On Weight-Loss

 On Weight-Loss

Full disclosure: I have never in my life had a need or desire to lose weight, not even on the wrestling team.

However, I do know about the psychological mechanisms that keep us from fulfilling our goals. Since this goal is so popular, I’m taking license to give some thoughts about a few different impediments to weight loss.

1. What have you noticed about the people that successfully lose weight, keep it off, and aren’t anxiously avoiding weight gain? You may notice that, to them, it's not a big deal. And because they aren’t stressing all the time about their calorie count and exercise time, we HATE them for losing weight so easily.

Let’s cool our jets for a sec and look closer at the “not a big deal” part of it. Why aren’t they stressing about losing weight? I would argue it’s because they don’t need to. They love and accept themselves how they are, so there is little stress to change. When the journey to change your physical health and appearance is for extra credit, then you will find joy in your successes and easy forgiveness for your missteps. But, if you cannot PASS without having a certain weight or look, you have a double bind on your hands: “Be a certain way, or you are not good enough.” You can’t help but feel anxious about this process, a feeling that counteracts your efforts. The force driving the anxiety is SHAME.

2. Anxiety is the activation of your FIGHT/FLIGHT response. For many of you, food has been your “drug of choice,” the most effective way to soothe your stress and pain. Food relieves anxiety through several mechanisms: Various compounds like carbs literally boost dopamine levels; getting our digestive tract moving reverses the anxiety response (see post on Body Language); and it is a distraction from other stressors or boredom. Your brain’s survival center has been wired to seek it out, and will override logic and will-power to get relief. Food has helped you get through difficult times, so your brain does not want to let it go. If you have lots of stress in your life, you will have poor luck trying to override your brain's survival functions.

3. Depression, closely tied to your anxiety, is the shutdown of the fight/flight response when it gets overwhelmed, in favor of the Freeze response. When depressed, your heart slows down and your muscles conserve their energy--much like a hibernation mechanism, and not good for weight loss. 

So, how do we reduce the effects of shame and your survival systems? Let’s start with all pain associated with weight or shape. What experiences have you had where certain shapes were shamed, criticized, or especially favored? Where did your sense of worth come to be closely tied to your weight? Or, what are the life circumstances wherein you were compelled to cope with food? Let's process the old traumas and emotions.

Next, where are we getting shame messages now? What family members, friends, or media sources are still conveying these messages, and what are you gonna do about it? What stories are you telling yourself that need to change?

What emotional repairs do you need to make with your current and former self? Do you need to express compassion for yourself for the body changes during that second pregnancy? For that depressive time after your divorce, or in that toxic job environment? What about the genetics you may have inherited or the medications you were taking? You and others need to communicate clearly that your weight and shape DO NOT DEFINE YOU, and that variations are natural and acceptable.

If there are other sources of stress in your environment contributing to your eating habits, target those next. If food has been your anti-anxiety medication, reducing the other stressors in your life so you don't need the medication as often will make the process of withdrawal and rewiring much easier. (See "The 3 S's of Change")

To sum up:

-Shame drives anxiety. You need to confront past and current messages that bodies need to be a certain way to be good enough. When your worth as a person is not dependent on your weight, then the pressure decreases, and the task gets easier.

-We hate to feel anxiety, and our body's survival functions override willpower to get relief. Cutting off the drug of choice is hard, but will be easier if the things causing stress are reduced.

-We need to forgive ourselves for fluctuations in weight. They happen for reasons that do not include you being lazy, gluttonous, or irresponsible. Blaming and shaming yourself is mean and makes losing weight even harder. Recognize that these critical voices in your head are coming from a place of hurt--real injuries that you've experienced. Treat those injuries.

Listen to this Podcast about "Body Justice", some new thinking about treating weight issues. I don't agree with everything here, but it may be helpful:

https://clearlyclinical.com/podcast/ceu-body-weight-size