Losing weight not working? How to stop the domino effect

The following is mainly about the aspects of losing weight that need to be considered if no other treatment of the causes of your excess weight is possible. But even if the existing or imminent obesity can be controlled with medication, we provide you with these tips as an effective tool against this problem. It was important to us to enable a holistic view of the topic and not just focus on counting calories and more sport. This does not do justice to the complex issue of being overweight. Here’s how to improve your self-awareness and why it’s so important.

Be honest with yourself

A view that is often expressed when losing weight is: “I don’t eat that much.” This immediately raises the question: What does each individual perceive as “not that much” and how do you define “a lot” and “not that much” at all? ? The following questions are also interesting: How does my calorie requirement change and how does losing weight change if the metabolism is altered, for example by taking medication or thyroid diseases? We want to deal with these questions in the following.

It depends on the actual consumption

In terms of nutritional medicine, “too much” is defined as exceeding the basal metabolic rate plus the daily calorie consumption, adjusted to one’s own activity level. “Too much” is therefore eating more than you actually consume – this is an arithmetic variable and has nothing to do with your own feelings.

This cool calculation is particularly important when, for example, medication is being taken or the endocrine system is diseased, which has a negative impact on the metabolism. Unfortunately, there are no studies and recommendations as to how much exactly one should reduce if this is the case.

With your self-observation, however, you will soon get a feeling for what is too much for you individually, because you can see it on the body scale. In Germany, around 60 percent of the population is currently overweight. This means that there are many people in our environment who continuously exceed this calorie limit, for whatever reason.

And that is part of the problem: We can no longer even perceive that we are actually constantly consuming too many calories because everyone is constantly eating too much and our perception of “normal” and “a lot” has shifted as a result. Almost everyone around you eats too much. However, if you add in fat-making drugs or other illnesses, then a spiral of weight gain begins that seems insurmountable.

Many patients take drugs that make you fat and are not even aware of these side effects or have one of the diseases listed above and therefore have no idea what is fueling their weight problem. Many factors that influence each other lead to obesity. The good news: you can stop this domino reaction!

self-awareness and self-efficacy

Self-awareness is the next starting point. Studies have shown that the majority of people who are overweight or even obese know full well that they are carrying too much weight on their ribs and abdomen. Many of those affected do not take the next step, getting to the bottom of the causes and realizing that their own eating habits and lack of exercise are multipliers for weight gain.

Psychologically, it is easier to blame the circumstances, i.e. the drugs that make you fat or the diseases that caused it, the stress at work, perhaps family burdens and many other things.

The conviction of so-called self-efficacy is often missing. A lack of self-efficacy means that people can no longer imagine that they can make a difference in their own situation simply by changing their behavior.

The lack of belief in self-efficacy is even more pronounced in psychiatric patients who take fattening psychotropic drugs.

If you want to get a grip on weight problems, then you should restore your belief in self-efficacy. It is in your hands, you can change the course of events, you can change your body weight. You don’t need an excuse, because this only gets in the way of your self-reality, but is transparent for everyone else.

Changes are possible

In our brain, the nerve connections that we constantly use are comparable to a well-developed highway. Nerve connections that are little used are like little-used forest paths. When we start using the forest roads more often, they slowly turn into busy highways.

Our brain is therefore very changeable, it has what is known as neuronal plasticity. Which highways your brain develops is up to you.

Since our brain is not a rigid organ from birth, but is constantly subject to modifications, we are quite capable of changing things that affect us. Knowing this, it is now clear that everyone has the opportunity to change their own weight because it is possible to overcome unhealthy eating habits and integrate activity into the daily schedule with small adjustments and changes in direction. And you can too!

Nowadays there are numerous calorie counting apps that you can download for free on your smartphone. Have you already downloaded such an app? You will be asked for your weight, height, age and gender as well as your activity level, the program then estimates your basal metabolic rate and the daily calorie consumption through activity. Because this activity consumption is different for everyone. If you don’t like saving every chocolate bar to your smartphone immediately, you can alternatively use the tried and tested food diary.

But you should decide on some form of listing, otherwise you won’t even know where you actually stand. It is extremely important to be really honest with yourself. Many nutritional counselors still work with a diary today, but do not allow the client to show the diary in order not to falsify the result.

Because those affected know that the diary will be read afterwards, they eat less while the diary is being recorded. In technical terms, such a motivated change in behavior is called a so-called bias.

The smartphone apps have the advantage that you don’t have to laboriously calculate every calorie you have eaten yourself, the app does it for you. Some of these apps also have a section where you can enter your movement units. We therefore advise you to use an app to record the status quo.

A final word on the subject of “honesty with yourself”. Honest introspection (internal observation) and self-reflection (thinking about oneself) are important elements of psychoanalysis, but also important elements of healthy living.