Today I would like to feature a guest blog by a talented, sensitive, compassionate author, speaker and personal coach, Kanta Bosniak.  Full disclosure, she’s my sister-in-law.  I’m so proud of her and the excellent work she does.

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by Kanta Bosniak

I love the title of Dr. Norris’s blog: “Satisfied Life.” Why? Because it speaks of a mindset that works for weight loss and for any accomplishment. Gratitude awareness. The assumption of meaning, order and purpose is not just a good idea. It’s practical, and it can color your entire experience of weight loss. 

When you meet a challenge with the assumption that there is a gift, not only in the outcome, but in the process you will go through to achieve the outcome, it’s as if you plugged yourself into an infinite power source. You will find that you have so much more energy to draw on! This attitude of positive expectation is pivotal to what I call your “Becoming Process,” becoming who you really are. Wholly you.

My own experience of weight loss taught me about wholeness. What a huge gift that was! When I thought of myself as whole and complete, I noticed that neediness and craving dropped away. The more I practiced self-appreciation and the appreciation of life, the less hungry I was and the more I enjoyed my food. I paid better attention to my deeper needs. The transitory ones came into balance and order, and I felt more satisfied and at peace.

If you’re paying attention, desires shift. Food, sex, and acquisition become less important. They take their place as part of a whole, joyous and balanced life, and they cease to be compulsions.  The needs for autonomy, self-expression and contribution are felt more keenly. You begin to feel these not as preferences but more as urges…as you need air to breathe. 

Successful weight loss really is a spiritual journey of spiritual transformation, because it goes directly to the replacement of transitory pleasure with lasting joy. You learn to nourish your soul. You cease futile attempts to meet non-physical needs with a substance and go right for the “food” of the soul. Nothing wrong with a brownie once in a while! But it’s not our Source, not our Higher Power, not anything more than… a brownie. What a relief! 

Yes, relief. The quest for spirit is a universal one. We all thirst for limitlessness and hunger for a feeling of connection with God. “The very purpose of our lives,” says the Dali Lama, “is to seek happiness.” And there is, if we do not pursue our purpose, a kind of low level anxiety that ramps up the longer we deny it. The rigid outer-based approach to weight loss does not address the real issues and so it rarely succeeds. Begin with inner changes and healthy eating and exercise become natural, easy and much more fun! You discover that what you thought of as “tough stuff”: weight loss, a project that you entered into with gritted teeth and steely determination, hoping to survive…turns out to be a pathway to satisfaction, gratitude and joy. 

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Kanta Bosniak is an artist, writer, and hypnotherapist with an international telephone coaching practice. You can find her at KantaBosniak.com. Her book, “Surviving Cancer and Other Tough Stuff: An Illustrated Journal” is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.