Mind & Body -- The connection

Last week, we talked about the power of mind and how it controls our body. This week, we shall see how this can explain the most common complaint in our lives – putting on too much weight, or rather how to lose weight.
Gaining excess weight is usually the effect of a deeper underlying cause.
Everything in our body is interconnected and ultimately controlled by the mind. So, our thoughts and feelings can manifest in the body, over a period of time, cumulatively, as excess weight. These thoughts and feelings are usually of “fear, resentment, guilt, sadness”.

Fear is the most important reason that is interconnected with the other three and various other feelings. Fear is one of the most important underlying causes of anger. When a person stifles his anger or fails to express it and get a closure on it, it usually builds up in the body as resentment. This fear and resentment manifests as excess weight.

Guilt again works in the same way and coupled with any of the above reasons gives rise to issues like emotional over-eating, obsessive eating of sugary foods etc. The fact is that, when you are depressed or sad, usually the blood sugar levels get affected and hence some people get a sugar craving and end up eating the wrong kinds of sugary foods, which gets stored in the body as fat.
Some people are able to step out of their negative emotions, especially when they start exercising due to two reasons –
a) They receive support from the people around or they themselves become mentally stronger and thus can keep themselves motivated.
b) Exercise releases happy hormones like endorphins, dopamines etc. in the body and they like the feeling.

However, this is not true for all the people. If your root cause is not taken care of, the problems will come back to haunt you even if you do manage to succeed the first time.