Have you been trying to lose weight but feel like you’re hitting a wall? Have you ever considered that you might be able to lose weight not only be going to the gym, but also by starting therapy? That’s what today’s post is all about.

While the best weight loss results are certainly most easily achieved with lots of physical training, your mental state is also highly important to be successful. So if you’re looking to make a significant change in your physical appearance, in addition to visiting a physician and nutritionist, you may also want to consider making an appointment with a therapist.

At times, a desire to lose weight stems from a confidence problem, which may also be the cause for the weight gain in the first place. If your troubled psyche is where the problems about your weight begin,  you may not even be able to really start lose weight until you deal with your troubles.

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Love Your Self

People often like to say that you have to love yourself to be truly happy. But a therapist might actually tell you that you should love yourself before you can lose weight.

While simple in practice, this is sometimes harder than it sounds for the simple reason that people who are overweight have a built in reason not to love themselves. They have a reason to be discouraged, a reason to feel like their weight issue is larger than they are.

If you feel this way, or know someone who does, find a therapist who can help you take a look at yourself or at least help you put your feelings about yourself into perspective.

 

The Shame Cycle

Weight is often associated with a shame-cycle. People eat because they want to feel a small jolt of pleasure in their lives, which food can provide for them. But then they are ashamed of themselves for being overweight. To overcome this feeling, they eat more and then they feel even more ashamed. This spirals out of control with more self-loathing and more eating to erase those negative feelings.

If you love yourself, you look in the mirror and say: “I love myself as I am, but I would love myself more if I lost five pounds.” That is a healthy way to approach weight loss.

If you hate yourself, you look in the mirror and say: “I hate myself. I feel horrible about myself … ” and this type of thinking does not lend itself to losing weight. Instead it usually leads to you heading to the icebox to fish out something sweet to eat to make your unhappy and uncomfortable feelings stop.

If this is the case, you need a therapist who can help you find the root cause of your shame. For some, shame has always been present. It may have been parents or family who have made you feel bad about yourself or about some aspect of your life — which could be anything from poverty  to your looks to something that just makes you feel different.

What do millions of people who are trying to lose weight experience every day? The scenario goes like this: “I hate myself, because I am fat. Until I lose weight and become thin, I will continue to hate myself.”

Whoops. That sounds pretty much like a flight plan you might file if you wanted to wolf down a bowl of ice cream before bed every night and devour three or four candy bars every day. There’s nothing like poor self esteem to fuel bad decisions.

If this is the case, find a therapist who specializes in cognitive-behavioral therapy to bring about change, which is hard to accomplish if your self-esteem is too low to navigate what sounds easy, but is very hard.

weight-loss-therapy

Things to Know About Therapy

  • Duration – There are, basically, two types of therapy in the United States from an insurance point of view, which are short-term and long-term therapy. Short-term is usually an eight-session program which can be hard to achieve results with if you are dealing with a psychological issue. But it’s still better than not getting any therapy at all. Other programs will go on for as long as is necessary for you to achieve results mentally and physically.
  • Discipline – Most therapists in the country define themselves as cognitive-behavior therapist, which means they work on patterns of thought that influence dysfunctional patterns of behavior. This often offers a relatively quick turnaround of one or two years, but rarely branches into eight or ten years as you you might expect with psychoanalysis.
    Many therapists with a Masters in Social Work – the famous MSW or MS Gullible degree, as it is sometimes called – have no particular discipline they follow. These are considered feel-good therapists, and if they are guessing about their own practices and techniques, then get up calmly, walk away and find someone else.There is not a right or wrong type of therapist, but the best one for you will be the one who tells you something you believe in and provides a formula which sounds right to you. In the end, you have to buy into the therapists’ orientation. If you don’t, the therapy is a long-term tug of war between you and your therapist.
  • Hospitalization – If you are morbidly obese and have tried and failed to lose weight many times, find a short-term therapist and resolve, at the end of the eight weeks, to commit yourself to a so-called “in-house” program, like a camp designed to help people lose weight.
  • Will Power – Will power starts with the foundation of a strong ego. Once you build up your confidence and your sense of self-worth, will power is no longer like lifting a truck; it’s just something that you do when you value yourself enough to take care of yourself. It’s a behavior that comes with effort and training – but the results are well worth it.

Where ever you are in your weight loss journey, know that you are not alone and help is always out there. You just have to be ready and willing to accept it!