Losing weight is not just about dieting or exercising as proven by the countless number of failed diets and exercise programs. First, you need to identify and let go of the many Mental, Emotional, Subconscious, and Spiritual blocks that prevent you from losing weight. I call them the M.E.S.S. blocks; they are limiting beliefs, thoughts, or fears that prevent your weight loss. If you do not let go of these blocks, you will continue to have an extremely hard time losing weight and, if you do succeed, you will continue to gain the weight back.

If you have been physically abused, you will probably be fearful of being abused again, and you will look for a way to protect yourself. Fat protects you from being seen and noticed. Fat decreases the sexual attention that you receive from others because fat makes you less attractive. Fat again becomes a form of protection.

A lady I met at a conference told me about her overweight teenager daughter who was letting herself go by not taking care of herself and her body. Confronted by her mother, the teenager admitted that the only way she knew how to deal with the unwanted sexual attention from boys at school was to look bad and be overweight.

During one episode of the Oprah Winfrey show, Lisa Nichols, one of the teachers in the movie The Secret, admitted that she put on 100 pounds to protect herself from unwanted sexual attention she was getting from men.

If you are fat and less attractive, you will feel more protected from physical abuse. Many women develop this belief when they have been traumatized by physical abuse. If this has happened to you, you will need to let go of this belief. If you have been beaten on a certain area of the body, you will develop a layer of fat to protect yourself from the physical pain of the beating. You typically store the emotional pain within the same area as well. So, this layer of fat will be full of the emotions and memories related to the physical abuse. Before you can lose the fat through a healthy lifestyle, you will first need to release these stored emotions.

One of my clients was beaten on her legs by her mother. All her life, she had huge legs and she had trouble losing weight. One of her distorted beliefs was that she needed to have at least four inches of fat around her legs to protect herself against her mother's beating.

To ensure that you feel safe losing weight, you need to let go of the following M.E.S.S. blocks to weight loss: "fat protects me from abuse", "fat is a protection"; "being fat makes me feel secure"; "I feel insecure and unsafe if I am thin"; "I feel protected from abuse if I am fat". You will not be able to achieve permanent weight loss until you let go of these distorted beliefs.

By Marylin Stompler, Author of Fat No More, Release the Subconscious Blocks that Prevent your Weight Loss. Go to http://www.fatnomoresecrets.com to receive your FREE eBook Fat No More Secrets. http://www.fatnomore.com