The epidemic of depression in the Western world today goes hand in hand with the popularity of weight loss. Unfortunately, reducing diets are associated with depression. This is for several reasons …

Compared to the 1970s, almost ten times more people suffer from depression. In highly developed countries, it affects women three times more often than men. Interestingly, in poorer societies - such as African - it is a more democratic disease and is equally distributed between the genders. Psychologists believe that one reason for this is the weight loss epidemic that does not occur in poor countries.

Weight loss defeat

The ideal of beauty, associated with a slim figure, has become popular in our culture. It's a fashion, but it motivates many people - especially women - to lose weight.

The ideal of beauty, associated with a slim figure, has become popular in our culture. It's a fashion, but it motivates many people - especially women - to lose weight.

Eating a diet at the beginning usually leads to weight loss. However, research shows that over 90 percent. slimming, then returns to the original weight, and often even exceeds it! This is because losing weight conflicts with the body's natural defenses. The body tries to maintain its normal weight, so it changes its physiology in times of hunger so that it "extracts" more calories from small amounts of food. In addition, starvation causes the body to store calories as spare, as if anticipating future hunger. Ultimately, after we finish the diet, even if we eat a little less than before we start our diet, we gain weight. Due to these natural physiological mechanisms, almost all dieters fail sooner or later.

Life failure? Slimming

An outstanding and obese psychologist, Martin Seligman, wrote: “From the age of 20 I have been using different diets constantly. Today it has been 30 years of ineffective efforts. This is my biggest failure in life that I cannot stop thinking about. I am reminded of this by every glance in the mirror, every glance at an appetizing-looking dish… ”. Repeated failures cause what psychologists call learned helplessness. It is about feelinglosing self-efficacy, the ability to influence important aspects of your life. Learning that you are a helpless person discourages you from taking any actions (not only those aimed at slimming), worsens your emotional state (causes apathy), and even affects the difficulty in concentration and the ability to think clearly and intelligently. These are the common symptoms of depression. It can be said that slimming failures become an excellent breeding ground for depression.

Are you losing weight? You will not avoid unpleasant thoughts

In addition, it is extremely difficult to break free from unpleasant thoughts about eating. A person focused on eating has even more problems with it than a drug addict. A drug addict can remove everything that he associates with drugs: change friends, environment, place of residence, lifestyle. He can remove all the situations and stimuli that have led to drug use, and then it is easier for him to free himself from thoughts of drugs. Food is much more difficult - you can't eliminate food from your life. Man is constantly exposed to many stimuli associated with food. Therefore, people who have problems with overeating or overly focused on weight loss cannot free themselves from unpleasant thoughts. Something reminds them of being overweight every day. This, of course, makes the mood worse.

Depressive culture

Does this mean that in order not to fall into the trap of weight loss, it is best not to worry about being overweight? Unfortunately, it is very difficult. For women, body appearance is an important indicator of self-esteem. Whether we feel good about our appearance or not is determined by comparing ourselves with the standards in a given environment. If these standards are very strict (and such unrealistic beauty ideals are popularized by the media today), then comparing yourself with them leads to disturbances in self-esteem and a feeling of inferiority. And it is also a "caloric fertilizer" for depression.

Important

What about people who manage to keep their weight down?

It is possible if we scrupulously count calories and still stick to the limits. This is what 10 percent do in our well-fed western world. slimming. These people stay thin but go hungry chronically. Some years they under eat! Unfortunately, the effect of long-term malnutrition is depression, depression, apathy, a decrease in vitality, vigor and joy of life! And because women are more likely to lose weight than men, perhaps that is why, first of all, women are diagnosed with depression. The disproportion in suffering from depression between the sexes occurs only in those countries where it appliesthe ideal of thinness. Where thinness is not the ideal of beauty - eg in Egypt, India, Uganda - depression affects women as much as men. There are hardly any eating disorders (bulimia or anorexia) there.

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