Sometimes weight gain comes unannounced, uninvited, unwelcome, an intruder into your life. And yet, upon closer observation, there are reasons. You just weren’t looking their way. The reasons, if not purely physical and metabolic (which they can be, but not often) have their origins in your psychology, your feelings, your coping skills, your life situations. The reasons are there, but many times they creep in and exert their influence without your permission, and without your conscious knowledge.

And yet, as people, we have enormous reserves of brainpower. We can think. We can investigate. We can analyze. We can observe. We can change things. The funny part is, a lot of times it happens like this: A woman will try to understand why she eats the way she does, why she’s been holding on to extra weight, and just the inquiry itself begins to exert an opposite influence—and she begins to lose weight. So when that happens, the weight loss is a byproduct of gaining insight and understanding.

It stands to reason, doesn’t it? If there are forces you haven’t been paying attention to—like stress, anxiety, loss, sadness, disappointment, etc— and if these very things have nudged you toward eating more, what do you do? Well, if you are very unhappy with your eating and your weight, tackling those issues head-on could be the solid answer.

It’s a smart way to look at it. When you go on a diet thinking it’s the only answer to giving you a better life—and really the unacknowledged problems in your life are the culprits—then ultimately the problem won’t be solved. That is the reason so many women lose weight, but can’t keep it off. The real problems remain.