Noted author and spiritual development guru Teal Swan thinks that the cause of obesity is fear – specifically, the fear of humiliation and shame.

But the truth of the matter is that humiliation and shame are not always root causes of fear: underneath them something else often lies – perhaps the feeling of not being good enough, perhaps the feeling of actually being bad.

It’s experiences like this which can lead to the feeling of shame and of being humiliated, but in fact although there is often a deeper root cause than that portrayed by Teal Swan, she is still probably right about the fact that fat is actually acting as a barrier between ourselves and what we are afraid of.

Now, when you take this a stage further, the sad thing is that most people who are afraid of humiliation and shame are also fundamentally afraid of the people who shamed them – or, to put it more exactly, they’re frightened of people.

And this means that if somebody becomes obese so as to have a “shield” (of fat) between themselves and other people, the cure for obesity may not lie in a diet or slimming programme, but in healing the emotional wounds which caused the shame and humiliation to build up in the first place.

Of course this is a really radical view which will not find acceptance among most people, who would like to ascribe their obesity – or at least being “somewhat overweight” (a way I’ve heard many obese people describe their condition) to eating the wrong food, or carbohydrate sensitivity, or their parents overfeeding them as children, or… You name it, I’ve heard it.

But essentially what they won’t admit or can’t recognize is that the deep shame and fear of humiliation or of other people they feel (again, to remind you, because other people are always the cause of shame and humiliation).

This fear lies deep down inside, and one cause of it is that people who are obese were often raised in an environment that condemned selfishness. In other words by “selfless” parents….

And people who behave “selflessly” are often extremely selfish in respect of their children’s needs and desires. So children who are raised in this kind of environment will feel taken advantage of, and ashamed for feeling taken advantage of !

This is Teal Swan’s logic, and I can’t say I disagree with it. The end result is that any relationships are so painful, these people may deposit fat, completely unconsciously of course, as a boundary; and this prevents somebody from connecting with other people – as Teal rightly says, fat becomes a boundary.

And the reason people choose a physical boundary rather than emotional boundary is because people in such a family environment often find that it’s not acceptable to be cold or mean: in the family environment, “that’s not what we do around here”…

So in essence people who are obese often grow up in an environment where they struggle to recognize their own wishes and desires, and operate on the assumption that they will achieve love through being “nice” and taking responsibility for the struggles and burdens other people have in their lives.

Of course anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of human nature knows that this is completely unrealistic, and you can never take responsibility for somebody else’s problems and solve all their difficulties.

The interesting thing about this emotional and physical dynamic is that people who only feel comfortable with giving and not receiving will not receive from others in their life – it’s a law of nature: if you only give, you never receive back.

What this means is that the fat not only acts as a shield or boundary from the shame and humiliation that other people might deposit upon them, but it also acts as a storehouse of energy which such obese people can use to protect themselves against the emotional demands and drains of other people.

Everyone is born with the potential to become a fully developed, fully spiritually realise person – but becoming fat, or obese, in response to your environment is a real reaction to emotional trauma that prevents such fulfillment of the personality.

Happily, as Teal rightly says, once somebody has obviated the need for a barrier between themselves in life, there is no longer a need for fat, and of course this is when people begin to actually successfully lose weight. They just happen to find the diet that works “for them”!

Now there may be other causes of obesity, indeed, I’m sure there are, but the point is that Teal is saying, quite rightly, obesity is a condition that originates in an emotional cause, not a physical cause.

I would say that at its essence obesity is an imbalance between a person’s existence and their right livelihood, or to be more exact, their right life.

So addressing the emotional problems and difficulties underlying obesity will allow people to lose weight. Until this happens, no matter how effective the diets they may try throughout their lives are, they will stay fat. Which means the real cure for obesity is in fact dealing with emotional issues that have led to the problems they now face.

If you’d like to read more about this, go and have a look at Teal’s blog, which is called “A Spiritual Catalyst” – she’s very good on these things, and she’s developed a unique style of expression which allows simple communication of complex issues.