Virgina Sole-Smith wrote another great post on her blog, neversaydiet, about new research supporting the notion that having negative feelings about your body and trying to “escape” it through dieting and restriction often leads to the ironic opposite effect: gaining more weight.
I know some find this effect counter intuitive. From a logical point of view, if you are dissatisfied with your body and decide to lose weight, well then, that should lead to weight loss, right?
Nope! Not for most of us.
In fact, this isn’t a question of logic at all. It’s not about linear effects, causes and reactions.
This is a question that is much more chaotic. It’s deeply hooked into emotion, the unconscious, fears, social pressures, media, self-esteem, self-worth, self-loathing, among others.
Because of that, the goal “to lose weight” is actually a psycho-social quagmire that women can’t escape – as long as they keep that complicated goal.
The very unfortunate thing is that even when a health care provider, for real health concerns, prescribes “losing weight” to women “losing weight” is STILL a goal that is tainted by all of these societal pressures. So, from a motivational perspective, even trying to lose weight for health reasons can also, easily result in body dissatisfaction and self-loathing.
There’s a core connection between body dissatisfaction and self-loathing. Your body is YOU. So, if you feel badly about your body how can it NOT impact feeling badly about yourself?
Coming to any behavior change from a place of self-loathing or self-negation is not likely to result in a successful outcome, and from this new research also suggests may even pack on more weight.
It’s so utterly non-logical, but I’ve seen it again and again with clients I’ve worked with. When women decide to stop loathing themselves and stop trying to lose weight to feel better about themselves, despite being heavier than they ever thought they’d be, and INSTEAD embrace who they are and start doing things to TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES, the self-loathing starts to evaporate and they often find themselves losing weight when they weren’t even trying or interested in it.
Go figure?!
