Oh my goodness no, your weight is right where you need it to be! You’ve expressed that intellectually, you know that. So this is an emotional issue. Would you agree?

May I share something with you? I majored in clinical psych. I loved it, I lived it, I ate it up. I read textbooks for enjoyment. By the time the first two years of a four year degree had passed, I had diagnosed myself with at least a dozen disorders, and every diagnosis was correct according to the DSM in use at the time, I think it was DSM III r.

Fortunately, at the same time I was learning all the diagnostic and statistical criteria of the day, I was also learning about cognition and what makes thinking and what it is. I learned that although we don’t perceive it, so very much of our thinking is habitual. Not necessarily the things we think (that’s a different subject), but the way we think.

There’s an interesting interplay between the way we think and the way we feel, too. Our thoughts shape our feelings, and our feelings shape our thoughts. Even more interesting (I thought anyway) is the fact that not only is much of our thinking habitual, but much of our emoting as well. We are truly creatures of habit in both heart and mind, and the habits of each directly impact the others.

Here is why these things are not popular in any flourishing school of thought in modern therapeutic circles: It makes us responsible for these things my friend, for we truly are responsible for our opwn habits. They are after all acquired by our own choices and actions. And not many people these days want to hear about that.

But I can tell you this: When I accepted my own conclusions and applied them to myself, it was very liberating, as in it set me free – free to take responsibility and totake charge, to make a CHOICE to extinguish the maladaptive thinking and feeling habits that were causing me MAJOR problems for so many years by simply but stubbornly refusing to do them any more. Bad thiniking habits. Bad feeling habits. Never did beat a few of the bad health habits, but at least I’m in the habit of trying now lol

And here’s the hope in all this, which is what I want to give you, hope, and courage to make your OWN CHOICE. When I stubbornly refused to do those things, that became a habit too! And now it would be as hard for me to partake in those old habits even one time than it was for me to leave them forever. habits are hard to break, but easy to make, thank God. Make good ones, my friend.

There’s so much more hope I can share with you, and I can tell you exactly what worked and how it worked for me if you’d like to hear more by any chance, stuff that’s been crucial to how it worked for me.

Peace to you, I sincerely hope that my admittedly un-mainstream comment didn’t cause you any distress.