The Link Between Happiness And Weight - Psychology And Physiology

[Sydney Susan 333]

Interesting article in my local paper today

DECEMBER 03, 2013 - Sydney Morning Herald

Are slim people happier?

Dr George Blair-West.

Slim people are happier people. Moreover, their happiness is more profound. Despite the eternal stereotypes of the ever-smiling, rotund, fairy godmother, and the paunchy, ho-hoing Santa Claus, the research supports a rather different reality. This, however, is not a story of causality. This is a story of association. Losing weight will not make you happy, but happy people are generally slimmer. So, what is the relationship between happiness and weight loss? The link is the elusive word ‘meaning’.

As a doctor and psychiatrist, I subspecialise in only three areas of psychiatry: the psychotherapy of weight loss, trauma therapy and relationship therapy. The most difficult of these three areas, not by a little way, but by a very long way, is obesity. If only losing weight was a simple as ‘just eating less and exercising more.’ Of course, if it was, we would not have the obesity plague that we’re faced with currently. The truth is that most people know precisely what healthy eating looks like. Moreover, they want to lose weight, but something sabotages the process.

While we continue to think of obesity as a condition in its own right, rather than as a symptom of an underlying problem, our abject failure in treating it will continue to haunt those of us in the medical and related health professions.

You do not need to be Freud to know that a significant amount of overeating is self-medicating unhappiness in all its forms – stress, anxiety, depression. (‘Comfort Eating’ should go down in history as one of the greatest over-simplifications of all time.) chocolate (the other major food group) is the most widely used antidepressant on the planet. The first step in therapy then, is helping people to develop alternative and more effective ways of managing these emotions – this is ‘Treating Obesity Psych 101’ – it is also just the tip of an iceberg of considerable complexity.

Over more than a decade, as I have drilled deeper into the minds of my obese patients, another issue emerged. For many people food and eating was the most meaningful part of their day-to-day life. If you are going to put somebody, for whom food is the high point of their day, on a diet, please do not be surprised by the inevitable failure that follows.

(Mind you, this does not stop health professionals from making this mistake over and over again. The unfortunate cost is the creation of confusion and a failure mindset in our hard done by patients.)

My intrigue with what I was seeing clinically took me to the profound research, spanning the last 20 years, of Professor Carol Ryff at the University of Wisconsin, USA. In one particular, well-designed study she looked closely at two groups of women. With 135 in total, members of both groups rated themselves as ‘happy’.

This was no airy-fairy investigation of warm fuzzy feelings. Ryff was interested in the correlation between hard biological markers like cortisol (an immune system marker), HDL cholesterol and body weight, with two different forms of happiness. One group were defined by being satisfied with their life, enjoying its pleasures and generally having a subjective sense of well-being. The other group had a deeper sense of well-being built around the desire for personal growth, meaningful experiences and relationships, along with a sense of purpose in their life.

Ryff found statistically significant differences when she looked at those who lived with meaning and purpose in their life. Not only did they have lower weight, but their good cholesterol levels were higher and their cortisol levels were better. In short, happiness built around meaning and purpose is not a luxury in life – your weight and your health depend on it.

I was surprised to find that, much more than most challenges in therapy, my patients really struggled with trying to find what was meaningful in their life – let alone the purpose this would guide them to. Too often they would make the challenge more problematic by adding the ‘ion’ to what is fundamentally a ‘quest’ - making it a ‘question’ – a question they could not answer. At school, a question without an answer equalled ‘idiot’. Like most of us, when faced with a question we do not know the answer to, my patients pushed it away. Once they understood it was a journey, a Quest, they needed to pursue over time, they settled into the process.

Slowly but surely as my patients found more meaningful pursuits in their life than eating, they began losing weight. More importantly they lost the weight and kept it off, while at the same time saying to me, ‘This is strange, because I don’t feel like I’m on a diet at all.’

Finding meaning is not about quitting your day job and going in search of your soul in a third world country. This journey begins at home. It begins with a detailed examination of what you found meaningful in your past and which aspects of your life and work now are meaningful. I also get my patients to look at their dreams for the future, some of which they have held since they were children. Once we have found what is meaningful we look at what purpose this guides us to.

This all takes time, self-exploration and regular reflection. Managing the powerful physiological and psychological forces that drive overeating, requires us to bring out the big guns. There are no bigger guns than meaning and purpose.

Dr George Blair-West is the author of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning The Way of The Quest that explains the ‘how to’ of finding meaning and purpose. His first book, the best selling Weight Loss for Food Lovers: Understanding our minds and why we sabotage our weight loss has been translated into Dutch and Chinese. For more information about his latest work into the motivation and mindset of weight loss visit www.weightlossforfoodlovers.com

Edited December 4, 2013 by Sydney Susan

[Ms skinniness 3,003]

As a therapist, I totally believe this. If find myself thinking about food when I don't have something bigger to look forward too. These days my case load is down and I have a lot of free time without a plan. I'm really bored and I find myself grazing more than I want too. If i'm busy, then I don't think about food and I don't eat. It's fundamentally simple but yet very complex.

[southernsoul 773]

I'm currently working on a masters degree in clinical mental health counseling & I completely agree with this article. I see this a lot around the WLS forums...people struggling to find meaning and purpose as they go through this process, and also getting caught up and blocked by (sometimes) unanswerable questions. True happiness does not depend on a number on the scale, but on recognizing what is meaningful and valuable to each of us and then surrounding ourselves with it.

[Arts137 1,811]

" If only losing weight was a simple as ‘just eating less and exercising more.’ Of course, if it was, we would not have the obesity plague that we’re faced with currently. The truth is that most people know precisely what healthy eating looks like. Moreover, they want to lose weight, but something sabotages the process."

Our Fat Brain!

"For many people food and eating was the most meaningful part of their day-to-day life. If you are going to put somebody, for whom food is the high point of their day, on a diet, please do not be surprised by the inevitable failure that follows."

Oh Yes!!!

[feedyoureye 3,087]

I am a "quest" type. I have traveled, and the most success I have had losing weight (outside of WLS.... which is the only time I have gotten to goal) have been my travels to India. I have lost weight all 4 times I went there (for months on end), without trying, and put it back on in a heartbeat when I got back. I didn't feel like I was on a diet, and when I got back I didn't feel like I was eating more. I think it must have been the "quest" of travel. I even gave goals and purpose workshops while I was in India one of the times, and read the "Hero with a Thousand Faces" (Joseph Campbell's book on the Heros quest) as a prelude/blueprint to my first trip to India. I just have to figure out how to create this quest/adventure feeling everyday.... and pay for it at the same time! I met my husband while in India, he was on an adventure as well... he wants to live this way too and is planning a trip around the world on a motorcycle... which is not for me.

Edited December 20, 2013 by feedyoureye

[mistysj 1,939]

Is this pinned on purpose? I don't think it is but wanted to check before getting it unpinned.

[Arts137 1,811]

I do think that people felt I was "funner" when fat. I wonder if it was just 'la belle indifference'. I just "did" and did not think.

Now I am quiet and I think a lot... but am happier INSIDE.

[Fluffnomore 1,235]

One of the main things I have had to think about is that the times I have been thinnest in my adult life I have also been going through some kind of trauma and couldn't eat. My gut seems to be where I process my emotion at least figuratively, and if it was full of sadness or sickness, bingo. No food. Couldn't do it. So the strangest idea (for me) is that I can be happy and thin. It never failed: I got the "You look great!" compliments when I felt like I was dying on the inside.

When I was seeing her regularly several years ago, I remember talking to my therapist about this but never really came up with a strategy.

This article is interesting, for sure. There are many nuggets, which like dense Protein deserve to be digested slowly. Thanks for posting!

[feedyoureye 3,087]

One of the main things I have had to think about is that the times I have been thinnest in my adult life I have also been going through some kind of trauma and couldn't eat. My gut seems to be where I process my emotion at least figuratively, and if it was full of sadness or sickness, bingo. No food. Couldn't do it. So the strangest idea (for me) is that I can be happy and thin. It never failed: I got the "You look great!" compliments when I felt like I was dying on the inside.

When I was seeing her regularly several years ago, I remember talking to my therapist about this but never really came up with a strategy.

This article is interesting, for sure. There are many nuggets, which like dense Protein deserve to be digested slowly. Thanks for posting!

I had this happen once before too... loss of an important relationship... bam 35 pounds down. Then later on, I would gain when sad...

[southernsoul 773]

Is this pinned on purpose? I don't think it is but wanted to check before getting it unpinned.

I don't know who pinned it originally, but I hope it stays pinned. I think it's an important topic. The forums here are filled with instances of members struggling in all sorts of ways & trying to cope with anxiety, fear, doubt, and low self-esteem. Anything that might help to clarify why we sometimes sabotage ourselves and how we could stop SHOULD be kept front & center, in my opinion.

[southernsoul 773]

I am a "quest" type. I have traveled, and the most success I have had losing weight (outside of WLS.... which is the only time I have gotten to goal) have been my travels to India. I have lost weight all 4 times I went there (for months on end), without trying, and put it back on in a heartbeat when I got back. I didn't feel like I was on a diet, and when I got back I didn't feel like I was eating more. I think it must have been the "quest" of travel. I even gave goals and purpose workshops while I was in India one of the times, and read the "Hero with a Thousand Faces" (Joseph Campbell's book on the Heros quest) as a prelude/blueprint to my first trip to India. I just have to figure out how to create this quest/adventure feeling everyday.... and pay for it at the same time! I met my husband while in India, he was on an adventure as well... he wants to live this way too and is planning a trip around the world on a motorcycle... which is not for me.

That's really interesting! I can definitely see how being deeply engaged in something you're passionate about could lead to weight loss, especially for somebody who tended to overeat out of boredom or unhappiness. I wonder if it also had something to do with the type & quality of the food? We eat a ton of processed foods in this country, while the regular diets in other countries are often focused more around fresh local foods.

[gamergirl 4,608]

So am I interpreting this correctly because the corollary would be that those of us who are overweight lacked meaning and purpose in life beyond food? and I don't see myself that way.

I have always had a strong sense of purpose, meaning and goals in my life. I knew what I wanted to be professionally when I was 12--a psychologist working in advertising. I was told there was no such thing, but here I am, doing just that. At 12 I decided to adopt, and I did. At 10 years old, I knew I would leave my country and live abroad, and I did. This sense of goals and purpose has continued throughout my life--yet I was overweight.

While I agree that being thin doesn't solve all ills, I also don't think weight loss is simply a matter of finding purpose in life? Am I misunderstanding the article?

[Ms skinniness 3,003]

I believe most people here in the US are over weight largely due to the amount of processed foods we eat. It all has fat, sugar, and salt that puts on the lbs. I work on eliminating processed foods and I do really well....give me something with sugar in it, and BAM I so want more and more and more.......

[southernsoul 773]

So am I interpreting this correctly because the corollary would be that those of us who are overweight lacked meaning and purpose in life beyond food? and I don't see myself that way.

I have always had a strong sense of purpose, meaning and goals in my life. I knew what I wanted to be professionally when I was 12--a psychologist working in advertising. I was told there was no such thing, but here I am, doing just that. At 12 I decided to adopt, and I did. At 10 years old, I knew I would leave my country and live abroad, and I did. This sense of goals and purpose has continued throughout my life--yet I was overweight.

While I agree that being thin doesn't solve all ills, I also don't think weight loss is simply a matter of finding purpose in life? Am I misunderstanding the article?

I interpreted the article to mean that most obesity problems can be linked to self-medicating unhappiness, stress, and depression through food. Having a sense of purpose and meaning in life gives you great tools to manage those emotions, and even reduce their frequency of appearance, thus eliminating the need for self-medicating through food. Like everything, this wouldn't apply equally to everybody, but I do think it's a pretty good perspective. I definitely believe that people with meaning and purpose in their lives are happier, and I think happier people are generally healthier overall than unhappy people. But correlation is not causation, either, so who can know for sure?

[feedyoureye 3,087]

Is this pinned on purpose? I don't think it is but wanted to check before getting it unpinned.

I don't know who pinned it originally, but I hope it stays pinned. I think it's an important topic. The forums here are filled with instances of members struggling in all sorts of ways & trying to cope with anxiety, fear, doubt, and low self-esteem. Anything that might help to clarify why we sometimes sabotage ourselves and how we could stop SHOULD be kept front & center, in my opinion.

Although this topic is useful and interesting, this website is packed deep with interesting and useful posts. Really, the answer is to get the most out of this site is to spend time, and use the search, and dig deep. When I started on this site I started looking at the oldest posts first. This post is not the kind of post that should take up pinning space in my opinion.