Weight control and dieting can be seriously hampered by fears like the fear of envy.

The concept of the "evil eye" has been with us for centuries at least, and probably for as long as homo sapienshas been down from the trees. In its classic form it is a superstition, the belief that a witch or other super-powered malefactor with malevolent intentions can create a lot of mischief by merely looking at an intended victim.

Like all superstitions, fear of the evil eye is rooted in something very real, in this case the fear of envy. It may have many other connotations, but the form we are interested in has to do with being envied.

In other words, inciting the envy of others can be a scary, dangerous thing. All of us learn at an early age that unpleasant consequences often ensue from the envy of others. Those consequences can include theft of the cause of the envy, damage to reputations or social relations, and other forms of personal or even institutional attack.

(I have included a much broader and more comprehensive coverage of this phenomenon and how it affects us in my book, You Can Do It....) Some people are so afraid of the evil eye that they will do just about anything to avoid being enviable in any way. Sometimes they are more successful than the rest of us would like.

One sure-fire way to be unenviable in Western culture is to be fat (but see the exception that applies in certain cases of poverty). This can result in an inordinate craving for some specific food, or category of foods, that do the best job -- i.e., are very fattening. Chocolate, pastries and breads are some examples of commonly abused fattening substances.

For some reason not yet clear to me, this kind of subconscious motivation to be overweight is highly resistant to exposure and requires some industrious ideomotor questioning to uncover. For instance, when fear of envy is a motivator, the subconscious mind typically does not recognize "envied by others" as applying to itself. Thus you may have to resort to euphemisms to pin it down. These could include phrases like, "others want what I have," "anger over my appearance," or "others will hurt me for being slender."