Myth of the Magic 2

You and everyone – whether they’ve ever wanted to lose weight or not – knows there are two things a person needs to do if they want to lose weight. You are promised that focusing on these two areas will resolve all your weight issues for good.

What are these two areas? You know them; say them with me.

Diet and exercise. Eat less and exercise more. Right?

Of course. You and everyone who has ever walked through a supermarket checkout stand, watched TV, or read a newspaper knows this is the traditional prescription for weight loss. You hear obesity research reported in the news confirming it. You watch TV shows including “Oprah” (until recently) and “The Biggest Loser” confirming it. You hear it from your doctor, family members, and strangers in the women’s restroom.

Take a moment right now and answer this question for yourself.

How long have you known that eating less and exercising more was the key to weight loss? One year? Five years? 10 Years? 25 years? Your whole life?

Every woman to whom I’ve asked this question has responded with her “whole life” or “from the time weight first became an issue for me.” Either way, by the time she finds me, it’s been a long time, a good portion of her life. Think about this, a whole lifetime of knowing the key to losing weight and not being able to do it. How frustrating!

We’re not just talking one or two people who somehow missed the course on “How to Implement a Diet and Exercise Program for Life” in junior high school, we’re talking about millions of people in this country. Statistically, over two-thirds of the United States population is overweight (Body Mass Index (BMI) greater than 25) and growing. That’s 200 million people who know what to do to lose weight, but are unable to do it.

Does this scenario strike anyone else as fishy? Fifty million obese women in the U.S. (BMI greater than 30) know they need to eat less and exercise more to increase their health and longevity and they can’t do it. Do you think they’ve thought about it? Do you think they’ve tried? Aside from the rare exception, of course they have. So despite our obesity researchers’ best efforts, despite your doctor’s best efforts, and despite your best efforts you have not yet achieved permanent weight loss.

There’s a reason for this. And it’s not that you and 99,999,999 other people don’t have enough willpower.

It’s that the single most important component of permanent weight loss is left out of the diet and exercise equation.

You.

When I say you, I don’t mean just your body. I’m referring to something more primary and subtle. I mean the You that has been looking through your eyes from the day you were born. The You who experienced the love or lack of love that welcomed you into the world and the You who was present during your first sexual encounter. The You I’m referring to is invisible but profoundly significant as it is the You that has been impacted by every life experience you’ve had and the You that impacts every choice you make.

It is the You that is as unique as your fingerprint and leaves its mark on the world in how you relate with other beings – expressing your inner, receiving the outer.

It is the You that gets conditioned into false habits of thought, feeling, and action. And the You that has the potential to see through the conditioning when you are challenged to open your mind and heart to a deeper truth.

Because you and nearly everyone in this culture takes the faulty logic underlying the Myth of the Magic Two to be the ultimate truth about losing weight, you also miss critical pieces of what makes permanent weight loss possible. These critical pieces start and end with You. In the pages that follow you will learn exactly how to release this myth and lose weight for the last time. For now, it’s very important that you see how You are left out of the Impermanent Approach to Weight Loss because there’s very little understanding of You within this old paradigm. You are simply not where the focus is when everyone is pointing to the latest diet and exercise program. Which brings us to the next crippling myth – the Myth of the Magic Hammer.

Exploration

How many years have you known that you needed to eat less and exercise more to lose weight?

What arises in you when you read in the Myth of the Magic Two that You have been left out of the process?