Food and weight controlled my life for thirty years. My dad was a diet doctor, my mother worked in what were then called "reducing salons," and I had an insatiable for penchant for sweets and snacks and leftovers. I didn't "outgrow" it---in fact, it only got worse---until the day I wanted peace more than I wanted to get into size 6 jeans. My prayer was answered. Over time and to my amazement, I not only got the peace, but the jeans fit, too. That was eighteen years ago. The peace is still with me and the jeans still fit. Everything I know for making this happen in anyone's life I've distilled into 101 suggestions in my book, Fit from Within: 101 Simple Secrets to Change Your Body and Your Life. Here are two of them to get you started.

Accept Yourself Today

Accepting who you are, body and soul, does not guarantee that you will lose weight. It does, however, put you in the ideal position for losing weight--not just one more time, but for the last time. If you don't accept yourself, you won't live fully, and if you don't live fully, you'll need to get full some other way.

It can be hard to accept yourself if you're too heavy (or if you think you are) because the mass culture as it's printed and televised finds fat abhorrent. This leads to self-hatred, more eating, and less exercising ("I can't be seen in workout clothes. I'll exercise after I lose the first ten pounds").

You may not be consciously thinking, "I'm completely unacceptable today, but at 120 pounds I will be perfect." Unconsciously, though, it's difficult not to have such thoughts because the media bombards us with the message that only thin (and while we're at it, we may as well add young) bodies are acceptable.

Every age and culture has had its physical ideal, but only in recent history has that ideal been foisted on us hundreds of times a day through magazines, movies, and TV. The implication that even normal weight isn't thin enough makes it hard for a lot of people, women in particular, to accept and value themselves. If you are overweight, it's even harder. Stand up to the barrage and hold firm to your belief in yourself...

>>> Click to Continue Reading "The Path to Becoming Fit From Within"

© Copyright Victoria Moran. This article was originally published at our website, SoulfulLiving.com, in May 2002,
as part of our "Self Improvement" Issue.

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