If you have been heavy your whole life (or most of it), you may believe that your main problem is getting your body to a healthy, more comfortable weight. You may be convinced that your life will be dramatically different when you’re at your ideal size and that you can then kick back and enjoy life. If you are so obese that your size restricts mobility and activity, you may find that life does vastly improve when you reduce your size. Being more comfortable in your body and able to do more may be enough to change how you feel about yourself and put your life back on track.
However, even if you lose the weight, you will still have many issues to deal with. My concern is that people who loose a tremendous amount of weight are not changing enough of themselves to become emotionally healthy. It is certainly easier to blame your weight for your unhappiness. If I’m thinner, you may think, I’ll get out and socialize more and have better relationships. But the fact is, you can be social and active at any weight, and focusing exclusively on taking off pounds may be drawing you farther away from the underlying issues you really need to address. In fact, your current weight may be a protection against examining your fears—of people, of risk-taking, of failure.
In this case, taking off the weight won’t correct your underlying problems. Sure, it may make you more relaxed in social situations, get you out to more places, and cause people to interact with you more positively. But reducing your weight will only take you so far in promoting well-being if you ignore your other, hidden problems. Maybe you have a fear of rejection or abandonment; perhaps you’re depressed and anxious in social situations. You may have low self-esteem and not believe you deserve happiness. Moreover, you may be in an unhealthy relationship which will keep on bringing you down no matter what you weigh.
Although shedding pounds may be part of your problem, if you stop there, it is likely that the weight will creep back on. People who keep weight off do so, in large part, because they have resolved underlying psychological problems which get hidden in their fat. I am not saying that everyone who is heavy has major psychological problems. I am saying that if you have been overeating and overweight for most of your life, there may be issues you will need to address along with eating and weight to bring you happiness. Everyone has leftover baggage from childhood and thin and average-weight people have to deal with them too. The difference is that they don’t suffer the stigma of being fat and don’t have the job of getting to a healthier weight on top of all their other issues.
Best,
Karen
Visit the message board exclusively devoted to my new book, The Food and Feelings Workbook, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings.
PLEASE NOTE: I encourage you to comment on my blogs and will do my best to address topics/questions you raise in future blogs. Unfortunately, however, due to time constraints, I cannot provide individual responses.
I TOTALLY agree. I have been 'thin' for 40 years. Before that I was average and then gained a freshman 25# (rather than freshman 15#). However I lost 35 pounds during that same year and stayed in the same 5-10 pound weight range for 40 years.
Nevertheless I struggled with fears about food, eating and weight for many years. Being diagnosed with a gastrointestinal disease and food allergies helped me realize that I had never been 'fat', but only bloated from gastrointestinal problems. However I also continued to focus on food and physical symptoms to avoid feeling painful emotions.
Only recently did I learn to identify and accept emotions which I tried to avoid experiencing, while working through your 'Food & Feelings' workbook. I highly recommend that workbook to ANYBODY who ever struggled with food, eating or body image problems, no matter what they weigh.
SUE CORNING
Posted by: sue corning | September 27, 2007 at 11:09 AM