When someone loses or gains weight, what we see on the surface can often be only the tip of the iceberg.
Size and appearance can be indicative of our state of physical health, so it’s fair to assume that if someone looks healthy, then they probably are.
Likewise, we instinctively know that an overweight person who loses weight should experience a corresponding improvement in health. The thinner the better, right?
Logical as they may seem, these assumptions may not necessarily represent the gospel truth. But why on earth would I say such a thing when I spend week after week harping on about the benefits of losing weight and combating obesity?
We’re going to tackle one of the more sensitive sides of saying goodbye to problematic body fat. Weight loss goes well beyond the declining values our bathroom scales show us each week.
Our culture places an undeniable value on aesthetics and physical beauty. Particularly at certain stages of our lives, we may actually place this desire before the priority of achieving and maintaining good health.
Set realistic goals and lose weight but don’t stake your happiness and sense of personal worth on it
However, while we look at the obvious and easy-to-see outward appearance of the body, far more complex and subtle under-currents are so often at play lurking just beneath the surface. Beauty is all too often, as the popular saying goes, only skin deep.
I tend to possess a fairly accurate ability to recognise losses or gains in weight when I haven’t seen people for some time, down to even small fluctuations.
It’s always surprising when I notice big drops in weight over relatively short periods of time. As a fitness professional, I am naturally curious as to how this has been achieved, because I am all too aware there are both healthy and devastating ways of doing it, and when it comes to being healthy, what you see isn’t always what you get. After expressing my initial surprise, my first question is always: “How do you feel?”
Beware of liberally awarding praise in each and every case of rapid weight loss and try to be more sensitive to that person’s state of mind and health. The undercurrents we are discussing here, of course, are the state of health of the mind. Mental health issues such as depression are out there. They are real and more common than we perhaps might first think.
Mental health issues can become powerful motivating factors for dramatic weight loss and lead to highly undesirable methods of shifting it fast.
Such issues might even lead to eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia. Eating disorders have a devastating effect on health and can cause complications that persist for the rest of one’s life.
Teenagers and young adults indulging in extreme measures to manage their weight might not consider or even care that they will pay the price later on.
Seemingly healthy, attractive and beaming young women can look like the perfect pictures of health, but instead are laying the foundations for a lifetime of health problems. Such behaviours must be fixed and the underlying causes or mental health issues tackled.
To praise someone for losing weight is a validation of whatever motivation they had, plus whatever means they used to get there. Such validation is all someone needs to repeat the cycle of self-destructive behaviour.
The links between weight loss and mental health are indeed still being explored. Researchers in the UK conducted an interesting study recently investigating mental health among overweight and obese participants who lost various amounts of weight.
It was found that dramatic decreases in weight loss of five per cent or more of the total original weight actually resulted in a higher incidence of depression than in those who lost less than five per cent.
So, more weight loss doesn’t necessarily mean more happiness. It was deduced that the supportive environment provided for those losing weight during the course of the study itself was perhaps the most significant factor in improving mental health, more so than the actual weight loss itself.
It is unclear, therefore, whether weight loss alone does indeed improve mental health or even prevent declines in it, as previously thought.
This might seem a little bit like devaluing or discrediting the noble quest of weight loss. But why would I want to do that? Well, with quite good reason actually, simply because weight loss is not the all-encompassing answer to our problems and should not be seen as such.
Unrealistic expectations, desperation, depression or even peerpressure or partner pressure are probems that must be solved in their own rights and won’t be fixed by dropping a few kilos.
Losing weight is something we must do for the right reasons. Otherwise, with the cause of our woes remaining firmly intact, we will continue to suffer the side-effects again and again, no matter what we do and no matter how much weight we lose.
We can still go about losing weight healthily while tackling these issues for the host of other benefits it provides, but if so, we should do it simply by eating less and exercising more and getting support from friends, family or other like-minded people with the same goals as our own.
The support itself could make all the difference. There are enough wonderful reasons to lose weight, such as real and proven improvements to general health and lower risk of contracting various diseases, so examine your motives, set realistic goals and lose weight, but don’t stake your happiness and sense of personal worth on it.
matthew.muscat.inglott@mcast.edu.org