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Why Only Unintentional Weight Loss Can Work
When people talk about ‘weight loss’1* they are talking about intentional weight loss. The kind of process where people decide to ‘do something about their weight’ and simply change the way they eat and also maybe their physical activity too to produce this loss.
But we don’t gain weight intentionally, do we? We don’t one day decide to eat more and exercise less, do we? It just happens ever so slowly and catches us unawares.
The reason we gain weight unintentionally throughout our life is due to developing a more psychological need for food (and not because the body’s metabolism slows down or us being less active as widely believed.)
When people have only a physical drive to eat they are made, by the basic human Eating Instinct, to only be able to eat what and how much the body physically needs. It’s like these people have an in-built protection system against overeating. They have an in-built off-switch where eating is concerned.
But if people develop a psychological element which also drives their eating, it takes the place of their original physical drive to eat. This leaves the person without an eating off-switch. The person living this way has two choices. They can either go with it and put up with the larger appetite or they simply decide to restrict their eating and even use exercise to try and counter it.
When you have a psychological drive to eat it can escalate into a really miserable way to live. You have to be hyper-vigilant to resist food around you. You have to spend inordinate amounts of time exercising. And in addition to this, using the brain to control the eating is exhausting in itself. You see the brain wasn’t designed to control the eating, the body was.
When you decide to lose weight – i.e. intentionally – the psychological drivers of the eating increase because you are now using even more conscious attention to try and exert control over your behaviour which even further obliterate any scrap of bodily protection against overeating that you even had.
Many people have lost all their physical Eating Instinct because they have spent so must time and effort thinking about it. Every weight loss attempt their overeating worse but they are too scared to – but also can’t – stop thinking about it.
People get enticed, again and again, into losing weight the intentional way because every time you are ready to begin the cycle again it really does feel like it’s going to work this time. You are so pumped you can ignore your appetite – your psychological drive to eat – for a good while. But all you did was externally change your behaviours (eating and exercise) which took you ever further away from your protective physical Eating Instinct. And you lost your eating-off switch forever.
Unintentional weight loss works by disconnecting the eating (and exercise). We have to stop looking to external goals for inspiration. Instead it turns all the attention to the internal working of the physical body and completely out of the thinking mind. One by one, the psychological drivers of the eating are eliminated and the physical eating driver is rebuilt from the ground up. This leaves people with only a physical driver for eating which means only the physical demands of the body (and not the psychological needs of the mind) need to be met.
You are probably thinking, “Yes but, this sounds a very boring way to eat!” The Eating Instinct has this covered too. You see, when the Eating Instinct is in charge, the body makes the mind – you – believe that the foods the body physically needs are your favourites anyway and the amount it needs was the amount you wanted to eat all along!
If you would like to learn more about the amazing qualities of the Eating Instinct and develop your own internal eating off-switch, come and say hello to me at Try Freedom. Eliminating psychological drivers of the eating – stopping the mind needing to be fed – and developing the one and only physical eating driver which makes you only want to eat what your body physically needs.
By Alison Hall
1* I use the terms ‘weight’ and ‘weight loss’ in this article purely to get people’s attention. At Try Freedom, we only focus on reducing, and ideally eliminating, psychological drivers of the eating and replacing them with a purely physical drive eat. Weight loss can only ever be seen as a side-effect of this process, otherwise the process, by default, can’t work. We also adhere to the Health at Every SizeTM principle that help social justice, create inclusive and respectful community, and support for people of all sizes in finding compassionate way to take care of themselves. Because restricting the eating (and doing exercise in the name of weight control) makes the appetite grow in those with a psychological eating drive, people in larger bodies need to be protected from those who don’t understand this and assisted in ways are helpful and not harmful.
Alison Hall is an Intuitive Eating counsellor and owner and founder of Try Freedom
THE SCIENCE – for the skeptics, read the science here:
Appetite Effects of Restricted Eating
Inefficacy And Harm From Weight Loss Interventions
Interoceptive Awareness – the Science
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September 22, 2022