Why Are People Overweight? Part 2-Purpose

If you’ve read Part 1 of this article, you are beginning to understand that I really don’t care “why” people are overweight because it truly doesn’t matter. A good prospect for what DOES matter though, is “What purpose is served by being overweight?” The “purpose” of the weight is a whole different story and gets us a whole different answer.

A lot of the answers to the “purpose” question are a bit shocking when we hear them, but the examples I’m giving are all real ones that came up with clients of mine. Here are a few:

“If I’m overweight, I’ll be undesirable, and if I’m undesirable I won’t get into an intimate relationship. If I don’t get into an intimate relationship I can’t get hurt. So the weight prevents me from getting hurt in a relationship.”

“I don’t deserve to be happy because I’m a bad person, and being overweight makes me unhappy. The weight serves as punishment for my being a bad person.”

“Being overweight makes me bigger so that I can be seen. People never noticed me before, so the weight serves the purpose of making me big enough that they see me now.”

“People hurt me when they get close to me, so the weight serves as a physical barrier to keep people at a distance.”

There are as many “purposes” for the weight as there are people who have a weight problem, but this gives you a slight idea of what types of things come up. Weight as punishment for something, and weight as protection “from” something are the two main underlying themes in most purposes for being overweight. Oddly enough, almost every purpose that has come to light with my clients has had some sense of logic to it.

OK… so let’s say that we found out the purpose of the weight or of being overweight. Let’s say that the purpose is to make the person undesirable so that they won’t get into a relationship where they will get hurt. Now what? We found the purpose, so does everything magically resolve itself and the weight problem goes away all by itself? Nope…

Let’s look at the purpose again. Chances are that part of the reason this person wants to lose weight in the first place is so that they CAN have an intimate, loving, caring, relationship. (Which they CAN do without losing the weight, but that’s a whole different topic). So the purpose of the weight is a purpose that they don’t want the weight to serve anymore, and THAT is important. All of a sudden, the weight has lost it’s purpose for being there. NOW is the weight going to magically disappear all by itself? Probably not.

Contined in Part 3 of this article…
Weight Loss CDs/MP3s