Sometimes, our bad feelings about our body play a role in our mental health that many of us are not aware of. Focussing on perceived flaws in our body can provide many of us a distraction from other troubles in our life we find so overwhelming we cannot deal with directly. So, all of our troubles end up being viewed through the lens of how we feel about our body. Why do we do this? One of the reasons is that we, as a society, are convinced that bodies we deem unattractive can be ‘fixed’ and everyone can look ‘good’ and as a result, be ‘happy’.
Diet and exercise plans can feel like a plan to get our shit together. When our lives our in turmoil they can feel like a salvation. All we need to do is follow the latest program and we will be organized! We will get skinny! Then, all will be well. Weight loss plans can seem much easier to wrap our brains around than diving into the drudge of some of our underlying problems such as dealing with a gambling problem, or an emotionally abusive relationship. Instead, we focus on our body and look to the next diet to make everything okay.
I think this phenomena is one of the reasons that diets have a 95% failure rate. When we put all our well being eggs in the one basket of weight loss, it is a demoralizing experience for many of us to reach that weight loss goal only to realize that our problems followed us down to the size four we now are. We fall off the diet wagon, gain back the weight and it all begins again.
Today, I invite you to pause and consider if the body concerns you are feeling are in anyway a camouflage for something deeper. Maybe it’s not 10 pounds (or 20 or 30) that you need to lose to be happy but some other area of your life that needs your love and attention. If we want to find the answers, we need to be sure we are looking at the right problems.
