Weight loss, self-esteem, body image,
depressive symptoms, and health related quality of life. These are the
topics you can expect to read about in this article which covers the
psychological aspects of weight loss.
The physical changes that occur when you lose weight are obvious. You
get a healthier body, you lessen your chances for many heart and brain
diseases, type two diabetes, cancer, and so on. The benefits are really
many and have been talked about in great detail here.
However, as always, the psychological side of weight loss has been
neglected. We have to understand that besides becoming healthier in the
physical sense, most people undergo positive mental changes as well. And
these are really important since you have to cope with your new self in
a positive, productive, and healthy way.
Furthermore, I would like to point out another important point here.
Weight loss is not accompanied just by positive physical and mental
changes in our thinking patterns. People also consistently report that
they feel better – their self-esteem, body image and quality of life
improve just because they started eating healthier. That’s just another
reason it’s something we should be striving for.
Thinking about the picture is important because it can improve our
wholesome understanding of the effects of weight loss. It’s not just
losing weight – you have to feel good in your new body and be able to
keep up it as well. The latter two aspects are sometimes even more
important because otherwise you can get unhealthy obsessions with your
body (think bigorexia or orthorexia).
With that said, this is what has been gathered together in studies so far:
Self-esteem
What is interesting about self-esteem is that it improves more when
people lose weight by a change in behavior in comparison to different
surgical procedures or the use of pills.
By a change of behavior I mean different changes in eating patterns.
This basically means it’s more likely your self-esteem will improve more
if you lost your weight due to a lifestyle change or healthier eating,
as opposed to undergoing surgery or using pills.
And the relationship between improved self-esteem and weight loss
seems to be more or less linear, according to one study. It found out
that the more weight you lose, the more your self-esteem will improve.
This may seem quite self-explanatory and intuitive, but other studies
didn’t notice this linear effect. Truth be told, it doesn’t even matter
that much. All studies agree on improvements in self-esteem when you
lose weight. In some of the studies, these outcomes could have happened
by chance, but this was probably due to bad variable controlling and
smaller sample sizes which are common in such studies.
Depressive symptoms
Out of seventeen studies, only one didn’t see a change in depressive symptoms when people lost weight.
People reported feeling better (their depressive symptoms were reduced)
when they lost weight in all the other studies. However, only three of
them found a similar linear trend where those who lost more weight also
reported feeling less depressed than others.
In others, it seemed to be more of a threshold type reduction. So
after people lost a certain amount of weight, their depressive symptoms
improved.
Body image
This one may be quite self-explanatory to be honest. Studies so far
have been consistently finding improvements in body image after people
lost weight .
Body image itself was usually measured either by someone’s body
dissatisfaction, how high they rated their body on different scales
(think from 1 to 10), their body shape concerns, body esteem, and
others.
As you might imagine, improvements in body image were the highest
among the three domains that I’ve mentioned so far – the biggest
psychological improvement that you will notice among these three when
you will lose weight is an increased satisfaction your body.
Health-related quality of life
Health related quality of life can be described as your perception of
your own physical, psychological, and social functioning in which you
also include signs and symptoms of health and disease, as well as
possible stigma you might notice for being overweight.
Studies have been noticing improvements in this domain as well. The
highest improvements were usually found for a more specific measure –
vitality.
Health related quality of life is the aspect with the biggest
connection to weight loss. By that I mean that your perceived health
related quality of life is most closely tied to your weight loss. So
health related quality of life improves even more than body image! When
people lost 10% or more of their first bodyweight, there was a 5% (or
more) improvement in the perceived quality of life.
Another interesting thing was found in one study, where people were
reporting lower satisfaction with their social environment even though
they were losing weight. This can be explained by the fact that they had
a lot of social activities in their daily routine that were tied to
(unhealthy) eating. And they had to pass up on this social eating when
they started the intervention. What is even more interesting, the people
from this study were very likely to regain their weight in later stages
of the intervention.
This only provides us with information on how strong the social part
of weight loss is. It’s also something I have stressed a lot – sticking
to lifestyle changes that you can abide by and not creating artificial
momentary changes that you’ll most likely stop doing after a certain
amount of time.
Wrap it up
To end – the psychological changes when you lose weight are immense.
When you lose weight you become more satisfied with your body and your
appearance in general. Your self-esteem improves, as well as your health
related quality of life. In those who report different depressive
symptoms, these improve as well with weight loss. And, as always, it’s
important to stick to changes in eating that you can abide by – changes
that negatively affect your current lifestyle will probably not last
that long when it comes to weight loss.
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