This Is Where Your Weight Comes From

I ran a poll on my audience some time ago and found that the majority of you would change your weight if you could.  Over 87% of you.If you're in the less than 13% who wouldn't, then you are a small majority.The longer I spend in the public world of health and wellbeing, the more I realise we are in a deeply concerning time as a collective of women when it comes to our body image.  We are openly hateful, critical, and ashamed of the vehicle that carries us breathing through our days.  We despise it much of the time.This is largely due to the marketing of mass-media images of what the perfect female body should look like, as if there is one definition of perfect.  Our body image and shape has not been driven by evolution, by biology nor by physiology - but by fashion brands whose success is measured by their bottom line.We are exceptionally lucky in our first world comfort to be afforded great choice when it comes to food and wellbeing and yet our rate of depression, dissatisfaction, anxiety and stress are drastically higher than in third world countries.  Something is terribly wrong.The diet and weight-loss industry is one of the most financially successful industries in the world today.  When the GFC and recession hit in 2008, the weight-loss industry did a record year and have continued to do so every year since.As our obesity levels have risen in developed countries the diet and weight industries have raked in even more dollars.   In 2008, the annual financial cost of obesity was estimated at AUD$8.3 billion with an additional AUD$49.9 billion in the form of lost wellbeing, bringing the combined cost of obesity to AUD$58.2 billion. (In Australia alone!)As we get more dissatisfied with ourselves, we invest more of our money into the diet industry.  The shame, guilt and deprivation industry.And yet, the biggest predictor of weight-gain is if you have been on a diet in the last two years, as found in a UCLA study on diet studies.Why?Because diets don't work.  Because the diet industry is a sham.We are so brainwashed by the diet industry that we continue to invest our money in the most unsuccessful industry in the world when it comes to your results.  It is about weight.  Though weight is not just about fat.  It never has been.  Weight is carried emotionally, spiritually and physically. It is held in our minds and our hearts and is never going to be 'fixed' focusing on the physical alone.If the diet industry really wanted to help you solve the negative image you have around your weight then they would focus on your emotional weight first.But then...why would they?