Weight Loss Articles

Body-Mind-Spirit Connection and Weight Loss:
Getting Your Whole Self Involved In Success
By Dr. Frank B. Smoot, MA, DD
www.CoachFrankSmoot.com

 

Diet Industry weight loss approaches fail, not for any single reason, but because they're so far "off target" in so many ways. An example is the way they restrict their entire approach to the body, to physiological / food-oriented methods. On the surface, that's a "logical" thing to do, because our culture has taught us to us see ourselves as physical beings.

Most Westerners see ourselves, first and foremost, as being our physical bodies. We also have minds and, oh, maybe those ethereal things called spirits. But the reality is that we are spirits who have minds and occupy bodies. Or, as the recording artist Sting put it, we are "spirits in the material world."

More importantly, the three aspects of ourselves are intimately connected. Unless we align our mind and spirit with our body's weight loss goals, we're simply wasting our time--and probably suffering while we fail.

To succeed at weight loss, you must use all your resources. You must involve all three aspects of who you are. You must combine the resources of your body, mind, and spirit, and get them involved and aligned toward your goal. That may mean you'll need to let go of the idea that you are primarily your physical body, and begin to acknowledge your mind and spirit. If you don't or can't accept this concept, your weight loss efforts will suffer seriously.

So let's dump our outmoded Western notion of how we humans are put together, and recognizing that our "being"--consists of three fundamental aspects: mind, body, and spirit, and that these three aspects of self are highly interconnected.

An approach to healing or treatment that involves all three aspects of self (spirit, mind, and body) is called holistic stemming from the same root word as whole, hale and holy.

Western science is gradually becoming aware that their "model" of health care is fundamentally flawed. We are finally discovering what Eastern medicine has known for millennia: Our health can only be optimized when these three aspects of self are in balance. In fact, our entire being is one big feedback system that tells us how we're doing in any given moment. To succeed, we need to work with all of who we are. And to do that, we need to fix our backward priorities.

 

At The Root Of Our Weight Loss Failures:
Backward Priorities

If you grew up in Western culture, you probably have some priorities that are not serving your health and happiness. As a culture, we are so myopically focused on the material world that we can barely even acknowledge the non-physical one, let alone look to it for healing.

However you may feel about Bible quotes, here's on that's pretty hard to ignore: "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths." (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

"Lose 10 pounds this weekend!" That's certainly a myth, but it's also what we want to hear. And because it's what we want to hear, we treat it as the truth. But in doing so, we set ourselves up for the only outcome we have any right to expect if we base our actions on lies: disaster.

Many of us focus great attention on our body while paying no attention at all to our relationship with the Creator who gave it to us. Maybe it's time for some better priorities? By the way, I have include a few Bible quotes here and there because they speak so eloquently to the points at hand. If they put you off, feel free to ignore them. But please don't miss the larger message.

The "Grand Illusion"

We on earth live in "The Grand Illusion." I first heard of this concept under the name of "maya"--the Hindu term that refers to the illusory nature of this physical world. Millennia ago, the Hindu spiritual teachers understood that what you can't see is much more real--and much more powerful--than what you can see.

As it turns out, this awareness is also a critical piece of the weight loss puzzle. As happens on rare occasions, science and spirit are in agreement on this point. Quantum Theory--a branch of the science of physics--has discovered that, no matter how closely we look, we never really find anything "solid." So, if we buy into the Grand Illusion--that what we can see is what's "real"--we'll never discover that what we can't see--the entire nonphysical realm--is even more real.

So it all boils down to a perceptual problem. We have learned to believe that the physical world is more real than the non-physical one. And, indeed, to our earthly eyes, it "looks" more real. But our blindness to other levels of reality that are even more important is what's actually keeping us stuck at a weight we don't like.

To sum up the problem: The result of our inaccurate perception is our out-of-whack priorities. The result of our out-of-whack priorities is that we look in the wrong place for our solutions. And the result of looking in the wrong place for solutions is excess weight we can't get rid of, health problems we shouldn't have, and a great deal of stress that could have been avoided.

A major shift for some of us will be to understand that what we can't see is more powerful and more influential in our lives than what we can see. If we don't grasp this essential concept, we'll forever be seeking solutions where none exist.

For more detail on the keys to successful weight loss, please check the resource box below.

Yours in total health,
Dr. Frank