How Negative Thinking Can Make You Fat

Posted by Freeman Michaels on May 20th, 2010 at 02:02pm

A recently published study in the journal NeuroImage showed that when study subjects engaged in self-criticism or self-blame, their brain activity changed in the regions strongly correlated with depression, eating disorders, and anxiety. This illustrates how over identifying with one’s faults and mistakes can put a person at risk for emotional over eating and carrying extra weight.

This brain research confirms what I have personally experienced. My own challenges with a negative self-image along with using food to cope with stress and anxiety, took me from being a fit TV soap opera star to being unfit and dramatically obese. However, learning to be compassionate towards myself and finding healthy ways to deal with my anxiety and stress allowed me to stop judging myself so harshly and release more than 70 pounds. Now I show others how they can do it too.

It’s not about losing weight – I don’t want people giving anything up. I don’t support dieting, loss, or deprivation. I help people change the way they think so that they are changing their patterns of behavior based on a clear vision of what they want in their lives.

Here are six patterns of behavior and thinking that make people fat.

Denying emotional needs: Many of us were taught to “suck it up”, stop complaining, be strong, and so on. We learned to condemn ourselves for being “needy”, sensitive or vulnerable. We often used food to try to and comfort ourselves and/or fulfill our needs (e.g., for safety, love, comfort, etc.).

Negative self-perception: Too often, growing up, we learned to focus on our deficiencies – in school, we got a lot of red pen marks on our papers. Coaches, teachers and parents constantly pointed out what we were doing wrong, but very few of them encouraged us or praised us for what we did well. We began to feel like we were not good at anything. The negative perception we have of ourselves can often perpetuate a cycle of failure where we have a hard time making positive choices and sticking with anything.

Seeing oneself as a victim: Finding someone to blame is an American tradition that is going strong in this obese culture. My weight release journey forced me to take a hard look at my life and I found a lot of instances where I personally played the victim. However, I came to understand that taking personal responsibility is actually empowering, while playing the victim and blaming people or circumstances is dis-empowering.

Judgmental thinking: In order to make sense of things that I didn’t understand or couldn’t deal with in my life I took on a judgmental perspective. I got caught in a mentality where someone was always wrong while someone else was right – there were good guys and bad guys – I agreed with one position and disagreed with another. My judgmental, black and white, thinking did not allow me to view my experiences with compassion. I found myself not only judging others but constantly judging myself. In this frame of mind, it is easy to engage in unhealthy habits that perpetuate the self-loathing.

Resisting change: Often, when we are only mildly miserable and our habits are unhealthy but not life threatening, we don’t take the steps to change our lives. Most of us wait until the situation is totally out of control before we are motivated to take action and make the lifestyle changes that are necessary. Change is hard and we have learned to conveniently dismiss our unhealthy patterns as simply being in a “rut” or a just a little off track. Over time we can find ourselves in a pretty deep hole where turning our lives around can be a tremendous challenge.

Playing-out Emotional Scripts: The hurts and misunderstandings that we carry from past experiences often get dragged into our present-day circumstances. It is as if we cast people in roles that we need them to play in order to act out dramas again and again in our lives. It is a little like the movie “Groundhog Day” where we keep saying to ourselves, “Here I am again, getting rejected, screwed over or put down.” The result? We turn to food for comfort, because that seemed to help in the past.

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Freeman Michaels is America’s #1 weight release expert and coach. He is the author of Weight Release: A Liberating Journey. His groundbreaking program uses personal development principles to end the “diet cycle” and help people release weight forever.

Tags: Diet Advice, Diet Studies, diet tips, food, healthy eating

Under Diet Advice Tags: Diet Advice, Diet Studies, diet tips, food, healthy eating