Perhaps you are wondering how it is possible that you have been trying your whole life to have a normal slim body. Perhaps it is not clear to you how it is possible that you have been fuller than others for as long as you can remember, and yet you do not see any essential difference between your lifestyle and eating habits and theirs.

Maybe you have coworkers who shamelessly stuff themselves with chocolate during breaks, often eat greasy hamburgers for lunch, and enjoy one or more glasses of wine on the weekends, and yet they remain slim. Meanwhile, you make an effort with salads, buckwheat porridge, yogurts, and drink almost exclusively water, but your body does not reflect that.

Perhaps you think you were born under an unlucky star and that life, through some strange lottery selection, assigned you a fuller body or a body that constantly struggles with symptoms of illness. Maybe you are wondering whether you need some very special restrictive diet that you simply have not discovered yet.

Let me comfort you right away. Every consequence has its cause and its logic, and your body and its struggles are no exception. It is also not true that every body needs a different diet, since we all belong to the same species. What is true is that people mainly differ in the kind of “baggage” they carry, and that baggage and the way we handle it determines how our body behaves.

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Different people, different baggage, different bodies

Although we believe that we are all the same, and in some way we are, people have very different life experiences and family histories. Some people come from families where there was a lot of physical and emotional abuse, while others grew up in more loving and accepting families. And this is very important for your body.

Perhaps as you read these lines, you frown skeptically and think, “But my childhood was not worse than anyone else’s. It was probably even better than most. I never felt like we lacked anything. I had food, a roof over my head, we went on vacations. How could such an average, exemplary family have had such a negative impact on me?”

Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician who studied the impact of trauma on symptoms in the human body, discovered many important facts on this topic. One of the main ones he expressed like this: “No person will speak worse about their upbringing and parents than it actually was. Most will speak much better.”

And here we arrive at the foundation of your physical struggles, and that is illusion. Blindness. The story you painted about your childhood is in reality quite different from the facts. And what you are not aware of is precisely what is causing your health or weight issues.

Blindness to the truth does not allow you to be effortlessly slim and healthy

To help you understand why diets do not work for you, I will describe a case from practice.

Sanja grew up in a family where, like yours, nothing was lacking materially. But for some reason unknown to her, Sanja already had a host of health problems while growing up. She struggled with allergies, constipation, eczema, asthma, and acid reflux.

Sanja tried to treat her challenges in various ways. She tried dietary supplements, herbs, different diets, and therapies. All of these things helped, but only partially. Some symptoms disappeared, for example reflux, but then new ones appeared, such as tongue ulcers and an irritating dry cough.

Fortunately, at one point Sanja began to suspect that perhaps something besides food was influencing her well-being. At the same time, Sanja also had regular difficulties in romantic relationships. She simply could not find a suitable partner, and all her relationships ended turbulently and stressfully.

For this reason, she decided to visit a psychotherapist, because she believed that there must be something very wrong with her. Already in the first session, the therapist told her that the problem was not her, but rather that her problem was that she did not realistically see how problematic the people she grew up with were.

At first, Sanja did not want to accept this and stubbornly insisted that the problem must be something in her. The therapist persisted and told her how to communicate with her family members from now on and how to observe them. After looking at family photographs and listening to Sanja’s stories about her mother and father, he had quite a few sharp words about them, which surprised Sanja.

Until then, she had always believed that her parents were a model of a good marriage and parenting, and that she herself was an incapable loser.

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The truth hurts at first, then it liberates

Although she did not fully believe the therapist that she herself was completely fine, she took his words into consideration. Instead of reading literature about positive thinking, she began reading certain works that discussed the harmful consequences of non-compassionate upbringing, emotional immaturity, and the connection between physical symptoms and suppressed emotions.

It was as if someone was slowly crushing the pink glasses she had worn her whole life. She realized that the anger and nervousness she often felt when interacting with her father and mother were completely justified emotions, arising because her parents regularly controlled her, mocked her, treated her as demanding and overly sensitive, and so on.

Until that moment, she had not dared admit that she was actually furious with her parents, because when she felt such emotions she experienced great guilt. After all, parents must be loved and respected, because they gave us life.

Although that is true about life, another thing is also true. The parents consciously decided to have Sanja. That was their choice. And consequently, they were responsible for Sanja’s safety, not only physically but also emotionally. Unfortunately, due to their own incapacity, they did not perform the latter task well.

Sanja often felt overlooked, unseen, and unheard in her family. She grew up in chronic feelings of rejection and fear. She developed the feeling that in order to be loved, she had to become different.

So, like every child who longs for love, she began to try. She did everything to be accepted and loved, and at the same time her true self, the divine consciousness within her that knew Sanja was wonderful exactly as she was, developed chronic rage. Rage toward the people around whom she was not allowed to be authentic, spontaneous, and sensitive.

With the help of the therapist, she finally came into contact with the cause of her physical problems. With her rage.

Terrifying emotions we do not want to admit or feel create problems in the body

Anger. Rage.

Most people will flinch just reading these two words. Suppressed anger, when a child’s boundaries are crossed and no one fulfills their emotional needs, develops into rage in the body. And when you understand how rage affects internal organs, you will no longer want to hold it inside.

When we are openly angry, our face twists, muscles tense, the brain becomes focused on the object, person, or situation that caused the rage, heart rate increases, and we may even sweat.

THE BODY AUTOMATICALLY REACTS TO THE IGNITION OF RAGE, because the body is not separate from the mind.

The purpose of anger is to protect your body and dignity, or to fight in order to fulfill your needs. If all people were familiar with the meaning and necessity of anger, then the moment they felt it in their body, they would respond to its impulse.

They would tell disrespectful people that they will not speak to them that way. If a thief took their money, they would run after him and try to get their property back. If their mother came into their apartment to open windows for ventilation without their permission, they would say, “Mom, I do not allow you to enter my space without my permission and change anything.”

After these words, the anger would immediately calm down, and the body would return to a state of peace, where breathing is deep and slow, heartbeats are calm, muscles are soft, and the brain becomes slightly dreamy and curious, like in small children.

When anger turns into rage, it begins to eat us from the inside

People who struggle with excess weight and symptoms of illness are often unable, unwilling, or afraid to express anger because of childhood experiences where being angry meant losing a parent’s affection, being mocked or even punished, or having their anger treated as unjustified or ridiculous.

So they become good, accommodating, unproblematic, and entertaining.

But inside?

Inside they are furious, and they are not even aware of it, because all emotions connected to authentic self-expression were suppressed deep into the body out of fear.

The problem is that ANGER IS IGNITED AUTOMATICALLY. When your boundaries are violated, when needs are not fulfilled, when you are not respected, your true self knows it. And regardless of the smile on your face, your true self ignites anger in your liver.

But because you immediately deny and suppress that energy of anger, it cannot come out. So it stays within you and turns into chronic rage.

What does that look like?

It looks like a pressure cooker. On the outside you are pleasant and smiling, but inside you are boiling. Even if you wear a mask of kindness, your heart beats faster, your body is flooded with stress hormones, and your muscles and brain are activated.

This means your body can remain in crisis mode for hours. It consumes enormous life energy, exhausts you, and most importantly, in crisis mode the immune system is practically switched off. The liver and digestive system function differently. Everything changes. Digestion does not function properly, you cannot regenerate well, and metabolism is impaired.

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Illness and excess weight are the result of unconscious chronic emotions

That is why diets do not work for you. When a person throws even healthy fruit into a body that is burning with rage, that body cannot digest that food properly. Nor can it optimally use it. That body wants to fight, not digest and regenerate.

At the same time, another process is happening in the background. Chronic rage smoldering beneath the surface floods your body with stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones are exhausting for the body. On some level, you know you need hormones of happiness and pleasure to feel well. You need serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin.

And because you absolutely refuse to face your rage, frustration, and panic, you go for serotonin through a shortcut.

Food, sex, alcohol and other drugs as a shortcut to happiness hormones

After a hard day of wearing the mask of the good girl, when you come home, you need serotonin in order to sleep.

Food, sexuality, and relaxation are all natural sources of pleasure for humans, because they have to be. If food did not flood us with happiness hormones, we would stop eating and die. If sexuality did not bring us a bath of happiness hormones, we would stop reproducing.

The problem is that due to non-compassionate environments in which we grew up, we live false lives that keep our bodies in constant crisis mode. Because we are not aware of this, we go for serotonin through a shortcut.

We eat when we are stressed. We watch series when we do not want to face frustrations in relationships. We drink alcohol at family gatherings where emotionally immature relatives irritate us with their disrespectful remarks.

The problem is that these shortcuts do not help, because they do not remove the cause of discomfort.

How to free yourself from food addiction

If you run to food when you are not well, do not judge yourself. You were programmed for this before you were even fully aware of yourself. Do not try to discipline yourself.

Instead, begin to observe yourself with curiosity. When the urge arises to stuff a bag of chips into yourself, ask: Interesting, which terrifying emotion am I trying to suppress right now? Am I afraid of something? Is someone not respecting me, but I think I am not allowed to be angry at them? Has someone crossed my boundaries? Do I feel powerless in some situation?

Addictions are not actions worthy of condemnation. They are breadcrumbs leading to causes. They are signals of a mass of suppressed emotions that want to be expressed.

Let me tell you good news. Just recognizing emotions will already relax you greatly. Even if you do not express your anger at your parents at the holiday table, but simply admit it to yourself, your muscles will soften and your heartbeat will calm.

But I know you will not stop there. One day you will gather the courage to stand up for yourself. And each time it will become easier. Your body will become softer and softer, your immune system will finally be able to effectively regenerate, your metabolism will flow smoothly, and you will have excellent digestion.

You will no longer tolerate people who do not respect you, and at the same time you will finally notice people who calm you and with whom you can be without a mask.

A slim and vital body and a natural inclination toward healthy natural food that grows from the earth will come automatically, as a consequence of your awareness of your inner world.

You will succeed. And life will FINALLY become colorful and beautiful.

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