The Emotional Reasons You’re Holding On To Extra Weight - Page 14
If you actually find most weight-loss techniques quite easy, not-so-bad, and actually rather sustainable but you just won’t execute them, there could be something behind that extra weight you’re carrying other than your inability to lose it. Losing weight doesn’t only signify a change in your physical health and abilities; it also ushers in changes to your social life, to the way people treat you, and overall to the way that you experience your time on this earth. In your weight loss would be drastic, then having that new body can feel like moving to a new country where you don’t speak the language or know the customs. But just because change is scary doesn’t mean it’s bad. If you sense a subconscious reason you can’t or won’t lose weight, here are the emotional reasons that could be holding you back.
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You’ve known mean skinny people
A lot of the slender women you’ve known have been superficial, mean, selfish and a lot of other negative traits. Deep down, you wonder if the way the world treats you as a slender person makes it inevitable that you develop those traits, too.
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You fear you won’t maintain it
It can be scary to achieve your goal weight because then it will be all the more devastating if you return to your old weight. You don’t want to reach for the stars for fear that you’ll grab them, and then drop them. And that’s worse than never having held them in the first place. At least for now, you don’t know what you’d be missing.
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You fear you won’t know when to stop
You worry that, if you do lose a lot of weight, you will not know when to stop. Perhaps you won’t recognize when you’ve lost enough weight, and you’ll keep going, completely losing a healthy and realistic image of your body.
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You might resent men who pay attention to you
You think of all the men who wouldn’t give you the time of day as an overweight woman, and then you think of how those exact same men might hit on you when you lose weight, and you become furious at the thought of giving them the pleasure.
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You don’t want to write off heavier men
You currently know plenty of overweight men who you find adorable, charming and perfectly dateable. But you wonder if losing weight will cause you to develop goggles that no longer make those men look good to you, and you wonder if that will make you superficial.
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Your family is overweight
You are overweight because of habits that you learned from your family—habits that your family still has. You do not want them to feel that they aren’t good enough for you, or that they taught you something “wrong” just because you no longer live like they do.
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You are afraid of dating
Getting in shape will probably welcome in date invitations, and you don’t know how to date! You haven’t been on a date in years. That’s a scary prospect.
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You won’t know what affection is genuine
If a man does take a liking to you, you worry that you won’t know if he likes you for your body or for your mind and personality. At least when you were overweight, if a man liked you, you knew he liked you for the right reasons. Your weight filtered out superficial men.
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You won’t know what respect is genuine
If you’re offered a job opportunity, or your colleagues pay more attention to you, you don’t know if it will be because your ideas are good or because they see you as more of an “equal” now that you’ve lost weight. That’s an infuriating thought.
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You don’t want it to be the topic of discussion
You don’t want the topic of discussion for the next five years, every time you see someone who hasn’t see you since the weight loss, to be the weight loss.
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You’ll have to buy all new clothes
A small price to pay figuratively for a healthy body, but a big price to pay literally! And you like your current clothes. You have a sentimental attachment to them.
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You don’t want to satisfy your critics
All of those people who always told you that you needed to lose weight, that there was something wrong with you for being overweight—you don’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing you follow their advice.
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You’re afraid it will change your brain chemistry
You’ve heard that eating healthy can change the way you feel and think, and it’s true—it can! But in wonderful ways. You’ll still recognize yourself; don’t worry. You’ll just enjoy being in your mind more than you ever did before.
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What happens if people still don’t like you?
You have had this idea for so long that if you could just lose weight, everything would change—you’d make more friends, meet the man of your dreams and get the job you always wanted. But now you fear that you could lose weight, and none of those things would happen. Then what?
