Are you carrying excess weight and/or struggling to lose it? You may believe it’s because you are eating too much – and in part this may be true. BUT, and it’s a HUGE BUT, there are many other reasons why you are carrying excess weight and are struggling to get back to your natural, slim self.

OTHER REASONS FOR CARRYING EXCESS WEIGHT

• Your body may be carrying excess weight as a physical barrier to protect you from perceived emotional harm. This is usually a reaction to a traumatic or abusive event earlier in your life. It is entirely possible that your conscious mind doesn’t recognise this or even dismisses the event as neither traumatic nor abusive. However if your subconscious is ‘running’ a program that says otherwise, it is far, far more powerful than the conscious mind, and it can self-sabotage your attempts to lose this ‘protective’ weight. How do you know this might be happening for you? When you lose weight and begin to feel ‘better’ about your weight, you don’t seem to be able to stop your self-sabotaging.

• You may be intolerant to wheat and/or dairy. If this is true, then your digestive system is constantly struggling to process these foods which makes it inefficient. A sluggish, ineffective digestive system leads to weight gain and difficulties for losing weight. The way to find out if this is an issue for you, is to completely omit wheat and dairy for a at least 2 weeks (ideally for 4 weeks) then introduce wheat first and see how you feel, then 1 week later repeat the exercise with dairy. If you are intolerant or sensitive, on reintroduction—you will know! On a ‘clean’ system the reintroduction of a food that causes problems leads to excess gas, belatedness, and sometimes headaches, constipation or diarrhoea. If this happens, come off wheat and/or dairy and see if the symptoms then go away.

• Stress triggers chemical changes in your body which raises your blood sugar levels. If you don’t need to run or fight (in reaction to stress: this was our ancestral response to stress) then this sugar in your blood is not needed and will be converted to fat and most typically stored as body fat around your middle. See another of my articles: Comfort Eating When Stressed?

• Food additives are of course tested for safety, however the vast majority of the testing is paid for by the food processors, rather than fully independent researchers. When tested independently, some food additives, for example aspartame (an artificial sweetener widely used in so called ‘diet foods and drinks) show very different results with independent tests showing it stimulates the appetite, and can give headaches and digestive problems.

• You may be eating a relatively healthy diet, but the wrong food at the wrong time of the day for your body. Again, this is due to your digestive system not being as effective as it can be. To find out more about Body Typing, see my TIPS article on Ayurveda: Eating for your Body Type (on my Red Dandelion website)

• What you think is a healthy diet, may be out-dated. Nutritional wisdom has changed quite dramatically over the last decade. TV advertising of so called healthy foods, are so misleading that, to me, it it is nothing less than fraudulent. Get up-to-date with some excellent books for example: ‘Spent’ by Dr Frank Lipman, ‘Crazy Sexy Diet’ by Kris Carr and for spiritual reasons for holding on to weight: ‘A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever’ by Marianne Williamson