Weight gain is so much more than just eating too much and not moving enough. For many people weight gain is a symptom, just like headaches or acne are symptoms of potential dehydration, lactose intolerance or hormone imbalance.
Unfortunately in our thin obsessed society, weight gain is demonized and the people who gain it are labeled as lazy or gluttonous or both. Yet, then why is the weight loss/diet industry a $63 billion industry? People can't be that lazy if they are willing to spend $63 billion of their hard earned money to be thin. There are numerous companies that promise if you eat this way, move that way, drink this chalky drink or swallow a magic pill that the weight will just melt away. And it will....for a while. But likely, as many of us know, who have tried the food, exercise, magic pill, fad diet, it comes back. It almost always comes back if we are just addressing the weight as the problem.
The weight is not often the root problem. The weight is often the symptom of a root problem not being addressed.
The ACE's study at Kaiser Permanente in California started as a weight loss study. The doctors leading the study thought they would be able to understand why their participates were overweight or obese and have continually yoyo dieted their entire lives in attempt to lose the weight, yet inevitably gained it back and then some. The initial point of the study was to treat the weight, but what the study ultimately found was that for a majority of the participants, weight was a symptom or even a sense of protection. Try as they might the doctors could not treat just the weight. Many participants initially had success on their limited calorie diets and regular exercise routines, some even losing significant amount of weight, but then something would happen and the participants would drop out of the study, never to return, some would "slip" and binge eat, other's couldn't explain it even though they were following the plan, they were gaining or not fluctuating. This flabbergasted the doctors leading the study.
What started as a weight loss study addressing the weight gain as the symptom turned into what is the well known now as the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study, which identified that 75% of people who struggle with weight have had at least 1 ACE on the questionnaire developed during of the study. And that the more ACEs someone has, the more likely they are to be overweight and struggle with weight related illnesses. And anyone with 4 or more ACEs will likely have a whole host of health related concerns. With each ACE a person has, they have an increased likelihood for diabetes, cancer, obesity, heart attack, depression, etc.
Learning about ACEs and the study is really quite fascinating and once you learn about it is very hard to look at overweight and obese people with anything other than compassion. Weight is a symptom of suffering, of pain, of issues on a deeper level than that person may not care to share with anyone, perhaps, let alone themselves. Weight can act as an armor of sorts, a protection from connection, or intimacy, it can act as a physical barrier, it can physiologically be a sense of comfort to the hurting heart inside.
Even Weight Watchers, the leading weight loss company in the US, has adopted a new model recently. They are no longer focusing on numbers and calories. They have added community, mindfulness and psychological support to their programming, even changing the name to "WW". If a major weight loss corporation can see that we can't just treat the weight then hopefully we can begin to see, as a society, that it is never just about the weight.
For many people food is comfort. That's why we crave "comfort food" when we feel homesick or lonely, or tired, or it is just a Tuesday night after a stressful work day. Food can, for many, fill an emotional need. Turning to food for comfort does not make a person weak or gluttonous, if anything we are trained from a very young age to use food as comfort. Often children are offered a treat when they fall and get a boo boo. Food treats are given as reward too, for a job well done or getting a good grade. Food is central at a funeral and a wedding. We bring food to people who are grieving or eat mindlessly while we zone out in front of the TV. Food is central to everything we do. And we also associate a lot of foods with emotional times in our lives. It makes sense then, that we learn and default to patterns of food comfort as adults.
If we do not learn different coping mechanisms or don't address the emotions head-on (which is tough stuff!) we default to "I have a booboo" (physical or emotional) I need ice cream, candy, a treat to make it all go away and feel better. Which it does! That's the amazingly cool thing about our anatomy when it comes to our dopamine receptors. Next time you are feeling down or stressed and you turn to a treat for comfort, notice how your body responds. It will likely feel tight and tense to begin with, then you will decide you need a treat; there is the decision process, which is exciting and fun, and occupies your mind; then you get to enjoy your treat, which is glorious and delicious and relaxing; then you feel that rush of dopamine pleasure rush through your brain and body; reveling in the dopamine glow, you forget (at least for a while) what caused you to seek out the treat in the first place. Boom, the treat has done exactly what you sought it out to do in the first place. Comfort.
So the next time you feel yourself gaining weight or your pants don't fit anymore don't beat yourself up and call yourself lazy or bad for eating all the donuts, ask yourself, what is going on here? What is going on on a deeper level? Check in with your emotional state. Are you taking care of your emotional needs? Have you been triggered? Do you need to journal or talk to someone? A great trick before you eat the treat is to put a hand on your heart and a hand on your stomach. Take a deep breath, exhale, and ask yourself, is my heart hungry for this treat? Wait for the answer. Then ask, is my stomach hungry for this treat? Wait for the answer. Not that the answer will make you eat or not eat the treat, the act of pausing and checking in with your needs, potentially emotional, physical or both, is the goal.
(To take the ACEs questionnaire go here. And to learn more about ACEs I would highly recommend two books, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. (one of the leading doctors in the ACEs study) and The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-term Effects of Childhood Adversity, by Nadine Burke Harris, M.D.)
