A majority of people who make an attempt to lose weight fail to do so. If a million people passed through the DMV and 700,000 of them failed to secure their driving license, it’s fair to say we’d ask questions about the test. We wouldn’t think it was down to laziness, a lack of willpower or disinterest in achieving their goal. So, why do we take that attitude when it comes to people and weight loss?
America has a weight problem. In fact, according to the Center for Disease Control, just over 70% of us are classified as obese or overweight. With so many of us struggling to control and manage our weight, we have to ask the question – what is causing this failure?
The majority of us place the blame squarely on ourselves when we fail a test or blow a diet. We never consider the method we choose to facilitate our weight loss. It’s a billion dollar industry, after all, so there should be something that will work for us.
Born To Eat
Why is it so hard to lose weight? Well, according to Jim Keller, an obesity psychologist who serves as the Director of Behavioral Health for a bariatric program in Oklahoma, the brain and body are born to eat. Well, designed to eat anyway.
This is why it’s so difficult for many of us to shift those extra pounds. His assertion is backed by science. A study from Penn State shows how powerful a reward our brain sees food as, which makes it difficult to step away from that bag of chips once you have opened it. In Keller’s work, he has found that there are many causes of obesity.
He has conducted well over 10,000 psychological interviews with patients who were considering bariatric surgery. While there are plenty of biological and genetic factors at play, they interact with environmental factors as well.
Can a Psychologist Help?
What a psychologist can do for you goes beyond helping with your weight loss mindset. Changing your eating habits is challenging, but it may be easier when you understand what is driving those bad habits you can’t shake. You may have decided to change your bad habits, but you constantly slip back into them. Why can’t you call it a day and move on with it?
You don’t have as much control over your behavior as you’ve convinced yourself you do. Addiction, stress, and anxiety all impact that control. That’s where a psychologist can help. It’s all about getting to the root of your problems and finding an effective course of action to overcome them.
What drives your behavior? Although we usually kid ourselves otherwise, it’s not logic. It’s your habits, your addictions, your biochemistry, and even the actions of the people around you. Which makes sense, considering we know that positivity breeds positivity. We tend to rationalize our actions. When you feel stressed out, you are less likely to take good advice and instead do what you want to, or feel compelled to do. So, you have to learn how to resolve your stress, to deal with an addiction, to manage your depression.
Resolve isn’t constant. Like the tide, it ebbs and flows. You can motivate yourself into mindfulness of diet and seconds later, you’re eating a slice of cherry pie. This is something that you have to gain control over, as best you can, and that’s something that a psychologist can indeed help you with. Change isn’t easy. If it was possible to bottle self-discipline and motivation and sell it on the open market, then you would be rich beyond your wildest dreams. You can’t do that, but what you can do is gain insights about yourself and learn how to put that knowledge into action to change your behavior.