What happens when you think about eating? Does the thought of a meal in a restaurant fill you with dread? Do you get anxious about eating? Or is it that you feel a sense of rising panic at the idea of putting on weight? Weight anxiety affects people differently. It may be you experience a sense of worry about how certain food will affect you. Or it could be noticing your mind going into overdrive when you eat chocolate or crisps, for example.

Anxiety about weight is increasing

Anxiety affects millions of people world wide. It’s experienced as feelings of fear, worry, and unease. Increasingly more people are experiencing anxiety about their weight.

In fact, anxiety does have an impact on weight and eating habits. And certainly, weight and eating issues can contribute and worsen existing anxiety. A recent study found that people who struggled with their weight were more likely to experience anxietyi.

Weight anxiety is a particular type of anxiety that’s defined as excessive worry and stress about weight, shape, and appearance. It can show itself in various ways, such as constant body checking, obsessive thoughts about weight, or feelings of guilt and shame related to eating.

Why weight anxiety?

You can feel under pressure about your weight, shape and appearance for a number of reasons:

• Social Pressure
• Society as a whole promotes unrealistic beauty standards that are impossible for most people to reach. Thinness, in particular, is aligned with success. When you can’t reach these impossible ideals, you can end up feeling inadequate or ashamed about your body

• Media Influence
• The media bombards us with images of “perfect” bodies. They’ve often been, airbrushed to fit an unattainable ideal. If, like most of us, you’re being constantly exposed to these pictures, you can’t help but compare yourself unfavourably to all the images you’re consuming. It’s easy to see how you can end up feeling dissatisfied with your own body which in turn can lead to weight anxiety.

• Personal Experience
• People often feel that’s it’s ok to make comments about your weight or appearance. If you’ve had negative comments or experiences about your size or shape from family, riends or doctors, it can affect how you feel about your body. In the long term, this can play a part in you developing weight anxiety.

Weight anxiety and disordered eating

Weight anxiety often leads to disordered eating patterns and impacts body image. This can set up a vicious cycle where anxiety triggers unhealthy eating patterns, such as extreme dieting, binge eating, purging, or taking diet pills. This, in turn, reinforces the anxietyii.

Research indicates a link between anxiety, depression, and binge eating. People with higher levels of anxiety and depression are more likely to engage in binge eating. The binge eating makes the anxiety and depression worse. which, in turn, increases the anxiety and depression symptomsiii.

Higher levels of anxiety are also associated with greater weight gain over time. A study following 6,695 adults over four years found those with the highest anxiety gained more weight than those with lower anxiety. This was found to be true, even after controlling for other factors such as age, sex, and physical activityiv.

This cycle can be challenging to break. It’s important to consider all the factors that may be contributing to a person’s anxiety and disordered eating patterns and to develop the strategies that will help them to tackle weight anxiety.

Breaking the cycle

It’s crucial to take a holistic approach to managing weight anxiety and reduce its impact on wellbeing. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.  By providing the right support for each client, new ways of thinking and acting can be learned with time. Working to address your weight anxiety can help you to stop fighting with your body and help you to find the courage to try new things and to live a life you enjoy.

When I work with clients with weight anxiety, we work in partnership to find ways for them to manage their anxiety and change the way they feel about their body. Together, we look at how they can spend less time worrying and more on living the life they want.

Have a look at https://www.blossomhypnotherapy.com/five-ways-to-boost-self-esteem/and https://www.blossomhypnotherapy.com/breaking-free-from-the-anxiety-emotional-eating-and-weight-cycle/for more ways to help with weight anxiety.

Client story

Jocelyn’s problem

Take Jocelyn (not her real name) for instance, a retired 62 year old GP and married mum of three.

When I first met Jocelyn she was fed up of her lifelong battle with weight. She’d had enough of thinking about food all the time and constantly worrying about her weight. It had left her unhappy, exhausted and unable to enjoy her retirement with her husband.

Jocelyn had researched weight loss jabs such as Ozempic, Monjaro and Wegovy. But, she was concerned about the side effects and long term implications. She approached me as she hadn’t tried hypnotherapy and wanted a more gentle and long term approach.

As we explored what was going on for Jocelyn, it became clear that she spent a lot of her time battling food and her weight. She described thinking about food as being “all consuming’. The more she tried to control thinking about food, the more she’d think about it and the more she would eat. By the time I met her she was avoiding eating meals and instead grazing all day long.

Jocelyn would quickly eat on the go. She couldn’t allow herself to stop and sit and give herself time to eat. Then, she’d criticise herself for her food choices and couldn’t understand why she felt so out of control.

It was particularly bad for her around chocolate, sweets, cheese and crisps. If she ate these foods she would eat far more than she wanted. Then she would become annoyed with herself and think about food even more.

She was feeling sad and depressed about her weight and how out of control it felt for her.

Jocelyn wanted to understand how she could change how she felt about herself and stop the constant food noise. She wanted to be able to look after herself better as she got older.

Jocelyn’s results

I worked with Jocelyn to help her to manage her stress and anxiety around food.

Together, we gently explored her childhood eating patterns and how they still impacted her today. Jocelyn began to realise she didn’t allow herself to take time to enjoy food because she felt she didn’t deserve it. We worked together to help Jocelyn feel that she could eat whatever she weighed.

As she began to let go of her past patterns, she started making more choices for herself. Jocelyn began to see that food isn’t a reward that has to be earned. She started to appreciate her body and began to lose her “food noise”.

Jocelyn discovered how to become aware of when she’d eaten too much. She realised it made her feel sick. As we worked on developing more skills, Jocelyn made the decision that she didn’t want to feel like this anymore. She had now had a toolbox of skills and techniques to help her to make the changes she wanted..

She learnt to tune into her body’s signals and recognise when she was hungry and when she felt anxious. Jocelyn realised she’d cofused anxiety and hunger signals and used food as a way of managing her anxious feelings. She no longer felt afraid when she was hungry as she understood it was her body telling her it was time to eat.

Jocelyn discovered foods such as chocolate, sweets, crisps and cheese are just another food and they lost the hold they had over her.

As we worked together, we practised tools and techniques to help Jocelyn to manage life’s stresses differently. Being able to manage stress meant she became less focused on food as a way of coping. With practice, Jocelyn became better at handling stressful situations in her life. She noticed her sleep improving too. She stopped grazing and started to eat regular meals.

In Jocelyn’s words

I’ve struggled my whole life with food and my weight and it’s always bothered me. I can vividly remember my mum telling me I shouldn’t eat so much and being taken to Weight Watchers meetings. I’ve never felt happy with myself even though the rest of my life is really good. I’ve tried so many times to change things but nothing’s ever really worked.

What was different this time was understanding how much anxiety is behind my eating habits. This was a revelation to me as I thought I just didn’t have enough self control. I now understand that when I feel better about myself my eating habits are better.

I really liked all the little experiments we did together and they really helped me to understand what was going on with my eating habits. I started to notice what I was doing and see how I could make changes.

As I worked with Celia, I came to understand that I didn’t value myself enough to allow myself to eat well. Celia showed me ways to value myself that weren’t based on my weight and what I ate and now I don’t allow the negative thoughts about food to take over my mind. I’ve learnt how to let them go.

I’ve now got so many skills to help me and I’m going to continue to use them and listen to the recordings. Now I’m living a happier life. I don’t criticise myself all the time any more and I’m so proud of the changes I’ve made so far and looking forward to continue to make even more as I go along.

I’ve even got chocolate left over from Easter still in the house. That’s never happened before.

Here are my top five practical ways to help you to manage weight anxiety. Beating anxiety can take time. Each step can be learnt and built upon. By taking these steps one by one, you can start to live your life on your own terms.

1. Shift your focus away from weight

Recognising your weight anxiety is the first step towards breaking the cycle and embracing a healthier relationship with your body. One way to do this is to try and take your attention away from focusing exclusively on your weight. Instead, it’s helpful to focus on a healthy lifestyle that includes balanced and gentle nutrition, regular exercise, and self-care. This can help you to feel better about your body, improve your physical and mental health, and reduce anxiety about your weight.

2. Don’t listen to your thoughts

Start to notice how often you have negative thoughts about your body, food and eating.  Anxiety around food and eating is often fed by critical thoughts, such as “I can’t eat that, it’s too fattening” or “I’m going to gain weight if I eat this.” Learn to challenge these thoughts by questioning how true they are.  You may also be able to find evidence to contradict them. For example, you could focus on things you like about yourself that are not related to your weight, or remind yourself that people come in a range of sizes and shapes.

3. Curate your social media

If you’re like most people, you spend a lot of time on social media. You may not realise it, but the images you’re consuming affect how you feel and can lead to increased weight anxiety.

Try and remind yourself that what you see on social media is a carefully curated image and has often been edited to make the person look good. Rather than having a steady diet of unrealistic images that make you feel anxious, surround yourself with people who promote realistic images of the human body. This can help you to improve how you feel about your own body and make you less anxious about your weight. It can support you towards finding it easier to accept yourself.

Take the time to find and engage in social media platforms and communities that emphasise diverse body shapes, sizes, and beauty. After a few weeks, don’t forget to check in and see if it makes a difference to how you feel about yourself.

4. Learn to experience your body from the inside out

This sounds a bit strange but it can really help you to change how you experience your body and reduce your anxiety about your weight.

You can learn how to do this by starting to shift your attention from the outside of your body and how your body looks – to the inside and how your body feels. Women especially have been taught to go through life looking at their body from the outside in, observing it as if it is an object. It then becomes second nature to pick apart the bits you dislike. Instead, see if you can start to experience your body from the inside. You can do this by focusing on sensations that you can notice.

Rather than judging how a part of your body looks and if you like or dislike it, try and sense into this area and notice whether it feels warm or cold, soft or sharp, tense or relaxed, etc. Changing how you relate to your body in this way by sensing into the body instead of only looking at it can help you to understand your body as a living, breathing being that communicates with you, rather than an object in need of changing.

5. Practice mindfulness

Mindfulness can help reduce anxiety by helping you stay present in the moment. Take a few deep breaths before you eat, and pay attention to the taste, texture, and smell of your food. Incorporate mindfulness practices into your daily routine to manage anxiety and increase self-awareness. Techniques like meditation, deep breathing exercises, and body scans can improve your overall well-being and help you develop a more positive relationship with your body.

For more go to https://www.blossomhypnotherapy.com/the-benefits-of-body-awareness/

Would you like to make living life easier, right now? Get your free Live Life on Your Terms recording here and begin to live your life with confidence.

If you believe you or someone you care about has an eating disorder rather than weight anxiety you can get help from Beat, the eating disorder charity

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