Dorie McCubbrey - How Much Does Your Soul Weigh?: Diet-Free Solutions to Your Food, Weight, and Body Worries

DIET-FREE SOLUTIONS
TO YOUR FOOD, WEIGHT,
AND BODY WORRIES

Dorie McCubbrey, M.S.Ed., Ph.D.

For Shadow

See the Light

contents

How much does your soul weigh?

When I ask that question, you may be wondering, Well, whats my soul supposed to weigh? What is my soul, anyway? And what does my souls weight have to do with solving my bodys weight problem? These are valid responses. After all, youve probably read countless books about eating and weight issues, and none have mentioned your soul. Thats because this book is vastly different from traditional approaches to weight control. Most focus on getting rid of excess weight or eating disorders. However, these are just symptoms. To become free of eating and weight problems requires addressing their cause. You will not find the solution in any diet, meal plan, lifestyle change, or behavior modification program. Those regimens are all imposed from the outside. The answers you seek are within. This book will guide you from your body to your mind, and then from your mind to your soulyou will discover how to solve your food, weight, and body worries from the inside out. Its no coincidence that you have started to read this book. A friend may have recommended it. You may have picked it off the shelf at a bookstore. It may have just shown up. Whatever the means, the reason is that you are ready. Your soul is ready to help you. Are you aware of its presence?

How much does your soul weigh?

My soul is light and free. But it wasnt always this way. For many years, I had no awareness of my soul. All that mattered was my body. I was just like the 50 percent of women and 20 percent of men who worry about their weight some or all of the time. I joined the 100 million Americans who are trying to lose weight on any given day. Like 10 million Americans, my weight worries led to obsession and ultimately anorexia and bulimia. At the other extreme, I was also like 55 percent of the American population now considered to be overweight or obese. My attitude vacillated between total obsession with weight loss and complete apathy manifested by an I dont care any more attitude. My body suffered from starvation and binge eating, compulsive exercise and a sedentary lifestyle, repeated cycles of weight loss and weight gain. I was so worried about how much my body weighed. But how much did my soul weigh? I finally realized that for more than fifteen years I had been completely ignoring my soul, and that it felt extremely weighed down, buried under my ongoing emphasis on weight control. Weight control was controlling me. This was the real weight I needed to losemy weight consciousness. This book is about a different kind of weight lossabout losing the weight thats burdening your soul, losing the weighty attitudes of the diet mentality.

How much does your soul weigh?

Does your soul feel weighed down by all your focus on weight control? Do you even know that you have a soul? Are you living your dreams and fulfilling your purpose in life? Or are you living a diet nightmare? Do you see yourself as a congruent extension of your core essence? Or has weight control been controlling you so much that you have forgotten who you really are and what is really important? Your symptoms are your teachers. Binge eating, purging, restrictive dieting, fasting, starving. Compulsive exercise, sedentary lifestyle. Overweight, underweight. These symptoms all have a message for you. Can you hear it? Or are you too busy trying to get rid of your symptoms to discover what they have to tell you? Maybe there is an issue you need to resolve in a current relationship. Or an issue from a past relationship. What about your relationship with your career or your finances? When you dig deep enough, youll discover that its all about your relationship with your soul. Your symptoms are a reflection of the hunger from your soulan insatiable hunger, which binge eating cannot satisfy nor starvation deny. To satisfy your souls hunger, you need to give it your attention. Wake up from your diet nightmare with the awareness of your soul. Listen to its voice. Honor its wisdom. Be its life.

How much does your soul weigh?

Your soul can be light and free. You can be who you really are, living in happiness, health, balance, peace, and confidence. You can achieve this success using Intuitive Self-Carea process that I discovered and used to end my own fifteen-year struggle with eating disorders and weight problems. Now, as a licensed professional counselor, an author and professional speaker, I continue to use this process to maintain my freedom and to guide thousands on their journey of freedom. This book includes three sections, which address why the games dieters play dont work, what the process of Intuitive Self-Care is all about, and how you can apply this process to your life by nourishing your soul. You will learn the details of my own elusive quest for weight control, and how I discovered the solution within myself. You will discover the secrets of people who have never had weight problems, and the insights you need to reclaim your intuition, your spiritual birthright. You will experience the therapeutic benefits of my 30-day plan of recipes to feed your soul. Throughout the text, my clients (whose names have been changed to maintain confidentiality) will share their perspectives about their own journeys of freedom. In addition, I have included detailed case studies of the four archetypal weight problems, so that you can follow along the journey of freedom with the archetype that you most resemble. Within each chapter, you will have the opportunity to answer introspective questions, much like those I ask my clients during their sessions with me. This book is designed to be interactive, guiding you to find your own answers from within yourself. I encourage you to write your responses in a journal, instead of just thinking about them in your head. You can also use your journal to note your insights and to document your progress as you follow this program. Let your journal be a record of your journey of freedom.

How much does your soul weigh?

Are you ready to make the shift from focusing on how much your body weighs to how much your soul weighs? Are you ready to begin a new journey of freedom, with experiences more spectacular than you can imagine? Freedom is not about losing weight or getting rid of an eating disorder. These external symptoms may dissipate as a result of your freedom, but freedom begins within. Freedom is about gaining somethingan awareness of your soul. As you journey within yourself to this awareness, you will enjoy freedom. As I write this introduction, I am sitting on the summit of Green Mountain, at 8100 feet above sea level. I can see for miles, with a clarity that is not possible when I am in the world at lower elevations. The city of Boulder, Colorado is behind me. The wilderness of the Rocky Mountains is before me. This is a little bit what your journey of freedom will be like, and my clients and I will be your guide. You will be rising above the world to gain a new perspective, leaving the diet mentality behind you and moving forward to embrace your intuition, the voice of your soul. In a newsletter that I read recently, the actor Alan Alda said, You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you will discover will be wonderful. What you will discover will be yourself.