Q&A 33 – How does relaxation aid weight loss?

When it comes to weight loss we tend to think of it as a problem that needs to be solved, and one that is serious and potentially fraught. What if this was not the case? What if relaxing and relying on the innate wisdom that is within each of us was part of the solution?

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. 

Show Notes

* Why we say that in this understanding there is very little ‘doing’ that is necessary

* How being relaxed and loose can aid the reception of insight and wisdom

* How finding a solution to an overeating habit is not all on our shoulders

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

* Michael Neill’s book The Inside Out Revolution

* My book It’s Not About the Food

Transcript of this episode

Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A; episode 33 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. 

Today the question I’m going to explore is, how does relaxation help with weight loss? 

This question came about because recently I gave a friend a copy of Michael Neill’s book, The Inside Out Revolution and I was reflecting on my experience reading that book, when I first was introduced to this understanding by a friend. I tell this story in It’s Not About the Food. I got two thirds of the way through the book, and my friends checked in with me and said, “How are you enjoying it? What do you think about the book?” 

I said, “I really like it. It’s really great. He’s got a very engaging writing style. And I feel like I’m learning some things, but he hasn’t told me what to do yet.” And she said, “No, that’s right. And he’s not going to.” 

At the beginning of exploring this understanding, I couldn’t really grasp or get my head around why it was that people said that there’s not a lot, if any, doing in this understanding. Why is it that, that they’re not giving me things to do? Like, rules to follow, or checklists to go through, or that kind of structure that we’re so used to, from, or at least I was, from the self-help world, and from the diet books, and the managing your eating books that I read for years and years and the classes that I took. 

It was really puzzling to me that the teachers kept referring to this idea of doing less.

And so that’s where our question is pointing us today. I want to explore what that means and why it’s important. 

A couple of different analogies occurred to me about this. So one is, is one that I heard from someone else somewhere else, and I can’t remember what it was, but the analogy is this: imagine that you’re having to have surgery, any kind of surgery. And the surgeon approaches you and is maybe taking you into the operating room. And imagine that there’s one scenario where the surgeon approaches you, and is really kind of tense and rigid, and just sort of uptight. And you can tell that this is a person who really follows the rules, and wants to get things done in a timely manner.