I experienced my big breakthrough, when I was obese, by way of a simple question: “is that the story you want to tell?” I was mid-way through telling my story of why I was fat for the seemly millionth time when a college proposed this critical question. My immediate response was, “No”. I went on to say, “I am tired of telling that story”. It was time to tell a different story.

We all make up stories. Some are “tall tales” with very little factual basis. Others are supported with data and evidence. But very few of them are inherently true. They are true for us, sure, but the same circumstances may be interpreted quite differently by someone else.

If you have ever played the game “telephone” with a large group of people, you have seen this reality demonstrated. Whatever information began the chain will inevitably be different by the time it gets to the end of the line. Playing the telephone game, we usually laugh when we hear how different the final interpretation is from the original message. But the truth is that this same scenario played out in real life is no laughing matter. We have all heard distorted truths about an event in which we were involved. We have all felt the anger, confusion and frustration when the story being told is about us. We can often even feel bound and oppressed by the stories we tell about ourselves.

We tell stories to make sense of things. We want to hold on to an interpretation that helps us feel safe or acceptable. And we all seem to feel the need to recruit allies – other people willing to “buy in” to our story. The question is: Is the story that you are telling serving you?

Is the story that you are telling serving you?

Many times the story we have constructed about ourselves and others is not serving us. Our interpretation of past events is often defensive and inaccurate. An added challenge is the collective stories we feel obligated to defend. Families, groups and cultures have their own particular history. But “his-story” is just an agreed upon interpretation of past events.

Part of the liberation of my weight release process involves reinterpreting past events from a compassionate perspective and analyzing our interpretation to determine if the stories we are telling are really in our best interest. I find that most of us who struggle with weight carry the burden of stories that are not serving us. The interpretations of our experiences tend to involve a lot of shame, blame and guilt. With compassion we begin to unravel our perceptions and reinterpret our experience. We begin to forgive ourselves for the judgments that we have held against ourselves. As we release the story that we have been telling and learn to honor our experience our lives begin to change. Self-acceptance is the doorway to self-love. When we love ourselves it is much easier to make self-honoring choices around food. Weight release is a natural by-product of self-acceptance and self-love. We release weight when we let go of old stories that lock in our negative perception of ourselves.
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Freeman Michaels is America’s #1 weight release expert and coach. He is the author of Weight Release: A Liberating Journey. His groundbreaking program uses personal development principles to end the “diet cycle” and help people release weight forever.
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