I either couldn't get going with the diet or I spoiled a good run with a binge, usually more than one because I felt guilty about my failure.

Supplements didn't work because they either were supposed to reduce my appetite but I ate even if I wasn't hungry. Or they were supposed to increase my metabolism but I would have had to be burn like a jet engine to get rid of the extra food I kept eating.

Was I weak, undisciplined, or lazy? At times I thought so (why else would I have a problem), but that's not the way the world saw me. I was a work horse, pushing myself hard through illness or fatigue. I was the reliable rock at work. I could negotiate multi-million dollar deals. I was considered courageous in the face of adversity. And I was a regular gym member.

Yet for a long while, food and body issues ruled my life. I now know it's because I needed the plunge into food, to deal with stress and emotional tension of any kind. My irresistible food cravings were a well-worn survival pattern that couldn't be reversed with either willpower, or rational insights about my ?issues?.

Then I started studying bio-energetics, how we have energy systems that govern our chemistry, and therefore our emotions.

That explained why even therapy couldn't make a dent in my behavior. Having insights about why I overate, didn't dissolve the long-established ?energy imprint? that pushed me to hide from stress and tension in food.

And knowing about my patterns wasn't enough to break the chain, because when I had the urge to eat, it wasn't my rational thought process that was engaged, but my primitive instinctual self.

So if diets didn't work and a heavy workout schedule wasn't enough to compensate for my overeating, what was the solution?

Since I couldn't fight my food cravings, I had to eliminate them.

I had to learn how to dissolve my tension, both the emotion itself and the energy pattern behind it. How? I use a combination of tools including EFT and Releasing. If you don't know these, you can get results by just being more aware of the tension, and focussing on your intent to let it go.

Life happens and stress is building as the world is accelerating. We can't isolate ourselves from it. But we can become masters at defusing its effects.

I also needed to change my belief that I was doomed to either overeat or be miserable fighting the urges to indulge. And that's something else that couldn't be done on a rational thought level.

Maybe some people can just wish away their unproductive beliefs; I couldn't. I had to use a particular form of guided visualization. And I had to do it after I had dissolved the ?energy knots? that were choking me, or the message didn't sink in.

Then weight loss came as a natural consequence of healthy behavior. And I didn't need to be afraid of food anymore. Life is too precious to waste on stale Twinkies.