4 tips to avoid obsessing over losing weight

Body weight is more than a simple measure of how much mass our body has. For many, weight is experienced as a fundamental problem in their lives, so much so that they need to reach their "ideal weight" to accept themselves.

Many associate weight as an indication of attractiveness, beauty and health and, of course, this influences their self-esteem and self-concept, with those who feel terribly bad when their weight is not wanted.

Weight loss is a very delicate matter that can range from the mere loss of a few pounds on medical advice to a real mental health problem. Therefore, below let's see how to avoid obsessing about losing weight and understand that it is not everything.

• Related article: "The 10 most common eating disorders"

Why obsessing over losing weight can be a problem

Millions of people throughout this world are concerned about their weight. Some worry in a way that we could say "innocent", in the sense that they have had a bad time lately. And, now that they have raised their heads, they set the goal of gaining a healthy weight, either by gaining a little weight or losing it. Others, unfortunately,

are caught in a harsh spiral of weight obsession, worried about every calorie they eat and forbidding all kinds of rich but "wicked" food. They are valued based on their weight, which greatly influences their self-esteem.

Food is what gives us nutrients, the fuel that our body needs. Without food, human beings simply die and therefore we need to eat. However, what is a basic need, something instinctive and that the only concern that should be assumed is in case of not finding it, many People worry about “overdoing it” with food, gaining weight by overeating and, to compensate, they go into restrictive diets or, outright, stop to eat.

We may at some point in our lives need to lose a little fat for health reasons. However, obsessing over losing weight It can lead us to a situation that is not synonymous with health at all, and it is the harsh world of eating disorders. For this reason it is so important to establish a healthy relationship with food and understand that weight is not a measure of beauty or health, but an indicator of mass, nothing more.

The objective of this article is to learn a little about how to avoid obsessing over losing weight, looking at some myths, beliefs and attitudes to combat about how loss and weight gain in addition to understanding that maintaining a healthy diet is something extremely necessary to have a beautiful body, which is nothing more than any body that enjoys a good Health.

Myths about weight loss

There are many myths that exist around food and that are directly related to obsessing over losing weight. Many people, in their attempt to achieve weight loss goals, control by the numbers that should appear on the scale becomes the control for what you eat, this being the breeding ground for developing an unhealthy relationship with food.

It's funny how in today's world, where we can easily get more food than ever, we eat worse than our ancestors did. It is true that we have more availability of nutritious food and that malnutrition is relatively rare, but we also live in a world where there are many High-calorie, greasy and low-nutrient foods that happen to be hyperpalatable, that is, more palatable compared to traditional and non-nutritious food. season.

Since the poorest foods in nutrients are, in turn, those that have a more intense flavor, it is not surprising that the population prefers them over healthy foods. As a consequence of this, we have diseases such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases in the population, since It is difficult to resist this type of food, which also tends to be commercialized ready-made and sold at a relatively low price.

To say that the population is addicted to junk food is not an exaggeration. People know that they are not healthy foods, that it would be best not to eat them at all and that they carry health risks, but it is difficult for them to stop eating them. As a consequence, once a lot of weight has been gained, they try to give up all at once, categorizing them as "forbidden" foods and this is where the unhealthy relationship with food explodes.

How to avoid obsessing over losing weight?

There are several actions we can take to avoid obsessing over losing weight.

1. Not using the gym to eat more afterwards

There is no doubt that physical activity burns calories and helps you lose weight. Going to the gym should be viewed as a way to ensure good health and fun, whether you're doing strength training, cardio, or targeted activities.

However, the truth is that many people go to the gym with the clear intention of burning large amounts of calories and then replace them by eating everything. Obsessed with weight, to make sure they don't gain a few extra kilos, they beat themselves up doing all kinds of exercises in the gym and then eat all kinds of hypercaloric foods.

This is quite dangerous. On the one hand we have the fact that the person binges and, on the other, performs compensatory behaviors, in this case doing excessive exercise, all to avoid gaining weight. All of this can be used to suspect a possible case of bulimia, an eating disorder that requires psychological intervention.

2. Don't be too choosy about calories

There are countless applications that serve to track the calories of what we eat and, also, those that we burn with exercise. These can be useful as they help us to have an orientation on caloric intake and the proportion of macronutrients that we have ingested, helping us to know if we are maintaining a varied diet and consuming the amount of calories needed.

However, obsessing over absolutely trapping every calorie to make sure you lose weight is a mistake. These applications should be downloaded and used with caution and understand that they are only a record of what we eat, putting the focus more on the nutrients consumed before our caloric intake. The reason these applications should be viewed with caution is that many people want to make perfectionist use of them.

There are those who try to keep an exhaustive record of everything they have eaten throughout the week, motivating yourself to continue taking between 1,200 and 1,500 calories, which are highly recommended general. It usually happens that for the simple fact of having forgotten to register one day, its users are overwhelmedThey feel like they have failed, break their streak and overeat, feeling like they are getting fat with each bite.

It is necessary to understand that by not recording absolutely everything we eat in a calorie counter, we are not going to gain weight. As long as we eat a healthy diet, rich in nutrients, we can make what we eat a little more flexible and even forget to write it down.

• You may be interested in: "Do you really know what self-esteem is?"

3. Neither restrictive diets nor prohibit foods

Many people believe that they will only lose weight if they forbid certain foods and fully control the calories they eat. Yes, it is true that knowing the caloric intake, it can be assumed that you will lose weight, as long as you eat fewer calories than you consume and there is a caloric deficit.

Now, doing a restrictive diet does not work, and much less if it has been obtained from dubious sources. It is not difficult to find on the Internet all kinds of miracle diets in which the forbidden foods are highlighted. These, far from being good instructions to control or lose weight, become dangerous sources of guilt.

They prohibit so many foods that they practically do not allow to enjoy the food, only being able to eat food low-calorie such as lettuce, some low-fat meats such as chicken and strictly forbidding everything candy. Others force us to eat the same food for several weeks (p. g., the pineapple diet).

Both types of diets are extremely unworkable, since they are tremendously boring in addition to insisting on the idea of ​​forbidden foods, which which makes if the person skips it one day with a food of this type feel a lot of regrets and go to the other extreme, that is, stick a binge.

It should be clear that prohibiting food goes against human nature, and that it can only be “prohibited” in those cases that for health reasons cannot be ingested under any circumstances, as would be the salt in hypertensive or carbohydrates in people with morbid obesity. Restrictive diets potentiate eating disorders.

Any diet that is going to be done should be consulted with professionals, including doctors, dietitians and nutritionists. If there is a suspicion of a possible eating disorder, a psychologist should be consulted.

4. Do not expose yourself to the scale every day

One of the most dreaded moments of people who are desperate to lose weight is weighing themselves on the scale. Everyone has an ideal weight in their head, although not for that reason healthy nor really ideal, but that are translated into a specific number, a value that if we have not reached it still saddens us and a lot of. For many people this can become obsessive and they use the scale every day, even multiple times.

The weight that the scale marks us can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it may happen that, in case of success, we feel motivated to continue with our weight loss routine, eating healthy and exercising, but On the other hand, if not, what will happen is that we feel frustrated and even obsess over eating less or exercising more than the necessary.

Both weight loss and muscle gain are a process with its ups and downs and therefore the daily measure of where we are is useless because it can perfectly demotivate us. What you have to take into account is the whole process as a whole.

We are not going to lose weight overnight. Weighing yourself every day does not provide reliable data and any variation that occurs can be produced by such a number of factors unrelated to our control that it would be very difficult to use them as a measure of whether there is progress or not, much less indicative of an improvement in the Health.

In most cases it is appropriate to weigh yourself once every two weeks, preferably only once a month, and using smart scales, if possible. These are devices that go beyond the simple measurement of weight, but also measure other aspects that are related to the health of the person such as fat percentage, amount of muscle mass, fluid retention, basal metabolism, and aging premature.

The scale must remain hidden or at least in a place with little exposure on the days that it is not going to be used.. To do this, it is best to put it in a high place where it is difficult to lower it, or directly hide it in a drawer that we do not usually consult. This will prevent us from being tempted to weigh ourselves out of date, so we can better assess progress.

Bibliographic references:

• Carbajal Azcona, Á. (n.d.). Water - Nutrition and Dietetics Manual. Retrieved from https://www.ucm.es/nutricioncarbajal/
• Soenen, S., Bonomi, A. G., Lemmens, S. G. T., Scholte, J., Thijssen, M. TO. M. A., van Berkum, F., & Westerterp-Plantenga, M. S. (2012). Relatively high-protein or ‘low-carb’ energy-restricted diets for body weight loss and body weight maintenance? Physiology & Behavior, 107 (3), 374–380.