Hard Truth:  The more we focus on losing weight, the more we gain. It’s true – dieters regain at an average rate of 108%.

Today, there are more “diets, “fixes”, “cures”, “pharmaceutical relief” and “apps” for weight loss than ever before in history.  But our society weighs more and has MORE health problems associated with weight too.

It doesn’t add up, does it?

I searched for the answer to that riddle for over 20 years before discovering our methods of losing weight were actually creating the regain.

When I stopped pursuing those methods, I lost weight without regain (my substantial weight loss has been sustained for over 11 years now).

I came to believe I was hiding out in my excess weight, safe and comfortable in the shadows.

Carl Jung once said:  “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.”

And, while it’s true excess weight is a perfect place to hide, and it’s very tempting to live there, there is also a collective consciousness – one that is quite large and pervasive – existing around weight loss in our society.

This collective consciousness, which most of us follow and track all day, creates “accepted” thought patterns and beliefs. The accepted beliefs about weight loss for most of us are absolutely unworkable.

But we continually buy into this consciousness because everyone else is doing it.

Diets.  Calories.  Points.  Excessive exercise.  “Demonized” food.  Fast change.  Rapid weight loss.

None of it gets us anywhere, except at a higher number on the scale.

We do it because the ads promise success, without regard for the fact that a photo cannot measure lasting success.  We do it because we want the end result, without the work it takes to create the result.  We do it because we want the fantasy of weight loss and what we’ve made up it will give us.

Here are some of the reasons we hook into the the collective consciousness of diet mentality:

1.  We love the promise.

2.  We love to lie to ourselves.

3.  We love to hide from reality.

4.  We love to pretend.

5.  We love having a handy excuse.

6.  We love to play it safe.

All of mainstream weight loss is about those things:  promises, lies, hiding, pretense, excuses, playing it safe.

We know eating celery and cabbage soup, or “cleansing”, or fasting, doesn’t burn fat.  Our bodies are dumping water and wasting vital tissue.  But, it’s easier to pretend.

We know avoiding one of the major food groups cannot be sustained.  But we suffer and hope for miracles.

We know we ultimately have to face ourselves and grow up, but we’d like to stay child-like a little longer.

Imagine if we stopped the pretense and changed our collective consciousness.  Imagine if we grew respectful of our bodies, instead of treating them like machines that can be tinkered with and “fixed.”  Imagine if we deliberately nourished them with food that created positive, sustainable energy.  Imagine if we moved, often, and with joy.

Yes, it’s simple.  It’s less dramatic than suffering, resisting, restricting and being cruel to the body with excessive dieting.  So, in one sense, it is easier.

But, it means unhooking from the collective consciousness of “the diet will fix.”

And it means stepping out of the shadows.

No hiding.