I am not talking surgery, extreme dieting or crazy amounts of exercise. I am not talking about taking yourself to your limit physically, but you will need to drop your current beliefs around what is possible, and embrace the fact that you actually don’t need to DO anything physical at all to lose weight.

Stop
Take a breath
And before you do anything else, including reading the rest of these words, get a pen and paper out and complete the following sentence:

I’ve just read the opening paragraph to this article and it has made me feel………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Your response will identify a lot. 

Background
I am a menopausal woman who has gradually been putting on weight over the last few years. I’ve watched my body shape change, waistline thicken and the elastic of my skin begin to weaken. And all of this even though I am eating healthier than ever before; my weight kept on increasing. It’s been a frustrating journey as I watch my slim husband eat way more than me yet remain slight with hardly an inch of body fat. 

At age 46 I have been conscious of what I look like my whole life (what woman isn’t; society trains us to obsess about our looks). I began my journey slight, my small boned frame able to eat anything and not put on a pound. Perhaps it was to do with the 30 cigarettes I smoked everyday (at least), or the weekends spent dancing in clubs. But in the last twelve years that all changed, I stopped smoking, began heavy drinking, stopped partying, went bankrupt, gave up booze, had two operations, and entered menopause. 

The Experiment
Over the past year or so I have been conducting my own personal experiment
It began in the summer of 2017 when I couldn’t fit into any of my clothes and realised that I’d put on a stone in weight above where my body has historically felt its healthiest. 

In my early 30s I stopped partying hard, taking ecstasy and cocaine, plus I finally smoked my last cigarette at 34. My metabolism changed and the scales showed that I was gradually putting on weight until I tipped the scales at a whopping 50% extra on top of where my weight had been. I was still small but my body was now coping with half the weight again that it had ever experienced before, and I felt huge. I noticed how I began to buy loose clothing to hide the roles of flab, was covering my body for the first time in my life, and experienced shame and self-loathing. 

I looked at my fat and hated it
How and why had I allowed this to happen
And the journey began to ‘try’ to lose weight

Of course it started with vigorous exercise and calorie reduction
I was hungry and unhappy
Yes the weight came off, but it went back on again as soon as I began to eat normally or stopped intense exercise. 

I had fallen into the trap of social conditioning;
I wanted to look like everyone else,
Was listening to the noise of the weight-loss industry
Yet still was not losing any weight

Then in October 2017 I knocked my elbow badly and whilst the tendons and ligaments were inflamed, developed tennis elbow from the repetition of computer work. Not only was all weight training now barred, but I couldn’t even lift a cup of tea with my right arm. I was frustrated as I watched my weight balloon even more, and knew that I wanted to do something radical; an experiment to lose weight NOT via exercise and NOT via food (after all I was already uber healthy)

This was an experiment about how powerful the mind is
How we can do ANYTHING we put our minds to
The unbelievable
The incredible
The bizarre

And so it began
I stopped ALL exercise other than light yoga a couple of times per week
I ate what I always ate, with no change
Then
I watched as the weight literally fell off
Pound by pound diminishing
And my clothing becoming looser and looser

People began to notice and comment
The first 10lb dropped in just three weeks
(almost overnight)
And I had reached the 14lb mark by the last month of 2018
I was back to where my body was healthiest

So
What did I do?
How did I change my mentality around weight to produce such a drastic result?

The answer may surprise you

I tried and failed with the manifestation process that I am a master of
And the reason this method didn’t work is because I got obsessed with losing weight; to the point that it totally got in the way of the technique. It got so frustrating because it wasn’t working, and I knew I had to come at this from a different angle. 

What about if I looked at this from the opposite viewpoint? 

And this is when it clicked in
It was BECAUSE I was so obsessed that it wasn’t working
I needed to let the frig go

But this was so scary
How could I let go when I wanted it so much!
And here we lay at the feet of paradox
One of the gatekeepers to liberation

I knew I had to get through the gate to the other side of this
To NOT be so bothered by the result
So that the result could manifest! 

And there you have it
The answer to the conundrum
And the way I got ‘there’ was to sit
Meditate
And let go

Just like in every other area of my life
I did exactly the same as usual
I stepped back from the intensity of the situation
And let it go
Became the observer
Didn’t NEED it any longer
So that
It could come to me

And it did
One stone lighter
My favourite jeans fitting me once more
Increased energy
Feeling healthier than I have ever before in my life
And even more evidence in my ever growing toolkit that ANYTHING is possible
The point of this experiment and blog is to show that

WANTING IS HEAVY

And once the wanting has gone, obsessions obviously vanish and you set yourself free
When the wanting energy ceases then your whole energy field gets lighter
And that HAS to manifest in the physical form, as well as on other levels
But
The one and only thing that I upped this past year is my meditation practice; the lack of exercise (that I normally do) made way for more time on my cushion. My commitment was there, consistency became my middle name, and nothing was more important than connecting to my best friend = the real me 💜

And then the snowball effect
Because I was feeling so much better about myself
I began to fine tune all areas of my life
Did a juice/fruit detox
Took some time off
Slept more
R E L A X E D

And what happened was
An almighty spiritual shift
Going to a new place
Somewhere I could never have imagined
Heaven on earth
I’ve never felt like this before
Spiritually ‘light’
And of course what you are feeling on the ‘inside’
HAS TO be reflected in your external world…