Why Can't I Lose Weight, Part Two

When my clients tell me they are baffled about not being able to lose weight, and I have asked them all the reasons why they think they cannot, I then ask them an essential question. What if you just don't know?

First they look at me blankly, like it's a trick question. Then suspiciously, like I've got a new experimental drug I want them to try out and it might be dangerous. Then, finally, they relax. What a novel idea. They just don't know. Of course, they have been saying that for ages... I just don't know why I can't lose weight...but to actually just be in the "don't know" of it is a relief.

You are a smart woman, I say to them. And you've been paying attention to everything you can about nutrition, dieting, exercise, etc... You've even tuned into your own psychology. But if knowing all that was of help, you'd have been helped by now. They nod vigorously. Exactly.

So I suggest an upside-down approach. Why not assume you don't know? Because when you don't know, all your theories that actually block you from progress fall away. Let me explain.

When you believe that you are overweight because to be thin and beautiful would make you vulnerable, or go against your feminist ideals, or fly in the face of your obese family history, you are stuck in overweight until you change those "reasons." But when you don't know, anything can happen. You become open to discovering, not resolute in "It will never work for me." Taking this approach, even if you DO think you know (in fact especially if you think you know), changes everything.

First, you feel even more relief. Wow, you're not some stupid woman who knows what to do but doesn't have the moral fiber to do it (like you often tell yourself). And wow, wow, wow...there might be reasons out there to discover and try something that might work. You're not stuck in the impossible, you are open to the possible.

It is worth a thought!