FIND YOUR REALITY

 

Whilst we all love to look up to celebrities, I happen to work with many of them so I realise that they are just real men and women trapped in a world that has an even higher standard of perfection than ours.

 

Being a celebrity or Icon comes with a huge responsibility. When they endorse something they are sending out a message to the world. Very often people believe in that message and lose heart when they realise it’s not true.

 

I would like to correlate this to my work, its been really bothering me to read so much nonsense out there on diets and exercise fads and all of this being endorsed by the Icons of today.

 

So when they diet or get onto a program they do so for periods of time to achieve results and more often than not cannot sustain the results.

 

It’s a job, and as they all say so - their pay cheques depend on how they look. They also pay a heavy price psychologically and physiologically for this turmoil they put their bodies through.

 

Please open your eyes to the reality – nothing is truly what it seems. Forget about everything you read, invariably the truth is very different.

I  hear of people I have treated and worked with who choose to glamourize my diet and try and compare me to Paleo, Atkins, Jenny Craig etc and the truth is that I am not a trend, what I do is not a fad. Nor am I trying to ape someone who is one.

 

I am a real person, living a real life, have given birth to 3 children, suffered many a heartache trying every way to lose weight when I was fat, struggling to find a solution, believing in every ray of hope that someone provided. Lucky for me I decided to opt for this as a profession and that set many things right, but not everyone wants to be a Nutritionist as a means to lose weight and stay fit.

 

Having lost weight I try to be able to hold onto my sanity and not have a fit every time the scale shows a slight increase. This is a normal psychological effect, for anyone who loses a lot of weight.

 

I am real, normal and fairly simple to decode, and like all of you I have a regular life with very real pains and triumphs.

 

I have the knowledge and the gift to help others with their journey to lose weight, but am still very much susceptible to the horrors that anyone battling weight is susceptible to.

 

It’s time we embrace simple and real. That’s the truth. Forget about trendy, cool and always trying to define everything, always needing to brand everything and everyone and believing blindly in everything we read.

 

Stop lying about what you do, that’s when you stop lying about who you are and are more open to accepting the truth and finding what really works for you.

 

Stop trying to look like someone else, or to conform to a public perception of what you should look like.

 

We all read so much and when we see a famous face associated to a brand we think they are everything that they vouch for. Especially those touting weight loss. Sometimes even our celebrities are victims to these brands misusing their name.

 

I was reading through the new gimmicks being advertised on Facebook and claiming so and so lost weight with some bizarre product, that's all lies, I know the person in question and they never even endorsed the brand, even had no clue their pictures were being misused.

 

Invariably most of what you read is not true. All the icons up there have their ups and downs, thin and fat days, binge days, crazy moments and deep down they are very real people in an unreal world. They don't tell you about their struggles you only get to know of the end result.

 

Any icon you know who touted weight loss and screamed from the roof tops as ambassadors of a particular system eventually never sustained it. Because the truth is what is propagated isn’t really what they are doing and what they are doing isn’t really sustainable and then it’s back to square one.

 

We are real women and men. We don’t have a photo-shopped life, or the luxury to spend hours grooming ourselves every time we step out. So we need to stop falling for the propaganda, besides which we don’t get paid to look good – we look good because we want to.

 

A lot of what we read is far from the truth, most people lie about the truth. We find ourselves pouring through any article or book saying “weightloss” – and we look up to someone who is a celebrity sharing their secrets.
We look at what they look like and automatically see a mental image of ourselves looking like them. That motivates us to give what they say a go and thereon begins the madness.

 

The truth is that what they have to say won’t be a secret if they shared it and it doesn’t work if you follow it. So no one really tells you any secrets.

 

Just like my mothers cook, one of the best cooks I know, a fabulous culinary talent. We have many friends who try and wrangle her recipes out of her and she conveniently forgets to share the most important ingredients – but never says she won’t share it upfront.

 

Such is life we all want to hold on to our own success and share as much as we think we can without giving away too much.

 

While talent, karma and luck make people celebrities, it’s their actions that should make them Icons, and good character that keeps them grounded, to know you are in a position to influence people is great power, and with great power must come great responsibility.

 

Often than not everyone loses their way for a while when they see huge success and if good sense prevails they recover themselves. Those are the lucky ones, the others will do anything to survive and anything to earn.

 

I look up to anyone famous who has the strength of character to stand up for what they believe and who refuse to endorse products that don’t work and mislead people.

 

While money is the motivator, how do you sleep at night knowing that a vulnerable adolescent or person is likely to believe what you say and mess their lives up further, because there is no one more vulnerable than someone looking for a solution to their weight problems.

 

My job is well on its way if I can help someone connect with their real self and understand that they need to always be truthful to that reality.

 

So stop looking up to unreal icons and stop believing everything you read instead work towards finding your own path and share your insights truthfully (if you choose to share anything at all) or else you are better off keeping mum.

 

And the honest truth, if you aren’t willing to eat less, if you aren’t willing to eat simple and slow, if you aren’t willing to exercise regularly then forget it. Because anything else you are searching for means you are still finding an excuse to not do what you actually need to do -  to be able to lose weight.