This is Who I Am

(c) keltt Fotosearch_k8159446

There are five common thoughts of those who fall prey to the Given Up and Given in to Hopelessness of weight loss. They share them all at once or come to them one at a time.

“This is who I am.”

“Guess I’ll be fat forever.”

“It’s in my genes.”

“I’m tired of dieting.”

“I’m happy being fat.”

Today, I want to address the first one; I’ll address the others in successive blogs.

It is possible to reach a point in life where you’ve carried extra weight around for so long that you associate it with your identity. It becomes who you are. You might not say it out loud, as have many clients to me, but you think it to yourself.

I’ve had people tell me that instead of thinking of themselves as Jane or Jack Doe, they think of themselves as Jane or Jack Doe, heavy gal or heavy guy. They take on the persona of who and what they silently tell themselves they are.

What that means is that your thoughts become your acceptance. You think, “This is who I am,” and this thinking will sabotage any weight loss changes that you ever attempt to make unless you change the way that you think.

The reason why this thought trips people up and keeps them trapped in hopelessness about losing weight is because it’s an unfinished thought. The truth is that when you think that way you’re not really accepting yourself as is.

What you’re doing is raising a mental flag of surrender because you feel hopeless. The phrase isn’t finished. There needs to be a “because” at the end of it.

So, when I hear someone say, “This is who I am,” I ask them to say out loud “This is who I am because __________.” I want them to do this because when they add the word “because” it becomes the link to the identifier.

This lets you discover the real reason you’re thinking the way you are. You can figure out why you feel the way you do and why you struggle with weight or dieting once you know the reason. And, at the very least, it forces you to openly talk about what you are trying to suppress or deny.

So, for example, you might think, “This is who I am because diets never work for me.”

OK, now, take it further, why haven’t diets worked for you?

“Diets have never worked for me because I don’t stick with them for very long.”

Why don’t you stick with them for very long?

“I don’t stick with them for very long because I don’t see quick weight loss.”

. . . and, in my office, I will continue to respond to each answer with another Why to break down the client’s initial “This is who I am” to the root, to the problem . . . and that gives the client the best route to the solution.