The Importance of Letting Go – by Kalpana Patel – Eating Psychology Coach (ICF)

I often get asked about the relationship between weight and emotions. This article by fellow respected life coach Kalpana Patel sheds some light on it:

Every attachment, be it a relationship, a material object, a position is accompanied by fear. What happens when we evoke fear? We set into motion the physiology of stress.

We need to learn to let go. Letting go neither means ending a relationship, nor does it mean not enjoying the material things you have in life. It just means to always be mindful that we don’t attach ourselves to them. When we live in a state of detachment, we learn to live without any fear. Living in this state always keeps us in a state of balance because we start to focus on the fact that true happiness lies only within us. We have learnt to place the responsibility of keeping us happy on external relations and material possessions. When we do that, we are always afraid that if things change on the outside life will become difficult and we will no longer be happy.

What happens in a relationship where we attach ourselves too much? There is the fear of losing the relationship. When that fear sets in, we begin to try and control the lives of the people involved in that relationship, thinking that by doing so we can ensure that we don’t lose them. But what happens in reality is that, we are only doing the exact opposite of that. Suffocating others in our relationships only out of fear of losing them, takes them even farther away from us.

It takes time to feel comfortable spending time with oneself.

Gradually the more we do that and the more we enjoy being with ourselves, we create a beautiful relationship with ourselves and the outer world.

As an Eating psychology coach, I know that holding on and not letting go can also result into holding on to excess weight. When we are holding on to excess weight, we need to do some inner reflection about what is holding on to that excess weight representing? What are we holding on to that is leading to this holding on to the excess weight? Past grudges, fear, toxic relationships, our own limiting beliefs.

We need to let go all of these and embrace forgiveness. Forgiving others and ourselves brings us to a place of feeling an inner peace and enables us to be able to love and accept ourselves unconditionally and believe it or not, but that is the first step towards even letting go of excess weight.

Kalpana is a certified Life Coach from ICA and also a certified Eating Psychology Coach from The Institute for the Psychology of Eating. She works with people to help them love themselves “Now” as opposed to waiting to do that only when they “Get there” . Getting there could mean different things for different people. It could be getting the perfect job, perfect weight, perfect life partner. By loving themselves unconditionally, they are placing the key to their happiness in their own hands. She helps people form a healthy relationship with themselves and in turn with food!

To read more by Kalpana see: https://chopra.com/ccl/are-we-teaching-our-children-to-stress

For more on Letting Go (of regrets, mistakes, guilt and to forgive, watch this Multimedia event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnoV8FiXMOQ