Were you frustrated with your dating/relationship experiences in 2011? Perhaps you reflected on personal changes that could contribute to a greater quality of relationship experience. If losing weight happens to be on your radar towards self-improvement, check in with yourself to make sure that your motivation is not to increase your desirability to others but instead feel better (and healthier) about yourself. If all motivations for self-improvement are external – so that you are more appealing to another – it doesn’t arrest the true issue of dissatisfaction: a sense of not being enough in your own self-perception.
In truth, losing weight doesn’t necessarily mean you will lose self-loathing; any degree of distorted self-perception weighs you down in a way that the scale doesn’t measure. When physical weight loss becomes a consequence of a healthy self-perception you are much less apt to lose your commitment to your health strategy. When losing weight becomes a consequence of recognizing your best self deserves an opportunity to express, then external validation of worthiness does not become the motivating factor for commitment.
As authentic regard for one’s own sense of self-worth becomes the impetus for change, satisfying this self-worth then becomes the metric that fuels sustained commitment. Most successful weight-loss that is maintained stems more from an inner shift in perception of self than from any neurotic, fear-based consequence of re-gaining weight.
In my last posting, 2012 Resolutions, one resolution, “to accept myself as I am as the first step towards revealing the person I desire to be,” drives the point of restored self-regard home. To accept yourself as you are now is not about acquiescing to an unsatisfactory physical state nor is it an excuse to ignore the consequence of an unconscious lack of self-regard (greatest contributor to physical imbalance), but rather, it is to recognize that your inherent self-worth is fundamental to your nature and not a consequence of external metrics or validation.
If your weight loss plan (or resolution) begins first with losing any self-loathing, you will find that the physical weight comes off easier and quicker and is sustained. Think of an undesirable overweight state as a reflection of an over-indulged, distorted self-image and you will begin your successful weight-loss efforts where the over-indulgence originates: within the mind.
You are worthy because you “are” – and the ego’s distorted perception cannot get traction on that fundamental reality.
photo: vorakorn kanokpipat
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