I am no doctor, but I’ve watched my mom emotionally eat for decades, becoming obese (and I am 70 lbs heavier than she was at her heaviest) and going for a stress test, landing 2 days later in the O.R. for a quadruple bypass… Do thin people have heart diseases, too?… of course. But obesity is an accelerating factor in clogging arteries, HBP, Diabetes etc… and my mind runs with it.
How do I reconcile?
ANSWER
Hello!
This is a great question and will require a few angles for us to work thru this. #1 the actual facts of health (science stuff) and #2 Your brain behaviour (mindset and thoughts).
Let’s start with #2.
I will assume you have completed CONFIDENT. If not, you should stop all of this thinking and go thru CONFIDENT first.
The first place is to get back in control of your mind. In your words, your “mind runs with it.” Who’s in charge here? You or your brain (remember to name your brain so you can separate from it)?
I want you to focus on looking at all your thoughts around this topic and see the reality these thoughts are creating for you. It looks like you have an unmanaged mind on this topic, and you are believing all the thoughts that your brain (remember to name your brain so you can separate from it) is giving you.
So let’s organize this:
C: Heart Disease
TD:
My mom’s emotional eating caused her heart condition (This is not a fact… you didn’t receive a document proving this, did you?)
My mom’s emotional eating caused her to be obese (again, just a thought… Is there hard evidence to this or just your assumption?)
Obesity is an aceleratated factor in HBP
Obesity causes diabetes
Obesity causes
T: My mom’s emotional eating caused her heart condition
F: anxious
A: Overthink about all the reasons why obesity is bad, ruminate about my mom’s life, ruminate about my own choices, search for evidence to prove my thoughts right so I can question all my choices right now, search for evidence proving my thoughts right so I stay in this old way of thinking, etc…
R: I convince myself that emotional eating is terrible and caused my mom death.
I’m not going to do all the models for you, but you need to.
It sounds like your brain wants you to stay stuck where you were before you came here. If you believe all these thoughts to be true, then it sounds like the only option is to control your eating once more and go back on a diet. In a way, you are trying to justify yourself your old ways. Is that what you want?
At the end of the day, you have to decide what you want to do with your body. Your body your choice. Have you made a decision yet or are you leaving it to others to decide for you what you will do with your body?
#2. Health and weight.
The first place to start is to do PEACEFUL Lesson 5, where Stephanie breaks down the health, Health at Every Size and a Weight-neutral approach to health. The worksheet that goes along will give you over 50 +ways to take care of your health without needing to lose weight.
PEACEFUL lesson 6 also has many videos addressing various topics you are concerned about within your questions. I would suggest you go and watch Stephanie answering these questions: Here the few that I suggest:
I’m diabetic. How does this impact my journey?
Health conditions and Intuitive eating… now what?
but science says this food is bad?
Understand that we live in a fatphobic society. Weight stigma is very present in medical care, and science has it in any other segment of our society. “Fat is bad” is an assumption in most medical studies, meaning it’s not even studied as a non-confounding factor; it’s assumed from the start to be problematic. This is why “obesity” is a correlating factor in nearly all research outcomes.
Correlation (association or risk factor) and Causation are vastly different. An example to illustrate this is the sale of sunglasses in the summer. There’s a correlation between Ice cream sales and sunglasses sold. As the sales of ice creams is increasing so do the sales of sunglasses. But the increase in sales of ice cream doesn’t cause the increase in sales of sunglasses.
It’s the same with weight and heart disease. There’s a correlation meaning it’s present, but there is zero evidence that it’s causing it. This is why as many normal-weight folks have heart condition as higher-weight folks (note here the language I use: higher weight versus obesity. This is how one can speak about weight without engaging in fatphobic language).
We have a class coming up in March, Normalizing Weight Gain. Stephanie will be teaching an in-depth segment on weight and health that will help you.
In the meantime, I would suggest you read Stephanie’s article on this topic that includes a lot of research. And also the book “Health At Every Size” by Dr. Lindo Bacon. It’s a bit sciencey but will help you convince your brain to change its tune. lol!
Hope this helps!