Hello, dear one!
I hear you. You’re tired of battling with your weight for years. You’ve graduated from several weight loss programs and learned to be an expert on various diets. Your accountability partner and fitness trainer have no answer to the oscillation of your weight.
Now, I want you to open your arms and hug yourself. You’re not alone.
This was Hannah’s old story too.
Hannah’s weight became a problem after giving birth to her two girls. After her first daughter was born, her weight never returned to normal before she was pregnant again with her second child.
The two girls were only eleven months apart. Hannah remembered those crazy days when she was semi-awake all day. She was too exhausted to worry about her weight.
Hannah soothed herself with the thought that one day when she had more time for herself, the extra pounds would come off. But they never did!
For ten years, Hannah had been trying four weight loss programs and multiple diets. She would lose as much as 40 pounds at times, but then she became heavy again.
Her fitness trainer at the local gym recommended coaching.
This took Hannah on an unexpected journey, and it unlocked the door to her path of maintaining the desired weight.
During the first session, Hannah was clear that she could lose thirty pounds, as she had done that many times. What she didn’t want was to gain the thirty pounds back after losing it.
She had a clear vision of her ideal weight. She even bought a gorgeous coral dress in size 8 to program her mind as a result.
What she didn’t anticipate was the surprising link between her weight and her emotions. The next few weeks were emotionally heavy for her, but the work was necessary to keep her weight off once and for all.
From the second meeting on, Hannah agreed to do the “consciousness breathing exercises” to get in touch with her body and connect to her higher self, the Spirit.
Hannah felt safe and open in a trusted and supported space.
Through guided breathing and answering questions, Hannah discovered three revelations that caused her weight to vacillate.
The first cause was her mother.
This was the first feeling called her body and shocked her. Hannah loved her mother and admired her strength for bringing up her and her brother as a single parent.
Her parents divorced when Hannah was ten and her younger brother seven. She remembered their constant fights. Her mother was crying and cracking dishes in the kitchen, while her father yelled and slammed the door to the garage, and drove off.
Hannah hid in her bedroom during their fights, wondering if they would have stayed happily ever together if she and her brother were not their burdens.
After her father left the house, Hannah’s mother took on three jobs to keep them fed and clothed. Whenever her mother was out with new boyfriends, Hannah cooked dinner and watched her brother until she left home for college.
Hannah’s mother was a fashionista. As a mother dating actively, she stood out with her thick and wavy dark hair, a voluptuous body in colorful and revealing outfits, and a laugh that could be heard from blocks away.
As a teenager, Hannah was embarrassed when her girlfriends teased her mother’s flamboyant facade. Hannah secretly wished that her mother would dress down and acted more like her friends’ mothers in the neighborhood.
She didn’t realize that she had planted a seed in her subconscious mind not to be publicly acknowledged for her beauty. She often wore oversized t-shirts and sweatshirts to be the opposite of her mother.
Of course, this brought ongoing criticism from her mother. She could still recall her mother saying to her, “You will never get any man’s attention if you dress like this.”
But Hannah wanted to prove to her mother: You’re wrong!
And Hannah did!
Hannah married her college sweetheart. Like Hannah, her husband loved wearing t-shirts while not working. He was a pharmaceutical sales manager and a great provider.
The problem? Hannah was continuously challenged by her mother.
Each time Hannah’s mother came over to visit her two granddaughters, she would make comments on Hannah’s stay-at-home choice, “Men change hearts and die. You saw how fast your father left us for the blonde. What would you do if this happens to you?”
Hannah felt belittled and insecure each time after her mother left.
By connecting her body and mind, Hannah identified her mother as her “energy vampire.”
She felt strongly that she was never good enough for her mother. As a physical sign, she would often gain a few pounds after her mother’s visit.
Discovering the first factor was a huge win for Hannah. She kept going on this self-actualization journey and unfolded another cause for her excess weight.
The second cause was her continuation of an unresolved issue.
This took some grit as a self-acknowledgment!
Growing up in an emotionally unstable household, Hannah witnessed the fierce fights between two adults. Hannah craved her parents’ love and attention, but instead, she received their emotional and physical abandonment.
After her father left and married his sidekick girlfriend, he hardly came back to visit her and her brother. He replaced them with new children. She felt left out, but she never acknowledged the feeling of abandonment.
In her teen years, her mother was either busy working or dating other men. Hannah had no adult guidance at home, and she had to be a mother to her younger brother. You can call her courageous and selfless, but the truth was she learned to ignore her emotions.
The feeling of abandonment in Hannah was like a seed sitting in the soil; it would not germinate until it met the right season.
The marriage had been a blessing. Both Hannah and her husband came from broken families. Both wanted to make the best for each other and the girls.
However, Hannah’s husband traveled a lot because of the pharmaceutical sales and presentations. Sometimes, he would only return home for a weekend and fly off again.
For many years, Hannah was like a single parent to her girls. As a stay-at-home mom, she was doing it all, raising children, calling handymen for repairs, and paying bills.
She felt lonely and unsupported. But she was too afraid to complain and discuss her needs with her husband. She thought they had a partnership, and this was her work.
During a meeting one day, Hannah had a breakthrough moment.
Because she never addressed her deep-seated abandonment issues, she repeated what she didn’t resolve.
Hannah had suffered the long-standing unspoken feeling of abandonment. She first buried her emotions with her parents, then with her husband.
Since she buried her feelings in her parents’ absence, the Universe gave her a second chance to tackle the same issue with her husband. His job demanded his absence, which caused to resurface Hannah’s unresolved feeling of abandonment.
Whenever her husband was away on business trips, she was overwhelmed with all the chores, Hannah would reach out to comfort food, like a bowl of pasta coated in butter, or a bag of vinegar flavored potato chips. She knew it wasn’t good for her, but she craved for them. Afterward, she felt shame, guilt, and disappointment.
Hannah began to see how she could gain back the lost weight with her heavy emotions.
With this breakthrough discovery, Hannah took it a little further and leaned her third cause of weight challenges.
The third cause was her need for external protection.
This discovery was a huge win for Hannah!
Since childhood, Hannah developed a need for extra stuff. You would see her home filled with countless highlighters, five sets of dishes, dozen of comforter covers, and numerous toys.
The master bedroom’s walk-in closet on her side was jammed with clothes pushing against each other. When she opened the girl’s bathroom closet, the towels would fall on her face.
There was no space empty in her house.
Hannah had created a physical environment full of stuff; they made her feel protected.
In addition to the stuff, she also gave reverence to high-end items so that she could feel accepted by her sorority sisters. Carrying an LV bag was necessary to send a message: I’m doing fine as a stay-at-home mom.
But there was an unpleasant story behind her luxury bag. Her husband bought her the bag, reluctantly.
Hannah was torn between anger and guilt. She was angry at her husband because she had to justify owning the bag. At the same time, she felt guilty because she knew how hard her husband worked so that she could stay at home comfortably with the girls.
“I let all this stuff overpower me, “ Hannah cried, “I’m so heavy with stuff.”
Hannah had been carrying both physical and emotional baggage with her all day and every day, and how could she be lighter in her body?
Week after week, Hannah kept her appointments and discovered more and more about herself.
She learned different techniques to align her mind with her body.
Here are her results:
Her mother didn’t change, but Hannah learned to center herself during the moments when old issues surface; she became a master of self-regulator in front of her mother.
Her husband wanted nothing more than to please her. Hannah became comfortable asking him for help when he was home, and he was happy to stock up the pantry and refrigerator before his next business trip. They also created seven-minute huddle rituals, checking in and chatting with each other several times a day in person or via phone. This has brought them closer together.
Letting go of her stuff was not easy, but she did it.
She started by downsizing her bags. It took some courage for her to replace her big tote with a crossbody bag with essentials. Guess what? The lighter bag relieved her back pain!
After donating some unused clothes, she was proud of not filling the empty spaces right away. After a few months, she got used to emptier closets.
In Hannah’s case, she did the hard work on herself and identified her mother as her energy vampire. She resolved her old issues before moving forward. She got rid of her accumulated stuff so that she could be emotionally and physically lighter.
She consciously coped with her three causes to hold her inner power.
It’s been over three years, and this summer, Hannah will showcase her splendid coral dress again.
If you resonate with Hannah’s story and would like to discuss your weight challenge, let’s chat.
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