Eight months ago, the mood in my therapy room shifted considerably. Clients who had been affected by very low self-esteem were suddenly bounding in, crammed with a new-found enthusiasm for all times.
The reason was obvious and needed none of my diagnostic skills. They had all lost a substantial amount of weight using Ozempic, and after years of combating poor body image they finally had the figure they at all times wanted. A number of confidently predicted they would not be needing me for for much longer.
Then just as quickly as they hit this euphoric mental high, they got here crashing down again. And I wasn’t within the slightest bit surprised.
Within just a few months, the identical clients had lost their glow. They were back in my therapy room looking lower than ever and a brand new condition was now top of my treatment list — one I christened ‘Ozempic sadness’.
These clients had swapped one set of problems for an additional, identical to those I used to be treating ten years ago who had bariatric surgery when that was the load loss trend du jour.
Women have so far more emotional investment in food, and feel under more pressure to look good than men do
They’re confused about why they appear higher, but feel worse. As a therapist the reply was obvious. Because their over-eating wasn’t the issue. It was only a symptom of something deeper that was yet to be addressed.
From working with these clients, I’ve been capable of discover five of probably the most consistent causes of ‘Ozempic sadness’ and the very best ways to tackle them. Of course, this emotional turmoil can strike people who find themselves combating any sort of weight reduction — it could even play a component within the vicious regain cycle so many yo-yo dieters experience.
So when you find you retain sabotaging yourself each time you lose just a few kilos or are laid low with a low mood now you are newly slim, read on to find how you may tackle your problems — and really enjoy your recent body.
How to handle the pain when comfort eating stops
Over-eating isn’t about being greedy or eating an excessive amount of, or being lazy. It’s at all times about one thing. You can find your trigger by asking yourself this one query: what am I attempting to bury with food?
Then, consider: how does it serve you, focusing a lot of your brain energy and time on what you’ve got just eaten, or what you will eat next? What would you’ve to deal with when you weren’t over-thinking about food? If you were being very honest about your thoughts and feelings.
One lady I treat, in her sixties, found that taking Ozempic removed her appetite, so she would sit in her armchair for hours at night, over-thinking all of the things that would go improper in her life. These dark, catastrophic thoughts were just getting larger and greater, now that she did not have the distraction of food to occupy her mind.
For people like her — who’ve automotive doors crammed with sweets, or desk drawers filled with biscuits — comfort eating has at all times been a crutch. They benefit from the sensation of food of their mouths; the crispiness, the crunch, the pleasure they get from each bite. Ozempic turns that off like a light-weight switch, and it leaves an enormous void.
Comfort eating at all times masks turmoil. For some it is the bullying they went through at college. For others, it is the fear of a giant birthday — typically 40, 50 or 60 — and feeling like they are not where they wish to be in life.
One of my clients was sent away to boarding school at eight and has never handled the impact of feeling rejected by his family. Even when you think it’s ‘just’ a matter of just a few extra biscuits or helpings, it rarely is.
How to tackle it: You have to ‘break state’, rise up, move around, and take three breaths out and in. If you continue to feel tempted to eat, call a friend; by the point you’ve got done these items, the urge will often have passed.
Opening the door to past trauma
For some clients the euphoria of fitting into that much-loved dress simply cannot outshine the sadness they now feel at not experiencing the enjoyment of freely eating. In some cases, food was their only pleasure — and now it’s gone.
Worse still, the gap that food leaves creates an open door for buried trauma to emerge. Plenty of the time the issues run back to childhood.
In the worst cases, it may possibly be sexual abuse, or the anxiety of living in a chaotic household perhaps due to an alcoholic parent. Food is the one substance available to everyone from childhood, and so that they use it when things are hard, and proceed doing so throughout their lives.
Some experts say Ozempic is a lifetime drug, and that after you begin injecting it, you’ll need to accomplish that without end
For one client whose partner died five years ago, taking Ozempic made it suddenly feel as if the agony of their loss was yesterday. The sadness was unbearable. Others feel themselves specializing in the profound grief at having never resolved a conflict before a loved one died.
Their approach to self-soothing, of swallowing down uncomfortable emotions, has gone now because they can not use food. But they don’t seem to be equipped to self-soothe in other ways.
That pushes many to modify their addiction. If food cannot give them the happiness they crave, they’ll regularly start drinking more. Another client I see has begun compulsively shopping to fill the gap that not over-eating has left. It’s all about trying to find a dopamine or serotonin (the ‘pleased hormones’) hit from one other activity.
This problem is more pronounced amongst women. We have so far more emotional investment in our food, and feel under more pressure to look good than men do. Men aren’t as emotionally complicated.
When clients come to me saying weight reduction has made them feel emotionally empty, we now have to discover what began those feelings. Unless you’ve got pinpointed it, resolved it after which let it go, you will live with the unprocessed trauma without end.
How to tackle it: If the trauma is of a very serious nature, you are going to should seek skilled help. Memories buried alive don’t die: if there’s something that you understand you have not addressed, it’s essential to accomplish that with a therapist or counsellor, or you will not give you the option to maneuver forward.
Family jealousy at the brand new you
Losing a considerable amount of weight can totally change the family dynamic, particularly if everyone within the family is obese. You could be seen as breaking the mould.
Before, everyone ate the identical food, shared the identical lifestyle and was in the identical position. They understood one another — now, one person is outside all of that and has rejected the old norm. Some people will see this as a criticism of them.
One woman I treat told me her family said she has betrayed them by becoming a traditional size for the primary time. I explore this in my recent book, The Getting Of Resilience From The Inside Out, which unpicks family dynamics and formative years experiences that may result in self-sabotaging behaviour, including compulsive over-eating.
Comfort eaters benefit from the sensation of food of their mouths; the crispiness, the crunch, the pleasure they get from each bite
This problem is most pronounced amongst moms and sisters, and a number of the fallouts are severe. I treated a mother and two daughters, of whom the eldest girl was on Ozempic.
Her mum and sister couldn’t understand why she was pulling away from them and fracturing their relationship. But reducing weight had modified her identity. She couldn’t face being surrounded by her unhealthy family while on this recent path. Their lifestyles had develop into too different.
There can be jealousy, particularly amongst sisters when one can afford Ozempic (lots of my clients pay around £240 per monthly jab) and the opposite cannot.
How to tackle it: Protect yourself, and set boundaries. Some members of the family aren’t good for us, and in case your relatives aren’t being supportive, and are pushing you off course, see and speak to them less. Family should make you are feeling good, not depleted.
Questioning your relationship
For many larger women, their partners are their feeders, just as when one partner gives up alcohol, and the opposite pushes them to ‘just’ have a glass of wine. It’s hard to take care of boundaries once you’re being undermined by a romantic partner.
People often feel not noted of the brand new journey their other half is on, and so they’re also fearful. They wonder, if my wife loses weight, will she stray? Will she be more attractive to other people? Anyone who loses an unlimited amount of weight has a significantly higher divorce rate since you develop into a distinct person.
It’s never nearly your size. If your partner hasn’t modified in any way, chances are you’ll begin to query how much you continue to have in common. Losing weight, especially if you’ve never succeeded before, also feels precarious.
Clients often tell me they don’t desire to go home to a partner who’s ordering one other takeaway. They wish to be around people who find themselves doing yoga and eating salads. If you are not getting that at home, chances are you’ll search for it someplace else.
Without the distraction of food, chances are you’ll begin to ask yourself why aren’t my husband and I having sex any more? Why doesn’t he come near me? Why don’t I would like to go near him? Once these questions are exposed, they can’t be ignored.
How to tackle it: Stay committed to your goal. Come up with a brief phrase or mantra — reminiscent of, ‘I really like you, but I would like to do that for me’; or ‘I do know this makes you uncomfortable, however it’s my alternative.’ Repeat it each time they struggle and push you, and so they’ll stop.
Friends develop into frenemies
If someone in a friendship group has something the others want, it may possibly cause a serious rift. I see this with women who start getting Botox and fillers when their friends cannot afford it, and weight reduction jabs are creating that very same wedge between them.
Taking Ozempic marks a change of lifestyle and priorities. This can have a serious effect on women’s social lives, too. With no appetite or desire to drink (a side-effect reported by some who take the drug), women simply stop going out with friends, because those situations are too hard to navigate.
When your entire friendship group is laughing at your glass of soda water, it may possibly feel like they’re judging you, and vice versa. By the time it’s nine o’clock and so they start repeating all of their same stories it really stops feeling fun.
But reducing your social life can trigger serious loneliness. One of the drivers of over-eating and wanting to drop a few pounds for many individuals is loneliness, so Ozempic may be returning you to the source of your problem.
Like my clients on antidepressants, the medication ultimately has a numbing effect. Yes, it may possibly eliminate the worst symptoms (on this case over-eating), however it also eliminates the happiest feelings too. It makes their life feel very grey. That, plus the lack of social life, could be incredibly hard to cope with.
Some experts say Ozempic is a lifetime drug, and that after you begin injecting it, you’ll need to accomplish that without end. My query is, why shouldn’t you give you the option to take care of that weight reduction without it?
If you may’t — and studies suggest weight gain for those who come off it’s high — it’s since you never processed any of the explanation why you became obese in the primary place. I can guarantee those reasons were never about an absence of willpower or being greedy. In fact, they were never about food.
How to tackle it: Friends are for a life or a season, and sometimes you outgrow them. If yours don’t desire to be there for you on this slimmer period of your life, possibly that friendship has run its course and it is time to search out recent ones?
The Getting Of Resilience From The Inside Out by Sally Baker is published on Thursday, by Hammersmith Books
As told to Claudia Connell
