If you are like most of the new clients coming into my health and wellness facility right now, you have a New Year´s resolution to lose weight and get healthier. Chances are this isn´t your first time having this resolution (or trying to lose weight for that matter), which means something went wrong with your previous intentions. Well, there´s a good reason why your previous resolutions or attempts didn´t stick. And it´s not about your will power or motivation. It´s about information and survival.

What we crave, what we enjoy doing physically, and how much weight/fat our body wants to hold on to have a lot to with the environment the body is in–or rather, thinks it is in. You see, our body is designed to survive. If the body thinks it is starving or in danger of starving, it needs to respond accordingly in order to preserve life. Our body has different hormones designed to help program the body based on the feedback it is getting. One of the main hormones that help the body regulate how much we need to eat is leptin. Leptin is a hormone that is released from your fat and is responsible for telling your brain how much food is enough to maintain its body–fat set point. In very simplistic terms, if you are not eating enough you will be hungry, if you are eating enough you will be full. This is not about will power, this is about feedback. If you eat and you are not full, your body thinks it needs more in order to maintain a level of fat that is appropriate for the environment it is in.

What creates the body´s body–fat set point is the information the body is getting from its environment. For as long as humans have been around, the chance of famine has always been present because of bad crops, bad herds, long winters, natural disasters, etc.—until about a hundred years ago, that is. With the advancement of things like electricity, automobiles (and airplanes), and food processing, our ability to get food, store food, transport food, and make food has, for most of us, changed our need to protect ourselves from starvation. We are no longer at risk of starving, but the protective mechanism is still intact, as it takes a lot longer than a few generations for our bodies to evolve.

So if we no longer have as many environmental threats to our survival then there must be other reasons why our body would want us to move less, eat more, and store fat (outside of perceived laziness, bad genes, and bad habits). We now know that mental stress can create the same chemical signaling that starvation does. The part of your brain that responds to stress can´t differentiate between physical stress and psychological stress. (The signals travel via different pathways but end up in the same place with the same response.) So we can now see that specific emotions like a feeling of lack, not being good enough, not doing enough, not fitting in, disappointment in one´s self, being discouraged about your self or things in life, missing out on something, or deprivation (to name a few) re–create the signal of not enough food. That is, food starvation and emotional starvation trigger the same chemical response.

If you consider the main reason why most people start to diet or exercise is to change the body in order to feel better about themselves, you can see how many people start off with programming that is working against them. Not only will the body NOT want to eat less than it currently is if it is still getting input that there is something wrong but it won´t want you to move that much. You can´t take action to change something you don´t like and not have some form of negative feedback underlying the action. If the body thinks it is starving (even if it is getting an abundance of food) it could easily send signals to induce you to want to move less (and relax more)–making sure you do not take a liking to moving more, which is one reason why a lot of people have to force themselves to do exercise. It was probably unlikely that someone had to force you to go out and play as a kid, but you probably didn´t have the same stress then (and you probably didn´t care how you looked at age 8).

The point is, if you have to force yourself to move, force yourself to stop eating (or eat less), or convince yourself not to have the food you are craving, then you may want to take a step back and ask yourself why those signals are there. Think of where you are and what you are experiencing simply as feedback about your environment–your mental environment. Take a moment to think about how you feel about your body and health. If you feel negative emotion when you think about your body, then know that you have some mental work to do first. Your goal is to find a way to make peace with where you are. One way to do that is to acknowledge that your body is the result of what you have been thinking before you knew better. If you didn´t know you were doing it, you can chalk it up to ignorance. Be happy that your body is giving you such vivid feedback. If you don´t like where you are, your body (along with your emotions) is also helping to show you how important your body and health is to you—this is a good thing.

Once you are able to at least be neutral (at peace) with where your body is, you will start to change your natural desires. You will start to find exercise and moving around more appealing. Your appetite and what you crave will change as well. I personally don´t have to count calories anymore because my body does it for me. My body wants to be lean, and in order for it to maintain its level of body–fat it will make sure I only eat a certain amount, which means I get full much faster than I ever did before (back when I judged myself and worried about how I looked). Now I don´t have to consciously watch my food intake; my hormones and my body´s internal feedback loop do it for me. If I try to eat what I used to, I get so full that I almost get sick. If I eat a bigger lunch, then my appetite changes for the rest of the day accordingly—I can´t eat as much as I normally would at dinner even if I wanted to. (Well, I guess I can ignore my full signal, but it is so uncomfortable that it only took a couple of times going there for me to be aware of the warning signals as I get close to being full.)

This is not to say that there aren´t other things to consider when tending to your body and health. Movement (like exercise) is vital for our health, and it does provide many great benefits, even if you are not losing weight. And nutrition is very important as well. Eating fewer processed foods and getting more things like fiber and omega 3 fatty acids will make a huge difference, but chances are if you tend to the mental side of you first—if you get to feeling good first–you will change your awareness as to what your body wants. The foods that used to taste good (like high–sugar and high–fat foods) won´t have the same appeal. Your desire to feel good from all aspects of your health will be driven by wanting to feel good, not changing something in order to look different so you can feel better about yourself emotionally. Start inward, then the outward stuff will fall into place. Not to mention, once you are in a good place mentally, all that physical work will have much higher rates of return. Happy New Year! Make this year about how you feel, not just how you look.