March 12
Over the years I’ve gained and lost 100 pounds twice, so I’ve paid attention to the stories I’ve heard from women discussing their struggles with weight. These stories have been alternately heartbreaking and uplifting, depressing and inspirational. Yet one common thread exists: whether it’s Kirstie Alley talking to the tabloids about her yo-yo dieting, or an intimate conversation with a friend about her quest to lose weight and keep it off, these women all experience a degree of self-hate at some point. Almost without exception they’ve spent time standing in front of the mirror and cursing their bodies—the love handles, the loose skin, the widening hips, the fat thighs. I’ve been there, too. And I can tell you that it’s never productive to look in the mirror and grab at parts of your body unkindly! The first step to making peace with weight – and jumpstarting weight loss – is learning to love the woman in the mirror.
I learned this lesson first-hand. By dieting all the way through high school and university I was able to stay slim, but I tried almost every weight loss program out there – the Grapefruit Diet, Weight Watchers, Atkins, Pritkins, and South Beach, just to name a few. But things caught up to me when I got pregnant, and over the course of my first pregnancy my unrestrained eating resulted in a weight gain of over one hundred pounds. My attempts to take this weight off were interrupted when I got pregnant again. I was eventually successful, though, and wound up getting all the way back to my pre-baby weight. Stepping on the scale and seeing that I’d lost 100 pounds was one of the prouder moments of my life.
Like so many women, though, I eventually fell off the wagon,
and over the next 10 years I put all 100 pounds back on again. (It’s an easy
thing to do – 10 pounds a year is only 100 extra calories per day!) When I
attempted to shed pounds the second time, I looked back at all the elements of
my first success to see if I could find some magic in it. And sure enough, that
weight-loss experience became the basis of my new plan. From these experiences
I developed a step-by-step process that is based on aligning internal
knowingness with external actions. I now endeavor to share my process with
others seeking the same results.
I call this process the Six Stilletto Steps. In part, this was due to my own love of stilletto shoes! But beyond that, it’s also a testament to the nature of this process. You can’t just walk in stillettos – you’ve got to make every step deliberate and be sure to keep your balance if you don’t want to end up on the ground. In the same way, every one of the Six Stilletto Steps must be carefully balanced between the internal and external in order to keep things steady and peacefully on track.
In my upcoming eBook I explain each of the Six Stilletto Steps, show how I used them to further my weight loss journey, and illustrate how you can do the same. Your need may not be as great as mine – you may just be looking to shed a few excess pounds or drop a dress size. But if you want your weight loss to be peaceful and sustained, I think you’ll find my six steps to be an empowering, effective, and above all peaceful method for losing weight.
Every chapter opens with a personal story, describes how I used the step, and closes with some key messages I call “Walk Away with This.” I’ve invested a lot of time, effort and emotion to try to understand my problems with weight, and now I’ve written an eBook to share my revelations with you. I used to view my problems in this area as major defects, but now I have begun to view them all as gifts. They forced me to get to know myself better and kept me on the path to personal discovery. I can only hope that they will do as much for you.
Self-hate is a very big thing. Your book sounds like a walk in the hand. May I know how it's going now? One more thing people need when it comes to facing this challenge is a good motivation, and your book may just give them that.
Posted by: Andrea Chopra | August 08, 2011 at 08:03 AM