The Journey to Weight Loss
The journey to weight loss is often perceived as a simple equation: eat less and exercise more. However, if it were that straightforward, wouldn’t we all be at our ideal weights? The truth is, the struggle with weight goes beyond diets, fitness programs, and calorie counting. It’s time to stop dieting and attain ‘thinner peace’.
Understanding the Real Issue
Your weight is not the primary issue. The problem often originates from elsewhere: family turmoil, trauma, witnessing others struggle with food and weight, or perhaps low self-esteem. Turning to food for comfort is a common response, leading to weight gain. The cycle then begins with dieting, which may result in temporary weight loss. However, your brain eventually fights back, leading to a regain of the lost weight. To achieve sustainable weight loss, it’s crucial to understand how your brain works and identify the emotions driving your overeating habits.
You may have lost a few kilos, but sooner or later your brain started to fight you. To shed the kilos and keep it off, you need to look at the way your brain works and also what emotions may be driving you to overeat.
The Battle of the Brains for Weight Loss
Your brain is composed of different components. The advanced part, which we’ll refer to as your ‘computer brain’, desires a slim figure. Beneath it lies the more primitive ‘animal brain’, which prioritizes sustenance over appearance. When you diet, your computer brain takes control, aiming to shed the excess weight. However, in the long run, the animal brain, fearing a famine, triggers a stress response that makes weight loss even more challenging.
Your computer brain wants you to look good in your jeans. Your animal brain wants you well fed and couldn’t give a toss how you look in your clothes. So, when you go on a diet, your computer brain is taking over and saying “Right, I have had enough of you pigging out. We are cutting back on food until all this flab is gone.”
It may last a while; you might even lose weight. But in the battle between the animal and computer brain, the animal will eventually win. Every time. When you restrict your food intake, your animal brain assumes there is some sort of famine and goes into panic mode. It floods your body with stress hormones which in turn make it even harder to lose weight.
To keep your animal brain under control, it’s important to try to relax and get in touch with what’s causing us to overeat in the first place. First off, if you have ever been on a diet, your brain and metabolism have been damaged.
Minnesota Starvation Experiment
A study conducted in the 1940s, known as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, provides a startling insight into the effects of dieting. The study involved 36 healthy men who were subjected to a starvation diet of 1,800 calories a day for six months. The results were alarming. The men became obsessed with food, experienced mood swings, and even resorted to stealing and hoarding food. Post-study, their binge eating worsened, and their metabolisms dropped by an average of forty percent. This experiment underscores the damaging effects of extreme dieting.
The results were astounding. After only a few months, the men became completely fixated with food, thinking, and talking of nothing else. They became angry, depressed, hopeless, and humourless. They began stealing and hoarding food as well as anything else they could get their hands on.
Many began smoking, biting their nails, and drinking coffee so excessively, they were limited to nine cups a day. Then came the bingeing, some of the men lost all control and would eat huge quantities of food and then experience guilt and self-hate so great that they force themselves to vomit.
After the study finished, the bingeing became even worse, some of the men eating up to 10,000 calories a day for months afterwards. To top it off, the men’s metabolisms were an average of forty percent lower, making the cycle even worse.
The moral of the story, diets can screw you up! When you cut way back on your food intake, your animal brain will send stress signals thinking a disaster has struck. It will pull every trick in the book to get you to eat, to gorge yourself until you’re sick. It’s doing what it thinks is best, keeping you alive. The easiest and most effective way to lose weight, (without your brain and body freaking out) is to make gradual and gentle changes.
So how can you get this part of your brain under control? First, accept yourself, right now, just how you are. I know, I know, you want to change. But until your body stops getting messages like “you fat, bloody cow” and “you are a disgusting, tub of lard”, your body will feel stressed out and under attack. Which makes you, you guessed it, want to overeat.
Second, realise your brain has been damaged by dieting. Every time you restrict your food intake, your body goes into a flight or fight response. Telling yourself you can eat what you want, however most of the time you would like to eat healthy, helps keep you relaxed and not feeling deprived.
Eat whatever you want one day a week or have a small treat once a day. It will keep you from thinking about everything you can’t have. Telling someone they can’t have something is a sure-fire way to have them become obsessed with it. When your body is sending you signals that you are hungry when you logically know you have had enough, a helpful exercise is to say the following statement to yourself. “I know that my brain is sending me the message that I am hungry when I am not. This is just a false alarm. I am okay.”
When you feel yourself wanting or starting to overeat, stop and take a deep breath. Ask yourself, what are you feeling right now? Are you stressed, angry at your spouse, lonely or bored? There may be a part of you that believes that you are safer being overweight.
I believe every extra kilo you hold on to your body may equal a kilo of emotional trauma you’re carrying in your heart (not to mention tummy, thighs and arse). Healing your pain and beliefs will help you shed the fat that’s protecting you. If you have been on several diets and still find yourself gaining back the weight, there may be an underlying issue you’re not dealing with.
Sometimes we are aware of what’s causing us pain, other times we know we’re not happy, but don’t know why. You hide the pain and bury it. The problem is, pain is not normal, and it doesn’t go away by pretending it’s not there, so we seek relief from our pain with food, alcohol and drugs, etc.
Getting in touch with the pain and letting it go, will help release your need to overeat, have extra weight for protection and feelings of self-blame and inadequacy. There is no separation from our mind and body. The more aware we are of what is affecting us and how to deal with it, the more control we have over our bodies and lives.
The Path to Thinner Peace
The key to attaining ‘thinner peace’ lies in making gradual and gentle changes. Start by accepting yourself as you are. Self-criticism and negative body image only add to the stress, driving you to overeat. Recognize that your brain has been affected by dieting. Each time you restrict your food intake, your body goes into a fight or flight response. Allowing yourself to eat what you want, while focusing on healthy choices most of the time, can help you feel relaxed and not deprived.
When you feel the urge to overeat, pause and take a deep breath. Identify your emotions. Are you stressed, angry, lonely, or bored? There might be a part of you that feels safer being overweight. Each extra kilo you carry may represent emotional trauma you’re holding onto. Healing these emotional wounds can help you shed the weight that’s been protecting you.
Conclusion
If you’ve tried multiple diets and still find yourself regaining the weight, there may be underlying issues you need to address. Pain doesn’t disappear by pretending it’s not there. We often seek relief from our pain with food, alcohol, and drugs. Addressing and releasing this pain can help alleviate your need to overeat and your reliance on extra weight for protection. Remember, there is no separation between our mind and body. The more aware we are of what is affecting us and how to deal with it, the more control we have over our bodies and lives.
Book an appointment with a Clinical Hypnotherapist who specialises in weight loss. My partner Grant Bodle is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, Nutritionist and Personal Trainer, who has amazing results with weight loss and the Virtual Gastric Band Four Session Protocol that we developed together.
