Weight Loss and Emotions: My Journey

 When you have been overweight all your life, listening to people’s stories of how xyz diet and abc gym worked for them only gets you more worked up. If it is working for everyone, it should work for you too right? If it’s not, surely you are doing something wrong, surely you are terrible at something, surely you do not deserve achieving what you want.

 

 We forget we are all unique. We forget we all have different bodies and one size doesn’t fit all. We forget we come from different life situations, and have different stories leading to us being what we are. What people in general, do not understand about people dealing with weight issues is- it’s not a choice. No fat person wants to be fat; they are just in that situation owing to their journey so far. Sure they may have made grave mistakes regarding their health choices at some point, but no one wishes to have kilos of unwanted fat lying around on their body. And more often than not it’s a vicious negative loop: judgement from people around you putting more and more pressure on you, you becoming so desperate that you will try anything and everything to lose those kilos in order to get validation, things not working the way you imagined because you tried everything haphazardly without a clear plan, things going out of hand, you start becoming more depressed thinking why can’t you do it just for once and then reach to a point where you are so frustrated that you give up on everything and go back to your old eating habits, leading in turn again to more judgement and the cycle goes on. After a point, it all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

 People like me, who are emotional eaters, go to food for their comfort. We eat when we are happy, we eat when we are sad. We also eat when we do not feel anything, by feeling worried that we are not feeling anything. It’s not so much a problem that we associate food and emotion, but what becomes a problem is which food we associate with. And you guessed it right, sugars become the constant go-to food. Sugars release dopamine, which essentially makes the brains of people like me go, “Dude!! I’m so happy now. That thing, about a thing that was eating you up all day -forget about it. Duh!! Why would you worry so much about it?” or “Dude, this reminds me of the time you were so happy about getting that A+ on your mark sheet. Yeah, that felt so good!!”. And who doesn’t want to feel happy? Who doesn’t want that kick you get by that shot of endorphins? This gradually leads to a sugar addiction. Most people in their lives wouldn’t know they are addicted to sugar. Try cutting out sugar completely for one day and you’ll know what I’m talking about. As Indians, it is particularly tougher for us. Just when you will be on track of reducing your sugar intake, there will be another festival which will really test your patience and determination. And how can you not have sweets? That’s like going to a themed-party without knowing what the theme is. Getting rid of this emotional association to sugar is the hardest task of all. You have to constantly make a choice of not giving in to your cravings. You have to keep looking at the future benefits you want by doing this- forming a habit which will help you in your weight loss journey and life in general. And this can be pretty tough. But once you do it, it starts paying off. I went from drinking 4–5 cups of tea on an average day, while also never denying more to completely cutting it off and replacing it with green tea and black coffee (all thanks to my doc sister). Now I associate them with my emotions. And while an overdose of them can still be harmful, its way better than sugar. Next, I tried decoupling my emotions from food. It is very hard and requires patience. But it is not impossible. For someone who always had an emotional association towards food, it’s very hard to accept food as just a fuel to the body and nothing more. But once you change your perspective, things tend to be better.