Why You Need to Stop Trying to Lose Weight

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Many of my clients tell me they want to lose weight. In fact, it’s fairly common language today to say that your goal is to “lose weight”. 

We’re even told by doctors we should lose weight! But most of the time it doesn’t even work. 

Why?

Today I want to talk to you about some of the problems associated with the way we think about weight. Specifically, we’ll look at the research behind Weight-Inclusive vs. Weight-Normative approaches to health.

Admittedly, I’m not a medical doctor, psychologist or nutritionist. I am a certified life coach and weight coach through The Life Coach School and I earned my Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies. I understand the research, have seen it applied with my clients, and I want to share it with you in an accessible way.

As the conversation about health changes, health care professionals are trying to focus more on what works--and we know that simply shedding pounds isn’t enough. Things are shifting away from “weight-loss” and moving more toward “weight-inclusivity”. Toward what is important for health and well-being.

Makes sense, right? 

Let’s go over the weight-normative approach that society has been touting for far too long. I’m summarizing the research articles (see the below for references) to give you an overview: 

1. Our body mass index (BMI) is an outdated tool. A high BMI doesn’t mean we will develop diseases or poor health. Unlike smoking, which we know causes lung cancer because it is backed by empirical research, BMI and poor health have no established causality.

2. Body weight isn’t voluntary. Many factors are at play: genetics, access to healthy food, physical activity and other resources.

3. When people try to lose weight and can’t, learned helplessness can develop. Because they don’t lose weight on the first try, they may give up completely on their health.

4. No weight-loss intervention has worked long-term for the majority of participants. People who have maintained weight loss are the exception, not the rule. I’m an outlier myself as I’ve maintained my weight loss of 20-28 lbs for over a decade. But that’s unusual and most people gain back the weight they lose (sometimes more).

5. Weight cycling is when the weight goes up and down the scale. Weight cycling IS connected to poor health. This yo-yoing is connected to inflammation, cancer, and possibly even premature death. It also negatively influences psychological well-being because we simply don’t feel good about ourselves when we weight cycle.

6. Trying to maintain weight loss puts people at risk for eating disorders. All kinds of unhealthy behaviors can emerge from rigid dieting.

7. The weight-normative approach encourages us all to be thin and constantly striving for that. It encourages stigma against people of different sizes. These stigmas tend to show up across various settings in our lives, including health care professionals. Overweight people are viewed as lazy while thinner people are judged for being able to eat what they want. It’s a vicious cycle with a massive amount of bias. In fact, it is actually this weight stigma that is connected to poor health - not the pounds themselves. 

Wow, so did you know all of that? 

I certainly didn’t realize that this is where the research had taken us in 2020. It’s so easy to fall into the pattern of counting calories and thinking that the way we grew up was correct. We’ve learned a lot, however, and it’s time to re-train our brains. 

Regularly, I see how the weight-normative approach affects my coaching clients on a daily basis. Many of them are consumed with thoughts about tracking food as they think obsessively about losing weight. 

If only this mental energy could be freed up so they would have the time and space to think about other, more important things! To create the work they want to share with the world. Instead, they are focused on the guilt they feel from last night’s dessert. And it’s heart-breaking. 

In the weight-normative approach, my clients beat themselves up for not reaching their goals. They constantly feel shame for not doing the work they “should be doing.” And they over-complicate their lives, thinking there’s one magical answer out there.

All in all, the weight-normative approach that many of us have become accustomed to is a hazardous burden that is harmful to us in the long run. 

Photo by AllGo - An App For Plus Size People on Unsplash

Now, let me introduce you to the weight-inclusive approach.

Are you ready for some good news?

This approach focuses on health--on the positive instead of the negative. Health has many components and can be measured in a variety of ways. Attention is placed on daily actions rather than a targeted end-goal. The vision is for long-term change. 

These clinically significant improvements are associated with weight-inclusive approaches:

• Lower blood pressure

• Increased physical activity

• Decreased binge eating

• Increased self-esteem

• Decreased depression

• No adverse outcomes to this approach (unlike the weight normative approach)

• Higher body appreciation

• Lower habitual appearance monitoring

The weight-inclusive approach also calls for more empirical research about what works and what doesn’t. This approach recognizes it is important to increase access to healthy options.

Models for the Weight-Inclusive Approach:

• Health at Every Size

• Physical Activity at Every Size

• The Body Project

Rather than focusing on the negative, weight-inclusive language uses positive vocabulary, such as “body awareness”, “intuitive eating”, and “health”. 

One of my coaching clients is focused on her health--and that’s the language we use. Not “losing weight”. She recognized the need to drop the “shoulds” around losing weight and to start defining health for herself. Right now, that includes sleep and taking vitamins--not tracking her food or reading more books about weight loss.

Now that you understand a bit more, focusing on the weight inclusive approach is accessible for you. Check out my free training on how to stop overeating today.

References Used to Write this Post:

Thanks to Paula Brochu for directing me to these published articles.

Bacon & Aphramor, 2011 - https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-10-9

Logel, Stinson, & Brochu, 2015 - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/spc3.12223

Tylka et al., 2014 - https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobe/2014/983495/

Hunger, Smith, & Tomiyama, 2020 - https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sipr.12062

The WHY Behind Dr. Caitlin Faas [Why I Do What I Do]

Setting the scene

I believe we can all agree that being stressed and exhausted can quite often lead to overeating and lack of exercise. 

What we may not all be aware of is that according to new studies women directly gain weight when facing heavy pressure at work. And things can get even more complicated for women in academia, where demands are high, deadlines are close, and time is not a friend.

Stress is the cause of many health issues, but weight gain is one of the obvious side effects. Stress at work, especially for women, can result in little time to eat healthily or exercise, which in turn causes extreme fatigue and a strong desire to indulge in comfort food.

Although studies haven't necessarily investigated the hidden causes of overeating in this situation, it may be about the combination of job tasks at work and the responsibility for the household that women often assume. This makes it rather difficult to find time to live a healthy life.  So how can you avoid overdrinking, overeating, and procrastinating?

The good news is that there are ways to fight stress efficiently, improve sleep, boost your mood consciously, lose weight in a healthy way and tackle unhealthy eating habits, watch your caffeine intake, and exercising more. 

And that's where I come in.

Let me tell you how it all began…

I’m Caitlin Faas, Ph.D., tenured psychology professor and certified life coach. All these struggles were very familiar to me. While climbing the academic ladder, without feeling personal fulfillment, I was eating junk food between meetings and enjoying one too many drinks. Taking care of my health, was not a priority. No wonder I felt exhausted and suffering from burn-out syndrome. 

That is why I have a special understanding of women in higher education who make sustainable, lifelong changes ripples across their lifespan.

They are willing to make healthy choices, ready to educate themselves on losing weight in a quality way, but get stuck in their semester routine with weight loss. The majority are doing so well in August, but are falling apart by December.

And then everything changed

However, I decided that enough was enough and I want my story to help, inspire and empower you. I managed to lose the weight and kept it off, breaking my vicious cycle of overeating and overdrinking for good. 

Reaching out to a life coach revolutionized everything for me, making me show up for myself,  investing in myself and committing to doing the work of real transformation. Because I believe in helping and teaching by example, I wanted to guide others to experience life to the fullest. 

• Once I did the work myself, I became a certified life and weight coach to offer guidance to others on their journey to their better selves.

Why I do what I do

Being the best version of myself shows others what is truly possible. I am an example of what is possible and taking care of my own physical and mental health has created the foundation for my life success.

I believe that when people stop bad habits, they unlock the ability to go after their dreams, setting things in motion. 

My top priority is now my physical and emotional health. It can take some time to make it work and I want to help other academics unleash their power to do the same. They have such amazing work to get out into the world and overeating doesn't have to hold them back.

Academics have great ideas to share with the world, trying to reach as many people as possible, but we cannot do that at the highest level unless we are taking excellent care of ourselves. 

Photo by Allie Smith on Unsplash

What I do

Everyone who enters the journey of self-discovery and self-empowerment realizes they had the power all along. I just provide the help they need to get out on their own. I can also show them how to refocus those intelligent brains to work in their favor.

In order for you to get the results that you want, I am a strong believer in 1:1 coaching sessions where we can create together an outline naming all your obstacles, plus strategies and tips to overcome them. 

With my help, you will be able to go introspective on understanding why your circumstances are neutral and how to run an analysis of the reasons why you don’t take action. All of these can lead to the discovery of existing beliefs that sabotage your productivity.

After assessing where you stand, I can guide you on learning how to allow urges and unlearn desire, give advice on how to plan for difficult situations. Then we'll also create a plan on how to handle the discomfort, with a clear focus on defining the tangible results you want to achieve in our six weeks together.

All these will help you unleash your inner strength, helping you create the feeling that fuels action, leading to the implementation of pro-activation instead of procrastination.

My work is to teach you how to believe something you don’t yet believe while coming up with proactive plans for you without judging. 

How my work can benefit you

Decisions that will benefit your life in order for you to feel and look great aren’t that easy to make because you will need to discover the cause of your overeating and how it relates to your life, learn how to allow for food urges, but unlearn desire and determine what to do when you have upsetting life events.

Under my guidance, you will enjoy your own individualized food protocol in order for you to get the results you actually want. Teaching you how to allow discomfort throughout the process of weight loss and learning how to plan ahead for difficult situations will end up developing exception plans and embrace the joy of eating. 

All these steps will create a new mindset where you will discover what desire is and where it comes from and help you change self-depreciation to curiosity. One can obtain lasting change only by getting to the root of the issue and I can guarantee you that you will see a difference in your actions and lifestyle.

How I do it

As a life and weight coach, my work consists of showing you your beautiful brain. I don’t believe in the authoritarian approach in which I end up telling you what to do. You will realize through our process that you actually have all the answers inside of you. My job is to help you see that for yourself, so you can make true progress and feel good inside and out. This is how you can actually lose weight for good, stop overdrinking, and end procrastination.

I have designed a six-week program where I will guide you through making decisions and help you to follow through several steps along the way, steps tailored specifically to your needs.  We’ll cover the result you actually want, obstacles and strategies, what desire is and where it comes from and how to change your judgment of yourself to curiosity and to explore your mind.

I know it can feel overwhelming like there’s no way breaking the vicious cycle. But I believe you can do it and I want to help you learn how.

In the end, it is about true change. And true, lasting change comes from getting to the root of the issue that keeps you stuck in the cycle of procrastination. Changing your thoughts and mindset can and will result in a difference in your actions and lifestyle.

What is the next step

What I mean by 'leading by example' is that I believe my success can become your success.  I want to help you become your best self. 
So, let's work together and overcome the need to overeat or drink too much and become unstoppable in what you can accomplish. Once you do that you will realize that you can really enjoy life to the fullest.

How to kick an unhealthy eating habit to the curb

Are you overeating and regretting it afterwards? Eating too many snacks after dinner? Skipping breakfast because you're out of time in the morning? Do you constantly Google- Do I eat too much?

You're not alone. There are many unhealthy eating habits and patterns that we get into over time. They usually don't start overnight, but they can be hard to shake.

The first thing to recognize is that shaming and blaming yourself isn't going to get rid of that habit.

How do you feel when you think these thoughts?

• I should be able to stop eating after dinner.

• I should be able to feed myself breakfast in the morning before I leave for work.

• I should stop eating these unhealthy snacks.

Feeling guilty? Or some other negative emotion?

Feeling guilty doesn't make us want to take the actions we want to take. It usually makes us want to run away from the problem or hide it.

Too often my coaching clients think they can "should" their way out of a habit or into a new one. It doesn't work.

What does work is generating inspiration and determination.

Those feelings come from different thoughts, like:

• I know I can change this eating habit.

• I can do anything I set my mind to.

• I can figure this process out, step by step.

• Many other people have done this before me.

• I'm looking forward to figuring out a healthy eating habit.

The key is to find the thoughts that work best for you. They have to ring true and generate positive feelings for you.

Then you'll be able to take the actions you want to take.

You'll look back at your food tracking diaries to see what patterns are emerging.

Maybe you notice that every work day at 3:00 PM you wander over to the vending machine. Seeing that pattern allows you make a shift.

Then you can say, "Instead of going to the vending machine, I'm going to pack a healthy snack the night before." Try it. See if it works for you. If it doesn't, readjust. Small tweaks can make all the difference. They add up very quickly.

You might also notice a pattern of eating more at night. A lot of people trying to lose weight can stick to their breakfast and lunch plans, but struggle in the evenings. Recognizing that's a normal human pattern is important. It's called ego depletion.

As the day goes on, our decision making abilities get fatigued. It isn't something to beat yourself up about. It's something to recognize and adapt to (see how to conquer self-control).

You'll also be able to question the thoughts you believe to be true.

If you say something like, "I need dessert after dinner," you can question that. Is it true that you need dessert? Or has it become such a habit, that you aren't even sure if you need to do it? Try a night without it. See what happens. How do you feel afterwards?

Another common thought is, "Eating this cookie will help relieve my stress." We think eating makes us feel better. Eating as a reaction to a feeling isn't a strategy that works for us long-term. It's a way to buffer away our true feelings.

If you're feeling stressed, the key is to allow the feeling of stress. It won't last very long when you actually allow the feeling. You can even start to shift with statements like, "I'm feeling stressed, which does not mean I need a cookie." Try it, see if it works for you. Write down what you notice.

As you do start to change your eating habits, build in rewards.

If you've figured out a habit you want to change and make a plan to change it, what reward will you get? We all thrive on a reward system. If you avoid the vending machine for an entire week, is there something else you want to spend that money on? Is there an experience you can gift yourself (e.g., pedicure)? Create a system for yourself to succeed and something to look forward to in the future.

And don't try to change all the habits at once.

Many of us dive head first into 5-10 new habits all at once. We also have a knack for doing it right when everything else is stressful. The semester is ending, there's a work deadline looming. So we take on "healthy eating habits" like it isn't going to be too much at once. Habit building takes time. Give yourself grace and compassion in the process. Write yourself a permission slip to work on one healthy eating habit at a time.

Extra inspiration:

• Remind yourself of your reasons for losing weight

• Recommit to your weight loss goals

• Follow the CDC recommendations to reflect, replace, and reinforce your eating habits

Want to work on your eating habits through life coaching?

Leave your details below to sign up for my free stop overeating program!