If you have tried to lose weight, you know that you not only change your body, but also change your mind.
Weight loss can strongly influence one’s physical health. For overweight and obese people, losing weight can help reduce risk of many chronic disease, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart diseases and some cancers.
When people have healthy weight, they have better body image, higher self-confidence and higher self-esteem. They become happier.
Healthy body weight can also protect people from mental illness, such as depression, anxiety and feeling stressed.
Of course, losing weight too extremely will harm one’s health. Too intensive weight loss can cause mental problems.
One example is eating disorder. People with this mental disorder cannot eat properly and the can become very ill.
One recent study published in Obesity Science and Practice checked if worsening mental health could negatively impact weight loss.
Traditionally, intensive lifestyle interventions is the main weight loss treatment. The interventions include health dieting, regular exercise, and some education courses.
In the study, the lifestyle intervention was delivered weekly for the first 14 weeks, followed by 10 biweekly or monthly sessions until 1 year.
All participants in the study had prediabetes and overweight/obesity. One group received the lifestyle intervention treatment.
The other group received metformin and standard care to manage their diabetes symptoms.
Researchers measured all participants’ mental health status during the intervention program.
They found that people in the lifestyle intervention group had greater weight loss and larger mental health improvement.
Interestingly, the results showed that mental health status could influence weight loss outcomes.
In the lifestyle intervention group, For people who only worsened on only one mental health measure (stress, anxiety or depression), they still experienced significant but less weight loss.
For those who worsened on two or three mental health measures, they experienced no weight change.
These effects were not found in the metformin/standard care group.
It seems that when people change their lifestyle to lose body weight, their mental health changes may impact weight loss.
The researchers suggest that as the lifestyle intervention continues, the contact between participants and between participants and program trainers became less frequent.
This could lead to less psychological support and increase the risk of mental issues in overweight and obese people.
The more serious mental problems people have, the less weight loss they will experience.
The researchers conclude that in the future, weight loss treatment through lifestyle intervention should pay more attention to people’s mental health and provide more psychological support.
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