Considering Counseling for Weight Loss
With so many options, avenues, and treatment models meant to help with non-surgical weight-loss, hiring a mental health therapist for losing weight might not be an intuitive consideration. Perhaps you have tried to make behavioral changes for weight loss through dieting, exercising at a fitness center, or by cutting your favorite foods from your eating routine, and have still found that your efforts don’t yield the quick results you were hoping for. Cognitive-behavioral therapy for weight loss and other types of mental health counseling can address emotional and mental barriers that often hinder long-term success.
How Mental Health Counseling Promotes Sustainable Weight Loss
Whether one is aiming to change how they function in a romantic relationship, change how they manage unpleasant emotions, or lose weight, the goal of mental health counseling is often to establish behavior change- to help the client take new actions to help them reach their goals. Therapy can also help clients to overcome the barriers to forming new habits by encouraging them to consider the many factors in their life which aid with or block them from meeting their goals.
Weight loss is a goal met through behavior change; therapy helps people to take new actions to meet their goals. Boom!- therein lies the synergy. If non-surgical weight loss is a goal, why not consider hiring a professional who is trained in helping people to meet all sorts of goals?
“A professional who is trained in helping people to meet their goals?” you may ask. “Isn’t a personal trainer a professional who is trained in helping people to meet their goals yet also knows how to navigate a fitness center?”. There is nothing wrong with hiring a personal trainer, joining a yoga course, hiring a dietitian, or adjusting your diet to suit your nutritional needs. What you may learn or have already learned though, is that changes in diet or exercise are often temporary. Why? A therapist will likely help you to answer that question.
Connecting Mental Health and Weight Loss
Stop me if you have ever said this before: “I know how to lose weight, I just can’t get myself to do it.” With new philosophies and science on weight loss being coined every day, I will point out that it is highly likely you don’t actually know everything you need to know to lose weight, and honestly, a mental health therapist is not going to either, and neither is a dietitian, nor a PCP. But what a well-trained therapist will be able to sniff out is whether any person is engaging in problematic eating behaviors in response to greater emotional needs. A therapist can help you to figure out why is it that you may be reluctant to act on your intention to exercise or change their diet. A therapist can also help to refine a support system to include and exclude those who are helpful and problematic in losing weight.
Eating for reasons other than in response to physical needs (hunger, blood-sugar management, etc.) can lead to weight gain. But what reasons are there to eat other than in response to physical needs? I will provide a list:
Please note whether you believe any of the following listed items are reasons you eat when you are not hungry.
Aside from hunger, you might eat for the following reasons:
- In response to stress, anxiety, sadness, boredom, anger, loneliness, or any other emotion; otherwise known as emotional eating
- In response to inconsolable distress such as the loss of a loved one or after surviving an instance of trauma, even if the stressor has not been present in a long time
- As a means of socializing with friends/family even when not hungry
- To unwind after a hard day or long day at work
- To rewarding yourself or celebrate an accomplishment
- To reward yourself for losing weight
- To punish yourself for gaining weight
- In place of smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol
- For stimulation
- To avoid the fear of missing out (FOMO)
- To experience novelty, like eating the newest ice cream flavor at your favorite ice cream shop or trying new food combinations you have never had before
- To feel “free” on vacation
- To distract yourself from unpleasant thoughts
- To distract yourself or soothe yourself when experiencing unpleasant bodily sensations due to pain or illness
- Out of fear you will offend a person serving you food
- As a result of being trained to finish all food served to you (“Clean your plate!”)
- Because you feel out of control and struggle to stop eating once you start (binge eating)
- Because you cannot resist the temptation to eat food in front of you
- Because your partner wants you to gain weight or alter your appearance
- Poor body awareness, making it hard to tell if you are hungry or not until you are very hungry
- If you are under the influence of substances that increase the desire to eat
- After “earning” food by going a long time without their favorite treat
- Because you want the food and plan to “work it off” later with exercise
- Purely out of habit and/or without thinking
- Because you are afraid of becoming hungry later; because to feel hungry is scary
On my way to buy supplies for my pet bunny, I weave through parking lots filled with people entering and exiting a local fitness center, and I know some of these people hope that enough exercise will help them to overcome the above issues. I am not in any way discouraging people from joining gyms, but gyms provide people access to exercise equipment, they don’t help people address underlying issues stopping them from losing weight.
How a Therapist’s Perspective Can Help You with Your Weight Loss Journey
Why do we not have a photograph of the entire Milky Way galaxy? Because we are in it. To get such a shot, we would have to send a camera outside of our own galaxy.
A therapist is a camera outside of your personal galaxy.
Even if you read the above list and cannot identify with any item, a properly-trained therapist (ideally in eating disorders) can aid you in developing insight on your barriers to behavioral changes for weight loss. Treatment may start with assistance in identifying all the roles food plays in a client’s life aside from nourishment. Then, over time, the therapist and client may work to figure out how to use other coping skills, resources, people, and strategies to replace food, thereby eliminating a client’s need for food except when hungry, or other reasonable exceptions. Eliminating the behavior of eating when not hungry is reasonably likely to result or aid in weight loss.
