Weight may seem like it is simply a physical condition, but in my own experience, there is very little, if anything, that is only a physical challenge. For most of us, emotions, beliefs and spiritual sensitivity play a role in the physical conditions we get to address in our lives.

I took this question into the silence and discovered reasons behind weight that I had never considered. Once we look at the reasons, we‘ll look at the emotions that accompany weight and weight loss. Then we’ll see if loving your body has any bearing on weight loss.

In the quiet, this is what I heard about the reason we put on too much weight:

When we are overweight, we are protecting our sensitiveness. We insulate our sensitivities, so that we will no longer be abused, and no longer feel vulnerable. We tend to think this allows us to “weigh in” with authority on situations without exposing our vulnerabilities (though this is a myth of our minds, because we typically still feel vulnerable when we are carrying excess weight).

We also put on weight to protect others as well as ourselves. This happens when we subconsciously allow ourselves to carry the weight of the world. We are literally carrying more than is ours to carry.

Even in physical conditions where excess weight is a by-product, or you perceive you are overweight due to a food addiction, poor diet or lack of exercise, consider how you are carrying more than is yours to carry, because there is usually an energetic connection as well as the more obvious physical ones.

Consider this for yourself. Does this insight fit in your life in any way? Are you carrying more than is yours to carry for the sake of protection? Are you insulating your sensitive nature for the sake of self-protection?

What sensitivity might you be protecting? What deep emotional wound do you need to keep from happening again? What do you feel people need to be protected from? How does it make you feel to have to protect yourself and others?

Psychotherapist, Irene Rubaum-Keller provides significant insights about some common feelings that that accompany the period of time between realizing you are overweight and choosing to do something about it.

In her article, What’s Missing from Weight Loss: Self Love, Rubaum-Keller discusses results from her surveys of over 300 people. She describes the primary feelings that occur before you do something about your weight as self-loathing, depression and loneliness.

You can read more about what she is learning as she writes a new book about the process of weight loss at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-rubaumkeller-/whats-missing-from-weight_b_501782.html.

So, if you are a sensitive person protecting yourself, and perhaps others, from the abuses of the world, and if you are feeling depressed, lonely, or hating yourself for how you look and feel, you are carrying a lot of emotional pain.

Since the cells of your body carry your emotional pain in physical expression, does your body need your love? The answer is clear now, isn’t it? Yes, your body needs love, and so does your spirit.

Your spirit has been carrying a burden and it has been more than your fair share to carry. If someone you loved came to your house exhausted by some large and heavy physical object they were carrying that was supposed to provide added protection for your home, wouldn’t you invite them in, help them set it down quickly, get them a comfortable place to sit and something to drink?

Of course you would. You might even give them a big hug and thank them for their hard work. And then you might consider ways that they could avoid carrying that kind of load by themselves again.

That’s what your body and emotions have been doing—carrying a heavy load for the sake of protection. You deserve some sympathy. And you deserve to give yourself a break.

You deserve to heal the abuse that led to your belief that you needed protection. You deserve to work with others, and not alone, to make the world safer. You deserve to understand how to be with your sensitivity in a positive manner so that you don’t have to protect it. (See the Psychic Powers and Abilities: Live Intuitively class at New Dream Foundation for real-life tools in being with your empathy, intuition and sensitivity.)

You deserve love and you need love in order to let go of the burden.