Why Hating Your Body Can Make You Fat

From years of personal experience, I know that hating your body will not make you thin. In fact, you will often gain weight when you despise your body. Below are a few reasons why body hate will usually backfire if you try to lose weight.

1. No matter how much you hate yourself, you can not hate yourself thin.

First, let’s go to the obvious. If you cringe when you look at what you perceive as your flabby arms or belly; has all this self-hate made you permanently thin? Sure, maybe hate can work in the short term, but as a long-term strategy it has not, or you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog.

2. Studies have shown that when you focus on self-love (instead of counting calories or carbs or hating yourself), you will lose weight.

Research has shown that instead of focusing on calorie counting and carbs, you should focus on what feels good to you and your body if you really want to lose weight. What foods make your body feel good? What kind of exercise doesn’t feel punishing but fun? Where can you step up self-care and self-love in general so that you enjoy life more? The research has also shown that when you love yourself enough to start taking care of your physical body and emotional body without focusing on your pounds on the scale, that is when you can actually begin to lose weight. In short, caring about how you feel instead of caring about how you look is a much better approach to weight loss than any diet out there.

3. Hating your body creates stress, and stress leads to weight gain.

According to Marc David, Master Nutritionist and creator of the Institute of the Psychology of eating, “When you constantly speak to yourself negative messages such as ‘I hate my body,’ ‘I am too fat,’ ‘Nobody will love me because of how I look’ – you are literally creating a constant, low level, day in day out physiologic stress response. These thoughts increase cortisol and insulin, while decreasing growth hormone and thyroid hormone, all of which signal the body to store weight, store fat, and not build muscle.” In other words, stressing about your body sets off a whole slew of physical responses which keeps the weight on, not off.

4. How to love the body you currently have.

So how exactly do you go about the business of loving your body when you can’t even imagine feeling good about how you look? You can check out my blogs at www.aprilhorton.com to find out more. I am a professional Body Image Coach and would love to help you on your journey to body love.