Fear is a Very Powerful Depressant

I was watching a movie yesterday and heard the line:

Fear is a very powerful depressant.

On The Biggest Loser we see the contestants fears all the time. These fears keep them depressed, emotional and eating their way through life. Most often their biggest fears are part of their biggest breakthroughs.

What sort of things do you fear in your journey?

Fear of injury
Fear of major medical issue (heart attack, asthma attack)
Fear of losing control
Fear of taking control
Fear of change
Fear of being hungry
Fear of losing friends
Fear of being selfish
Fear of expectations
Fear of attention
Fear of relationship changes
Fear of affection
Fear of failure
Fear of the fat not being what is making you unhappy
Fear of success

Confronting your fears and moving past them is an important part of your journey.

IF YOU DEPEND ON FOOD as an emotional coping mechanism, you won't succeed at losing weight until you find ways to confront and resolve difficult emotions that DON'T INVOLVE FOOD, EATING OR OVEREATING.

The next time you discover a fear - confront it. Ask for help if you want or need to - or even if you don't think you need help. =) Don't bury it under countless empty calories. Eventually those calories are stored in your thighs and you still have the fear living underneath.

How do you take charge of your fears?

Research, Get Creative, and Trial and Error. =)

To start, I found this great overview article of areas of further exploration to take charge of your fears.

http://www.freedomfromfear.org/viewtopic.asp?topic_id=188

Cognitive Therapy for Weight Loss:

Education - You don't know what you don't know.

Self-Monitoring - You have to acknowledge it to fix it.

Problem Solving - You know best how to fix it, get creative and come up with solutions to your own issues. You do this in many other parts of your life (your job, your relationship, your parenting - you can do this for you too).

Accountability and support - Get tips, advice and support and have a place where you are checking in and being accountable.

Change in eating habits - Appreciate food for its taste AND how it fuels your body through each and every day.

Lorelei Added:  Fitness - Creating a physically strong exterior has a massive impact on how strong you feel on the inside.  There is a calm confidence you can have when your body is fit and you know you are a healthy person.

Responding to sabotaging thoughts - Your mind will always be more powerful than the muscles on your body. Learn to control and harness the power of your thoughts.

Experiments to decrease fear and increase tolerance of hunger and craving - create your own experiments to move through your fears. Empower yourself to solve your own issues once and for all.

Maintenance - As we have seen on last week's Biggest Loser, this is where you take everything that you have learned, and apply it along with new information that you will constantly bring into your arsenal of tricks to keep you on the right path for the rest of your life.


This is YOUR journey. It will only go as far as YOU take it. =)