Keep It Off reveals a step-by-step process for resolving the underlying issues that cause overeating and unwanted habits. Dr. Brian Alman has helped thousands of people find their inner guru and tap the well of resilience that lies within us all. Combining years of clinical research, real-life stories, and ancient mind/body truths, Dr. Alman's acclaimed, proven system is founded on four essential master keys: entering a zone of calm awareness, accepting the self unconditionally, allowing stuffed feelings to be expressed safely and comfortably, and resolving unwanted habits for lasting results.

Hospitals, clinics, and spas all over the world are enjoying success with the Keep It Off system. With Keep It Off, readers can become the healthy and happy person they've always wanted to be.

... we are a package of thinking and feelings housed within this body that is called you and me. In order to make any change for the better, all of the parts of ourselves must be addressed for that change to become permanent.

—Deepak Chopra

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of losing weight? Is it counting calories? Diet centers? Diet pills and plans? Starting an exercise program for the twentieth time (with that new machine you bought for Christmas)? You've probably tried some or all of these methods-and many others-with little or only temporary success.

Actually, many diet and exercise programs work pretty well. The real problem is not the ineffectiveness of the program, but the dieter's inability to stay with the program once the weight has been lost. The rate of relapse is disturbingly high-right around 95 percent according to the weight-loss industry's own figures.

Why do we begin overeating in the first place? And why, even if we lose the weight, is it so hard to keep it off? What's the missing ingredient that keeps all these weight-loss plans and programs from making a real, lasting difference?

To help answer these questions, let me introduce you to a client of mine, Mary.

The Case of Mary

Mary wasn't at all happy with her weight, and she was looking for help. When we first talked in my office, she told me that four years ago, when she was thirty-five, she weighed a comfortable, attractive 125 pounds. Then she explained how she began gradually putting on weight, until now she weighed over 170 pounds.

And she didn't know what to do about it.

She had tried all the popular diets, diet books, diet programs, and diet centers, and nothing had worked for more than a few months. She would lose weight, gain it all back and more, lose weight again, then gain back more, and on and on, caught in a vicious cycle of "yo-yo" dieting. Plus, she was becoming obsessed with losing weight-with food, fat, calories-and she was ending up with nothing but feelings of failure for her efforts.

How could such an intelligent person, and one seemingly in control in other areas of her life, get so stuck in a rut? As Mary took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and told me more of her story, she started getting to the bottom of things.

Mary's Story-"More Sad than Happy"

Mary was successful and satisfied with her job, but a difficult divorce four years earlier. child custody battles, and a stressful remarriage had left her feeling, as she said, "more sad than happy lately."

And she soon realized that there were other emotions weighing her down. Raised a Catholic, she felt guilty about being divorced; she was still angry at her ex-husband for what she felt were injustices; and she was exhausted and sometimes overwhelmed trying to raise her daughters and keep a career going. She acknowledged, probably for the first time, how empty she felt in her life. And she also admitted that her weight gain had not been gradual (as she first told me), but had occurred in a few short months, right after her separation four years ago.

Why, then, had Mary gained weight? Why had she put the weight on when she did, and why couldn't she keep it off?

The Answers Are Always Inside

The answer is that, in those difficult years, overeating made Mary feel better about her life, if only for a short while.

It was her way of distracting herself form her troubles, her way of stuffing down her unwanted feelings, her way of expressing her biting anger at her selfish ex-husband, her way of quieting negative thinking (even though it was only temporary), her way of filling up the emptiness she felt in her personal life, her way of feeling less lonely at night.

In short, overeating became Mary's most effective way of dealing with her problems, given her coping skills at the time. Considering all the troubles she was faced with, and considering she didn't know of any better way to handle them,. I would say that Mary was wise and resourceful, and did a great job of caring for herself and helping herself through this tough period of her life.

Is There a Part of You Like Mary?

Mary's is a familiar story, and it can help us all understand that, in most cases, gaining weight is not the problem, but the solution to our problems.

Overeating, or eating unhealthy foods, is not usually caused by physical appetite. It's caused by emotional need. For Mary, as for millions (estimated at 70 percent of American adults and 30 percent of American kids), overeating is a coping mechanism, a practical and positive way we have of dealing with the many stresses in our personal, family, and social lives.

Associating food with comfort and protection is a normal response learned in childhood, probably at the breast or the bottle. And so when faced with life's difficulties we often turn to food for help, or as a simple form of self-treatment. We even call our portions "helpings," "treats," and we say "help yourself" at the table. In a sense, all food is "comfort" food.

Unfortunately, by comforting or treating ourselves with food, we ignore meaningful signals we're trying to send to ourselves-our real call for help-that we need to get to the root of the problem.

Shedding the Emotional Weight

It has become clear from my work at Kaiser Permanente's Wellness Center in San Diego, California that the root cause of overeating is almost always repressed feelings. Your body is the natural receptacle for repressed, suppressed, or unresolved feelings, and carrying around this kind of emotional weight often creates a need, an emotional hunger, that puts on physical weight as well.

In other words, when you're miserable inside, when shame and guilt and fear and resentment (and more) are silently "eating" at you, you try to make yourself feel better by indulging yourself with food. And the more feelings you've trapped inside, and the longer you've suffered with them, the more you want and need to eat.

This explains why the diet plan relapse rate is so high. All the popular plans will help you lose unwanted pounds-for a little while-but unless you deal with your repressed feelings, unless you do something to lighten the emotional weight you're carrying inside, you'll go right back to soothing and satisfying yourself with food.

So this is it-the missing ingredient that goes unrecognized and thus unaddressed in all other weight-loss programs. To make any lasting change in your body weight, you need to dig into your buried feelings and discover what they are, what part they've played in your life, and how they've brought you to where you are now. Only when you're willing to face and to resolve your emotional issues, to finish the unfinished business in your life-people, hurts, mistakes, wrongs, and so on-will you be able to get free of your old eating habits and keep the weight off.

The formula is simple but powerful: If you'll allow yourself to shed your old emotional and psychological baggage, the physical weight will naturally follow. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, to win the battle once and for all, you need to start at the beginning, with the emotional healing that must take place before you can start to eat, exercise, and care for yourself healthily. If you'll look deeply into the underlying emotional causes of your overeating, you can actually turn your weight problem into a doorway, or a bridge, to becoming healthier and happier-permanently.

What's the Secret?

The secret to losing weight and keeping it off is quite simply to start respecting yourself, caring for yourself, even loving yourself, without conditions, restrictions, or requirements. Once you start to love yourself truly as you are, with all your strengths and weaknesses-pounds and all-you'll naturally start to take better care of yourself, mind and body, heart and soul. And you'll find yourself feeling healthy, happy, peaceful, positive, light, calm, and energetic. It's nothing short of miraculous.

But the miracle of unconditional self-love can be almost impossible to achieve for most of us, weighed down as we are with a lifetime of stifled feelings, negative messages, and self-criticism. So to start you on the road to self-love, self-care, and permanent weight loss, I've devised the Keep It Off Weight-Loss Program, a four-phase plan that uses the power of self-hypnosis to help you access your inner resources to make these amazing and lasting changes in your life.

Step by step, you'll learn to:

1. Become Aware of your body, mind, feelings, and true self. Become relaxed and honest about your relationship with food; begin listening to the inner signals you've been ignoring or avoiding for years; recognize the emotional issues that are sabotaging your happiness and self-confidence; and discover how to stop your past from controlling your present.

2. Begin to Accept yourself (and your body) as you are, a vital step in freeing yourself from the triggers of overeating, and in coming to understand, and to embrace, the true, authentic you. Begin connecting with your inner wisdom; stop judging yourself with critical thoughts and feelings; and discover how to turn negative thinking into positive thinking.

3. Let yourself Express your true self safely, simply, comfortably, easily, and positively. Start releasing your pent-up thoughts and feelings; give a voice to all the conflicting messages in your head; let go of some conscious control to gain a natural freedom and balance; and discover yourself feeling alive and rejuvenated in the present.

4. Find ways to Resolve your unfinished personal issues once and for all, and learn how to carry these new tools and techniques with you forever. Reorganize the way you interact with yourself and others; and discover how to use the stresses swirling through your life to help you develop more positive and creative eating habits.

My experience with helping thousands of overweight people, both in my private practice and at Kaiser Permanente, has proven to me that the learning you will experience in the Keep It Off Weight-Loss Program is genuine, lasting, and can result in inner and outer transformation-something often dreamed about, but seldom realized.

Be Prepared

A word of warning: Prepare yourself for something entirely new and remarkably effective. Unlike all the diet pills, plans, and products you've heard of, or maybe tried, the Keep It Off Weight-Loss Program will show you how to find within yourself the power to lose weight and keep it off. It will give you the tools you need to open some new doors in your life, perhaps to reopen some old ones, all to open your heart, mind, body, and soul to positive changes.

Part I of this book will teach you the fundamentals of self-hypnosis, because self-hypnosis is the best way to open the lines of communication with your inner emotional world. Read the eight short chapters in Part I completely and give yourself time to digest and practice the methods and techniques they describe.

Once you've learned the basics of self-hypnosis, you'll have all the skills you need to make the most of my Keep It Off Weight-Loss Program presented in Part II.

Being seriously overweight is a nightmare for so many of us. But the good news is that, with the help of self-hypnosis, you have the ability to solve your weight problems safely, effectively, and permanently. The natural instinct for health and happiness you were born with is waiting to be freed and empowered.

Mary's New Life

As for Mary, she has lost her unwanted weight and has succeeded in keeping it off for over a year. By working with self-hypnosis through the four essential phases of self-change-heightened Awareness, unconditional Acceptance, free Expression, and creative Resolution-Mary took the very issues that had driven her to overeat and used them to build a bridge to new feelings, ideas, behaviors, opportunities, and answers. She learned how to stop the vicious cycle of yo-yo dieting, how to transcend her "stuck" places, and how to move on with self-love and self-confidence. She took what I like to call a breath of "fresh AAER" and learned how to lose weight and keep it off.

Mary is a real person, one of the many I've worked with at Kaiser Permanente, and here is what she wrote me recently:

Dear Dr. Alman,

I just wanted to thank you on my birthday. What I have learned from you during this last year makes me feel like this is my first birthday of a happy life that can continue for the rest of my life!

Thank you so much!

Mary

Copyright 2004 by Brian Alman, Ph.D.. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.

Tags: Diets and Weight Loss

About the Author

Brian Alman holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and he traines medical doctors, psychologists, counselors, dentists, and the general public. His previous books, Self-Hypnosis, Thin Meditations, and A Clinical Hypnosis Primer, have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. He does training programs with the Kaiser Permanente health-care organization.