Overweight. Obesity. Anorexic. Bulimic. Diets. Healthy. These are all words that are very familiar to all of us. We hear something on at least one of these words on a daily basis. Our obsession with losing weight, gaining weight, maintaining a healthy weight all boil down to one major thing and that is our relationship that we have with food.

What we eat, how much we eat, when we eat, why we eat boils down to our personal preference. Our preference to certain foods is often times traced back to our childhood. Each of us holds a strong association to certain foods with memories back to our childhood. Many times we overindulge on those foods that have memories back to happier times. We might associate eating apple pie when we visited our grandparents and now to recreate those feelings many times we overindulge whenever we have apple pie.

There are many psychological reasons why we eat the foods we eat, why we overeat some foods and why we wouldn’t think of touching other foods. We tell ourselves that it is the taste but in actuality it may be the memories that are associated with those foods. It can be a very complicated process to break through those messages to form our own distinctive relationship with food and with our body. It can be very natural that certain foods would symbolize important events in our life. However, it is the power that these foods hold over us that creates the overeating or refusal to eat these certain foods.

The reason that diets fail for so many people is because the relationship we have with food has the strongest hold on us and supersedes any diet plan that we may try. The way in which we see ourselves and our relationship to food are the two key areas that must be addressed before any weight loss plan can be effective.

Dieting tends to belittle the relationship between food and body. Most diets make weight loss about the food alone. There are many more facets to weight loss than just what we eat and when. The first thing is to address the power of the mind. We need to listen to what we say to ourselves about how we feel about ourselves and our body. Once we have the image in our mind as to how we want to look when we’re at our Perfect Weight, then we need to address our relationship with food. These two things are so very vital to weight loss that if you do not address them, you will automatically put the weight back on that you lost which starts the yo-yo syndrome and is very unhealthy.

You must be willing to embark on the emotional work that is necessary to address these two issues. It is being truthful with yourself that creates the success you so desperately want. So what is your relationship with food? Is food your friend or is food your enemy? Once you get the answer to that question, no matter what diet plan you choose, you will be successful. And the difference being is, this time, your weight loss will be permanent!