Endless attempts to lose weight are familiar to a considerable number of people. However, not every person succeeds in successfully losing weight and not gaining extra pounds again. Why is this happening? One of the major factors affecting the state of the body is the psyche. Very often, excess weight appears under the influence of psychosomatic factors.
Losing excess weight can be very difficult. A person limits himself to food, goes in for sports, and unnecessary body volumes do not go anywhere. Or you may be faced with a different situation when you succeed in losing weight, but it does not work out to maintain the desired weight. When circumstances develop like this, it's time to think about the possible psychosomatic causes of excess weight.
Everything comes from childhood
Most psychological problems, complexes, negative attitudes are formed in childhood. They can arise due to upbringing, the climate within the family, or under the influence of the situations that the child faces. The psychosomatic cause of excess weight, because of which it is impossible to lose weight, often lies precisely in childhood.
In the context of psychosomatics from the distant past, two options stand out:
- the impact of the mother on the child, family relationships;
- relationships with the closest environment and with society as a whole during the period of growing up.
If a child does not feel desired and loved, if he does not have enough attention and affection from his parents, this is imprinted on a subconscious level. Gradually, this starts the process of gaining excess weight, which can be especially vividly revealed already in adulthood. The opposite situation also happens. Mothers who are very fixed on their children, stifle them with love, constantly control them, deprive them of the opportunity to independently make decisions and make choices, unconsciously negatively affect the child's psyche. If the relationship with the mother developed according to this scenario, it is highly likely that the person will be overweight or even become obese. This is due to the fact that there is an unfulfilled desire for independent action inside, a desire to get a little more freedom, to become the person who can make serious decisions.
Communication plays a very important role in the process of personality formation. If a child experiences situations when he is often ashamed, when he is bullied, he is not understood, he withdraws into himself. Emotions from such situations go inward, eventually cease to be realized. Children's grievances and experiences that have not gone away push the psyche to build armor, which becomes fatty deposits in the body. The more depressed, depressed and ashamed a person feels, the higher the number the scales can show. Experts in the field of psychosomatics argue that overweight, which is difficult to remove, overwhelmingly affects people who are sensitive, vulnerable, touchy, unable to hold back tears, vindictive and suspicious.
Intrapersonal problems
Not only in childhood, a person is faced with any traumatic situations. In the course of life, an already adult and independent person overcomes various problems, faces the difficulties of interpersonal communication, finds himself in situations that affect self-attitude and self-perception. Such moments, if they are acutely experienced or not experienced at all, being forced into the depths of the psyche, are a trigger for the development of psychosomatics.
Internal reasons for excess weight, in addition to those already mentioned, can be hidden in the following points:
- lack of joys in life, because of which a person is unable to deny himself sweet and unhealthy food, which, in turn, provokes weight gain;
- feeling of inner emptiness, which is filled with food, drinks;
- self-dislike, self-rejection, hatred and disgust for one's body; when such thoughts and feelings exist, the body begins to defend itself by accumulating kilograms;
- inability to pay attention to oneself, the desire to do everything for other people, to give love to the world, and not to oneself;
- lack of self-confidence, in their abilities, a feeling of some inferiority, uselessness, low self-esteem;
- numerous internal fears, anxieties and concerns; the world is perceived as something hostile, from which one must defend; protection is created at the physical level in the form of excess weight;
- people who do a lot in life through strength and without desire also fail to lose weight; as a rule, such persons do not know how to refuse at all, be afraid of offending or offending another person; the comfort of the environment for them is put higher than their inner harmony;
- excess weight from the point of view of psychosomatics may appear and not go away in cases where a person does not want to be attractive to society and the opposite sex; it may be dictated by some traumatic experience in the past or a desire to “hide” from society;
- rejection of natural sexuality causes the body to accumulate unnecessary fat.
Secondary benefit
The last block of psychosomatic reasons why you can't lose weight involves the idea of secondary benefits. Almost the entire theoretical basis of psychosomatics is based on this idea.
What does secondary benefit mean? Leaving / escaping into any illness, for example, obesity, or some kind of uncomfortable state - overweight - is based on taking advantage of such a situation. Referring to pain, a person can create an image of a victim for himself, not go to work, not deal with any issues and problems, etc.
Fighting excess weight can be an unconscious constant goal. Having achieved this goal, a person finds himself in a situation where there is nothing to strive for, when his world is changing dramatically, and the usual comfort zone does not remain. He can no longer complain or show everyone around his grueling attempts to deal with unnecessary pounds. The reason disappears from life, which could be referred to under certain circumstances.
An additional reason, because of which it is impossible to lose weight, is the lack of true desire. This absence can be formed both by a secondary benefit and by any other reason named above. A person may be convinced that he wants to lose weight and look slim, but this belief is superficial. It often arises under the influence of the outside, but it is not true. Under the influence of a modern society with formed standards of beauty, an overweight person can experience discomfort and feel insecure. However, internally, he is quite comfortable in the body in which he is. An additional conflict arises, which can provoke the development of other psychosomatic abnormalities and even lead to eating disorders, which already fall into the category of borderline mental states.
