Table of Contents
Filling the Inner Emptiness © Martyn Carruthers
Online Coaching, Counseling & Soulwork Therapy
Your weight also reflects your emotions and relationships,
and a multi-billion dollar junk food marketing programs.
While most people focus on their physical weight, health and their diets,
we can help you improve your mental, emotional and relationship health.
Weight-ing for Health?
Consider weight as a form of communication. Being underweight, overweight or obese sends messages that people do not or cannot otherwise express. See me! Love me! Help me! and Avoid me! are common examples of communication-by-weight. Your body weight indicates much more than your diet. What does your weight tell the world?
For example, overeating sweet food seems especially common amongst people who, as children, were rewarded with candies and chocolate by their parents. Many weight issues expose emotional benefits that seem to outweigh the health costs. See Eating Disorders and Obsessions & Compulsions.
We help people change obsessions and compulsions
into ordinary temptations.
Do you change your eating habits in a crisis? Do you respond to family or relationship problems with binge-eating or starvation? You are not alone.
Weight & Compliance
Overweight and underweight are often results of manipulation – by marketing, media, friends, colleagues and family members. Are you being pressured to eat or to diet to please other people’s ideas?
- “I made this just for you, so you must eat it!“
- “If you don’t eat this I will have to throw it away!“
- “If you don’t eat this – it means you don’t love me!“
- “If you don’t lose some weight – our relationship is over!”
People in codependent relationships often try to control
each other’s access to resources (e.g. money, transportation),
to substances (e.g. cigarettes, alcohol, drugs) and to food.
Do your family and friends support your choices?
Or do they try to control you?
What does the data say?
Happily married women gain an average of about 6 kilo (14 pounds) during 12 years of marriage, while unhappily married women gain about 20 kilo (42 pounds) in the same time. (Davis 1987)
A study found that 35% of women indicated that being overweight decreased their husband’s jealousy, or reduced their own fears of having an affair (Felitti 1993).
Another study found that husbands may feel anxious about their wives’ weight loss (Neil, Marshall and Yale 1978). See also: Sexual Issues and Sexual Solutions
Boundary Issues & Weight Loss
Boundary issues concern limits, rules, power games and victimization. Do you use your weight to set boundaries? Does your weight avoid your being victimized or controlled by other people? Examples are:
- Your parents expressed love with food
- You eat to feel full – not to satisfy hunger
- You never learned to say “No!” to offered food
- You or your partner become overweight to test your love
- You or your partner become overweight to avoid sexual intimacy
- Your were taught that “overweight = healthy” and “healthy weight = too thin”
Our online help can help you control your desire to eat by resolving emotional and relationship habits.
Weight Loss Strategies
Moving from an unhealthy weight to a healthy weight is not easy, fast nor convenient! In Western countries, refined starches and processed fats are so cheap and commonly available that if you insist on easy food – if you insist on fast food – and if you insist on convenient food – you may become overweight, or even get fatter! If you really want to lose weight, make your weight loss a real priority.
Assume that food companies want you to eat refined starches and processed fats. Assume that your government is powerless to stop them. Assume that you are the victim of years of psychological marketing and promotion and – probably – parental brainwashing. Assume that common diets will cause common health problems and common deaths (see hypertension.)
You are not alone. We can help you manage emotional entanglements
and relationship bonds that motivate eating disorders or prolong obesity.
Can you avoid foods with hydrolyzed vegetable starches (often called high fructose corn syrup or HFCS)? HFCS doesn’t exist in nature. It is nearly impossible to avoid it as it is commonly used to increase the sales of processed foods that would be otherwise tasteless. Some scientists say that HFCS does not trigger a sense of fullness, and is a leading cause of obesity.
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According to research by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, high-fructose corn syrup began as an addition to animal feed to lower costs and to increase sale prices by increasing the weight of animals before slaughter. The animals would continue to eat beyond what they would normally eat without this additive, and gain excess weight. Wikipedia |
Unless you’re making a concerted effort to avoid it,
it’s difficult to consume high-fructose corn syrup in moderation – Time Magazine
First – manage your negative emotions and solve relationship problems. Then, switch your attention from what you put into your mouth to how you feel later. Some other strategies to help you lose weight are:
- Talk to your doctor
- Avoid canned drinks
- Eat fruit twice each day
- Sit down at a table to eat
- Eat leafy green vegetables
- Keep a food diary or journal
- Walk when you feel stressed
- Avoid anything in a cereal box
- Eat more fruits and vegetables
- Avoid junk food as if it is poison!
- Eat less meat and refined starches
- Have a sweet treat only once a week
- Drink many glasses of water each day
- Keep healthy snacks at home and at work
- Exercise or walk most days for 1 to 2 hours
- Forgive yourself – and make healthier choices
- Do not eat while reading or watching television
- Shop for food after eating, using shopping lists
- Forget fast results. Healthy weight loss is slow!
- Eat slowly – make meals last at least 20 minutes
- Eat fresh fruits and raw or lightly cooked vegetables
- Eat three meals and two or three planned snacks daily
- Aerobic exercise: at least 30 minutes three times weekly
- Minimize fat by baking, grilling, broiling, roasting or steaming
- Cook with a clear broth, nonstick cooking spray, wine or water
- Avoid food with added sugar (sucrose, fructose corn syrup, etc)
- Ask your friends and family to support your efforts to be healthy
- Alcohol stimulates appetite, slows metabolism and is full of calories!
- Stop eating before you feel full. Within 20 minutes you should feel fine
- Eat regular meals to increase your metabolism and burn more calories
Please consult your physician about medical conditions.