Getting Slim

Many people go on a diet, yet we know that dieting doesn't work well in the long term. We may posit that these people do want to lose weight sustainably. Then why do they, again and again, go on a path that doesn't lead them there?

Because they think it does lead them there. There is a mismatch between hope/belief and reality. In such a case, one frequently sees people looking for a solution somewhere, anywhere outside of themselves: the next diet, any kind of procedure. Also, theories abound as causal explanations for the overweight.

Of course, calories come and go. They are ingested. They are burned. Some people naturally have a higher metabolism than others. Having more muscles burns more calories. Even having more body fat burns more calories. Genetic factors are involved at every stage.

But has the mind no role to play? We can probably all agree that it does, more or less. Now for a basic premise of this book - and the whole Read&Do series: body and mind are one whole. If you go deeper into the details of the body and especially the brain, eventually, you can see that body and mind are the same thing, only looked upon from different angles. Thus, saying that it's all in the body is also saying that it's all in the mind. They're two ways of looking at the same. That counts for many things, as well as for overeating.

Using your mind means doing something. It's not just waiting until something happens. It's not even like a pill that you can ingest and wait for its action upon your body-mind. That is why this is a Read&DO book. You are asked to work on yourself in a particular way. This is: not from outside in, by forcing yourself into someone who you eventually are not and will have much difficulty to push yourself toward. Diets are outside-in procedures. They're not you. They try to change you; they don't let you change from inside out. If you want to change from who you are, from inside out, you need to start from there: inside.

In this book, you may find out what can support you in this direction. This doesn't mean that anything else is unimportant. Sure, calories remain calories, and the mind will not make them miraculously go away. On the other hand, your motivation to eat or stop eating when there's still food on your plate, and even enjoying the fact that there is still some left on your plate, is a thing of the mind. Also, metabolism - burning the calories - is under the influence of the mind, although, in any case, the caloric intake is substantially more critical. This book is oriented mainly towards the intake.
The aim is not to make you eat less, but to bring you more to what you naturally, as a total human being, want to attain in this regard.

Beforehand, you may be a little apprehensive. While proceeding and afterward, you will find out that it's worth it. Not only your body loses overweight, but also your mind. The mental overweight shows in all kinds of negative emotions that are related to eating, your body, related frustrations, maybe even your relationships. Arguably, getting rid of mental overweight may be as important or even more important to body-mind health than getting rid of physical overweight.

This way, even working on 'getting slim' is not necessarily related to physical overweight. One may have a 'normal' weight or weigh medically too little. Even so, the body image one has may be one of overweight. The work on yourself that this condition asks you to do may be much the same IN DEPTH. People with quite different outward conditions may feel related this way.