If you ask almost any overweight person, “Do you really want to lose weight?” The answer is likely, “Yes, I would love to lose weight.”
Most overweight and obese people want so much to lose weight that they spend thousands each year trying, so why is our country growing fatter? Why aren’t people losing weight when they say that it is what they want to do?
The answer is that, as much as they want to lose weight, there is something they want even more: they want to fill their emptiness and avoid their painful feelings.
The problem is, food works too well to temporarily fill up inner emptiness and cover over painful feelings of loneliness, heartbreak, aloneness, sadness, grief, hurt, frustration, anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, and so on. If you don’t know how to stop creating your own emptiness and aloneness, or how to manage and learn from the painful feelings of life, you have to find some way to fill the emptiness and avoid the pain.
