New Year’s resolutions to lose weight all too often end up on the scrap heap of broken promises
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New Year’s resolutions to lose weight all too often end up on the scrap heap of broken promises
How many New Year's celebrations have passed when you have made a resolution to lose weight? How far did you get? Did your great resolve seem to diminish over the few weeks that followed, until the resolution drifted into a distant memory? This experience is one many of us are familiar with.
Our experience of New Year’s resolutions may be one that can undermine our confidence in our capacity to make changes in our lives. With each year and each failed resolution we begin to believe we cannot change.
We are not assisted by the fact that this is the time of year when the diet industry pulls out all stops to sell their products.
The diet industry rides on the ‘New Year’s Resolution’ effect – selling the dream of weight loss – but actually knowing that their product does not really work and that many will give up within a few weeks and also regain all the weight that is lost in that time.
In fact research has shown that whatever your New Year’s resolution, about 25% of us give up our New Year’s resolutions within 1 or 2 weeks and about 50% will have given up that resolve six months later[i].
Why is it that we cannot sustain our New Year’s Resolutions?
This has actually been the subject of extensive research, with various factors identified as being generally supportive of change. It seems that readiness to change and the ability to carry out that change, because of skills or your own self-efficacy (that is your capacity to do things for yourself), are key factors to likely success in reaching your goals[i].
Going on a diet is only focussing on one aspect of life – if you try and do it by making a decision to do so and exerting willpower alone, it will not be sustainable.
What I found was that fundamental change in my body size and shape required me to change EVERYTHING
This takes a moment to reflect on. What does EVERYTHING mean? It was not everything I was doing, but everything I was being.
EVERYTHING is to do with our relationship with ourselves
What is missing in the New Year’s Resolution ‘method’ of weight loss is that fundamental change is not a matter of willpower. There is, however, a set of skills required that will support us, but it is not a break-through diet or weight loss programme or exercise regime.
It is a LOT simpler. We need to focus on our relationship with our inner most.
Developing a new way of being with ourselves ultimately changes:
- Our relationship to others
- Our relationship to stress and life pressures
- And, wait for it, our relationship to EATING and what we eat
"From the inner heart, we can make the body what we truly are."
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings and Revelations, p 91
It is not about finding perfection but developing a deeper awareness of ourselves, how we treat ourselves, and learning over time how to build a connection with ourselves.
Honesty and Gentle Breath Meditation
The Gentle Breath Meditation allows us to feel what is going on in our body and develop an honest relationship with ourselves.
This learning to live from within will not be an immediate solution for your weight and this is the difference here – there is no quick fix. We do not do this in one go. We build a long lasting and very rewarding relationship with ourselves over the years, not only in the New Year to come.
Instead of Happy New Year, we need to say to ourselves ...
Happy New Life!
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