Your weight problem is not an accident. All of your diet and exercise attempts fail as soon as you stop working them precisely because neither diet nor exercise programs address the underlying cause, and that cause is based in how you feel about yourself. Either you want to punish yourself or protect yourself, so let us look at each.

Punishing yourself means that your fat cells carry guilt over things you did in the past, either to yourself or to others, and the real cure is self forgiveness. You are an emotional being, so once you address your underlying guilt by forgiving yourself, your need to punish yourself with obesity will be gone. Permanently. This leads to safe, steady weight loss as your emotions normalize.

Ask yourself these questions: What was my crime? How long ago did I do that? Am I still doing it? If I had gone to prison for it, would I be out by now? Have I punished myself long enough? Has there been in fact way too much punishment already?

You may well find that you have indeed punished yourself way too much and it is time to grant yourself a full pardon. Forgive does not mean forget, it means accepting responsibility, then moving on with your life in a positive way, having learned your lesson. You cannot change the past. You can, however, change the way you feel about it. You can take your power back from the past and stop letting the past hurt you. You can stop spinning over how life used to be and get on with creating the good life you have always deserved. So forgive yourself. Today. Right now.

Protecting yourself is the other emotional motivation that causes great weight gain. You have been deeply hurt. Your fat cells form a protective barrier between you and the outside world to stop you from being hurt again. But it doesn't work, because you are still carrying all that hurt around with you, stored inside those fat cells. And again, the real cure is forgiveness, but in this case, you need to forgive the people who hurt you. Once you deal directly with all the underlying hurt you feel by forgiving them, you will safely, steadily lose weight exactly because your need for protection will be gone.

Ask yourself these questions: What was done to me? How long ago did all that happen? Are those hurtful people still in my life? Do I still need to be protected from them? Why should I continue to suffer for what they did? If it was not my fault, why am I paying for it?

You may well find that you have suffered way too long and way too much already. And often those hurtful people have been gone from your life for years, so you no longer need to be protected from them. So let the suffering stop right now. Forgive them.

One hundred percent forgiveness may not be possible for you at first, and that is fine. Not to worry, because you can start with a small percentage of forgiveness and work up. How about forgiving them ten percent? Twenty? Eighty? Even five percent forgiveness is an excellent step in the right direction. There is no reason you should continue suffering for actions that were not your fault.

Forgiveness does not mean that you let anyone off the hook, it means that your present happiness is more important to you than your past suffering. Forgiveness does not mean that you condone the hurtful things done to you, it means that you reclaim your right to run your own life. So long as you do not forgive, those hurtful things are running your life, and how is that working for you? The people who hurt you may have ruined your yesterdays, but only you are in charge of your tomorrows.

In my years of helping people lose weight by addressing the underlying causes, my consistent finding is that obesity is an emotional issue. And only forgivness heals the guilt and the hurt. Hypnosis allows the process of forgiving to work more quickly and throughly. This results in safe, permanent weight loss. And that is what you want.

Author's Bio: 

Board certified clinical hypnotist Michelle Beaudry takes clients in person and by telephone from her office near Orlando, Florida. 407 862-9144, hypnofemme@aol.com.