashamed. It also made me determined to follow the rules set out to me in the hope of achieving what was required of me in order to be accepted (and loved) again. I was nothing if not a 'good girl' who craved approval.
But what was really going on? About 18 months before that fateful doctor's appointment to discuss 'weight problem', my parents' marriage had broken up. My father had been unfaithful to my mother. To add insult to injury, the so-called mistress (I don't like that word – it seems to lend legitimacy, even an air of romance, to something squalid and sordid) was a friend of my mother's. Or perhaps that should be ‘frenemy’. Ah yes, long live the sisterhood.
The divorce was messy and vicious and raw. It splintered the hearts and cracked the souls of all concerned. I would hear my mother sobbing alone in her bedroom after Dad had left us. By then, we were living in a small two-bedroom flat down in the city. The large family home with the amazing views at the top of the hill had been sold and the profits divided between my mum and dad so they could start new lives apart.
This new residence was like a geographic symbol of my mother's 'fall' in society.
From being the respectable wife in a loving nuclear family living in a large, new house right at the top of the hill overlooking the city, she'd become a single mother of two living in a little flat down amongst the folk she had viewed from above. It was a rapid and painful tumble. My mother crumbled and for a while her women friends would need to come over in the middle of the night to look after her.
Aged just seven, I didn't have the mental or emotional tools to process that kind of searing pain and anxiety. Emotions that were so palpable, I felt them like a physical ache in my gut.
This is why, flying in the face of logic and reason, children find a way to blame themselves for things like divorce and abuse – it's the only reference they have for making sense of it: 'Bad things happen when I'm bad and good things happen when I'm good so this must be my fault. Daddy isn't here because I was a bad girl and he doesn't love me. I'm not enough...'
And some of these little girls then spend the rest of their lives subconsciously seeking Daddy's love and approval, often from emotionally unavailable or abusive men because they've now been programmed with corrupted beliefs about love such as 'love is abusive', 'I'm unloveable' or 'I must be submissive to get love' and so on.
When they grow up, these girls may wander down the promiscuity road and make themselves sexually available to any male who'd have them, motivated by a jumble of needs including the need to feel desirable, the yearning for something similar to the intimacy of love-making and believing that jumping quickly to the sex act will somehow fast-track an emotional relationship – when in fact it usually does exactly the opposite. (Obviously I'm speaking hypothetically here. I have no personal knowledge of such desperate behaviour. Honest. No, really... this wasn't me at all, heaven forbid! Promiscuous? [cough] How very dare anyone suggest such a thing...)
Ironically, these beautiful little girls often end up staying single for decades or they have a string of unsuccessful pseudo-relationships and they don't know that it's because subconsciously they're holding onto beliefs along the lines of 'men who love me, leave me, so I'd rather stay alone to avoid the hurt...' These types of subconscious beliefs are also the reasons for holding onto extra weight.
My mother's marital split, the bitterness over the profound betrayal and the enormous panic about how she would raise two small children on her own caused my mum to have a nervous breakdown – this was on the back of suffering post-natal depression after giving birth to my younger brother. So it wasn't a huge surprise when she quickly rebounded into a new relationship.
Unfortunately, this new man had his own baggage and it manifested as a tendency towards controlling and domineering behaviour. My mum felt desperate, vulnerable, alone and scared. She didn't know how she'd manage financially or emotionally to raise my brother and me by herself.
Now aged in her 70s, my mother tells me that back then, at the age of 32, she'd felt old and past it, as though no one else would have her. She thought this man was her last chance. Which is so tragically sad because my mother was – and is – beautiful, kind and fiercely intelligent. She would have had her pick of men but her confidence was so crushed at that point, she couldn't see it.
So in that two years, my family crumbled around me, my beloved dad abandoned me (it seemed to me), we moved house three times, I changed schools, and I found myself living with an intimidating man as well as his son, a boy who was four years older than me who never passed up an opportunity to call me a fat, ugly or stupid pig. Usually all three. This boy was going through his own turmoil of course. Like me, his life had also been wrenched apart by his parents' divorce but that doesn't occur to you when you're nine years old and your world has crumbled.
Is there any wonder my emotional pain showed up in my body as excess weight?
At nine years old, you don't have substances like vodka, cigarettes and cocaine to turn to. All you have is cocoa pops, cookies and ice cream. So food became my drug of choice. Over the next few years, I used it to stuff down my misery, I used it to feel loved and I used it to rebel. That's the thing about issues with food misuse and abuse, they're not rational and they're often conflicting. So I would eat to feel better but I would also eat as a form of self harm, and I would eat as an act of defiance and rebellion against the adults telling me I mustn't because I wasn't good enough as I was and I would diet as an attempt to adhere to social mores and expectations.
Yes, it’s complicated.
It was complicated even further because all this trauma, plus the sudden increase in the amount of sugar I was consuming, triggered a defective thyroid gene and then I had a sluggish metabolism thrown into the mix.
Every morning, I would start the day by getting on the bathroom scales because my mum wanted to know that the needle was moving in the right direction. More mornings than not, however, this did not bring happy news and I would start the day gripped by feelings of despair, failure and shame as well as by a determination to make today different because I did not want to be a disappointment to my mum.
'Today I will stick to the diet!' I vowed yet again to myself, God, our cat... before slinking in to the kitchen to break the bad news to Mum and assure her it would be different today. Then I'd work out the lowest calorie breakfast possible – this was often five dry crispbreads or rice crackers, coming in at 30 calories each with another 30 calories spent on milk in my cup of tea. This breakfast feast totaled 180 calories, which left me 820 calories for the rest of the day. I'd dip the crackers in my cup of tea to make them edible. Then the aim would be to eat nothing till I got home from school at 4pm, which is when I could have a ’sensible snack’ of a medium-sized apple and a boiled egg (140 calories).
So maybe for a few days through grim determination, I'd survive on 1000 calories a day – with everything I ate written down and calculated in a notebook. Maybe after the first or second day of a renewed effort, the scales would show a drop of half a kilo or a kilo but then the needle would stay stubbornly still for days. On the fourth or fifth day of semi-starvation, my sensible afternoon snack would blow out into a mini binge.
This regime was the dieting equivalent of hanging by your fingertips on a mountain's ledge. You're hanging on for dear life but you can't keep hold forever. Eventually your fingers slip and you fall like a rock into the canyon below. A binge session takes hold and you find yourself shovelling food into your mouth like an eating robot on auto-pilot. The numbers on the scale fly up. Cue more self-loathing and self-flagellation. You pick yourself up from the canyon floor and climb back up the mountain to hang off the ledge again, promising yourself that this time your fingers won't slip...
Back then I'd never heard of the famine response. I didn't understand that my body-brain had noticed the reduced amounts of fuel and assumed there was a famine situation to get through so, to protect me from perceived starvation, it had triggered cravings and was holding onto every ounce of body fat for dear life, as well as choosing to burning muscle tissue for energy instead of stored fat as I persevered with the self-starvation strategy called a 'diet'.
Over time the bingeing escalated. I fell into a pendulum swing pattern of starve and binge. I would have become bulimic if I could have – believe me, I tried - but despite a number of attempts at sticking my fingers and various kitchen utensils down my throat, I couldn't get that to work. Once my stomach had the food, it wasn't letting it go. The bingeing got crazy as well. It started out with extra pieces of toast and jam or raiding the biscuit tin but at the worst of my bingeing I would shovel tablespoons of butter heaped with sugar into my mouth. First, I would scrape the spoon through the block of butter then use it to scoop a heaped spoon of white sugar from the big bag of sugar Mum kept for baking. Other times I'd spoon the butter into my mouth along with a mound of breakfast cereal.
This was not about enjoying food. This was a type of mental illness and I was self-medicating with food. You don't pull slices of frozen bread out of the freezer, because you’ve polished off the fresh loaf, and chew on the corners out of a love and appreciation for food. Frozen bread is about as edible as cardboard.
Nor do you stand inside the open fridge door with your head back and mouth open to squirt whipped cream from a can directly into the back of your throat. Other times I'd just pile a load of different foods together – whipped cream on a slice of cheese covered with strawberry jam and chocolate sprinkles. I would eat cottage cheese covered in sugar. I was using food as a drug in the same way that a junkie uses heroin.
When a binge kicked in, I became a mindless automaton just pushing food in as fast as possible. The next mouthful was ready to go in before I'd finished chewing the one I had. Although I didn't chew much either. I would swallow as quickly as possible. It was like there were two versions of me and the one that wanted the food was stronger than the me who was already hating herself for having it.
In a way, there were two versions of me. Probably more than two. Subconsciously, I was using food to numb all the emotions I couldn't process. I was also using extra weight to hide behind. I was using it to avoid unwanted sexual attention and mental abuse from the intimidating males I suddenly found myself living with. Men who left piles of pornographic magazines sitting on the coffee table. (How reading Penthouse and Playboy magazines cover to cover as an eight-year-old-girl screwed up my understanding of being a woman is a whole other book).
I was also simply playing out behaviours and attitudes I'd learnt from my mother. She'd always been weight conscious – thanks to her own childhood issues and the cultural messages of the day (here's looking at you Twiggy) - but in the wake of the divorce this became a much bigger monster. During her nervous breakdown, mum survived on coffee and toast, possibly thinking at some level that if only she'd been thinner, my father wouldn't have cheated on her.
But I didn't realise all that at the time. I was an impressionable child of the 70s and 80s. A time when the diet industry was just shifting into top gear as the realization started to sink in about the vast and deep oceans of money that were there for the taking from armies of women who thought there was something wrong with their amazing, incredible bodies because that's what the cultural messages of the day were telling them.
I wasted decades of my life on the flawed information put out by the billion dollar dieting industry. I wasted a lifetime on the dieting and self-blame game. Don't do that, it really sucks.
Those 45lbs of excess body fat cast a long and dark shadow over my whole life and they consumed my every waking moment. I know that there are many people who are battling with much larger amounts of excess weight whilst for others it's a much smaller amount, perhaps that last five pounds that has refused to budge for the last five years. However, the amount of excess fat you're dealing with is not the main concern. What's more of a concern is how this extra weight is impacting your mental health and life quality. Someone with 'just' 10lbs or 4.5kgs to release can be more mentally and emotionally impacted by it than someone who is carrying four times as much excess on their body.
I was obsessed with my weight and with food. While I was growing up, it was all I could think about all of the time. Even when on the surface I was talking about something else, it was always there, this critical self-hate-speak chattering in my head like a background soundtrack stuck in a loop.
This obsession ruined countless special times in my life from celebrations to milestone moments to holidays and travel, it clouded every moment of my life until I worked out how to extricate myself from the tangled emotional and physical mess that is obesity.
What was the turning point? Everything started to slowly shift when I realised my body and mind wanted this extra weight. No, I didn't believe it at first either. Could it really be true that some part of me wanted to keep this extra weight?
Yes.
Because if some part of me didn't want the excess weight, it wouldn't be there. And until I got in touch with that part of me, and got it on board with what I consciously wanted, I was never going to win this fight. I wasn't even in the boxing ring! I was shadow boxing up dead-end diet alley.
For me, getting to a place of peace with my weight took many years spent on a healing journey that meandered through a variety of healing modalities including kinesiology, ThetaHealing, EFT Tapping, hypnotherapy, life coaching, Spiritual Response Therapy, yoga... and more.
It's been a journey that has expanded my mind and enriched my life in ways I could never have imagined. So my invitation to you is to see this as a beautiful healing journey and an exploration of yourself. Open your mind, be curious and find what works for you. Most of all though, take off your 'it's all about diet and exercise' blinkers.
Hi!
Just to let you know I'm almost there with the How To Heal Your Weight book -- so much for getting it out before …
Hi all,
Just a message to let you know that my plan is this... finish the first draft of the How to Heal Your Weight …
Thank you so much for being a subscriber! It's day two of my 30 day pre-order campaign... the aim of which is to get enough …
How exciting! All the best, can't wait to read it. Love Polly xxx
Tam you are such a legend, I can't wait to read your book. Loads of love, Rach xx
I am excited to uproot those deep rotten seeds and share your methods with the people I work with. Thank you for being an inspiration and showing me persistence in action! Congratulations again!
Best of luck with your preorders! Sue.x
Hi Tamara, I am very excited about your book, this is exactly what I was looking for!
Looking forward to the signed copy of the book from my old London Mate Tam. Also looking forward to an insightful read :). Great work Tam I love writing but haven't found the right path to make it happen as yet - this may also inspire me :) xx
Oh I wish I could reply to these messages in turn like you can on Facebook! So many lovely well wishes I'd like to acknowledge... but it will have to be a group thank you... so THANK YOU everyone! xx
Tim Tam. I’m in ❤️
So excited for this!!! Congrats xxx
Can't wait to read your book, especially if it is as good as your previous books.
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Pre-order 1 digital book and you'll receive the professionally designed eBook (compatible with all devices).
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Preorder 1 book:
And as a HUGE thank you, you'll get an Early Bird First-Run Paperback copy
You don't want anything fancy. You're not bothered about whether you get a copy signed by the author or not, you're just like 'yeah, whatevs, just gimme the book...' fair enough! And thank you! If you order the book in hardcopy, we'll send you a digital version as well.
What's in the package:
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You want the book for yourself or a friend and so you figure that a personalised dedication would be a nice touch.
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You'll also receive:
+ Early Bird Signed Paperback Copy
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Your name will be featured inside the book on a Patrons Supporter page with special thanks and massive gratitude--to be featured in every copy of the book forever and ever!
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+ 3 paperback copies of the book
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+ Immediate access to the introduction and first chapter
+ A digital copy of my previous book, Five Beliefs Keeping You Fat… and how to clear them.
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Pre-order 10 copies and you get:
A 90 minute energy healing and weight-loss mentoring call with me.
What's in the package
+ 10 Early Bird Copies
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+ Immediate access to the introduction and first chapter
+ A digital copy of my previous book, Five Beliefs Keeping You Fat… and how to clear them.
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Pre order 25 copies of the book and you'll get:
To meet with me every week for a month of one-on-one healing and mentoring sessions for weight-loss. The sessions will take place online.
What's in the package:
+ 25 paperback copies of the book
+ One month of weekly private healing sessions
+ Your name acknowledged in the book
+ Free access to my online course The 21-Day Self-Acceptance for Weight-loss Tapping Challenge
+ Ebook (PDF, ePUB, MOBI)
+ Immediate access to the introduction and first chapter
+ A digital copy of my previous book, Five Beliefs Keeping You Fat… and how to clear them.
+ Free shipping
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Pre order 50 copies of the book and get:
To meet with me every week for two months of one-on-one healing and mentoring sessions for weight-loss. The sessions will take place online.
What's in the package:
+ Two months of weekly private weight-loss mentoring
+ 50 paperback copies of the book
+ Your name acknowledged in the book
+ Free access to my online course The 21-Day Self-Acceptance for Weight-loss Tapping Challenge
+ Ebook (PDF, ePUB, MOBI)
+ Immediate access to the introduction and first chapter
+ A digital copy of my previous book, Five Beliefs Keeping You Fat… and how to clear them.
+ Free shipping
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Pre-order 75 copies and you get:
Me to host a half or full day yoga and meditation for wellbeing workshop at your UK-based office for up to 25 people.
If you're not UK-based, I can offer a webinar.
What's in the package:
+ 75 signed paperback copies of the book
+ A half day wellbeing workshop (or webinar)
+ Your name acknowledged in the book
+ Free access for all participants to my online course The 21-Day Self-Acceptance for Weight-loss Tapping Challenge
+ Ebook (PDF, ePUB, MOBI)
+ Immediate access to the introduction and first chapter
+ A digital copy of my previous book, Five Beliefs Keeping You Fat… and how to clear them.
+ Free shipping
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Pre-order 250 copies I’ll speak on whatever you’d like me to within the realm of yoga, meditation, weight-loss, alternative health and healing, at your UK-based event or conference.
What's in the package:
+ 250 paperback copies of the book
+ Keynote speech or workshop from Tamara Pitelen
+ Free access for all participants to my online course The 21-Day Self-Acceptance for Weight-loss Tapping Challenge
+ Ebook (PDF, ePUB, MOBI)
+ Immediate access to the introduction and first chapter
+ A digital copy of my previous book, Five Beliefs Keeping You Fat… and how to clear them.
+ Free shipping
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$6000
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Pre-order 300 copies and get:
Me as your weekend weight-loss concierge. I'll come to your UK-based home for a weekend to provide private yoga and meditation classes for you, your family, or friends. As well, you’ll get intensive healing and mentoring sessions to fast-track your weight-loss and wellbeing. I’ll do a menu for the weekend, I’ll bring the groceries and do the cooking.
You'll also receive:
+ 300 paperback copies of the book
+ Free access to my online course The 21-Day Self-Acceptance for Weight-loss Tapping Challenge
+ Your name acknowledged in the book
+ Ebook (PDF, ePUB, MOBI)
+ Immediate access to the introduction and first chapter
+ A digital copy of my previous book, Five Beliefs Keeping You Fat… and how to clear them.
+ Free shipping
Includes:
on Aug. 1, 2018, 10:14 a.m.
Love you