by Maria's Last Diet
Sometimes, a focus on dieting can be a way to escape self-awareness.
When a woman goes on a weight-loss diet time after time, and concentrates on nothing but the diet in order to lose the weight, she may be abandoning her "self".
There may be worry, fear, and anxiety just below the surface of her weight problem. There may be a world of meaning and understanding that could enrich her "self", but she may wish to escape all of that, sensing the experience would be anxiety-filled.
This is not uncommon. We all have a tendency to stop our minds from having disconcerting thoughts. We don't want to be reminded of our problems and our worries and our anxieties.
So, a woman may narrow down her thinking to that circumscribed area: the diet and all it involves - counting, portioning, weighing, meal-planning - all that may minimize the dangers of delving deeper.
However, this use of a weight-loss diet can also prevent a person from learning new things, from broadening her scope of understanding, and from finding new answers to one of life's difficult problems. She may not make any attempt to understand her own behavior. She banishes any upsetting or threatening thoughts from her mind by putting all attention, all hope, all expectations of a solution, all energy on THE DIET. The details and procedures of dieting take the place of true discovery, keeping her on the surface of things where it's very unlikely she'll find a way to fix the problem.
The weight-loss diet is only one part of the answer to a weight problem. The "yourself" part is where the meaningful and powerful answers lie.
by Maria's Last Diet
Sometimes, a focus on dieting can be a way to escape self-awareness.
When a woman goes on a weight-loss diet time after time, and concentrates on nothing but the diet in order to lose the weight, she may be abandoning her "self".
There may be worry, fear, and anxiety just below the surface of her weight problem. There may be a world of meaning and understanding that could enrich her "self", but she may wish to escape all of that, sensing the experience would be anxiety-filled.
This is not uncommon. We all have a tendency to stop our minds from having disconcerting thoughts. We don't want to be reminded of our problems and our worries and our anxieties.
So, a woman may narrow down her thinking to that circumscribed area: the diet and all it involves - counting, portioning, weighing, meal-planning - all that may minimize the dangers of delving deeper.
However, this use of a weight-loss diet can also prevent a person from learning new things, from broadening her scope of understanding, and from finding new answers to one of life's difficult problems. She may not make any attempt to understand her own behavior. She banishes any upsetting or threatening thoughts from her mind by putting all attention, all hope, all expectations of a solution, all energy on THE DIET. The details and procedures of dieting take the place of true discovery, keeping her on the surface of things where it's very unlikely she'll find a way to fix the problem.
The weight-loss diet is only one part of the answer to a weight problem. The "yourself" part is where the meaningful and powerful answers lie.