By Rita Lazar
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m on the email lists of a lot of alternative health professionals and experts – like acupuncturists, Reiki practitioners, chakra healers, weight loss gurus, etc. I like getting their weekly emails because there’s usually lots of inspirational tidbits, and every now and then I’ll get some great info.
One of the ladies I get emails from is none of the above-mentioned experts though, she’s a “life coach” and I don’t remember how I got on her list. I’m not going to knock the field of life coaching, because I know life coaches are able to bring great positive change into their clients’ lives, although that is rare. But I was getting a bad feeling about this particular life coach, mostly because of the quality of the message of her last few emails. This last email however, really took my doubt to the next level – the level of outright dislike.
This particular life coach – let’s call her “Perky the Princess” – always talks in her emails about having been very overweight at one time in her life, and how she lost a lot of weight because she stopped thinking and obsessing over exercise and diet and decided instead to fully live and love life. I, believe it or not, will not knock this method, but I don’t have enough respect for the messenger because I get the feeling she simplifies things too much.
The last email solidified my teetering dislike of her, because she said something very unfair. She was trying to get a message across, a message of how “unnatural” it is to be overweight. She said “if you search among the animals in the animal kingdom, you will not find any of them to be overweight – human beings are the only animals that get themselves overweight…”
Oh, Miss Perky the Princess. Firstly, not all characteristics of the animal kingdom should be copied by human beings. Lots of birds, for example, leave their young the minute they learn to fly. Should we leave our children as soon as they learn how to walk? Or should we hibernate all throughout the winter like bears? Or should we eat our babies like some spiders?
Or Perky the Princess could also say, “you know, human beings are the only kind of animal that form words and sentences and communicate with each other that way. No other animal does that..so we should stop doing that too. We should squeal like dolphins, or chirp like sparrows.”
Weight gain is an ability of the natural human body which makes it a human and natural occurrence. If it wasn’t “natural” to be overweight then instead of getting bloated, storing fat, and increasing in volume after a period overeating… you would die.
This mentality is so dangerous to people who are overweight and wish to lose weight, and it’s not just Perky the Princess spewing this stuff, a lot of people are using the “nature” angle. If you’re overweight and you feel like you have to lose weight because you’re convinced it’s “not natural”, then you’re just putting pressure on yourself, which is probably in addition to the ton of pressure you already have as an overweight person living in a society like this where people pay someone thousands of dollars who tells them “animals don’t get fat so if you’re fat you’re not normal”. You have to come from a place of calm to heal yourself of the need for emotional and physical cushioning. You have to have lots of silence, lots of rest, enough exercise, enough hydration, and a daily practice in acceptance. It will harm your efforts if you try to “fix” yourself, because your subconscious will sabotage your attempts at losing weight until you learn that there is nothing wrong with you and that you don’t need to be “fixed”.
Sending you much love, and reminding you that you needn’t listen to anyone who tells you there’s something wrong with you that needs to be fixed. You know in your heart of hearts that this is wrong.
