Health Isn’t Just Physical: Why Mental Well-Being Matters for Weight Loss
When I first began studying and practicing medical weight loss and health improvement in 2010, the focus was mostly on educating patients about calories, sugar, exercise, and other physical aspects of their health.
I would soon learn that weight management is far more than just physical; it is directly tied to your mental well-being as well.
In that same year, I started my own program for obese and overweight children as a pediatric nurse practitioner in a private pediatric practice.
I was able to empower young children and their families to learn how to be healthy, maintain a healthy weight, and avoid the diseases of their parents and grandparents, including diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure.
In the fifteen years that followed, I continued with my self-study of weight management, and subsequently learned not just about diet and exercise, but the mental healthcare practices that are necessary for successful, long-term weight loss.
Often, I find that my patients are so focused on counting calories, time in the gym, and pounds lost or gained that they forget to nurture their mental health.
When they do, these same patients who were so focused and dedicated might get burnt out and quit, or fail to create sustainable habits and end up gaining the weight back.
So, how do you avoid this fate?
Today, we are going to talk about how you can nurture the mind-body connection and create wellness practices that nurture all aspects of your inner and outer health.
The results? Sustainable weight loss for life.
The Mind-Body Connection
Most of my patients are aware of the physical requirements for weight loss. These include regular exercise, a calorie deficit, and proper hydration.
But this only covers part of the story of weight management.
What is often overlooked is the mental side of weight loss.
You may have heard the term mind-body connection, which simply refers to the way your mental health contributes to or impacts your physical health, and vice versa.
When it comes to weight management, the mind-body connection refers to how stress, anxiety, and depression (mental health) impact metabolism, hunger hormones, and sleep (physical health).
You know that old trope of the recently dumped person consuming a whole tub of ice cream through tears? This is an example of emotional eating.
While it seems cliché, this actually happens in real life, too.
When you are stressed out or depressed, you might not have the energy to cook and instead call for takeout or hit the drive-thru.
The same thing goes for exercise. If you are going through a hard or stressful time, you might not have the motivation or energy you need to get to your workouts, and end up skipping them altogether.
The thing is, working on your health requires consistency, and it can be hard to maintain good habits when you aren’t feeling your best.
The kicker is that your mental health requires just as much consistent care, so it’s important to understand what your brain needs to feel calm, and how to implement easy daily habits to make sure it stays that way.
Stress Management for Better Health
In order to invite more good feelings into your mind and body, it is important to learn to manage the bad.
Everyone deals with stress daily.
It might be a deadline approaching at work, or pressure at home with your family. It could be a disagreement you had with a friend, or it could just be the social and political climate that you are struggling to deal with.
Whether the source is micro or macro, you are likely feeling stress from one or more of the things we just mentioned.
External stress causes your body to produce a hormone called cortisol, which is responsible for that fight-or-flight feeling you get.
Cortisol increases heart rate and blood flow to your muscles, increases blood sugar for a boost of energy, and increases energy and alertness, all things that are helpful if you are running from a wild hippo or fending off a pack of rabid squirrels.
On the flip side, it decreases less necessary functions, suppressing digestion and your immune system.
Long-term, excess cortisol can cause you to gain weight, have increased insulin resistance, weaken your immune system, and create chronic anxiety and depression.
PRactical Stress reduction techniques:
Cortisol can have a big impact on your weight, but it is often overlooked because it is harder to spot the connections, and it can be hard to control the areas of your life that are causing stress.
Perhaps the most impactful thing you can do to reduce stress is to eliminate it at the source.
Take a minute to think about what is causing you stress, and whether you can solve or eliminate the problem.
Here are some examples:
Maybe there is a task or project at work that you can delegate or otherwise get off your plate.
Maybe you have an ongoing conflict with a friend, and you realize you are better off taking some time away from one another.
Maybe there is someone in your family who can help you one day a week with childcare so that you can take a couple of hours for yourself.
Learning to set boundaries and eliminating unnecessary stressors can help you regain some control and reduce your overall stress.
Scheduling daily or weekly downtime can also help to give you a sense of control and time to relax.
Regardless of your workload or home life, there are some practical techniques you can use throughout the day to help you relax in the moment:
Practice deep breathing techniques
Take a short walk or dance it out to your favorite song
Do a short meditation
Write it out in a journal
Phone a friend to vent
Practice a hobby you enjoy
Whether it’s five minutes or an hour, finding ways to reduce and manage stress should be a daily practice.
Building a Positive Mindset
The mind-body connection is a balance of tending to your negative feelings and building an overall positive mindset.
A big part of this is replacing self-criticism with self-compassion and fostering a habit of positive self-talk.
Humans tend to be very self-critical. When you are focusing on self-improvement, whether it’s internal or external, you tend to focus on what you lack, what you aren’t doing, and what you are bad at.
Having a more positive mindset involves learning to celebrate yourself when you have a win, and learning to be more compassionate to yourself when you don’t meet your own expectations.
Weight loss is a journey that takes time, sometimes months or even years to achieve your overall goal, so it’s imperative to find a way to stay positive no matter where you are on that journey.
We don’t have to tell you that nobody is perfect, but that doesn’t stop most people from projecting unrealistic expectations onto themselves.
This all-or-nothing thinking can lead us to feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and eventually burnt out.
Instead, learn how to shut down that little voice that says you aren’t doing enough. When you do hear that voice, try to shift your focus to something that went well and focus on that instead.
Practical Techniques to Build a Positive Mindset
Both positive and negative thinking are habits that are formed and reinforced over time.
The good news is that you can train yourself to think more positively with a little bit of intention and redirection.
Here are some ideas you can adopt into your daily routine that will help reinforce positive self-talk:
When you catch yourself in a negative spiral, redirect that and name a recent win or something you love about yourself
Practice positive affirmations in the mirror while you brush your teeth
Write a gratitude list in your journal or phone
Take time to acknowledge your wins, no matter how big or small
During a particularly challenging workout, repeat “I am strong,” or “I can do it.”
When you encounter a setback, try to reframe it into an opportunity to grow
Changing your mindset can be challenging and can even feel silly at times.
However, having a positive mindset and healthy self-talk can help to protect you against stress, give you more confidence, and even make you more motivated.
This is a tool that you can use regardless of what is happening in your life.
Social & Emotional Support
Weight loss can feel like an isolating endeavor. And it’s true, much of the process relies on you and your habits.
However, a supportive community you can rely on can be the difference between achieving your goals and not.
For example, you might be doing a great job sticking to your diet, but you have a friend who insists on splurging on dessert even when you aren’t hungry.
Or maybe you are trying to avoid temptation, but your spouse or roommate keeps the pantry stocked with junk food.
On the flip side, having someone or a community of people in your corner to help motivate you, celebrate your wins, and support you when you need it is proven to improve adherence to your health goals.
Support might come in the form of a workout buddy with similar goals that you can team up with at the gym, or simply someone to celebrate with you when you reach a goal, or motivate you when you’re struggling.
Other options for support might be a telehealth provider who can give you personalized guidance through your weight loss journey.
If you have the means, you could invest in a fitness coach or a dietician to help guide you through the more detailed aspects of your health plan.
To work through some of the harder feelings and changes involved in weight loss, you might turn to a therapist.
Whatever form of support you have, you need to have at least one person you can turn to for help when you feel overwhelmed.
Putting it All Together
Balance is a great way to think about the mind-body connection.
At the simplest level, you want to balance how you care for your mind and your body.
To take it further, you should seek to find balance in all things. This means knowing when it’s okay to splurge on a sweet treat, opt for rest, or motivate yourself to do a dreaded workout.
To zoom in, what does a balanced daily routine look like?
In practice, you are regularly practicing each component of a healthy lifestyle:
You are prioritizing good nutrition, eating mostly fresh foods that help you reach your goals.
You are practicing daily movement, making sure to exercise, stretch, and avoid becoming too sedentary at work or home.
You are getting enough rest, getting adequate sleep, and allowing your body time to heal between intense workouts.
You are practicing mindfulness, fostering positive self-talk, eliminating stressors, and reframing self-criticism with self-compassion.
Just as you are tracking food and exercise, make an effort to track your mood and notice what effects you either positively or negatively.
Finally, find and incorporate non-weight-related activities into your routine. It can be easy to become overly consumed by weight loss, but there is more to life than diet and exercise!
Make sure you are enjoying your hobbies, your friends and family, spending time outdoors, and doing things that make you happy.
Moving Forward
The mind-body connection is how you get those new, healthy habits to stick long term, helping you not just to lose weight, but to keep it off forever.
You should be treating your mental well-being as a crucial part of your health journey, spending just as much energy making sure you have a healthy mindset as you do counting calories and exercising.
Tending to your mental health involves finding ways to deal with stress and negative emotions, fostering a positive mindset, forming a supportive community, and creating a balanced routine that feels good for your lifestyle.
TeleHealthNP patients can reach out for support on their weight loss journey at any time for personalized advice and guidance.
