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" I'M LOOKING FOR AN ANSWER TO MY WEIGHT PROBLEM "
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Reading your email and
seeing "please don't tell me to just to start eating
sensibly..." and what you went on to say has made me
think that perhaps Overeaters Anonymous would be helpful
to you. They have online meetings which you can access
anywhere in the world on
www.oa.org/online_meetings.html
OA is a self help organisation which has existed for a
long time and there is a wealth of experience to support
you including telephone contact. You would also find a
lot of identification from people who are in a similar
place as yourself and they can help you find solutions
other than the drastic step of having surgery. Over the
years in my practice, OA has certainly supported many
clients like yourself. |
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I'm really sorry to hear of
your obesity problem & although I do sympathise with
your feeling that only appetite reducing pills will
help, I'd like to ask you a few further questions. I
wonder how long you have felt overweight & whether you
can remember what led to you overeating in the first
place? It sometimes helps to identify the feelings
inside that drive you to the biscuit tin? Is it linked
to feeling sad, angry, or isolated, lonely,
misunderstood or unappreciated? Have you had problems
with self esteem before, when you were younger for
example-sometimes the source of eating problems can be
found in unkind, thoughtless remarks by parents, friends
or schoolmates?
There are of course plenty of sites** devoted to helping
you lose weight if you just tap in the appropriate words
into Google, but I suspect that you probably know the
'rules' off by heart? However, it might help for you to
try & jot down some reasons as to why you over eat
before tackling the practical methods of reducing your
weight-please feel free to write further if you think it
would help to tackle the emotional reasons for over
eating.
Best regards & bon courage
** There are no shortcuts to losing weight in a healthy
and reasonable way. ... You can use a notebook or an
online diary. At the end of the week, ...
www.netdoctor.co.uk/health_advice/facts/loseweight
The best chance of losing weight, and keeping the weight
off, is to be committed to a ... You can learn about the
power of your appetite, ways to resist it, ...
www.patient.co.uk/showdoc/23068957
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You write that you have
always considered yourself to be overweight. I am
wondering whether there has been an increase in your
weight recently. Have you noticed if you tend to put on
more weight at certain times in your life? Our
relationship with food is quite complex and can be
connected to what happened in infancy and in childhood.
Food can sometimes be used as a means of trying to
comfort or reassure oneself. Unfortunately, it does not
address the underlying source of the distress and
suffering. You seem to be prepared to go to rather
extreme measures to reduce your weight. I would like to
ask you whether you have considered psychotherapy to
address the cause of your unhappiness. Psychotherapy or
counselling can be very helpful at times when one feels
stuck in life and feels there is no way out of whatever
difficulty is causing one to feel stuck. You mention
that you feel that life is passing you by without any
hope of your feeling better and you attribute that to
your weight. What you write makes me wonder if you are
not feeling lonely and isolated as each member of your
family seems to have found a place for themselves in
France but you do not mention any activities in which
you are engaged. I wonder what has prevented you from
learning French as you state that you have been in
France since 1997. Maybe your view of yourself is
preventing you from doing anything. Again, although you
may attribute the way you feel about yourself to your
weight, I would suggest that there may be other
underlying causes that it would be helpful to address. |
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