Weight loss is a sensitive topic for many people. Some people think that emphasizing weight loss can promote disordered eating and self-rejection. Others who may have a perfectly normal relationship with food may try many attempts at losing weight. Unfortunately, all too often in both scenarios, results are short term, and people seem to go through cycles of weight gain and loss without sustained long term progress.1
In my naturopathic practice, I see people who have tried various weight loss programs pursuing the same goal for decades. They feel like they have tried it all: diets, therapists, and exercise plans, and yet find themselves feeling a sense of despair, unsure if they will ever be able to reach their goal.2
Fortunately, they haven’t given up. Instead, their failures eventually help them realize that their excess weight is actually not the real problem and that a new paradigm for healing is needed.
A New Paradigm For Weight Loss
The foundation of this new paradigm that I want to explore with you is based on the idea that excess weight (as well as many other physical symptoms people experience) is a sign of a deeper imbalance in the body, mind, and soul. Looking at symptoms this way is what brings us to a path of holistic healing of both the root causes as well as the symptoms.
The Torah, in the book of Leviticus (chapter 13), talks about this idea concerning a skin condition called Tzarat, which is a physical ailment that occurs for spiritual reasons, and is usually mistranslated as “leprosy.” Tzarat, though a physical illness, has spiritual factors at its root cause. Similarly, the solution given by the Torah for healing this physical condition is spiritual3.
This teaching about Tzarat can give us a valuable perspective on what true healing entails. Our current conditioning usually causes us to separate a symptom that we experience from its root. More often than not, we replace the work involved in real healing with quick fix remedies that promise quick relief. This results in a back-and-forth cycle of losing weight and then gaining it back while unaddressed symptoms get suppressed. When this type of cycle continues over the long term, where symptoms are focused on without addressing the root causes, the result is an eventual worsening of the original symptoms and even the development of new symptoms4 that tend to be more serious.
To break this destructive cycle, a spiritual weight loss approach that combines physical healing, mental mastery, emotional mastery, and spiritual transformation can bring the healthy sustained weight loss that so many people are seeking.
Mental, Emotional, & Spiritual Aspects of Weight Loss
Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, known as the Piaseczner Rebbe, was a creative mystical thinker and an important Hasidic leader who lived in the first half of the 20th century in Poland. He wrote, “Look within yourself- you who are willing to listen and hear deeply- and you will see that this is a fundamental principle in human consciousness”.5
We learn from the above teaching the first step in a spiritual weight loss approach, the importance of being willing to look within. Once we cultivate a practice of looking within, we can start to have the awareness to see what is truly blocking our healing.
The next step to this approach is developing inner mental, emotional, and spiritual skills to activate healing. On this the Piaseczner Rebbe teaches:
“When your ego-based thoughts are busy and awakened within, it is hard for the Divine consciousness to penetrate through and be revealed. Therefore, it is essential to learn how to silence the thoughts and desires that constantly flood a person’s consciousness, seemingly without end, because the nature of thinking is that each thought gets bound and entangled with the next - until it becomes extremely hard for a person to disconnect and free herself or himself from them”.6
Did you ever realize how you have mental patterns that keep you stuck in habitual ways of being?
Multiple teachers and sages agree that the mind blocks our higher self from coming through in many ways. This gets compounded by the fact that the mental blocking causes emotions to get suppressed, which forms blocks to our energy flow. Even though emotions can be processed and released, unless we learn certain skills that enable us to master our mental and emotional functioning, what happens is that emotional energy gets suppressed and accumulates over time which can lead to compulsivity, addictions and/or a host of physical or mental health issues.7
Let’s take an example of negative thinking about oneself otherwise known as “negative self-talk” which is one of the biggest mental blocks to losing weight. As one’s mind cycles through negative thoughts about being unworthy or inferior, emotional energy gets suppressed and builds up which can either weaken one of the physical glands in the body involved in weight loss or can cause compulsive behaviors8 like overeating or emotional eating.
Steps Forward
To highlight a few practical ways to begin working on all the levels discussed, I suggest the following:
- Seek out guidance to naturally heal physical issues interfering with weight loss like thyroid weakness, adrenal weakness, and insulin resistance to name just a few.
- Start a daily centering practice to quiet the mind, feel your body, feel your breath, and feel more connected to your higher self.
- Learn ways to get in touch with and release energy from suppressed emotions and trauma. Start by observing your body sensations or emotions with complete acceptance, dropping resistance to your feelings.
- Remember that changing eating habits and nutrition is most effective and balanced when implemented AFTER or AT THE SAME TIME as a person is directing themself to the mental, emotional, and spiritual healing work.
I believe that we are all created with the ability to self-heal on the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels. A formula that reflects this idea says that
Vitality = Power - Obstructions9
In other words, our vitality is innate to us and the ability to improve our health depends on knowing how to access the potent healing power within. It may seem that finding something outside ourselves to alleviate our symptoms will enable us to reach our goal, but the truth is that all healing starts from within. More specifically, when we learn the tools needed to remove that which obstructs the wellspring of vitality inside us, we access our true power to self-heal. Choosing to embark on such a journey can bring us not only toward our initial goal of lasting weight loss, but along the way, we most probably will find ourselves experiencing increasing levels of inner connectedness and greater manifestation of our higher selves embodied in this world.
- Shuval, Kerem et al. “Long-term weight loss success and the health behaviors of adults in the USA: findings from a nationally representative cross-sectional study”. BMJ Open https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/11/7/e047743. July 14, 2021
- Mann, Traci et al. "Medicare's search for effective obesity treatments: Diets are not the answer." American Psychologist, 62(3), 220–233. Apr 2007.
- Leviticus: 12-15: 1-33
- “Weight Problems Take a Hefty Toll on Body and Mind”. www.hsph.harvard.edu
- Rabbi Shapira, Kalonymus Kalmish. Hachsharat Ha'avreichim. Translation by Rabbi Doniel Katz.
- Rabbi Shapira, Kalonymus Kalmish. Derech HaMelech. Translation by Rabbi Doniel Katz.
- Benjamin P. Chapman, PhD et al. "Emotion Suppression and Mortality Risk Over a 12-Year Follow-up". Journal of Psychosomatic Research. Volume 75, Issue 4, Oct 2013, Pgs 381-385
- Ferreira, Sonia et al. ”Stress Influences the Effect of Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms on Emotion Regulation”. Frontiers In Psychiatry. 20 January 2021
- Ehret, Arnold. Mucusless Diet Healing System. Benedict Lust Publications, Inc., 2001.
