Holistic weight loss approaches offer a powerful alternative to the consumer-driven myths of diet culture. By focusing on the mind-body connection, this approach highlights the importance of mental health, mindfulness, and support systems in achieving and sustaining weight loss.
Understanding Diet Culture
Diet culture does a really great job convincing us that weight loss is within our grasp if we just buy some more stuff—fancy blenders, meal plans, commercial weight loss programs like Weight Watchers, exercise equipment, cookbooks, etc. — and have a little more “self-control”. Diet culture is consumer-based, and it thrives on our conceptualization of weight loss as an individual’s problem. The myth is that weight loss is achieved only in combination with a shiny new product and a little individual grit, like powering through a restrictive diet, or exercising for at least an hour every day. In reality, weight loss is a holistic journey. The real secret to weight loss cannot be bought because it does not exist. Weight loss is most successful when you utilize support systems, like family members, friends, and health professionals to heal any pain that you are primarily soothing by eating, people-pleasing, and/or staying too busy to take care of yourself.
Healing from Within
How might we heal from within? Mental health care of course! Weight loss counseling is a unique field of behavioral health that helps an individual heal their relationship with food, grow in insight into underlying issues related to poor eating habits, shift away from disordered eating attitudes, reduce significant weight fluctuations, increase body satisfaction, and develop effective strategies for coping with stress.
Start by asking yourself these questions: How many hours of sleep did I get last night? Do I pay attention to my food when I eat? Do I sit and scroll though TikTok with a bag of chips after a stressful day? How well do I manage uncomfortable emotions? Do I feel like a failure after not being able to stick to a diet? Do I have a lot of negative thoughts about my body?
You’ll notice these questions all have something in common—they examine thoughts, behaviors and feelings. They operate within the worldview that the body and mind are one.
Why Do We Buy in to Diet Culture? Medicine and the Mind/Body Connection
The Mind/Body connection is a relatively new way of thinking about health and wellness in the western world. For a long time, western philosophy, psychology, and medicine operated within the framework of Cartesian dualism. Rene Descartes was a 17th century French philosopher who believed that the body and mind were separate entities. Descartes believed that the mind was the seat of consciousness and the body functioned mechanically. This resulted in modern medicine treating physical problems separately from mental health. Obesity treatment was siloed into medicine. In psychotherapy, the body/mind disconnect manifested in approaches like talk therapy (without incorporating the body), behavioral interventions, and cognitive restructuring. There was a real disconnect between the body and mind. Lifestyle and environmental factors like diet, exercise, sleep, safety, and stress were often not covered in therapy sessions, or they were treated as problems separate from one’s mental health. Fast forward to the 1970s, when Jon Kabat-Zinn introduces mindfulness-based programs to the United States. Mindfulness is the act of paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment without judgment. His Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program integrated meditation, body awareness, and yoga to help individuals manage stress, chronic pain, and illness. Kabat-Zinn’s research demonstrated that mindfulness has a profound impact on both mental and physical health, reducing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and chronic pain.
Holistic Approach to Weight Loss
I invite you to envision a world where you approach weight loss holistically, perhaps utilizing both modern medicine and psychotherapy, and honoring the mind/body connection. Certainly the medical model can be helpful in the treatment of obesity, millions of people benefit from bariatric surgery and injectable weight loss medications each year. However, these approaches alone do not work for everyone. Mental health counseling can supplement medical approaches to weight loss. Mental health counseling can also utilize body/mind approaches like mindfulness to help attain and sustain weight loss without medical intervention. If it is difficult for you to imagine how your mental health fits into your weight loss goals, that’s okay. Let’s examine psychological barriers to weight loss, which will likely shed some new light on why it has been so difficult to attain and maintain substantial weight loss. Biological barriers to weight loss are also significant, but we will focus here on psychological barriers.
Psychological Barriers to Weight Loss
Psychological barriers are thoughts and behaviors that can really hinder progress toward weight loss goals, and may even lead to weight gain following an initial period of weight loss. Some of the more common psychological barriers we help clients with at the Bariatric Counseling Center are: all-or-nothing thinking, lack of motivation, stress, depression, and poor sleep.
All-Or-Nothing Thinking
All-or-nothing thinking is a cognitive distortion. In non-fancy terms, this just means that the brain automatically sorts things into two categories, typically good verses bad. People who struggle with all-or-nothing thinking tend to view setbacks as complete failures. Have you ever thought to yourself, “What’s the point in continuing this diet, I just ate a cookie, I might as well eat the whole sleeve and start the diet again on Monday”? This is an example of an all-or-nothing thought. People who struggle with all-or-nothing thinking also tend to see food in good and bad terms like “Cookies are bad and kale is good”. In exercise, all-or-nothing thinking looks like either going to the gym seven days out of the week, or doing nothing at all.
Focusing Too Much On Motivation
Perhaps you find yourself comfy and scrolling every evening because you’re just not feeling motivated. Lack of motivation is a psychological barrier to weight loss because if we struggle with motivation we tend to think that we are flawed in some way, further negatively impacting our self-worth. There is a tendency to view motivation as a God-given gift, that we either have it or we don’t. We may stay stuck in a sedentary lifestyle because we are simply waiting for motivation to arrive. It’ll be here any day! It might, but why wait to find out as life passes by. When we focus on whether we are motivated, we miss the opportunity to build consistency and routine. We all do things we don’t want to every day, we can learn to focus on what we are willing to do to change our relationship with food, rather than what we feel motivated to do in the moment.
How Stress Can Impact Eating Habits
Stress is a psychological barrier to weight loss, and it can negatively impact the body over time. When physically or psychologically stressed, the body releases a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol slows down the metabolism, raises blood pressure, and raises insulin. Raised insulin leads to a drop in blood sugar, which can cause food cravings for high carbohydrate and high fat foods. When stressed you may gravitate more toward fast food, sweets, and sodas. Studies have shown that over time high cortisol levels contribute to higher amounts of stored fat in the body (Jackson et al., 2017). Aside from the physiological effects of stress, it also just sucks to be stressed all the time! Stress affects our interpersonal relationships, food choices, and ability to tolerate even the smallest of setbacks.
Depression and Weight Loss
Depression is sneaky and silent; symptoms may creep up on you so slowly that depression just becomes your new normal, and it is hard to imagine life without it. Depression looks different on everyone, some people never even cry when depressed. If you have a stereotypical understanding of what depression is supposed to look like, you may be missing some of the signs and symptoms. Symptoms of depression can include: depressed mood, loss of interest or pleasure in activities, significant and unintentional weight loss or weight gain, sleep disturbance (difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, or sleeping too much), fatigue and low energy, a sense of worthlessness and/or excessive guilt, and impaired ability to think, concentrate, or make decisions.
You can see how something as simple as loss of interest in activities can really derail your health goals. Take for example, someone who previously enjoyed thrift shopping on Saturdays, but a recent bout with depression resulted in a loss of interest in thrifting. Rather than going thrifting on Saturdays with friends this person chose to stay home. In doing so, they have decreased their level of physical activity and distanced themselves from their support system, likely unintentionally. They did not consider how walking around Texas Thrift is a physical fitness exercise –because it is fun and time flies! Simply put, loss of interest in activities leads to a more sedentary and isolative lifestyle. Losing interest in the things we love may isolate us from our support system, which can lead to disordered eating, like binge eating in secret or emotional eating in response to loneliness or guilt.
Get Some Sleep!
You don’t have to be depressed to have sleep difficulties that impact your eating behaviors. Poor sleep can be a symptom of depression, but it also functions as a psychological barrier to weight loss on its own. When we are sleep-deprived we tend to crave high carbohydrate and high fat foods. Also, if we’re really tired, decision-making is impaired and energy is low, making it even more difficult to plan and cook nutritionally dense, healthy foods.
Overcoming Psychological Barriers to Weight Loss
The good news is there are effective strategies that can help you overcome these psychological blocks to weight loss. Healing your mental health and achieving sustained weight loss does not have to feel like an uphill battle.
Meeting Basic Needs & Incremental Lifestyle Changes
Start with the basics. Sleep, eat three balanced meals a day, drink water, brush your teeth. By meeting your basic needs first, you carve out more time and energy for creativity, confidence, problem-solving, improving self-esteem, and achieving weight loss goals.
You likely won’t have the energy to exercise if you’re running on 4 hours of sleep and you haven’t eaten all day. Sure, you might be able to make it to one workout class, but it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to sustain long term weight loss goals while you’re running on fumes. “But what if I thrive on fumes?” you ask! Long-term goals are going to be very difficult to sustain if you haven’t met your basic needs. Our body and our mind are one. If you power your way through and grit it out, the body starts talking. Blood pressure rises from stress, metabolism slows from irregular eating patterns, and the brain gets foggy from too little sleep.
Meeting basic needs helps prepare you to take on small, incremental lifestyle changes. Making small changes to your routine, like taking an afternoon stretch break (a “movement snack”) instead of hitting up the vending machine, help to break free of the all-or-nothing mentality. Little by little, small lifestyle changes add up and they’re more sustainable in the long run. You don’t have to go to the gym every morning at 5 am for an hour. You can just invite small movements into your daily routine, like 10 minutes of chair yoga in the evening.
How to Do Something You Aren’t Motivated to Do
Here’s the thing about motivation—it magically doesn’t fall into our lap (I wish!). Motivation comes when we do something, experience the positive effects, and have a desire to do that thing again. You’re not going to be motivated to take a walk if you never go. However, if you take a walk one morning, you might find you have more energy throughout the day. This is exciting, so you go for a walk the following morning. Soon morning walks become a part of your daily routine. Each morning you step outside, you cultivate more motivation to continue. If you’re struggling to get started, remember, you don’t actually have to want to do something in order to do it. Do it, even if you don’t want to, and see how you feel.
Healthy Coping Strategies
Journaling, listening to music, knitting, video games, spending time with pets, walking, taking a shower, texting friends, meditating, dancing, practicing yoga, going for a drive, shooting a basketball, and creating art are all examples of healthy coping skills. Healthy coping skills are no different than other skills in life, you need to practice. It’s best to start practicing healthy coping when you’re in a good mood because it’s easier to get started and they’re more likely to feel successful. Once you develop more of a habit of utilizing your coping skills, they will come easier, faster, and more naturally when you’re experiencing uncomfortable emotions or interpersonal stressors. Regularly using healthy coping skills helps decrease stress and improve mood, making depressive symptoms a little easier to manage in the day to day. If you’re feeling better and utilizing healthy coping skills as needed, you’re less likely to engage in emotioOvercoming Diet Culture: A Holistic Approach to Weight Loss and Mental Healthnal eating and less likely to reach for unhealthy food that doesn’t meet your nutritional needs.
Mindfulness Meditation and Mindful Eating
Research continues to support the efficacy of mindfulness in mental health care. Studies have shown that mindfulness practices reduce stress and anxiety, enhanceml emotional regulation, and improves overall psychological well-being (Khoury, et al., 2013) Mindfulness-based interventions are now widely implemented into behavioral health treatment programs like the Bariatric Counseling Center of San Antonio. Mindful eating is a cornerstone of our Intensive Outpatient Program at the Bariatric Counseling Center. Mindful eating helps us slow down and pay attention to fullness cues. When we are more mindful we are less likely to overeat. Mindful eating is sustainable because it’s about how we eat, not what we eat.
If reduced stress, improved psychological well-being, and sustainable mindful eating practices sound good to you, then come tour the Bariatric Counseling Center! It’s okay if you don’t feel motivated to get started right away, just give us a call. Remember the thing about motivation—it’s not going to magically appear, you’ve got to start somewhere.
As you start to heal from within in weight loss counseling, you’ll feel more motivated to make sustainable lifestyle changes and better equipped to work through psychological barriers as they arise.
Jackson, S., Andrew Steptoe, & Clemens Kirschbaum. (2017). Hair cortisol and adiposity in a population‐based sample of … https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21733
Khoury, B., Lecomte, T., Fortin, G., Masse, M., Therien, P., Bouchard, V., Chapleau, M. A., Paquin, K., & Hofmann, S. G. (2013). “Mindfulness-based therapy: A comprehensive meta-analysis.” Clinical Psychology Review, 33(6), 763-771.
Learn more about our holistic weight-loss counseling in San Antonio.
What is a holistic approach to weight loss?
A holistic approach addresses the physical, emotional, and behavioral sides of weight at the same time, rather than focusing only on calories or willpower. It considers stress, sleep, your relationship with food, and mental health alongside nutrition and movement.
How is holistic weight loss different from dieting?
Diets usually focus on short-term restriction. A holistic approach builds sustainable habits and addresses why eating patterns happen, which is more likely to keep weight off long term.
Can a holistic program help if diets have not worked for me?
Yes. BCC’s intensive outpatient program in San Antonio is designed for people whose past diets were not sustainable, focusing on lasting behavioral change rather than quick fixes.
