I started to read this "Gabriel Method" book and I completely understand his "how I got so damn fat" story. We'll have to see how it goes. I will probably try this along with the hypnotherapy.
The Gabriel Method is the revolutionary new
DIET-FREE way to get fit by getting your
body to want to be thin.
Idistinctly remember the moment that changed my life forever.
It happened in August of 2001. I weighed close to 410 pounds.
Over the previous twelve years, I had gained more than 200
pounds.
I had just gotten off Route 4 in New Jersey at the Paramus /
River Edge exit. As I was getting off the exit, a thought stunned
me like an electric shock: “My body wanted to be fat, and as
long as it wanted to be fat, there was nothing I could do to lose
weight.” I turned onto the nearest side street and just sat there in
my car.
Not another thought came into my head for the next twenty
minutes.
During the twelve years in which I gained two hundred
pounds, I had tried everything I could to lose weight, including
every diet under the sun—from low-fat diets to low-carb diets
and everything in between. I had spent time at both Nathan Pritikin’s
institute in California and with the late Dr. Atkins himself
in New York.
I spent over three thousand dollars with Dr. Atkins, and
in the end, the best he could do was yell at me for being so fat.
I also spent several other small fortunes on every conceivable
holistic cure and alternative health treatment available. No matter
what I did, my body continued to gain weight.
Every diet or program I went on always followed the exact
same pattern. It started with my having to count something—
calories, fat, carbohydrates, salt, whatever—and a list of things I
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could not have. I followed the diet to the letter. I usually lost
weight quickly in the beginning, but then the rate at which I
lost weight would start to slow. Eventually, I stopped losing
weight altogether. At that point, I was dieting, not to lose weight,
but simply to maintain my current weight.
All the while my cravings for the foods that I was not
allowed to have escalated. Discouraged and dejected, there
would come a time when I was just too exhausted to fight my
cravings anymore, and I would binge. Weight that had taken me
a month or so to lose came back in just a matter of days. A few
weeks later, I was invariably 10 to 15 pounds heavier than when
I had started the diet.
No matter what I did to try to lose weight, my body fought
me tooth and nail, and in the end, it always won. After years of
banging my head against the wall and trying to force myself to
lose weight, I had to concede that, as long as my body wanted
to be fat, the situation was hopeless.
From the moment I made this realization, I renounced dieting
forever. I decided that instead of trying to force myself to lose
weight against my body’s will, I would turn my attention toward
understanding why my body wanted to be fat in the first place.
I then went on a quest for real answers. I spent hours a day
learning everything I could about biochemistry, nutrition, neurobiology,
and psychology. In the eighties, I attended The Warton
School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. While I
was at Wharton, I became very interested in biochemistry and
took a full curriculum of biology courses. I also did a year of
research into cholesterol synthesis with Dr. Jose Rabinowitz at
the VA medical hospital in Philadelphia. This gave me a solid
enough background in biochemistry to make sense of all the
current obesity research.
I plowed through twenty or thirty research reports a day, and
after reading several hundred—if not a thousand—research
reports, I rapidly became an expert in the most cutting-edge
chemistry of obesity and weight loss. I also studied meditation,
hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, psycho-linguistics, Thought
Field Therapy, Tai Chi, Chi Kung, and the field of consciousness
Introduction
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research. I even studied quantum physics. I was convinced that
the answers lay somewhere between the space that separates the
mind from the body.
But more than anything, I started studying my own body.
I stopped seeing it as the enemy that just wouldn’t listen to
me. I realized my problem was not my body but my lack of
understanding how to operate it. From that moment on, I
started listening to my body very closely. I also stopped trying
to push it around and force it to do something against its will.
Instead, I became its student, and as a result, I started learning
from my body.
Because I became a receptive student, my body became a
highly effective teacher. It taught me why it wanted to be fat and
what I would have to do to make it want to be thin.
As soon as I understood that there were reasons why my body
wanted to be fat, I stopped dieting. What was the point of trying
to diet if it was not going to solve the problem? I later discovered
that not only does dieting not work, but if your body already
wants to be fat, dieting will only make it want to be fatter.
Giving up dieting forever was the greatest and most liberating
thing I had ever done.
I hated dieting.
I hated being so obsessed with food and treating every hunger
signal as a battle I had to fight. I hated ranking every day
according to how good I had been: “Oh, I was good today!” Or
on a bad day: “Okay, today’s a baddy, so let’s just go for it. Let’s
go to the store and buy every cake, cookie, brownie, and flavor
of ice cream. No, don’t get chocolate! It has too many calories.
Get this one that’s fat-free—the vanilla bean ice-latte sorbetbanana-
sunshine. And now that you’re here, you might as well
try the passion fruit and the peach as well. Ah, screw it! Since
you’re getting all that, you might as well get the double fudge,
chocolate brownie, real ice cream. But don’t just get that one,
because today’s the day; if you’re going to do it, you might as
well try that other one you’ve been hankering for too.”
