Ep #177: Your Thoughts About Gaining Weight

Hello! Today, we are going to talk about weight gain.

But first, if you are listening to this when it is released, I just wanted to give you a quick reminder that registration for The Stop Binge Eating Program is closing in two days, this Thursday December 23^rd of 2021.

This is your chance to work with me for the entire first half of the year. Together, we’re going to work through whatever it is that’s been holding you back from stopping binge eating.

You can absolutely do it, I have no doubt. I don’t believe there is anyone that can’t. Now you just gotta believe in yourself like I believe in you and if you don’t, that’s just one more thing we can work on together. Building your belief is part of this process and if you don’t fully believe you can stop binge eating, it’s okay. A lot of people who are ultimately successful didn’t fully believe in themselves at first either.

But if you’re here listening to this podcast then I know there’s at least some belief in you. If there wasn’t, you wouldn’t be looking for help, you would have just resigned to being a binge eater for life. So take that belief that you do have and focus on that. Focus on the reasons why you CAN do it and less on the reasons why you think you can’t.

Then, instead of trying to navigate all this on your own, do it with me and with the support of other people who are going through the same process.

I don’t want you spending any more time on this work than you need to. So let’s speed it up by doing it as a team.

To register for my upcoming program, go to coachkir.com/group. On that page you’ll also find all the details about how the group works and what you can expect. And if you have any questions that aren’t answered on that page, email info@coachkir.com to ask anything.

I’m so excited to meet and work with those of you who are joining me. It’s going to be so awesome!

Alright, now onto weight gain and your thoughts about it.

Some of you are so terrified of gaining weight and this fear is actually hindering your progress.

It’s stopping you from doing one of the most basic things that’s recommended by not only me but by so many other people who also help people to stop binge eating.

And that thing is stopping excessively restricting yourself.

What I mean by excessively restricting is cutting out foods that you think are bad or will make you gain weight.

Or not eating enough or being hungry for longer than you need to.

You’re afraid to allow yourself to eat certain foods.

You’re afraid to go to events and gatherings where there will be a lot of food available.

You’re afraid to eat physically enough food and then binge on top of it.

All because you think it will cause weight gain.

So instead, you continue to excessively restrict yourself, which then leads you to feeling more urges for those foods you aren’t allowing yourself to eat or feeling urges to eat a lot more food since you aren’t fueling your body properly.

Now, if you’re not familiar with the two types of restriction that I talk about, you may be wondering why I say excessive restriction instead of just restriction. If that’s you, make sure you give episode #48, The Two Types of Restriction a listen.

But in a nutshell, there’s this kind of restriction that I just described to you here and then there’s the kind where you’re giving yourself limits because it’s what’s truly best for you and is what you want. There’s restriction that helps you and that harms you and when you’re afraid of gaining weight, you’ll most likely engage in the kind that will most likely hurt your progress, causing you to feel even more urges which can make it more challenging for you to not binge.

So that’s why fearing weight gain is a problem for a lot of people. It drives them to take drastic or just unhelpful measures to avoid it and because the method of restriction they use can lead to binges, probably more binges than if they weren’t doing it, then they are probably going to end up gaining weight in the end because of the added binges.

For some people, the excessive restriction and the bingeing evens out, depending on factors like how often they’re doing it but I’d say for most people, it doesn’t even it out and instead causes an upward trend in their weight.

So why is there this fear of gaining weight?

Some of you may want to say that’s it’s because of our society and I’m not going to disagree with you on that.

We’ve all seen or experienced how our society as a whole treats bigger people, smaller people, people who gain weight and people who lose weight.

For the most part, smaller people and people who lose weight are praised while bigger people and people who gain weight are criticized.

It’s of course not every single person that does this or thinks this way but as most of us see, there’s probably more people who think this way than people who don’t. And thankfully this is an issue that is being worked on by some amazing people who are determined to get rid of stigmas, phobias, and negativity around peoples bodies. So, change is happening in this area and I love it.

So because of how our society currently is in general, it makes sense that you would want to control your weight to avoid criticism and get praise.

But when it really comes down to it, for you, what’s a bigger problem than our society’s views are your views.

You can agree with what society believes and thinks, or you can disagree and the biggest problems for you arise when you agree.

If you disagreed and believed that weight gain isn’t a problem, that you’re beautiful and enough no matter what size your body is, and that your body size means nothing about you as a person, then you wouldn’t be so afraid of gaining weight.

If it happened, you would be able to see it much more neutrally, not as a devastating thing.

You also wouldn’t go to such drastic measures to avoid it.

You’d allow yourself to eat foods you want to eat, eat enough food, and set yourself up to do your binge eating work without adding the challenges of excessive restriction and increased urges.

So the problem for a lot of you is that you’re agreeing with what so much of our society is saying, thinking, and expressing.

You probably have lots of judgements about yourself and your body if you gain weight.

Some common ones I hear that you may hear yourself say too are that if you gain weight you’re lazy, you’re disgusting, you’re not good enough, you’re not attractive, you have no self-control, you’re unlovable…any of those sound familiar?

This is where the biggest problem lies. Not in the minds of other people but, in your own mind.

Now, can these thoughts existing in other people’s minds affect you when they’re speaking these thoughts to you?

Sure they can but, what’s probably going to affect you more greatly and more often is the thoughts in your own mind.

I sometimes see people on social media respond to hateful comments about their bodies and they do it with such grace and self-love that you can tell that they don’t agree with the hateful person, which makes it so much easier for them to brush it off or see it as just their opinion.

But if you’re already thinking hateful comments about yourself to yourself, it’s going to be so much more difficult for you to go through an experience like that.

And for those of you who don’t get comments, or it’s rare that you do, if all the comments are coming from inside your head, you are probably just as affected as those who hear them from other people.

So your thoughts about this topic need to change.

We can’t change other people’s thoughts about you, about weight gain, and about bigger people, but you can change yours.

And if we want our society to change, it’s going to happen one person at a time.

So be one of those people. Like the saying goes, be the change you want to see.

If you want the stigmas of weight gain to go away, start with yourself.

And I highly recommend you do because, it is highly unlikely that your weight is going to be exactly the same for the rest of your life. Most of you will gain at least a little weight in your lifetime as your body fluctuates or as hormones change or whatever else may happen and fearing this and thinking it’s a terrible thing isn’t going to be useful for you.

Notice how you act when you’re fearful of weight gain. Notice how you put so much focus on food and eating and your body rather that other things and people in your life. You may hold yourself back from doing things because you fear weight gain.

So if you want to stop being so afraid of gaining weight so you can stop engaging in eating behaviors that can hinder your progress, and hinder your life, your perspective of what it means to gain weight and what it means to be bigger needs to change.

All those thoughts I listed out for you before, lazy, disgusting, unlovable, no self-control, not good enough, all those words you may use to describe you after gaining weight are your choice.

It is not a fact that gaining weight means you’re lazy.

There are plenty of people who are far from lazy that gain weight.

It’s also not a fact that gaining weight will make you unlovable.

There are plenty of people who have gained weight and are still loved by all those who loved them before they gained.

These are all just stories you tell yourself about what gaining weight means about you.

And you want to know what gaining weight really means?

It means you ate more food than your body required for fuel.

That’s it.

There is of course the times when medications or hormonal imbalances or those types of things cause weight gain too.

But for the most part, it’s just the fact that you ate more food than you needed.

This isn’t a moral issue, unless you make it one.

It’s just a thing that happens for whatever your reason is.

I once remember someone comparing it to their dog that gained weight.

If a dog gains weight, you don’t think negatively of them.

You don’t stop loving them, start calling them a fat lazy failure, or think they’re not a good enough pet anymore.

You just notice it and either take action to help them lose it or you don’t.

You can do the same with yourself.

And when you do, you don’t have to be so afraid of it.

And this is important because for some of you, gaining weight may be part of the process as you’re stopping binge eating.

As you’re eating enough food and not demonizing foods, you may still binge.

If this happens, nothing has gone wrong. This is just part of your process. This is the part where you’re taking away something that is contributing to your binge eating, the excessive restricting, but, you have not yet worked through whatever else is contributing.

And that’s okay. This is a process and that means that for a lot of you you will tackle one thing at a time until it’s all been tackled.

So please don’t be afraid of this step.

You’re only going to fear weight gain if you’re making it mean negative things about yourself and you don’t have to.

Bigger bodies are not bad. They’re just bodies.

Becoming bigger isn’t bad. It’s just a thing that happens when you eat more food than your body requires for fuel.

And for those of you who may have a hard time neutralizing weight gain, I want to give you something I’ve found to help some people as they’re making this shift.

If you gain weight, your new weight doesn’t have to be your weight forever.

Weight isn’t permanent and it’s possible for you to lose weight.

So even if you gain, you’re not sentenced to that weight for life.

If that idea comforts you, then use it.

But please don’t only rely on that thought. Don’t use it and not also work on your fears, worries, and anxieties about weight gain.

Work on taking away the negative thoughts you have about you gaining weight and what you’d make it mean about you if you were in a bigger body.

How you think about you gaining weight is up to you, it’s your choice.

And when you’re not so afraid of it, you’ll be more willing to stop doing things that are making stopping binge eating more challenging for you.

It’s not helping you to be afraid of weight gain and it’s definitely not helping to think of your bigger self and a worse person.

Your body is just a body and if you gain weight, you are not a worse person, you are still the same person you were before.

So instead of being afraid and holding yourself back from eating enough and from eating the foods you love, eat and do the work you know to do.

And before I go, if you want more help with this concept, or anything you’ve heard me talk about on the podcast in any episode, join me in The Stop Binge Eating Program so you and I can talk about your unique struggles, your personal obstacles, and so I can help you overcome them and create your ideal eating habits.

Registration for this upcoming round closes this Thursday December 23^rd of 2021 at 10am ET. Do not miss out on this chance to change your eating and change your life.

Go to coachkir.com/group or find the link in the show notes.

Let’s freakin’ do this. Let’s go.

It’s time for a change and I can’t wait to be there with you when you do it.

I’ll talk to you again soon, bye bye.