Are You Emotionally Prepared for Weight Loss Surgery?
Part 2 – Emotional Housecleaning
This is the second in a series of articles regarding emotional preparedness for permanent weight loss, either by life style changes or by lap band weight loss surgery
While intellectually preparing yourself for a very emotional decision, please keep in mind that loosing weight is only one small step in preserving your health and correcting your body image. Equally important–if not more important—is the acknowledgment of the role your emotions play in changing the way you look and feel.
While permanent weight loss is a very passionate and painful desire, there are two scientific points that I mentioned in the first article that will come into play in your process, whether you elect to use weight loss surgery.
1. Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
2. Our choices are determined by our emotions. Only health can promote permanent change.
Tragically, obesity is an epidemic in America. Why in America? What is happening in our culture to promote a heavier and more desperate population? In part, this is the result of an individual’s inadequate preparation to address the emotions of every day life. Schools offer no courses in emotional wellness, and sadly, many families are not even aware of the importance of healthy communication much less promote it. It is comforting to understand that education and counseling can provide the necessary understanding to fill this emotional void and to correct the self destructive path of both compulsive overeating and of avoidance or misunderstanding of the principles of healthy emotional interactions.
The overall effects of obesity are startling and enormous. Obesity affects every aspect of life, physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. These effects gain in momentum, like a snowball rolling down the side of a mountain, creating an avalanche of monumental impact. For emotional eaters every emotional slight, every mishandled situation drives that snowball faster and more efficiently down the path of despair.
Think back to your school days. Were you the type of student who worked quickly on a rough homework assignment? Perhaps you waited until the night before the task was due and then became consumed with the overwhelming need to perform a month long task in 24 hours. Emotional progress presents this exact same equation. Either the student works every day at achieving wellness, or he finds himself buried under an unmanageable burden at the eleventh hour.
For some, denial is the true enemy of mental comfort. Denial is a complex–and often deadly–system that tells you that you are not responsible for your own life. Nothing could be further from the truth, but denial teaches you on a very real basis that feelings need not be addressed, that they can be replaced by oral gratification, by numbing yourselves with food.
The good news is that denial can be challenged and overcome. Good mental patterns can replace the fear, boredom, hurt, sorrow or anger that fed off of the denial process creating a false sense of security and helplessness. First, one must realize, and then accept, that emotional eating is an emotional problem. Secondly, one must realize that his body and his emotions have not been valued as they should – by the self or anyone else. This, too, is highly correctable.
If you are a candidate for lap band surgery, you need to stop and evaluate your current emotional processing system. If you have lap band surgery and are no longer capable of numbing your emotions, you may well find a substitute for handling your emotional discomfort. Statistics show that many lap band surgery patients switch from food to alcohol. Weight loss surgery patients are ending up in rehab in record numbers.
The truly healthy and permanent way to effect significant, lifelong change is emotional housecleaning. This is a courageous and brutally honest look at yourself, your choices and your actions. It is you taking of your personal inventory. Clean out the denial, the emotional fear, the failure to deal with your hurts and angers, and you learn how to BE the person that you can love and respect. In short, your internal beauty is reflection of your external appearance. You simply cannot change one without addressing the other.
While this task sounds daunting, it can be the start of a wonderful new adventure. Consider yourself a traveler in the wonders of your own heart and mind. You are what you are because of where your journey has taken you this far. Where you travel from here, is completely up to your own attitude.
Obesity doesn’t evolve overnight. Years of denial or misunderstanding the very emotions that drive your soul are the actual cause of your torment. New brain studies show that our emotions drive our behavior. Destructive emotional decisions create destructive physical patterns. It is that simple, and that difficult!
Are You Emotionally Prepared for Weight Loss?
Many morbidly obese people will have to face the emotional turmoil of past abuse. Abuse is not something that can be swept away or denied. Counselors would agree that it must be processed and healed before any significant wellness can be grasped.
In short, this processing is DIFFICULT, but it can be the most rewarding experience of your life. You are no longer a victim. You have the strength to overcome whatever was dumped on you in the past. You can become whoever you wish to be in the in the future. This process unfolds one step at a time. The rewards are beyond description!
With healthy emotional processing systems in place, you will be able to navigate the path to healthy living, and food will become a source of energy instead of a source of pain. You will be proud of your choices and be able to leave the pain of your past behind you.
At Positive Workouts, we believe that everyone deserves a chance to have a healthy and fulfilling life. We believe that combining positive thoughts with positive actions is the key to change. We make programs that facilitate change. See our product section for more information.