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For many overweight people, negative beliefs have been in place for so long that they barely get noticed. Even so, you can spot them through the damaging thoughts they generate. What kind of mind-body partnership is going on if you have thoughts like the following?

• My body is ugly and inferior.
• I’m stuck with this body. There’s nothing I can do about it.
• No matter how hard I try to lose weight, my body won’t cooperate.
• I’m so disappointed in my body.
• It’s just a matter of time before something inside really goes wrong.
• The best thing is to ignore how my body looks and feels.

Clearly the partnership is in trouble. In my experience, people with a history of weight issues are generally quite detached from the mind-body connection. They certainly aren’t using it to their benefit. A patient came to me named Amanda who at 55 had developed type 2 diabetes after carrying too much weight since she was a teenager.

I was just one in a long string of doctors she was seeing, which is no surprise since diabetes has systemic effects. Her eye doctor told Amanda that her blurry vision was the result of retinal deterioration, which fortunately was mild so far. Other doctors were addressing her fatigue, mood swings, over sensitivity to medications, erratic blood sugar, and lower back pain (this last not related to her diabetes).

Amanda is a stoic and forthright woman. She trudges from doctor to doctor determined to fix these symptoms. The first thing she told me was “I consider myself a healer. I do body work but it’s very holistic. My clients tell me I’ve changed their lives.”
“And you wonder why you can’t change yours,” I interjected. She nodded.

I asked Amanda what she was doing for herself, and she rattled off an impressive list. She went to a wide array of alternative therapists. She took supplements and was extremely concerned with avoiding processed foods. She did a cleanse once a month. All of these steps were pro-active but there was a catch.

“I like the things you’re doing,” I said. “But how do you feel?” to me, she looked worried and tense.
“I’m frazzled,” Amanda admitted. “I hate all these doctor visits. I just want these problems to go away”
“I get the idea that all this worry has made you eat more,” I said.

She had gained ten pounds in the two months since our last appointment. Amanda nodded, looking distressed. Amanda’s body told her she was in trouble, but her answer to added stress was more food. So her body was no longer in partnership with her, and she needed to change that. There was lots of melodrama, too, along with the medical concerns.

“You care about the whole situation,” I pointed out. “But you are caring in a negative way. Your body has gone so far out of balance that it’s sending up distress flares. You have to get your body’s distress down, and when you do, your own distress will decrease. The two are intimately connected.”

The right kind of caring aids the body to restore homeostasis; healing cannot progress until this happens. Amanda could do a lot to give her body a chance to reset itself:
She could stop eating so much.

She could take up meditation.
She could take pro-active steps to reduce her stress levels.
She could examine her negative beliefs.
She could feed the mind-body connection with the positive reinforcements of fulfillment.

Those are all forms of positive feedback. I also had an immediate suggestion. I asked Amanda to close her eyes and sit quietly for a moment. Then I guided her through the following meditation:

“In your mind’s eye, visualize your body as healthy and balanced. Visualize it at your ideal weight. Feel the contentment this brings. Visualize yourself smiling, feeling pleased with your body. Say to yourself, “This is the real me. I want to have the body I’m seeing. It’s going to be my body as soon as possible.”

As she went through the meditation, Amanda smiled. You could see the tension flowing out of her system. Her face relaxed into a look of contentment and hope.
Why didn’t Amanda’s previous doctors help her? Because they looked on her body basically as a broken machine that needed to be fixed. They had little expertise – or interest – in the whole human picture. But the whole picture was of utmost importance to her. “Stop eating so much” was just the opening wedge of a mind-body strategy to get her into a better place in her life.

For many overweight people, negative beliefs have been in place for so long that they barely get noticed. Even so, you can spot them through the damaging thoughts they generate. What kind of mind-body partnership is going on if you have thoughts like the following?

• My body is ugly and inferior.
• I’m stuck with this body. There’s nothing I can do about it.
• No matter how hard I try to lose weight, my body won’t cooperate.
• I’m so disappointed in my body.
• It’s just a matter of time before something inside really goes wrong.
• The best thing is to ignore how my body looks and feels.

Clearly the partnership is in trouble. In my experience, people with a history of weight issues are generally quite detached from the mind-body connection. They certainly aren’t using it to their benefit. A patient came to me named Amanda who at 55 had developed type 2 diabetes after carrying too much weight since she was a teenager.

I was just one in a long string of doctors she was seeing, which is no surprise since diabetes has systemic effects. Her eye doctor told Amanda that her blurry vision was the result of retinal deterioration, which fortunately was mild so far. Other doctors were addressing her fatigue, mood swings, over sensitivity to medications, erratic blood sugar, and lower back pain (this last not related to her diabetes).

Amanda is a stoic and forthright woman. She trudges from doctor to doctor determined to fix these symptoms. The first thing she told me was “I consider myself a healer. I do body work but it’s very holistic. My clients tell me I’ve changed their lives.”
“And you wonder why you can’t change yours,” I interjected. She nodded.

I asked Amanda what she was doing for herself, and she rattled off an impressive list. She went to a wide array of alternative therapists. She took supplements and was extremely concerned with avoiding processed foods. She did a cleanse once a month. All of these steps were pro-active but there was a catch.

“I like the things you’re doing,” I said. “But how do you feel?” to me, she looked worried and tense.

“I’m frazzled,” Amanda admitted. “I hate all these doctor visits. I just want these problems to go away”

“I get the idea that all this worry has made you eat more,” I said. She had gained ten pounds in the two months since our last appointment. Amanda nodded, looking distressed. Amanda’s body told her she was in trouble, but her answer to added stress was more food. So her body was no longer in partnership with her, and she needed to change that. There was lots of melodrama, too, along with the medical concerns.

“You care about the whole situation,” I pointed out. “But you are caring in a negative way. Your body has gone so far out of balance that it’s sending up distress flares. You have to get your body’s distress down, and when you do, your own distress will decrease. The two are intimately connected.”

The right kind of caring aids the body to restore homeostasis; healing cannot progress until this happens. Amanda could do a lot to give her body a chance to reset itself:

She could stop eating so much.
She could take up meditation.
She could take pro-active steps to reduce her stress levels.
She could examine her negative beliefs.
She could feed the mind-body connection with the positive reinforcements of fulfillment.
Those are all forms of positive feedback. I also had an immediate suggestion. I asked Amanda to close her eyes and sit quietly for a moment. Then I guided her through the following meditation:

“In your mind’s eye, visualize your body as healthy and balanced. Visualize it at your ideal weight. Feel the contentment this brings. Visualize yourself smiling, feeling pleased with your body. Say to yourself, “This is the real me. I want to have the body I’m seeing. It’s going to be my body as soon as possible.”

As she went through the meditation, Amanda smiled. You could see the tension flowing out of her system. Her face relaxed into a look of contentment and hope.

Why didn’t Amanda’s previous doctors help her? Because they looked on her body basically as a broken machine that needed to be fixed. They had little expertise – or interest – in the whole human picture. But the whole picture was of utmost importance to her. “Stop eating so much” was just the opening wedge of a mind-body strategy to get her into a better place in her life.