Radical Weight Loss

By Colin Tipping

 

It is an accepted maxim that thoughts, ideas and beliefs create our reality. It’s no giant leap therefore, to conclude that our bodies are created in much the same way.

In my book, Radical Manifestation: The Fine Art of Creating the Life You Want, I strongly suggest that excess weight is held for emotional reasons and that weight loss can result from doing emotional release work. I came to this conclusion after noticing that, after my Radical Forgiveness workshops, people frequently lost significant amounts of weight.

I am so certain now that a lot of weight gain is the direct result of our holding onto ‘stories’ about what happened to us, usually in childhood, that was traumatic, painful, wounding, degrading, humiliating and so on, that I have created a Radical Weight Loss Program based on that assumption.

It is difficult to quantify it, but my guess is that well over 80% of those who are significantly overweight are that way because they have deeply buried unconscious emotional pain that they are not aware of, or have been unwilling to deal with. The problem we face is that most of this emotional baggage is buried in our subconscious, below the level of awareness, so it is very easy to be in denial about it.

More Than A Question of Calories
It is true, of course, that eating more calories than we burn is a direct “physical” cause of weight gain. However, there are very many cultural, spiritual and emotional reasons why we “stuff” ourselves with food. We use it to dull our feelings of grief and guilt, anger and hatred towards ourselves and others. We associate food with love, fear, punishment and we eat to feel “full.”

The Genetic Factor
There is no doubt, also, that a tendency to put on weight can run in families as a genetic trait. However, it is common for unconscious emotional pain to be carried from one generation to the next, which suggests that weight running in families might also be emotional in origin, as well as genetic.

Functional Fat
However, I believe that the most widespread and potent reason why people carry a lot of excess weight is for protection. This can be protection from generalized hurt and rejection, but most frequently it is used to protect from imagined or real sexual attack.

Sexual Abuse
The sexual abuse of children by their parents, grandparents, step-parents, mother’s boyfriends, siblings, baby-sitters and others is rampant in our society. It is estimated that one in five adults were sexually molested in their childhood years. The only way a powerless child can deal with this is through the mechanisms of denial, repression and disassociation. However, such attacks leave a powerful energetic imprint on the body, generated and sustained by a potent mixture of repressed fear and guilt. (They nearly always think of it as their fault.) This is frequently made much worse by their own mothers refusing to believe them, if and when they have summoned enough courage to tell, and ending up being blamed and punished even more.
The Body Remembers

Even if the mind blocks it out, the cellular structure of the body remembers only too well. So it seeks to protect itself by piling on the fat in those regions previously most affected and thought to be most vulnerable. This not only provides a wall of physical protection against attack, but psychic protection also. The mind figures that being physically attractive is a risky proposition so the best way to ward off physical advances is by making oneself decidedly unattractive. What better way to become sexually unattractive than to be obese?

Fat Only in Certain Areas
It does sometimes happen that weight associated with emotional holdings shows up in specific parts of the body. For example, excess weight held disproportionately around the hips and lower abdomen often indicates repressed guilt or feelings about being trapped and, of course, fear of sexual attack. A pot-belly might be stored anger, resentment and fear about really revealing true feelings. Fat stored around the shoulders combined with hardened muscle tissue might be resentment about having to be responsible. Men often put on hardened tissue in the chest area as a way to armor their heart.

The Solution
The answer is to find a way to release the energy patterns of guilt, rage, shame and humiliation that hold the weight in place. Radical Forgiveness is the solution that I offer both in my workshops and through my Radical Weight Loss Program, but there are other ways to do it, of course. Whichever method you choose in taking this approach to the weight issue, the good news is that the only things you have to “give up” are the thoughts, ideas, beliefs, emotions and attachments that were responsible for your putting on weight in the first place.







Colin Tipping, the award-winning author of Radical Forgiveness: Making Room for the Miracle and Radical Manifestation: The Fine Art of Creating the World You Want, is the founder of the Institute for Radical Forgiveness Therapy and Coaching, Inc., based in Atlanta. See his ad on Page 22