Fear, Food and Weight Gain

The fear of food and the fear of weight gain can be healed by feeling the fear, and what drives the fear.

Some people have a fear of heights, and some have a fear of spiders. We can have a fear of getting close to someone, or a fear of getting fired.

And we can have fears, or terrors, or dread, of food. And we can have a terror of weight gain. For some people, in fact, these are some of their biggest fears in life.

What many people don't realize is that these unresolved terrors can actually drive a lot of compulsive eating as well as restriction, and of course also yo-yo cycles.

We have to actually face these fears in the same way that people who fear heights might have to -- we need to go into the emotion, challenge the behaviors we do to avoid that fear.

This may mean eating food that you feel would be "fattening" or that you view as "bad food" and letting yourself have the emotional terror meltdown. This may mean restraining yourself from purging or heavily restricting and just feeling that panic.

There are other things that drive these fears, which you will access after you let yourself connect with your fear. They can include:

-Fear that I am going to be rejected and unloved and unwanted if I am not the weight I feel I should be.

-Fear of feeling like a worthless piece of s*** if I am not the weight I feel I should be.

-Fear that something awful will happen to my body if I eat food that is not "clean" (common in restrictive-type eating).

-Fear of the emotions that I might feel if I don't exercise severe control over my food and weight (controlling food & weight due to not feeling in control of life).

-Fear that I cannot trust myself to moderate with eating; I am a bull in a china shop and I must keep the chains on.

-Fear of what everyone else will think if my weight changes from what I think it should be.

You can find out what your fears are by asking, "If I did eat something rich, and didn't get rid of it or compensate with restriction later, what fears come up?"

"If I did gain weight, or didn't lose it, why am I terrified of that?"

These fears come from false beliefs around worth that we absorbed in our childhood. We need to examine who and what circumstances created these terrors of food and weight gain.

Ironically, when you feel through these fears, and the false beliefs and worth-based associations with food, you actually become more balanced and moderate with food, not less.

Feeling through these fears will not make you a reckless binge eater who eats only junk food with abandon and balloons their way into diabetes or other health issues. What happens is actually the opposite.

And even more than the healing with food, these fears keep us trapped in a cage of worry and anxiety and prevent our overall happiness, affect our relationship with ourselves and with others, our creativity, and our self-expression.

The more you feel through them, the better you're going to feel in so many areas of your life.

Photo by Chris Abney via Unsplash