5 psychological reasons that prevent you from losing weight

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Extra pounds can be guilty of family attitudes, traumatic events and even hidden masochism.

What is an ideal body? So healthy for me. It doesn't matter how many kilograms it contains, whether there is a belly and cellulite. I was heartily happy when some companies began to use real men and women as models. I was happy both for plus-size models and for ordinary people who were finally freed from the imposed rigid standards.

But sometimes you need to lose weight for health. Fitness room three times a week, personal trainer, calorie counting, exotic diets and … zero result. Sometimes we unconsciously endow our excess weight with other meanings and meanings than just kilograms, which we need to get rid of. And in such a situation, you need to run not to the coach, but to the psychologist - otherwise you will never be able to lose weight.

Here are five real-life examples that explain why you are not losing weight despite grueling exercise and strict diets.

1. Ban on sexuality

Marina is 32. Everyone around says that it is time to get married and have children, but Marina is ashamed to meet her. “Who will love me like that,” the girl sighs, zealously kicking her legs along the treadmill on her way to an exemplary body. - The second year of studies, and the result is zero."

As a child, Marina was an ordinary thin child. Sometimes she put on her mother's shoes, let her hair down and flaunted in front of the mirror. Her parents did not approve of these manifestations of female sexuality. She was not scolded, no. They just said: “Don't be a fool! You'd better go read a book. The family's sex symbols were Dreiser, Simenon, and Hemingway. Attracting attention by appearance was considered shameful, intelligence and education were revered.

When Marina put on her makeup for the first time at the age of 16, her mother made a scandal shouting “Run to wash! You will bring that one in the hem. So the belief that sexuality is the lowest thing that can happen to a woman has been entrenched in Marina for years. She was an obedient daughter and naively believed that her parents would not advise bad things.

After graduating from the institute, the girl moved from her parents: if earlier Marina was controlled by a real mother, now an internal mother, no less strict, has come to her place. She regulated the sexuality of an adult daughter from the subconscious. And the girl began to gain weight in order to conditionally increase the distance between herself and her partner, making it difficult to access the body.

What's happening

Marina subconsciously does not want to lose weight, because she is afraid to be attractive. From childhood, she was taught that the attention of the opposite sex is dangerous. The increased interest of men and sex (as a natural continuation of spiritual intimacy) were endowed with a magical power that could ruin a daughter's life overnight - ruin a career, interfere with self-realization, that is, "make a fool."

Study and hard work - that's what, according to the rules of this family, turns a girl into a real woman.

Marina's excess weight stood guard over the interests of the family. It turned into protection from encroachments on the girl's body, from her unfulfilled sexual fantasies, and even from the birth of children. Of course, there is also a rejection of your body as a part of yourself - perhaps the part that secretly dreams of the forbidden from the parents.

By the way, often a consequence of weight gain is not only parental prohibitions on expressing sexuality, but also sexual abuse experienced in childhood.

What to do

1. Realize that there is a prohibition on expressing sexuality. Awareness and identification of a problem is always a big step towards inner freedom.
2. Analyze the history of the prohibition - where and when it appeared, in connection with what circumstances, what emotions causes its violation - fear, feelings of guilt and shame, and so on.
3. Make a choice: do you want to live with this belief, are you comfortable in it, does it not contradict your own desires? Or does this belief prevent you from building life in accordance with your plans?
4. Rewrite negative beliefs into positive ones. For example, "decent women do not flaunt themselves" on "a woman tends to please and be attractive" or "being attractive does not mean being vulgar."
5. Learn to form new habits that emphasize your male or female attractiveness. In the 21st century, hobbies rarely have a gender connotation, but if the goal is to come to terms with your sexuality, then traditionally female or male activities can help in this. For example, for women - meeting with friends, hobby for floristry, embroidery, going to beauty salons, using makeup and clothes that emphasize femininity. For men, it can be training for muscle growth, fishing, hunting, modeling.

2. Weight as a symbol of success

Nastya is 37. She works as a bank manager. As a child, she was teased for her thinness with "worm". And after the birth of her son, her husband began to call her "kolobochk". Nastya has tried a bunch of diets: from "rainbow" to "airy". This is when you eat fresh air. Literally. The effect was, but fragile. After a couple of weeks, the waist again becomes not free, and the soul - restless. Nastya signed up for a lecture with a fashionable nutritionist.

The nutritionist talked for a long time about probiotics, fiber and gluten, about how to cleanse the intestines and do breathing exercises. Nastya remembered about the air diet and shuddered, especially since from somewhere she smelled of the aroma of apple pie with cinnamon. Nastya looked around in search of a "troublemaker" and involuntarily began to look at those sitting around, for some reason, mostly thin girls, carefully writing down every word of the nutritionist on the phone. Due to their large height and low weight, many of them stooped and fidgeted: it was uncomfortable to sit on a hard chair with a lack of mass in places that are traditionally considered soft by humans.

Nastya remembered how painfully she tore off her knee when she fell, running away from her classmates, shouting after her: "The worm got out of the toilet bowl …". And then, unexpectedly for herself, I realized that she did not want to lose weight. And I never really wanted to. Somewhere inside her there lived a huge love for her body, albeit not similar to the texture of Victoria's Secret models. It never let her down: she won the championship in youth competitions in acrobatics, easily endured and gave birth to her Danka, looked stunning in a dress with a neckline, flew up to the sixth floor when the elevator broke down. And the position of manager in the bank was offered to her precisely after the decree, when, thanks to her weight, she began to look like a respectable woman, and not a trainee girl. There might be no connection here, but she liked to think there was.

And this body should be devalued, disliked and humiliated, turned into a mechanism functioning on the right combination of fiber and soy milk? Nastya got up and quietly walked to the exit. “Wait, I'm going to talk about intuitive nutrition now,” the nutritionist shouted after her. But her intuition told Nastya that she had to eat the apple pie immediately. Cinnamon.

What's happening

Nastya seems to want to lose weight, but deep down she feels comfortable in more weight. Subconsciously, she is sure that fat people look more solid, they are more respected, listened to, considered strong, kind. Nastya believes that being overweight gives her weight in society and is compared with wealth. And the need to limit oneself in food is perceived as an understatement of one's status. Her thinness evokes traumatic memories or unpleasant associations in her.

This reason is also found in families where in past generations they experienced war and famine. Overweight becomes a "strategic reserve" that will allow you to survive in difficult times.

What to do

1. By criticizing ourselves, we seem to communicate that we are not what we should be, that is, we do not meet someone's expectations. It is important to understand whose expectations these are, where they came from, and why you should live up to them. Often, already at this stage it becomes clear that our requirements for ourselves are nothing more than generally accepted standards or the opinion of people who are significant to us.
2. Analyze what completeness gives you. Listen to your body. Recall different feelings of yourself: when you were in less weight or more. How did you feel? When was the worst? When were you in maximum harmony with yourself?
3. Think about how your family treats fat people and food in general. Perhaps I often heard from my mother: "In our family, all women grow fat by 30" or "Eat more, but say less." It is likely that you are pursuing a family scenario instead of living your own life.
4. Ask yourself: what do people really value you for? If you think that being overweight emphasizes your status, your solidity, but at the same time desperately want to lose those extra pounds, find inspiring examples of people who have become leaders despite being thin. What else can become for you a symbol of strength and solidity? Clothes, glasses, hair - what can replace excess weight from these things?

3. Conflict of loyalty

Nikita is 25. And 125 kg on the scales. He has been working with the trainer for a year now, does not eat fried, salty and sweet, dairy and fatty, but the weight has shifted only by 5 kg.

Nikita always loved his mother very much. And he loved my grandmother very much. If he was asked: "Whom do you, Nikita, love more?" - he ran away, because mom and grandmother constantly fought, and to confess the same love to both meant to offend each one.

As a child, Nikita fell seriously ill with pneumonia. Mom, always busy with projects, missed the disease. Nikita got to the hospital in an ambulance and got out of there, as his grandmother said, "they put it in a coffin more beautifully." It was then that his grandmother took him from his mother out of town, for "fresh air and goat's milk." The grandmother scolded her mother that she had completely abandoned the child and did not see her life at her work. And Nikita missed his mother.

Granny served porridge for breakfast with not skimmed milk, generously spread butter on a slice of bread, cooked chicken soup with a golden film of fat on top, and whipped clouds of mashed potatoes. For afternoon tea, there was always a viscous thick jelly. “Eat everything, otherwise you’ll leave your health on your plate,” the grandmother grumbled. And the grandson obeyed, because he loved his grandmother. When my mother on her next visit saw Nikita in trousers tied at the waist with a string (the zipper didn’t come close any more), she threw up her arms and sobbed: “Why are you so worn out? Mom, why did you feed him ?!"

In August, Nikita left his grandmother for Moscow. Mom arranged fasting days for him on kefir, and Nikita, so as not to upset her, dutifully drank kefir. Nikita grew up, but he could not call himself fit. It seems that grandmother's porridge, jelly and soups remained with him forever, as a symbol of her care and love.

What's happening

Nikita fell victim to a conflict of loyalties. In a situation where equally beloved mother and grandmother are fighting for the title of "best parent", to side with one of them meant to betray. If Nikita continued to eat as his grandmother wanted, he would have let his mother down. If he began to lose weight on his mother's kefirs, he would admit that his grandmother lost.

The trap of a loyalty conflict is that it is not recognized. In a person, there appear, as it were, two parts of the personality with different models of behavior. They are also called "subpersonalities". One follows the rule "A healthy child must be well-nourished." The second reminds you that it's time to stop overeating and go in for sports. Each of these parts of the personality from time to time takes the initiative into their own hands, which leads to inevitable conflict.

What to do

The main task is to bring the conflict to the level of consciousness. When we are aware of something, we can control what is happening - ourselves or with the help of a psychologist. When there is a conflict of loyalties, the victory of one part will not eliminate the problem of excess weight. It is necessary to reconcile internal subpersonalities with each other, for example, using the exercise of psychosynthesis.

Name your subpersonalities that conflict with each other: parents, mom, dad, grandmother, grandfather, brother or sister. Feel yourself in the image of each, look at the situation through her eyes.

Ask each subpersonality what she thinks about the other, let her express herself critically. By highlighting the positive and negative sides of each part of the personality and assessing their impact on your life, you can take a more objective look at the situation and reduce the impact of subpersonalities on each other and on you. The result should be the separation of your personal perception of reality from the influence of subpersonalities, the acceptance of their characteristics and reconciliation. For example, I understand that in this situation I do not think so, it was my grandmother who thought so. I can agree with her, or I can disagree. And from this I will not betray her and I will not collapse myself.

4. Latent masochism

Rita - 43. In her youth, she was proud that she ate cakes and fried potatoes with might and main and did not get better, while her friends were always on diets, afraid to gnaw an extra cucumber. Rita began to gain weight after the tragedy with her mother.

On that day, the father announced that he was leaving for another. He returned from work, packed his things, briefly explained himself and left. Mom was crying, but Rita was in a hurry to go to the cinema with her friend - the tickets had already been bought. And my mother, left alone, decided to go out the window. The floor was the third, my mother did not manage to part with everyone and forever, but she managed to break her spine and stay bedridden. The father never returned, and the daughter left the institute and got a job in shifts to look after her mother.

Over the years, Rita stopped showing "signs of life": she no longer had her desires, feelings and motives. The accident with my mother corroded everything. He only left a huge feeling of guilt and shame for not staying at home that evening, not sitting next to her, not comforting her. If not for her stupid whims, then everything would be fine. Mother more than once blamed Rita for what happened (as if she had put her on the windowsill and pushed her down). And the daughter did not argue and tried to spend even more time with her mother in order to win maternal love and forgiveness. The friends sympathized with Rita, offered help, but she said: “Never mind, I will tolerate. It's not difficult for me. " She ate little, without appetite, but at the same time the weight did not go anywhere.

What's happening

Margarita feels a sense of guilt for some unworthy act and dooms herself to endless punishment. There is a fixation on an error, the inability to forgive oneself. This is latent masochism - not in the narrow sense of sexual perversion, but in the broad sense of the readiness and consent to inflict suffering on oneself.

It is important for a masochist to suffer "for show": the more people are convinced that he is "punished", the easier it is to bear the feeling of guilt: "Yes, I am bad, but I pay for my misdeeds." A person ceases to care about his health and appearance and unconsciously seeks to demonstrate his shortcomings.

The more flaws, the stricter the punishment and the more hope for a happy end: that someday you will be forgiven and loved.

Most likely, the desires and needs of such a person were ignored by their parents even in childhood. Perhaps they were busy sorting out their relationship and did everything to make the child as controllable and undemanding as possible. Not to have an opinion, to be silent, not to object - in such a family it meant a chance for survival.

Typical parental remarks: "Quickly closed his eyes and sleep", "What do you mean" sick "- be patient!" As a result, the child learns to endure and push back his desires. The comfort of other people comes first. Only after they feel good (as it seems to him), he will allow himself to relax a little and sleep - and then just not to die of fatigue.

What to do

Sometimes, without the participation of a psychologist, it is difficult for a person to discover the relationship between experiences and behavior. For people prone to self-punishment, “serving another” is a kind of comfort zone, and it becomes the meaning of life. This is the principle of codependent behavior: one suffers, the other saves, and they cannot live without each other. But if a person decides to change his life and asks for help, then the psychologist will direct the joint work to develop the skills of expressing negative feelings, the ability to say “no” and to get rid of the desire to please everyone. The goal of psychotherapy is to get rid of childhood traumatic experiences and gain respect for yourself, your feelings and desires.

5. Fear of illness

Denis - 47. An accomplished, wealthy man is ashamed of his body, like a teenager. It's not just big, it's huge. Denis was the only child in the family. His father died at the age of 42 from pancreatic cancer. The mother worked hard and to the end denied the seriousness of her husband's illness. The family was not ready for the loss. If the son immediately realized that his father would leave so quickly, he would communicate more with him, share stories, walk together. But, looking at his mother's reaction, he did not attach much importance to his father's illness.

Denis began to noticeably gain weight from the age of 37, when he got married and had his own son. There was a short period when he lost 10 kg. It all started with severe pains in the abdomen and back, and the first thing Denis thought about was cancer. The doctors ordered an examination, but while Denis was waiting for the results and appointments, he stopped eating and sleeping normally because of anxiety. As a result, he was diagnosed with gastritis, which millions of active people do not have time to eat properly and on time. After this incident, Denis's weight ranged from 160 to 180 kg, even with regular exercise in the gym and gentle diets.

What's happening

Weight loss subconsciously reminds Denis that within a few months his father turned from a healthy man into living bones. Although Denis agreed that his anxiety was generally groundless, it was after the death of his father that he began to believe that thinness would make him more vulnerable to cancer. He often recalled the saying "While the fat one dries, the thin one dies." Denis also had strong prejudices about baldness. He was seriously scared when, during a strict diet, his hair began to fall out - his father also lost his hair after several chemotherapy sessions.

Gaining excess weight, Denis unconsciously tries to slow down the movement towards death. As a rule, such people begin to gain weight after some fateful date - the death or illness of a significant person. Denis unconsciously identifies himself with his father and tries to avoid his fate, turning the kilograms into an airbag.

What to do

When we are under stress, the brain automatically analyzes previous experiences and builds causal relationships, forming associations that will help us protect ourselves from real danger in the future. But sometimes this mechanism fails, and fictional threats appear that have nothing to do with what we might actually suffer from.

The fear of illness is the disguised fear of death. It is scary to lose control of the situation, to die in agony, to leave your loved ones. Life always ends in death, this is inevitable. But at the same time, even when a person is sick, there is always a chance for life. As soon as we accept the cyclical nature of everything in this world, fear will cease to dominate us.

In cases similar to what happened to the hero of the story, it is better to consult a psychologist. Self-help is unlikely to be effective here.

We often think that if we change ourselves, we will become better, more successful, and more loved.

Now I’ll learn Chinese, sit on a twine, climb into size S - and immediately prove that I am worthy of love. But this willingness to reject oneself, endlessly evaluating and comparing, in fact, does not come one step closer to love. Life turns into a dress rehearsal, where the value of the moment “here and now” is lost. I have to work hard, and then I'll live! Until then: “Pull your sock! Better pull!"

You can come to self-acceptance in different ways. Someone needs years of painful self-improvement: until you find happiness in your biceps, and then you realize that happiness is not in them at all. Someone, finding themselves in a hospital bed, asks to return everything as it was and regrets that he did not appreciate it. Someone manages to meet people who do not look appraisingly, but with love and care. Not trying to change anything, but, on the contrary, admiring what the person himself has always considered flaws.

All these paths converge at one point. And when you find yourself in it, you exhale freely from the fact that now you do not have to run with all your might to the finish. To be happy, you don't have to run up to him at all, pumping muscles on the go, shedding pounds and learning Chinese. It's enough just to be.