How can I reduce my weight?

Beloved master, I am obsessed with food. I eat too much and have gained enormous weight. Can you help me to reduce my weight?

Sangito, you will have to learn love. There is no other way to reduce your weight. All other programs can help you a little bit, but sooner or later you will gain weight again because the basic root cause remains the same. You can diet, you can run, swim, exercise, but how long can you diet? Sooner or later you will be fed up with dieting and your mind will become more and more obsessed with eating. Now you will eat in your fantasy, in your dreams, and your mind will convince you that this is not the right way to live. You can't eat this, you can't eat that, and somehow if you ask the doctors, all the good things have to be avoided. A child was talking to his mother, "You say God is very wise. I don't believe it." The mother said, "But why don't you believe…

Osho! You say unhappy people eat more, so they become fat. Then why are the mahatmas fat?

Now here is a contradiction. The very man who cripples the woman so she must depend on him—when she does depend, he torments her. She will torment him too, because nothing else remains; whatever there is, is him. So she sits waiting, watching the door: “You are an hour late—why?” Where were you? You have no idea what that hour is. For you it’s just an hour—perhaps not even that. You were chatting with friends, playing cards. But for your wife, there is nothing else in life. You alone are her filling. If you aren’t there, she is empty. For her, an hour passes as if years have gone by. You can’t imagine her pain. So you say, “What got spoiled in an hour?” For you it’s an hour, but you don’t understand relativity. For her, it isn’t an hour. Your situations are entirely different. So then she will harass…

Osho, I am worn out from practicing religion—vows, fasts, yama and niyama—I’ve tried them all and found nothing. What should I do now? I have come to your refuge to ask this.

So sometimes fasting is useful. But fasting is not a way of life. Otherwise you are choosing slow suicide; you begin enjoying torturing yourself; you turn perverse and violent toward yourself. Such fasting is abuse—self-abuse—and no one can protect you from it. And your mute body already suffers so much at your hands. Do not imagine this abuse will bring you religion. Yes, the body will dry and wither—but do not fall into the delusion that the lotus of the soul blooms because the body withers. There is no necessary connection. So all that you did—yamas and niyamas, vows and fasts—each has its own value in its own place. But when you take them as synonyms for religion, Dayanand, you go astray. They are not synonyms. Religion has only one synonym—meditation. Mahavira used an exact word for it: samayik. The Jains call the soul “samay”—the timeless time. Samayik means: abiding…

First let the initial embarrassment disappear. When you start feeling a communion arising, then talk about me -- talk about what has happened here, what you have been doing here. And this is my experience: almost without exception my sannyasins have been able to bridge themselves with their parents very easily. [A sannyasin says she has been sick with hepatitis and other diseases here. She has no sexual energy, and thinks about food all the time. Osho checks her energy.] It is a very simple thing -- you just have to see the point. One thing is: whenever you don't allow sex energy to move rightly it starts getting obsessed with food. Food and sex are polarities; they balance each other. If you have too much sexuality your interest in food will disappear. If you have too much non-sexuality your interest in food will become almost an obsession.

Question: Last question: Osho! I am a complete glutton. What should I do? Ganeshi Lal! No one is complete in this world—so drop that illusion. And a complete glutton is a very difficult thing, almost impossible. The Choubeys of Mathura—the temple priests there—are famous for being great gluttons. Once they had a community feast, and a crowd of boys gathered to watch. The feast was held in a walled courtyard. When it ended, one Choubey came out, stroking his protruding belly. The boys clapped and said, “Here comes the eater Choubey!” The Choubey said very softly, “You haven’t seen anything yet—the eater is coming behind.” The boys waited eagerly. Then another Choubey came out, his hands resting on the shoulders of two servants. The boys clapped, “Here comes the eater Choubey!” He said with great disdain, “The eater is coming behind.