Ego Makes You Overweight, Not Your Body

Get Out Of Your Head and Into Your Body

Image created by Leonardo AI

Being overweight is all in your brain.

Diets are hell.

They are the brain’s torture system to conform to an ideal body image that isn’t real.

Diets Show How Your Brain Fails

Ego puts you on the diet roller coaster. There is temporary weight loss, but then the dreaded plateau arrives. The weight starts coming back. Ego puts us down because of poor willpower. We should be able to stick to the diet and be successful.

The next hill on the diet ride. Ego suggests the next diet will work. Maybe the weight will finally stay off.

The reality is that each diet failure reinforces our lack of willpower. We would be healthy if we weren’t so weak.

I have been overweight most of my life. I started the diet cycle at 14 and have been at it for a couple of decades. I have been on this ride for that long.

Susie Orbach mentions another reason diets fail:

If you continually diet, you are putting your body in a quasi-famine situation. It slows your metabolism down and breaks the thermostat. Diets don't work. They don't help you understand why you're eating more than your body wanted in the first place.

Ego Keeps Pushing For Weight-Loss

My ego is driving me hard to lose weight. It tells me not to be lazy and to get moving.

Moving for the sake of weight loss is demeaning. Exercising with this attitude makes me want to push myself harder than I should.

Moving for this shallow reason means you don't stay with it long or injure yourself immediately. Either option reinforces how horrible we are because we can’t get this right.

I joined the gyms and went for a few months, but life got in the way, and I stopped going. Now, I am making poor choices that cost me money, adding to my poor self-image.

However, I cook most of my meals. Fresh food is healthier than processed food. Yes, I do eat sugar.

Not seeing the good I do with my nutrition choices, I put myself down from being weak because I ate sugar.

I live in a town where most people are very active and not overweight. Sometimes, I feel like I get stares of judgment. I am overweight, so I must be lazy and bathe in sugar.

Or I am with people who weigh less than me, and I wonder if they think, ‘At least I am not her because I weigh less, so I am not so bad’. It makes you want to hide in your house and never come out.

It felt like a losing cycle. So I walked away from it. I am overweight and live the best life that I can.

I am not lazy, and I don’t lack willpower. People who know me will tell you I am always doing something, among the many interests that I have. My willpower is strong. I will stick to something until I finish it. I earned a degree and teach myself things all the time based on a video, working until I get it.

But Dr. Jason Fung, author of “Obesity Code” made a good point:

"The standard prescription for weight is 'Eat Less, Move More.’ It sounds perfectly reasonable but why doesn't it work? People wanting to loose weight are not following this advice. The mind is willing but the flesh is weak. Yet consider the self-discipline and dedication to complete an undergraduate degree, medical school, internship, residency and fellowship. It's hardly conceivable that over weight doctors simply lack the will power to follow their own advice."

How many times have we beaten ourselves up over this? This starts a cycle where we abuse ourselves, eat more, and move less, which spirals out of control. The longer the cycle continues, the harder it is to break.

I agree that we need to watch what we eat and move more. But it isn’t that simple.

Nutrition and exercise are only two pieces of a complicated metabolism puzzle. Our bodies are marvels of evolution.

Mother Nature Doesn’t Make Junk.

Evolution selects the most innovative ideas that keep life going. These intelligent ideas evolve into cycles. In the case of our bodies, metabolic pathways that keep us alive. Pathways that are based upon hormones.

Humans have 50 known hormones in their bodies. I would even say that this number is higher because we are learning new things all the time. Can you imagine the complexity of a system with 50 regulators?

Imagine putting 50 people in a room to coordinate the running of something. They have to be so well coordinated that there is no overlap. They interact seamlessly with each other on a variety of tasks that happen simultaneously. To pull this off is genius. Hence, the human body.

Life Is A Cycle Of Balance

At least 20 hormones are associated with digestion, not to mention maintaining metabolism. Hormones run in cycles—cycles that balance. Life is about balance. There are cycles that regulate metabolism for running from the tiger, feasting or famine, or just everyday life.

Don Kardong states:

The body responds to a calorie deficit by slowing down the metabolism and burning muscle tissue. That leads to weakness, sluggishness, slow times. In girls, it can also result in cessation of menstrual periods, which in turn leads to loss of bone density and frequent stress fractures.

This makes energy available when you need it and stores it when you don't. The ‘move more, eat less’ simplicity doesn't work. It isn’t a metabolic cycle.

This doesn’t take into account the genes that we are born with—genes that have adapted over time to a variety of living conditions—and the hormones coded from these genes.

Take into account the difference in hormones of the genders. Women are coded to have more body fat than men because of the reproduction cycle. This can seem strange because men eat more than women.

See the miracle of its complexity?

Your Body Has The Answers

Ego drives body image. If we fit the perfect weight, we are more important than those who don’t fit the image. This means they have flaws and we don’t. We are better than them.

Stop this nonsense. Get out of your head and get into your body.

Photo by Anna Tarazevich: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-shot-of-scrabble-tiles-on-a-white-surface-6230967/

The human body isn’t a torture chamber that you ignore. Get to know it.

It is a beautiful miracle of evolution. It isn’t a machine that you can control and force to be what you want.

If your weight bothers you, start examining your body cycles and finding your own answers to weight management.

I am looking at my cycles. This is my first time putting it under the microscope with this attitude.

My eyes are open, and I will never look at weight the same again. This is the starting point for my exploration—an adventure, if you will. I look forward to the things that I will discover.

Please let me know what you find if you decide to explore this. I am always excited to hear about other people’s adventures.