Lot's of weight-loss diets out there promise to "beat the street," so to speak, in terms of taking off the weight. Shine from Yahoo! has identified five diets that don't perform as advertised.Fads like grapefruit, maple syrup, apple vinegar, juice and cabbage soup diets will always be around so long as people seek to defy the conventional wisdom, that weight loss results from eating less and exercising more.
Application of this conventional wisdom will yield time-honored results, but when we find ourselves with unwanted pounds, why not take the opportunity to explore the spiritual implications of the situation? It might just aid us in our efforts to turn back the dial on the scale and change our lives for the better at the same time.
Some would even argue that spiritual awakening is our body's soul function. Indeed, there's no better example of a "come to Jesus" moment than the struggle to lose weight.
Scientists tell us that our bodies operate, from the molecular and cellular level on up, with an intelligence that is independent of our conscious awareness. They breath, circulate blood, eliminate, maintain temperature and perform myriad other internal functions all without any decision-making on our part.
Some functions, however, our consciousness has the power to override. The body sleeps, for example, when it's tired, unless we consciously veto that decision and stay awake.
Eating fits into this over-ridable category. Like other animals, the bodies of humans know what to eat and what not to eat, when and how much. If this function is out of whack, it's because we have for some reason decided to over-ride that caloric intake system. Discovering that reason is the first step toward solving the problem.
Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret, suggests that the reason may be simply a lack of awareness as you eat. She writes: "I am convinced that if we can eat our food in the present, entirely focused on the pleasurable experience of eating, the food is assimilated into our bodies perfectly, and the result in our bodies must be perfection." [italics original]
Sound like pie in the sky (pardon the pun)? Eckhart Tolle would agree with this approach in principle. Awareness, he teaches, dissolves the hold that unwanted (unconscious) behaviors have upon us.
The Secret is all about thinking positive thoughts. "You will never change your body if you are critical of it and find fault with it, and in fact you will attract more weight to you," Byrne writes. "Think perfect thoughts and the result must be perfect weight."
Perfect thoughts are not about losing weight, but rather they are focused on you at your perfect weight. Give it a try. There is no reason in the world not to put these ideas into practice.
Weight loss causes physical discomfort because, paradoxically, it also requires the use of the mind to veto the body's desire to eat. This discomfort or pain isn't very acute in some people. In others, it could be characterized as downright suffering and leads to weight issues.
Suffering, according to Tolle, is a response to the present moment--that it should not be how it is. Through focused awareness on this feeling of suffering we can make it conscious and thereby realize that what we thought of as pain is really only slight discomfort. And it won't kill us.
We learn to live with that discomfort for as long as is required to take the weight off. And eventually we no longer need to live a life that is built around its avoidance. When we reach that point, we've managed to teach ourselves how to be more present-moment oriented, an important spiritual truth.
And we no longer have a weight problem.
Photo credit: Corporatemonk
I have waged "the battle of the bulge" and so this article is full of gems for me. Thank you! Eckhart says that "what blocks the way is the way." I am now viewing weight struggles as an opportunity to become more present-moment oriented, as you say, and also as an opportunity to become aware of self-critical thoughts and release them. I've also discovered an excellent new book called "Women, Food, and God" by Geneen Roth. Thanks again for a valuable post Todd.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, Colleen!
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