Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much Read Online Free PDF

his mother, now a dear friend). Of course, the weight started climbing back on, slowly but surely like a creeping vine. The marriage was steeped in sarcasm and lack of mutual respect, and food yet again became my solace. I relentlessly dieted, to no avail. One day, I finally just stopped fighting and accepted that I had no power to change anything. I was defeated, and I surrendered to the real truth of what was happening me and to my strained relationship with my husband.
    To be true to myself, and to stop the cycle of suffering, I walked out of that marriage. I looked at myself as I was, and I figured that if this was it, I would learn to love and forgive myself, and treat myself the way I needed to be treated. No one else would be able to do that for me. I took out a photograph of me when I was a little girl, and I propped it up by my bedside and promised that little girl that I would love and protect her.
    I simplified my life, I began meditating again, and I limited sugar and flour in my food. There was no diet; I just went back to what I knew worked from my core, and not because I had a too detailed plan. I started to use the gorgeous soaker tub in my new apartment. Salt baths were my nightly treat! The more I loved myself just as I was, the faster things changed. I began exercising moderately again—a little yoga, dancing, walking, and doing some light weight training. The pounds began to drop off as if by magic.
    I began to notice the pattern and the relationships between feeling too much of the environment I was exposed to, the stress due to my weight fluctuations, my eating patterns, and my feeling of being emotionally overwhelmed. The detours began to become more and more obvious. Could it be that I finally found that rogue thread in the fabric that had been hidden from me until now?
    WEIGHT AND LIFE STAGES
    Being overwhelmed by feelings has been a common experience for me ever since I was a small child, and this has never changed fundamentally. It has been acutely noticeable in cycles, depending on what was happening in my life. Your story may have similar threads. We all go through stages and changes, and those of us who feel too much can be profoundly affected by a big emotional shift. Teenagers on the whole are hormonal messes, which makes it difficult to perform the job of adolescence: to find one’s identity. When you don’t know where you end and others begin, that separation is even more unsettling. Motherhood and pregnancy can bring up issues of separateness and togetherness, of loving your child without losing yourself, of having to trust that you can become a good mother. One of my friends was excited to see that the 37 pounds she gained during pregnancy dropped off in a week after she gave birth, and credited the weight loss to breastfeeding. Her delight was short-lived, as all the weight crept back in a few weeks, even though she went back to her pre-pregnancy eating habits. “My baby wasn’t nursing properly; I knew there was something wrong with him, and people were doubting my instincts. My mom had gone back home, and now the weight of being a mom was fully on me—and apparently, on my butt, belly, and thighs as well!”
    Midlife brings all of us new emotional stressors as we assess what we’ve done or didn’t do up to this point in our lives, and we begin to recognize that the consequences of our choices over the years weren’t necessarily what we expected. Caretaking for children, our elders, or close friends who unexpectedly become ill stir up more emotions. One of the participants in my online class told me that she had always been incredibly vigilant with her weight, controlling herself well, being mindful of never going past a size six. She was so proud of herself. She admitted the control was always on her mind, and she spent hours sometimes deciding she would not have the evil piece of cake. Then her sister got cancer and she became her caretaker. She