The Link Between Mental Health and Obesity

 The Link Between Mental Health and Obesity

How Your Mind Affects Your Body Fat

The Fattening Effects of Tension!This is not clear.

composed by Sara Lauritzen

Regardless of whether it's negative thinking, symbolic protection, or just being ourselves, we're clearly making progress. We are firm believers that it originates internally. The question is, how? Without including any hocus pocus, how can we relate an emotionally derailed person to their actual weight?

We discover the biological connection. By following those resistant emotions and ideas, we can learn where they are leading and the harm they are causing. Certainly, that was my approach!

I was fascinated to hear for the first time that being overweight was all in one's head. "How precisely would that function?" I wondered to myself.

My friend and I were having a lighthearted conversation about our weight when he brought up a book he'd read that painted a picture of weight increase as a protective sign. Apparently, the reason we're all overweight is because of our negative thought habits.

I was confused as to whether he was referring to a purely symbolic relationship with symbolic meaning or to a genuine biological one that had an effect on our metabolism. At the time, I had lost trust in conventional wisdom about fat and was looking for something more profound. Concepts pushed by the medical, athletic, and scientific communities appeared to be too general and genetically biased to apply to every single one of us on this planet. No one explanation explained everything, including why some people lose weight when they fall in love, even though it seemed like every diet plan and book had a fresh and revolutionary idea about why and how we all gain weight.

I immersed myself in the assumption that my weight may be caused by my thoughts and feelings because I was intrigued by the idea. I did some serious soul-searching to identify any mental triggers that may be impacting my weight, and I also started using affirmations.

Even while I was excited about the new idea at first, and I still am, I was disappointed and frustrated when I couldn't identify the exact mental or emotional factors that caused my weight to fluctuate.

Week after week, I could see my weight fluctuating, but I wanted to know how it was possible. The link was nowhere to be found.I reasoned, "How could an emotion affect body fat?"Because I couldn't pin it down to a specific idea or emotion, I lacked the command and control I craved.

I gladly became pregnant after two years of waiting and pondering. Weight loss around the thighs began in the first few months; this was a region that had previously defied my best efforts at dieting and exercising. Again, I couldn't pinpoint exactly which ideas or emotions coincided with my thighs, but I did know that something was changing inside of me.

I didn't do what most new moms do and embrace the precious moments spent alone with their kid after they were born. Despite being weary and exhausted, I mustered the strength to get back into my regular routine while still meeting the challenges of parenting. Moving to a new nation, which is culturally and linguistically very different from my own, caused a dramatic shift in my environment, and I began to doubt my identity as a result. Due to my incomplete postpartum recovery, my weight began to gradually rise regardless of my dietary intake. It was curbed for a while by a decent, tight diet, but it failed me as soon as I got off of it.

As winter 1997 drew near, I froze for a moment and stared out the window. By myself, I found solace. Although I was motionless, the sensation that my muscles were resisting my attempts to move piqued my interest. Even though I did not move, they were hard at work trying to undermine me. I was "tensing up" for no apparent reason whatsoever.

The realization that the fat I had gradually acquired was only becoming apparent in the places where my muscles were clenching hit me shortly after that introspective moment. Does anyone think there might be a link?"I wondered," I said.

Over the course of several weeks, I continued to observe this peculiar event. It was immediately clear that the trigger for my tense muscles were none other than my own internal experiences and emotions. I took this observation as a divine intervention because I was in such a desperate need to stop gaining weight. My first priority was to calm my racing mind and emotions. I couldn't wait to hear whether there was a way to turn this around. Can you really relax your way to a healthier weight?

My weight loss became apparent at the one-month mark. The news sent me soaring. I had not altered my diet or exercise routine in any way. I wasn't under any kind of medicine or stress. The only real difference was that I started to mentally unwind and release tension. "Explain that!" I whispered to myself.

I couldn't believe it. It had occurred to me that the amount of body fat fluctuated in relation to the degree to which my muscles contracted and relaxed. I didn't care how much I ate or how hard I worked out; the places where my muscles tightened or released were always the same.

On the other hand, bewilderment accompanied the joy. Since I had never heard of anything like this before, I was perplexed and wondered whether my head was playing tricks on me. I reasoned that asking would be the best way to find out. I don't know who to ask in a foreign nation without access to a library that speaks English.

My gut told me that looking online would be the best option. To begin making sense of this bizarre phenomenon, I looked for papers that discussed topics like muscle growth, stress, metabolism, or weight gain. It became possible that nobody had yet noticed what I had noticed when I lost access to my computer and was unable to access mountains of useless material and papers. To my dismay, I was unable to locate any written account of this peculiar occurrence.

I would timidly ask as many people as I could over the course of several months if they stiffened up frequently and, if so, where. Over time, I began to believe that only people who are overweight tend to clench their muscles in specific places. I knew this had to be investigated on an instinctive level when an increasing number of the skinny people I spoke to failed to understand the sensation I described when I tensed up.

I began my research of the mechanisms that cause tensing up by my own self-experimentation and careful introspection. In my opinion, internal strife occurs when we resist the same thing we are about to do. When we are afraid or have trouble letting our guard down and being authentic, we resist our behaviors, which further strengthens this belief. I mentally went over every part of my body, listening to my intuition to determine which muscles were tense and how to release them so I could be authentic again.

I felt like I was beginning over when I decided to learn more about biochemistry; I had little interest in science in high school. It was a difficult situation in which I found myself trapped. The fact that no one else had mentioned this didn't mean I should give up. Still, there were moments when I felt completely overwhelmed by the task of deciphering the seemingly endless stacks of scientific papers and having to look up each and every term.

A plethora of factors were involved in this apparently straightforward event. Nevertheless, it prompted me to ask a seemingly simple inquiry. If this is the sole method of gaining weight, then why has no one ever noticed it before? Or is it just another technique to put on weight?

The reality of this event's regulation was something I had to keep in mind at all times. It was something I had felt and seen firsthand. As far as I could tell, all the articles I read about obesity's origins focused on hypothetical or situational ways things might fit together.

Now that I knew there was a psychological component to controlling my tension, I set out to find out how this exercise could affect localized fat storage. Over the course of many months, I relied on my gut feeling to direct me to the most relevant reference materials.

It was necessary to identify the things that were not triggering my anxiety before I could determine what was. It didn't take long for me to figure out that I was erring when a trail grew too confusing or provided insufficient information. When these opportunities presented themselves, I followed the leads that were appearing. Somehow, the key words seemed to be pleading with me to pay attention to them.

In my quest for answers, my mind grew ravenous and would churn away at the slightest distraction. Without a background in medicine, I would spend nights worrying about why it was I should be the one to notice this occurrence.

In hindsight, though, I can see that it was not without its benefits. I would not have begun my life blissfully uninformed had I received a proper education. Thankfully, my expectations on what was and was not feasible from a medical perspective did not cloud my judgment. I had faith and anticipation that I would discover the solution, and gradually, everything started to fit together.

I quickly realized that in order to convince anyone to pay attention, I would need to locate current evidence to back up my textbook claim. I found this to be the most difficult aspect of my research. Reading current and old literature would occupy me for hours on end. When the answers to the questions raised by the most recent scientific reviews and studies began to line up with my textbook hypothesis, I knew I had made progress.

I had experienced sufficient physical confirmation to communicate my finding with others, and I was prepared to do so regardless of the growing mass of anecdotal evidence, facts, and consequences around this genuine occurrence. No matter the cause, the fact that I was able to lose weight and maintain it without changing my eating habits or increasing my physical activity level was sufficient evidence.

But this journey became an experience of self-confidence when I spoke up and said what I really believed in. As I saw it blossom into a full-fledged phenomena, I came to believe in what I was seeing. I devoted my time, effort, and enthusiasm to finding evidence that this occurrence is real and worthy of belief and follow-through.

Visit www.mindbodyfatconnection.com to download the Mind Body-Fat Connection eBook in PDF/Adobe Acrobat format or Microsoft Reader.

Oh my goodness!

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