Who would want to be overweight? Your dating and social life suffers with extra weight, as does your health, energy levels, and overall confidence. Not to mention you have to add clothes that fit to your wardrobe. Yet, for a significant number of the scores of millions of Americans that are overweight or obese there may be a false perception embraced by the heavyset that staying fat somehow has a pay-off, asserts the author of a new book, Fat and Furious: Overcome Your Body's Resistance to Weight Loss Now!

"It doesn't matter what trendy diets are circulating if those who need to lose weight believe, at a subconscious level, that staying fat is safe and good," says author Loree Taylor Jordan, C.C.H., I.D. "No matter how motivated you think you are, none of your reasons for losing weight will work for you if the subconscious reasons for keeping the weight are stronger."

Jordan, a holistic health expert and educator has gone through her own lifetime struggle with losing weight and trying every diet imaginable. Her new book chronicles her successful efforts to overcome obesity and offers caring, compassionate and medically proven ideas and techniques to help overweight individuals get on a mentally and physically sound course.

Some of the reasons cited by Jordan as to why you may not want to lose weight include:

-Bad attitude: Why bother dieting—the weight will just come back.

-Discipline is hard and not worth the effort.

-You don't believe you deserve to be thin.

-You think the weight insulates you from drawing unwanted attention from men (as a way to avoid being violated or victimized).

-It's a safe crutch—if you lose the weight, you now have to examine why you're not in a relationship or successful or having fun—you've lost your primary excuse. "Self-sabotage is an under explored reason for fat people getting fatter," points out Jordan. "You can blame almost anything that doesn't go right in your life on your weight. It's an easy, reliable target for people who make excuses."

So what's required to move from an unproductive comfort level with our overweight stature? "You'll need a complete and dramatic shift in your attitude and point of view about your emotional weight," says Jordan.

Five soul-searching exercises Jordan recommends for people who need to lose weight include:

1. Make a list of your reasons for not losing weight.


2. List the obstacles you've come up against when you had tried to create the body you desired.


3. Note all of the fears that might be stopping you from losing weight.


4. Offer solutions of what you believe would help you break through these fears and excuses.


5. Determine what your first step or course of action should be—and then do it!

Jordan encourages people not to give up, concluding: "Life is a journey and you can change a lot of things about yourself as long as you want to change. You can become one with your body and soul in a way you could have never imagined."