Like hiking up a mountain to discover a false peak, a peak appearing as the pinnacle falsely, the summit climb continuing, the weight loss victory contains similar surprising false peaks. Each arrival at the apparent top, more is learned, and another summit climbed. Additional pieces to the weight loss journey are yet to be learned and executed before a victory declared. Climbing a peak in Colorado summers ago, a thunderstorm set in just as we summited; we were driven immediately down the mountain in full sprint as hail began to fall. Given weight loss maintenance tools to remain upon the peak, enjoying the views from the top, there, the victory lies. Without the resolution of deep-seeded, emotional baggage resulting in symptomatic weight gain and a protective layer, summit views are short lived; pounds revisit repeatedly.
“I am cured” is the phrase of weight loss affliction denied. A recovering food addict depicts a more accurate assessment. Emotional healing guided to a healing heart, mind, and body, enables successful weight maintenance. Although sometimes “a cigar is just a cigar” and physical weight increases for reasons of medication, slower metabolism, and engorging for a celebration, the long term, pounds plummeting, recurring dieting population is a horse of a different color. We, the dieting club, represent a lifetime of utilizing food for emotional purposes rather than fuel. Losing weight only to gain it back and then some, is a club not worth joining, as it leads to additional ailments.
Research, experience, and introspection about the gravity of physical weight conclude that unresolved emotional trauma, the unfelt emotions and unhealed parts of ourselves is a necessary component as the pounds plummet. Healing psychological wounds, filling the emotional voids, and addressing lack of self-worth, are imperative pieces of a puzzle left incomplete. When sustainability finds its space within the cycle of weight maintenance, inner healing has halted the hefty recoil of weight gain. Emotional baggage from the present and/or the past, add burden to the shoulders like the weight of the world upon them. Reaching the root cause of the weight, enables a host of healing to take place. Routing around these resolutions, losing the weight with only physical awareness, remains a battle lost and won repeatedly, each time with greater difficulty.
Finding peace within, honoring one’s body respectfully, and mindfully consuming edibles, are functions of well being. Healthy food and fitness as energizing forces of fuel and strength, guide the journey and eliminate the external excess, yet inner brokenness that results in additional weight, low self-worth, and food addiction, must heal to sustain successful weight loss. Without addressing the emotional, internal, and weighted issues causing the underlying pounds, band-aiding the symptoms will not cure the “dis-ease.” Healing when pounds plummet is what constitutes true victory, the sustainability of weight loss permanence. Reaching deep, discovering the void of love, pain of loss, or childhood traumas, is when weight maintenance and healing are possible. Ignore the brokenness and inevitably pounds repeat their appearance. Inner healing releases the beast of burden of a weighted life and lighten the load of living, ending with true weight loss victory, without false peaks visited.The view from the top is powerfully stunning; remaining at the summit is extraordinary.