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If you are heavier than you want to be, you probably think that you want to lose weight. Think again. If you truly desire to permanently transform your body into a slimmer, more compact vehicle in which to experience life's journey, there's a good chance your real desire isn't to lose weight. It's to weigh less.

One of the most common reasons people seek out the services of a nutritionist is for weight loss. This certainly is true in my holistic nutritional counseling practice, and it's part of what I love best about my work. Helping people take control of their food consumption and release unwanted pounds is a privilege that gives me great satisfaction. However, what I really love best is not helping my clients transform their bodies for the short term, but for the long haul. My aim is to empower my clients with the experience and understanding needed to make lasting changes that bear fruit year after year.

If you are overweight, you are well aware of how the extra pounds you are lugging around place a burden on your body, your health and your self-esteem. Wanting to drop that padding is a sign of wanting to be healthy and love yourself more. But think about this. Is losing weight your ultimate goal? Or is it something else?

Let's put it this way. If you had a choice between losing weight and weighing less, which would you choose?

When I ask my clients this question, it becomes clear that the goal is not simply to succeed at "losing" weight. The goal is to become a different size person altogether, to inhabit a leaner and lighter body for life.

Achieving this goal entails more than going on a diet. Deeper, long-lasting changes are required. These include changes in the daily choices you make about what foods to put into your body, changes in the way you relate to food overall and changes in the level of physical exercise you engage in on a regular basis.

If you make these changes properly, you are guaranteed to lose weight - almost as a side effect, a bonus - whether or not you ever go on a diet again. In fact, going "on" a diet implies that one day you will go "off" it, setting you up to regain the pounds you so diligently shed through hard efforts, once you return to "normal" life. (We've all been there and the jury is in: diets don't work.) You don't need to "go on a diet," you need to transform your diet, as a whole, in order to achieve long-term physical transformation.

Body weight is a direct result of eating and exercise habits. Even if you have a thyroid problem or other medical condition that affects your metabolism, to a large degree your food and fitness choices are still driving the results reflected by the mirror and your waistline. You know this. If you want a lighter body, your eating and exercise habits must change at a fundamental level, individualized to your needs.

A lighter body - YOUR lighter body - is sustained on a different quality and amount of food than your heavier body. Your lighter body also engages in a greater amount of physical activity than your heavier body. That's the bottom line.

Along with moving your body more, if you want to weigh less than you do now, you need to eat differently than you have been up to now. This is the only way your shape and size will change for good. To think otherwise would be insanity. Did you know one definition of insanity is "to keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result"? Not going to happen! If you continue your old habits, nothing will change.

The way to weigh less is not to go on a diet but to change your diet. And this means changing your relationship to food. Because ultimately, your weight is not just a function of the kinds of foods you eat, but also a function of the way that you eat them: when and how and in what feeling state of mind. That's where, in my work, the counseling component of "nutritional counseling" takes on a fuller meaning. Helping my weight loss clients understand and heal the roots of their emotional eating is of great benefit in supporting their recovery and transformation. When it comes to weight, emotional factors are at least equally important as biochemical factors.

Addressing the biochemical piece is where cleansing comes in. Cleansing, which entails removing all artificial and processed foods from the diet and replacing them with fresh, water-rich fruits and vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds, is different from dieting which focuses on calorie restriction alone. I believe it is critical to remove certain sub-optimal substances (such as food additives, wheat and sugar) from your dietary repertoire for a period of time, in order to break free of physically needing them.

Yes, I said physically needing them. It's not all in your head: many, if not most food cravings and addictions are real, biochemical responses. You're not just "weak" when you can't resist buying and eating that cupcake or pint of ice cream or fast-food burger or entire bag of spicy tortilla chips. These foods contain chemical ingredients and specific combinations of flavors that trip the pleasure pathway in your brain - the dopamine pathway - which is your biological trigger for addiction.

What foods trip the dopamine pathway? Refined sugar, in all forms. Wheat, especially in white flour form, and other grains that contain gluten (rye, barley, spelt). Food combos of fat+sugar (candy bars, cookies, pies) and fat+carb+salt (pizza, french fries, chips). Numerous man-made additives and flavor-enhancers. Human beings are neurochemically wired to respond to these substances with an intense pleasure response, followed by craving for more....and more...and more! The result: substance abuse, presenting as food abuse. Food abuse takes many forms: compulsive eating, bingeing, overeating, eating to soothe emotions, eating to numb stress or unpleasant feelings, continuing eating even when part of you wants to stop, etc.

Food addiction is, perhaps, the most insidious addiction in our society. Because despite the fact that so many people suffer from its consequences, consuming junk food, processed foods and, indeed, overeating on any food (big gulps, big grabs and all-you-can-eat buffet, for example) is accepted, promoted and condoned. After all, we have a food industry to support! And believe me, food scientists are hard at work every day creating new "designer drugs" to keep you hooked for life. Big Macs, Doritos and Snickers bars were only the beginning.

However, take heart and know this: you are not a helpless victim. Far from it. In spite of all the temptation and media messages urging you to succumb, you still get to choose what you put into your mouth every day. With the proper education, information, support and resolve, you can turn your diet, your health and your weight around at any time. Yes, you can!

Doing a cleanse provides a break from old habits and teaches you how to "just say no" to your food addictions. A dietary detox or cleanse re-educates your taste buds, your brain and your entire body, showing you by example how brilliantly fresh, natural foods revitalize your system, give you energy and make you feel good. When you eliminate all processed, fake and industrial foods from your diet and spend a period of time eating only real foods that grow in or on the earth, you will start to see results in just days. After a few weeks, the results will be profound, even life-changing. You will learn by experience that the foods which nourished your ancestors - not just for centuries, but for tens of thousands of years - are the same foods upon which your body is designed to, and will thrive. You will start eating to evolve.

There are plenty of cleanses out there, some more extreme than others. I recommend choosing a program that feels doable to you, because the only cleanse that will work is the one you complete! I suggest that you avoid strict fasts like the Master Cleanse that start and end without safely transitioning you back into eating. Those programs can help you lose weight but usually don't support "weighing less" for the long term.

The program you select may be a juice-rich program like (my new hero) Joe Cross's fabulous reboot, or it may be something that gives you wider food options. I offer my clients two fantastic cleansing programs: the popular four-week Ultimate Detox Diet developed by my mentor, the late Teri Kerr, and my own 21-day Rainbow Cleanse™, which weaves principles of color healing and chakra awareness into a gorgeous diet of fresh, nutrient-dense foods. In addition, I provide coaching for people interested in following the protocols of my friend and colleague Natalia Rose, author of The Raw Food Detox Diet and Detox For Women.

All of the above recommended cleanse programs are geared towards making the lasting changes that ensure permanent results, long after you have left the actual cleanse behind. Like a diet, cleansing will help you to lose weight - most of my clients release ten pounds on average over three to four weeks. But, even more importantly, cleansing will teach you how to practice and embrace new healthy diet-lifestyle behaviors. Reshaping your relationship with food and eating is what takes you to the final goal that lies beyond losing weight: weighing less, for life.

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