Break Free From the Fear of Weight Gain

"Weight bias manifests as stereotyping, bullying, and discrimination based on a person's weight. The social stigma surrounding weight gain has become a global issue. Dieting is now woven into everyday conversation, while digital media fuels anxiety with popular memes such as: "The moment you realize that to get the body you want, you have to give up the food you love" or "Before: sad and heavier. After: happy and thinner.""

"The more anxiety people feel about weight gain, the higher the risk of negative social and psychological consequences. Fear of becoming overweight, coupled with the pressure to conform to socially sanctioned body shapes and sizes, often becomes a consuming obsession. This preoccupation occupies mental energy and focus, all in pursuit of an often unattainable ideal. We are all too familiar with one consequence of weight bias: the development of eating disorders."

"Efforts to conform to cultural ideals of thinness can lead to restrictive and unbalanced eating. Eating disorders take many forms, often involving different combinations of behaviors. For instance, limiting food intake during the day may trigger compensatory overeating in the evening, which in turn can lead to guilt and renewed attempts to restrict during the following day-a self-perpetuating cycle. In another aspect of eating disorders, the biology of prolonged restriction reinforces further restriction. Among other brain changes, the threshold for feeling full gradually decreases."

Weight-related social stigma and ubiquitous dieting culture drive anxiety about weight and reinforce harmful norms. Digital media intensifies fear through memes that equate thinness with happiness and morality. Weight bias appears as stereotyping, bullying, and discrimination that raise risks of negative social and psychological outcomes. Fear of weight gain can become a consuming preoccupation that drains mental energy and fuels attempts to conform to unrealistic body ideals. Attempts to achieve thinness often produce disordered eating cycles and biological adaptations from prolonged restriction that lower fullness thresholds and impair normal hunger and satiety signaling.

Read at Psychology Today