How far from your ideal weight are you? Five pounds away? 15? 40?

Your exact answer to that question is of great interest to Daily Health News life coach Lauren Zander, because it reveals an important formula that predicts your future—and she’s not talking about how long you’ll live or your likelihood of getting diabetes, heart disease or cancer. No, this is something different.

While we all know that excess weight increases the risk for various chronic diseases, in Zander’s unique worldview, the extent to which a person’s weight deviates from what he/she wishes it were predicts an ailment of a different sort—chronic unhappiness.

Speaking from personal experience (yes, the trim Zander had her own long-ago struggle with weight, so her insights are not without compassion) and from professional experience (in counseling hundreds of clients), Zander said that the distance between your actual weight and your ideal weight is a reflection of the distance between the life you are currently living and the life of your dreams.

Now, of course she’s not saying that reaching your ideal weight automatically makes all your dreams come true, giving you great love, health, wealth, accomplishments, beauty or whatever else your heart desires…nor is she that saying being slim makes you so happy in and of itself that all of those other dreams cease to matter to you. What she is saying is that closing the gap between your ideal weight and your actual weight can spark some amazing changes in the attitudes and actions that affect your entire life. Here’s how…

WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER?

Before we go any farther, let me clarify that Zander is in no way suggesting that we all can or should look like George Clooney or Sandra Bullock. She’s not espousing a single ideal body type to which everyone should aspire. She is talking about what it would take to achieve the body of your dreams—your own vision of a perfectly beautiful, healthy body that has evolved from your personal and family history, that takes into account your height, athleticism (or lack thereof), ethnicity, medical history and dietary needs.

“Everyone has his or her number,” Zander said. “Your number is not my number and it’s not some magazine’s number, either. But if your number is 140 and your weight is 150 or 200, my question is, ‘what’s up with that?’ What is it about you that won’t do what it takes to weigh 140 pounds?”

The difference between your ideal weight and your actual weight is not just a figure…and it’s not just about your figure either. Zander said, “In my 20 years of coaching, I’ve found that people’s disappointment with their weight—their wish to be 10 or 30 or 100 pounds lighter than they are—is also a measure of what they expect to get from the world. That’s because however far away you are from your ideal number reflects the degree of disappointment you are willing to accept with yourself and your life.”

IF THE PROFILE FITS

Zander’s method of using a client’s weight to gain insights into that person’s psyche is a form of profiling, Zander admitted unapologetically. She does it because it works—not 100% of the time, but in about four out of every five cases she sees. Typically, she said, people who are carrying around weight they don’t want tend to fall into three predictable categories…

A bit above the ideal (up to about 10 pounds overweight)…

If this describes you, said Zander, you probably have a pretty good life—and so long as you hang onto those extra five or 10 pounds, you can expect your career, relationships, bank account and most other things in your life to be just a bit shy of what you want, too! If you aren’t doing anything to lose those few extra pounds, you probably feel fairly pleased about the fact that your physique is better than most people’s…and you tell yourself that’s good enough.

When folks in this category rate their lives on a scale of one to 10, they typically give themselves about an eight, Zander said. But if this describes you, Zander wanted to know, Why not go for the 10? “You obviously have good self-control, so why are you settling for a degree of excellence that is not actually excellent?” she asked. In her opinion, you’re a bit lazy—and it shows.

Moderately overweight (about 10 to 30 pounds over your ideal)…

If you are toting around a moderate amount of excess weight, Zander’s guess is that you feel put-upon and victimized by your life. You’re not in control…someone else or everyone else is. You think that you are doing your best, but you also don’t think much of yourself or your abilities. “You find excuses everywhere you turn—it’s the marriage, the job, the kids,” said Zander.

The real problem here, according to Zander, is that you don’t know what it would take to get happy. “It’s a question you don’t even bother asking because you just don’t want to deal with it. You say that you can’t lose the weight or fix the other problems, but the truth is that you don’t want to do the work involved in uncovering and then solving your problems,” she said. Clue: The longer or more complex your explanation is for why you weigh what you weigh, the more blame you are assigning to others and the less responsibility you are accepting.

Zander’s primary wish for you? “I beg you to care more about yourself,” she said.

Significantly overweight (more than about 30 pounds beyond your ideal)…

A person who has allowed himself to accumulate a lot of extra poundage is a person who has given up, said Zander. “When someone tells me that he knows he’s really overweight, what I hear him saying is that he’s resigned to a life that is not at all satisfying,” she noted. “He may claim that he won’t cave in to ‘society’s standards of perfection’ or that he accepts himself as he is and wishes others would, too. But the sad reality is that he has no idea what it’s like to make a commitment to himself. He has no dreams.”

Now, I’m sure you can think of people who are significantly overweight, yet who clearly do make commitments and do pursue dreams. For instance, one who comes to my mind is New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a nationally respected political figure and leading contender for the next Republican presidential nomination. I don’t think anyone could accuse him of having given up or not pursuing worthwhile dreams. But Zander’s point is that Governor Christie and others like him are exceptions to the usual pattern she sees…which is that people who are resigned to carrying around poundage they dislike often are equally resigned to carrying around lives they dislike.

Harsh? Not when you consider that one of the most satisfying aspects of Zander’s work is helping such people see how much power they really can exert over their weight. And once they do see that, they often go on to seize their power over other parts of their lives, too.

IS IT ALL ABOUT WEIGHT?

It’s important to realize that weight is not what typically brings clients to Zander. Usually people consult her because they are struggling with some other problem, and then their feelings about their weight arise as they are evaluating their overall life satisfaction. But, Zander told me, she is delighted when clients tell her that they would like to weigh less (or more, though in truth that’s pretty unusual)—because “weight is the easiest place for people to learn how powerful they can be in their lives.”

Easy? Yes, indeed. “Food is one area of our lives over which we have complete dominion. When you become truly self-aware, this becomes very clear. The cookie doesn’t get into your mouth unless you put it there. You may have a thousand reasons for overeating, but those reasons don’t really matter—in the end, it all comes down to you and the cookie,” Zander said.

Once you understand this, you can forge a new, powerful, mature relationship to food…and to the rest of your life, too. At that point, Zander declared, you can accomplish almost anything.

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