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Fat No More Secrets 1 Of 10: I Must Finish My Plate
This is the first article in a series of 10 articles titled Fat No More Secrets. This article talks about how our family has influenced the way we eat and how we let our family block our weight loss.
Losing weight is not just about diets and fitness. You also need to figure out and release the many Mental, Emotional, Subconscious, and Spiritual blocks to weight loss. They are limiting beliefs, thoughts, or fears that prevent you from losing weight; I also call them the M.E.S.S. blocks to weight loss. If you do not get rid of them, you won’t be able to lose weight or if you do succeed, you will always gain the weight back.
Did you know that if you have shared two meals per day with your parents from your birth until the age of 18, you have had 13,104 meals with them? This gives you plenty of time to be heavily influenced by your parents, positively or negatively, to acquire their eating behaviors, and to take on their food or weight obsessions, if any.
If no one in your family was obsessed with food and weight and everyone ate in a healthy way without talking about dieting all the time, then you are extremely fortunate. On the contrary, if your parents were overweight, ate junk food all day long, and were obsessed with both food and losing weight, you may have taken on your family’s unhealthy eating behaviors and addictions. The great news is that you can let them go.
When I was growing up, I always had to finish my plate. My plate had to be empty before I could leave the table. So guess what? One of my limiting beliefs was that I had to finish my plate. I had no other option. Until recently, I still had to finish everything on my plate and it was difficult for me not to do that because I had been conditioned since childhood to eat everything I was served by my parents.
For years, I still had the belief that if I did not finish my plate, my parents would be angry at me. Of course, they did not do this on purpose; they simply wanted to be great parents and provide me with the right amount of nutrition. Yet, as a grown-up, I was still conditioned to be an obedient child and finish my plate so I would not be in trouble with my Mum and Dad. This lasted until I completely let go of the belief. if you believe that you have to finish your plate, you can easily eat a lot more than you need and gain weight just because of this limiting belief, especially in the U.S. where servings are so large.
The first step in changing your behavior is to start with a small serving. Then, even if you have to finish your plate, you will not overeat. You can always have a second serving if you are really hungry. It’s critical that you start to do this because this detrimental behavior has become anchored in your subconscious mind for a long time.
The second step is to release the belief that you must finish your plate. When you completely release it, you will have the freedom to not finish your plate if you are no longer hungry. And you will no longer feel guilty about it.