Mental Health and Weight Loss: The Right Balance

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  • shel80kg
    shel80kg Posts: 148 Member
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    I have been thinking about the title of this thread and I wonder if it makes any sense at all. There is no real balance between Mental Health and Weight Loss and perhaps I combined the two concepts to fit the context; this platform. What might make far more sense is Mental and the impacts on life-style choices including what and how we eat and in a more general sense, how we look after ourselves. The term " balance"....out!
    What makes me forget that I matter and what I eat has consequences. How do I shift gears from autopilot to manual and live my life with more intention and consideration. Only then, can I embrace the science of weight management which is, at the end of the day, about calories, energy expenditure, and chemical reactions and realities like it or not. I make not like how insulin results from excessive sugar which leads to (necessary) fat storage but it is what it is. Whether I imagine that I can control the influx of excessive sugars and what makes me forget that I am a chemistry centre capable of amazing processes and reactions but unable to fool Mother Nature if I consume stuff that will inevitably make me unhealthy is the challenge. I think I am learning that I have choices and responsibilities that cannot be ignored, excused away or minimised and although that is daunting for an overweight person, it can also be inspiring and encouraging. So, I won't be able to change the name of the threat but I will certainly change the word balance to impact if that is okay with all of you?
  • shel80kg
    shel80kg Posts: 148 Member
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    Quiet on the home front. Do you think there is a stigma with mental health? I wonder if it is far less fashionable to deal with mental health then it is to address weight loss and healthy life-style issues. I imagine that the depth of difficulties that perplex people who struggle with depression, anxiety, severe trauma responses, other affective mood disorders (eg Bipoloar), personality disorders and various forms of psychotic problems cannot make living easy...and management of important processes such as what and how to eat, exercise etc almost illusive. Nevertheless, it does not seem to matter if we mental health issues or not, we can all mess up when it comes to looking after ourselves and there are really no short-cuts...and excuses are a distraction. We just have to learn, understand and apply the right principles.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,102 Member
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    shel80kg wrote: »
    Quiet on the home front. Do you think there is a stigma with mental health? I wonder if it is far less fashionable to deal with mental health then it is to address weight loss and healthy life-style issues. I imagine that the depth of difficulties that perplex people who struggle with depression, anxiety, severe trauma responses, other affective mood disorders (eg Bipoloar), personality disorders and various forms of psychotic problems cannot make living easy...and management of important processes such as what and how to eat, exercise etc almost illusive. Nevertheless, it does not seem to matter if we mental health issues or not, we can all mess up when it comes to looking after ourselves and there are really no short-cuts...and excuses are a distraction. We just have to learn, understand and apply the right principles.

    I respect that you're continuing to think deeply and personally about those challenges.

    I think there is a stigma, societally - way too much so - about admitting or seeking help with mental health, all the way along the scale from mild to severe mental health challenges. There is also a shortage of effective interventions, especially affordable ones.

    I think your thread here is getting less traction for a different reason, though, at least in part.

    I'll speak for myself: I feel like I can speak to some of the mechanics of weight loss or exercise, which at bedrock are common across many people (not necessarily 100% universal). I even feel like I can comment, with ideas from my own personal experience, on issues related to motivation, dealing with hunger/cravings, or that sort of thing, stuff that's maybe subjective and individual but not super nuanced.

    I'm completely unqualified, feel completely incompetent, to comment on mental health issues. Mental health is very individual, very complex. *Anything* complex is hard to communicate about in text format, and when it's subjective and individual it's even more difficult. I have very, very limited personal experience.

    In terms of people participating in this thread, I don't think it really has much to do with what's fashionable. I think it's more about what each of us feels competent to write words about, clearly, in ways that may have applicability to others. For myself, it's not that I don't care: I do. I just feel out of my depth to be helpful. I hope that makes sense.
  • shel80kg
    shel80kg Posts: 148 Member
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    Hi Ann, That was a very well written response and my sense is that you made great effort in trying to be respectful and honest with your views regarding mental heath. May I reassure you that one doesn't need to be a mental health expert to be helpful or interactive which, I imagine, is not inconsistent with the general (superficial?) conversations on most of the community forums. Having a chat, a bit of banter, and sharing stories may not need to be filtered through the "do I need to be an expert to say things" process if the ideas and points broaden the discussions. I do take issue with those individuals who withdraw from participating (unlike you) because the world of mental health seems daunting and complex. We are people first and we need social experiences and can handle opinions/views/and suggestions that differ from our own and may even confront our perceptions and beliefs often shaped by more rigid and limited orientations (often due to affective mood difficulties).Further, if the common denominator between members is the strong interest in fitness and self-management then there ought to be diversity and tolerance for the broad range of people who can have fascinating discussions regarding the personal and often challenging reasons which interplay with the goal(s) of health and fitness.
  • shel80kg
    shel80kg Posts: 148 Member
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    Hi Everyone,
    I wonder if there are individuals who are overweight who have peace and acceptance with their body and eating behaviour? Maybe we have become obsessed with body image? Perhaps? This forum (my fitness pal) relies heavily on our fear and even paranoia that our weight issues require such grave concerns and attention. More broadly, the diet industry not only takes advantage of the fears and shame of overweight people but it probably creates the mechanisms of obesity because the slick diets and interventions simply do not work well over time. The mechanisms are, in specific terms, deprivation of familiar foods, denial of the strength of established patterns of eating, denial of the learned responses (associations between eating certain foods and feelings of comfort and relief from boredom, isolation, abandonment etc) and a general insensitivity to how hard it is to really face our truths regarding our eating challenges. I am not saying we shouldn't create support groups and design forums where people can share useful information and data. I am just struggling with the ongoing "simplicity" of most of what is recommended when the suggestions refer to the science and not the psychology of weight management. I would really love a robust discussion rather than diluted, party-line reiterations of those gurus who say "this is all I know and it works". Why aren't they applying their expertise to those for whom it doesn't work? Wouldn't that be more to the point? If we are being really direct and honest?
    Look forward to your views.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,102 Member
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    shel80kg wrote: »
    Hi Everyone,
    I wonder if there are individuals who are overweight who have peace and acceptance with their body and eating behaviour? Maybe we have become obsessed with body image? Perhaps? This forum (my fitness pal) relies heavily on our fear and even paranoia that our weight issues require such grave concerns and attention. More broadly, the diet industry not only takes advantage of the fears and shame of overweight people but it probably creates the mechanisms of obesity because the slick diets and interventions simply do not work well over time. The mechanisms are, in specific terms, deprivation of familiar foods, denial of the strength of established patterns of eating, denial of the learned responses (associations between eating certain foods and feelings of comfort and relief from boredom, isolation, abandonment etc) and a general insensitivity to how hard it is to really face our truths regarding our eating challenges. I am not saying we shouldn't create support groups and design forums where people can share useful information and data. I am just struggling with the ongoing "simplicity" of most of what is recommended when the suggestions refer to the science and not the psychology of weight management. I would really love a robust discussion rather than diluted, party-line reiterations of those gurus who say "this is all I know and it works". Why aren't they applying their expertise to those for whom it doesn't work? Wouldn't that be more to the point? If we are being really direct and honest?
    Look forward to your views.

    I think I was generally at peace with my body and eating behavior when overweight/obese.

    However, with time, the excess weight had made me unhealthy, and that was obviously only going to get worse, progressively rob me of mobility & independence, probably shorten my life. Rationally, I needed to lose weight, in order for my future self to be healthy, happy, maybe even alive.

    For me, there wasn't IMO a great deal of the psychological/social depth or complexity that you seem to be talking about.

    I know that's not true for all others, maybe not even true for most others. Everyone's eating challenges are not the same.
  • gorple76
    gorple76 Posts: 162 Member
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    As someone who grew up with disordered eating, weight problems, and patterns of dieting from the age of 11, I guess I am a classic case of psychology being a significant part of any eating/weight management plans. Sometimes it feels like every decision, event and emotion is related to food or weight. My life, self-image, memories and relationships feel dominated by it. In other aspects of life I am hugely objective and ‘balanced’ but find it nearly impossible to do that when it comes to eating. It would be great to be able to avoid it all together (in the way you might if you have issues with alcohol or drugs) but that’s not an option. The emotional and cognitive effort involved in the day-to-day and even minute-to-minute decision-making over food is such that when I am ‘in control’ or losing weight (like I am now) it feels all-consuming and exhausting. I’m sharing this not to say one argument is right or one is wrong, but so that if you don’t have this sort of experience, you can get some idea of how big an impact it has on someone’s life, and that simply advising ‘eat less, move more’ of CICO doesn’t really address the issue. I don’t know anyone who would say those things aren’t true, but for some of us understanding the biological basis of weight loss isn’t what’s getting in the way. Imagine if someone kept telling you not to scratch your nose all day every day. How much more often would you want to scratch your nose do you think?
  • wunderkindking
    wunderkindking Posts: 1,615 Member
    edited July 2021
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    Actually, reading back over my own post, that really might be the big take away.

    The long timers here and the 'gurus' and people who are most vocal are so because they had success with the 'party line'. It isn't an attempt to water anything down or dismiss. It's sharing what worked for them and where their experience is. Which is with the basic math and science.

    There is certainly room for people to talk about things not working for them, but I think at the end of the day weight loss method and figuring out what works is probably pretty personalized. And none of us can talk about anything but our own experiences and what worked for us.

    If people are hanging around MFP for a long time, what worked for them is... MFP. We have no way of addressing someone else's psychological struggles.

    (And I Do get it. I have massive, massive, panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder - 'don't worry' wouldn't work for me, but I also don't think someone who is not a professional is equipped to help me find what DOES work for me. Someone else with panic disorder MIGHT, but very often what you see recited in those scenarios is still a bunch of stuff that is the anxiety equivalent of 'eat less, move more' because it does work for loads of people with anxiety. The common advice that serves many well doesn't work for me/makes it worse.

    For figuring out what works for me I had to find a psychologist to sit down, know me, and have the education and experience to help me figure myself out well enough to make a plan. I know everyone doesn't have access to that. That's a problem, but I STILL don't think I've ever seen meaningful useful mental health advice given online that was not basically a party line and completely generalized. I don't know what the answer is)
  • penguinmama87
    penguinmama87 Posts: 1,158 Member
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    I know in my experience, I had to deal with all the mental health stuff first before the weight loss could happen. That might be a feature of my particular mental health issues - they are not chronic or ongoing and were largely situational. At the same time, fixing them didn't immediately make me start losing - I was actually at my highest weight ever last year while not dealing with a lot of the mental stuff that led me to put on the first bit of weight years ago. That was a feature of accepting my lot as inevitable ("having kids means I'll be fat, oh well") which is not correct thinking, but not really mental illness per se. Just a thing a lot of people think that is actually not true (our society has a lot of those with food and weight loss, and you see a lot of regulars on these forums correcting those misperceptions day in and day out - it's hard to even get into the nitty gritty of how this stuff processes through our brains when the basic equation isn't even understood or accepted).

    I can focus on the math and science of weight loss because my emotions are no longer wrapped up in it to the extent that they were, say, ten years ago. I was in a place where I could hear it and put it into practice. And I'm only halfway there now and we'll see what happens over the next six months or so and beyond. But I think the mental work I've done puts me in a much better place to be able to maintain, rather than doing the yo-yo thing some more.

    One interesting thing I'll note, though I don't know how much it relates directly to your questions, is that I did not find cognitive behavioral therapy helpful in my case, and it's kind of toted around as the ultimate best therapy (by some.) The issue I had with it, and the reason my really wonderful therapist abandoned its use with me, was because my brain got all tangled up trying to think, with its disordered patterns, about my thinking. We used up using dialectical behavior therapy instead, which used to be viewed as a therapy only for more extreme mental health disorders but is now being used for less severe illness. It was hard for me to accept at first because I had always been really proud of my own intelligence (whether warranted or not) and the idea that maybe I couldn't trust my own brain to accurately assess my own issues was really unsettling. But I had to humble myself and accept that at the beginning, because endlessly trying to examine my own thought patterns while still engaged in disordered thought was not helpful for me. I just kept spinning my wheels and getting more anxious.

    I think my point is to say there might be a limited utility for that kind of thing, especially with the additional limitations of a forum where we're not actually interacting face to face.
  • AlexandraFindsHerself1971
    AlexandraFindsHerself1971 Posts: 3,106 Member
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    I don't think it hurts to have out there the fact that for some people, it's not as simple as "eat less and move more".

    Some of us do have to clear away a lot of issues and trauma to get to where that simple equation can function. I binge. I probably will always have that tendency, in the way that alcoholics are never cured. But I have it down to where a binge is 150 extra calories, instead of 1500 calories, so it doesn't derail the weight loss. And I have done a lot of work to manage my emotions and rework myself so that my triggers are harder to pull and happen less often. And I think people should know that that's possible.

    Yes, I had pro help to learn the techniques that I used on myself. But even if you are in therapy, you do a lot of the hard work at home day to day.

    And therapy is sometimes hard to access for people. There's a shortage of mental health providers in general, and this impacts the actual availability of therapy. Therapy's expensive, and insurance doesn't always want to pay for it, or pay for enough of it. So while it would be ideal for people to be able to get all of their food issues talked through with a therapist.... sometimes the reality of the situation is that they can't.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,897 Member
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    wunderkindking wrote: »
    ...I'm spamming this thread and sorry, but I actually re-read a lot of this and now I will admit to be mildly irritated.

    Even if "this is all I know and it works" How, the blazes, is anyone supposed to give advice on something they don't know?" Why would they?

    I'm just a person. I'm a DOG TRAINER, ffs. I did enough research and experimentation re ; weight loss *to succeed myself*. I am HAPPY to share what I learned, but I have neither the time nor the desire to become educated about various methods and programs, never mind the complex psychology of food. You want that kind of depth, you can either:
    1-) work it out for yourself
    2-) HIRE SOMEONE to help you. As in : PAY THEM.

    Yes, I'm the only one here responsible for my mental health.

    Last March when the pandemic became too much for my normal coping strategies, I reached out for professional mental health help. Thanks to the expansion of virtual care, I got in within a few weeks. I mentioned this on the coronavirus thread, and other appropriate threads on the MFP forums, sometimes as a response to others mentioning their own struggles with psychological issues. But it wasn't my responsibility to do that - I voluntarily shared my experience.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,102 Member
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    I'm unsure whether the PP who said:
    I would really love a robust discussion rather than diluted, party-line reiterations of those gurus who say "this is all I know and it works". Why aren't they applying their expertise to those for whom it doesn't work? Wouldn't that be more to the point? If we are being really direct and honest?

    . . . really meant that as the regular people hanging here being the "diet gurus" who should apply their expertise differently. I have to admit, I read it casually, and read it as implying that people here regurgitate things said by "gurus" who are part of some larger "diet culture" (where there are plenty of experts, pseudo experts, cynical marketers, and more) . . . that those outside-MFP gurus should do better by dieters who have mental health issues, not that the regular folks here should become better gurus about things that aren't relevant to them personally.

    But I could be wrong in that interpretation!

    As an aside, I *don't* think people here - by and large - just regurgitate things they've heard or read, across the board. I think lots of people here talk about what has worked for them in their personal experience, and I'm sure there's *some* overlap of *some* of that with *some* so-called diet gurus' pronouncements. IMO, some of those so-called gurus go out of their way to mystify weight loss and claim things that are scientifically wrong or impractical as part of that, but they can't be wrong about everything all the time purely on the monkey-typewriter principle . . . can they? 😉

    And I 100% agree with others above that I'm just a regular human with limited personal experiences, plus some formal expertise in some tiny few things, but a complete lack of knowledge about others. That will lead me to say "perhaps you should seek professional help, and there should be no stigma in doing so", which I've done many times. I try to help people here if I can, using my personal experience, because other people have done the same for me in the past. I have zero experience with eating disorders, and very little with any major mental health issues, so I'm not going to speak to those.

    From time to time, we've had people here who said they were psychologists or therapists, or had similar professional background. Even *they* don't try to diagnose/treat people via MFP threads - I think it's maybe part of professional ethics *not* to do that? (Not sure.) What they do sometimes helpfully do is point out research studies, actually-authoritative relevant web sites for information or referral, or maybe even explain common strategies for particular issues in a non-person-specific way.

    That doesn't happen very often, because (I suspect) there aren't many people here who have that expertise. Mostly, it's just us regular folks, posting what we personally believe, trying to be helpful, with no formal compensation for it except maybe positive words from someone who feels we've helped. (Usually, seems like at least as many people criticize as say they feel helped, no matter the advice, no matter who gives it . . . !)

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