The 'pie in the sky positive' approach to weight loss?

Big People Have A Lot To Offer

By Dr. Matthew Anderson
eDiets
Contributor

I believe I have discovered something unusual and wonderful about individuals who are chronically 50 plus pounds overweight. In fact, I also believe, due to my observations of some of my weight-challenged clients, that this discovery can often lead to meaningful weight loss.

My Discovery

1. Obese people are individuals who are often larger than life.
2. They have significant and unusual gifts, abilities and skills.
3. BUT they constantly repress (an unconscious act) and suppress (a conscious act) these gifts.
4. They then use food as a substitute for authentic and powerful self-expression.
5. They eat to compensate for the repressed qualities and their bodies reflect this by getting enormous.

Discovery: The amount of excess fat that you carry is equal to the amount of unusual gifts, abilities and skills that you refuse to actualize!

Conclusion: Acknowledging and actualizing your larger-than-life special gifts and skills will change your life and your body.

This idea may be hard to accept (at first) if you have been infected by our culture’s negative attitude about obesity. But the mass-mind usually reflects the lowest common denominator and ignorance and prejudice are not the parents of creative thinking, great insight and massive positive change. This means that we have not been seeing what is right in front of our own fat-hating eyes. Many obese people are full to the brim with wonderful qualities that are aching to be actualized… and they have not been encouraged to acknowledge these gifts and live them fully in their daily lives.

I have seen wonderful changes in certain larger-than-life persons who have been my clients and I want to share what we discovered with you. Here is one example:

Jane weighed 350 pounds. She was in her mid-30s and had been significantly overweight since she was a child. She felt hopeless about weight loss. She had tried many diets and was a veteran "cycler" (gain, lose, gain). She hated dieting and she hated her body even more. I felt great compassion for her and I promised to do my best to help her discover a healthy and effective way to drop the unwanted weight.

After a few weeks I began to realize that Jane was a very impressive person. She was extremely intelligent, courageous and insightful. She was also an accomplished teacher. I thought of her as a"master" teacher but she rebuffed this title when I shared it with her. It was at that moment that I began to see a theme that eventually led to an amazing change in Jane.

I decided to focus on Jane’s rather unusual skills and abilities and Jane immediately became resistant. She did not see herself as a "master" of anything. She even accused me, at first, of being "too pie in the sky positive" about her. But I held to my position and repeatedly asked her to face the truth about herself: She was a very gifted person who had already given much to her students and she had even more gifts that could be shared on a much larger scale.

Finally, after being presented with facts about herself that she could not deny, Jane began to warm to my ideas about her. She started to pay attention to her rather significant abilities in a positive and self-respectful way. She decided that she would begin to write a book about teaching that she had secretly wanted to write for years. She volunteered as a lecturer at an upcoming teacher’s conference and was happily amazed at the enormous response she received.

As the weeks passed Jane found more and more of her abilities and began to share them with students, other teachers and friends. Then she began to notice that her attitude about food and her eating habits were changing and that she was losing weight. Over the next year she lost 70 pounds. To date, Jane is still dropping weight and still working hard to face, accept and share her larger-than-life gifts.

Given my experience with Jane and a number of other weight-challenged individuals, I am convinced this discovery and approach to self-expression and weight loss can make a tremendous difference to many obese persons.

I have lots more to say about this subject and will continue to write articles about being larger-than-life and its effects on our bodies and our lives. If you want more information about my up-coming CD "How to Drop 100 Pounds: Are you a larger-then-life person?" Please email me at DrA@DrAusa.com .