Do You Hate Yourself Because You Are Fat?

If you hate yourself because you are fat, then you are not alone. Millions of folks in this country...more female than male, but not restricted to any gender...do not like the way our bodies look. We've been taught that "we" are our bodies...and therefore, if we do not like the ways our bodies look then we do not like ourselves.

What I've found is that while we THINK we hate our bodies (and therefore ourselves) because we are fat, the inverse is actually true: We are fat because we hate ourselves and our bodies.

I know this flies in the face of conventional, scientific wisdom...so if this is news to you, realize that you are not alone in your beliefs and that I am not alone in this way of thinking. From weight loss pros like Geneen Roth to spiritual teachers like Abraham more and more folks are coming on board to this idea.

Do we become fat because we eat too much and/or move our bodies too little. Yes and no. Do we stay overweight because we eat too much and/or move our bodies too little. Again, yes and no...

It isn't about what we eat or how much we eat. It is more about why we eat and how we feel about ourselves and what we eat.

The better we feel about ourselves the more healthy we tend to eat. When we love and respect ourselves and our bodies we are better able to listen to our body and to take care of it and eat what it needs in order to be at its most healthy state. Sometimes this may be MORE than what we were eating before. Sometimes it may be less. Sometimes it may be different foods, other times it will be about when we eat.

One of the biggest challenges that we face is to learn to love and appreciate ourselves. Right now. No matter what our size is. No matter what we just ate.

Instead what we typically do is say we will love our bodies (and ourselves) when we've lost 5 pounds (or 50 or whatever the magic number is for you.) Sometimes our love is even more conditional than that...not only do we require weight loss to be deserving of our love, we require it in a specific time frame!

Sometimes we aren't aware that we are restricting our love...we just think we will be happier, more popular, more athletic, more __ (you fill in the blank)...but no matter what that "more" is, if we need to lose weight in order to experience it then we inherently feel we are "less" than enough...not good enough...somehow inferior...and all those feelings are about lack of love.

Hating our bodies is a complete waste of our time and energy. Nothing good comes from hate. It does not motivate us for permanent weight loss...it only perpetuates itself.

If you want to have true weight loss success...healthy, natural and permanent...then it starts with learning to love yourself.