That’s right; today’s exercise on Day 13 of Loving Yourself Thin is to thank your fat. Are you thinking that I’m crazy now? If you are that’s OK, just do the exercise anyway.

This is a simple exercise to do but will require some work. Sounds contradictory? This is because thinking of your fat as helping you might be a new thought for you, which is why it will require some work, but I think that once you get going you will find it to be easier than you first thought.

Grab your notebook, your journal, a piece of paper, a napkin, something to write on; as I have mentioned in previous posts, I strongly suggest you write with pen and paper instead of on the keyboard because it is more powerful for you.

Start jotting down anything at all that comes to mind regarding how your fat helps you in your life. Like I said, you might not have ever thought of your fat as being helpful to you, especially if you are constantly criticizing it (or yourself) for being overweight, however here are some examples of how your fat could be helping you today:

• If you are afraid of attention, your fat helps to keep people at a distance.
• If you haven’t set other life goals besides weight loss then by either staying overweight or regaining weight that you previously lost, your fat gives you a goal to keep striving for (your goal weight).
• If you are afraid of getting involved in life, your fat can give you an excuse to stay on the sidelines, therefore you won’t get hurt (emotionally or physically!)

These are just a couple of examples that might be true for you, however there are physiological ways that your fat helps you, which are true for everyone:

• Your body is just doing its job by “growing its fat cells”. When you eat more than you expend in energy or eat the types of food that trigger weight gain, the fat on your body is being stored for future use.
• Your fat is there to help you in the future in case of a famine, again, just doing its job.
• If you went on Survivor your fat would help your body sustain itself.

OK, the last one I threw in for humor, but in actuality, it is true. The point is to become aware of all of the ways that your fat is helping you right now. Am I suggesting you do this so that you give up on weight loss and stay overweight? No, this is an exercise in releasing more of the criticism and disdain that you have for the fat on your body. You see, your fat cells are not “out to get you”; they really are just doing their job from a biological standpoint.

Yes, your body is just doing what it is supposed to do when you feed it more than it needs to function at your current level of energy output. By recognizing that and by increasing your awareness of the psychological and emotional reasons that you hang on to your fat (by sabotaging your weight loss efforts), you will help yourself release the negative thoughts directed towards it.

Now that you have at least one way that your fat is helping you in your life, take this reason and write a letter to your fat, thanking it for doing its job. It could be a short note or a long diatribe, whatever you come up with is great, as long as you are recognizing and giving credit to your fat for helping you. Here’s an example using the first example in the list above:

Dear fat: Thank you for protecting me from life. I can now see that I have been using you to try and keep myself safe and that instead of attacking and criticizing when you are only “just doing your job”, I would make more progress in weight loss by working on increasing my feelings of safety in life. Thank you for doing what you are supposed to be doing and for providing me with a storehouse of fuel in case of a famine, I love you.

Again, this is just an example and your list of ways that your fat is helping you as well as your thank you letter might be very different. The entire goal of the exercise is to raise your awareness of what you are gaining from being overweight, how your fat is really not your enemy, and replacing criticism and negative thoughts towards your fat with acceptance and love.

The more that you can love and appreciate your body as it is now, the more success you will have with not only losing weight, but keeping it off in the long run. While the focus of the 31 Days of Loving Yourself Thin exercises is to increase your self love and the love you have for your body, you can see that by default you are going to understand more about yourself and the underlying cause for your symptom of overweight.

In conclusion, after you have done the written portion of today’s exercise, go to the mirror, look yourself in the eyes and tell yourself, “I love you exactly as you are right now. I now have a better understanding of how my fat has been trying to help me, thank you”.

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