"Do not make a cult out of food," Ostap Bender warned us back in his time, but they did not listen to him. And maybe that's why, by now, being overweight has become a worldwide problem. As they say, everything that is pleasant is either immoral, or criminal, or leads to obesity.

The general crisis of values ​​has given rise to a lifestyle based on the pursuit of momentary pleasures. The pleasure of eating begins and ends at the level of the mouth, and as a result, humanity is balancing between Scylla and Charybdis - excess weight and exhaustion.

This is not an exaggeration at all, because today's statistics make it possible to declare obesity (not amenable to treatment) as the non-communicable epidemic of our century, and mentions in news bulletins about another deceased victim of anorexia have ceased to surprise anyone.

Residents of developed countries "met" overweight a little earlier, but today this problem has affected even the most remote corners of the planet. For example, in the US, the number of obese people reaches 45%. At the same time, in the cities of the little-known country of Samoa, the number of overweight citizens exceeds 75%.
And now some statistics on Russia. Treatment.

Russia is currently one of the five most "obese" countries in the world. According to the estimates of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, 60% of women and 50% of men over 30 in our country are overweight. And of the older population, more than 50% are overweight people. But the most surprising thing is that the Russians treat the problem of excess weight philosophically calmly and do not think about its treatment.

According to research by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, the majority of Russians (70%) say that they are satisfied with the current weight of their own body, whatever it may be (happy people!). More than half (65%) of those surveyed consider the problem of excess weight irrelevant for themselves, and a quarter are only slightly concerned about their size. And only 9% panic at the sight of extra centimeters at the waist, and then only because they are afraid of losing their sex appeal.

According to statistics, overweight people age faster and live shorter lives. They are three times more likely to be diagnosed and more difficult to treat diseases such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, twice as likely to have atherosclerosis, as well as a higher risk of developing cancer, lesions joints, blood vessels, gallbladder and other organs.

Obesity is a very complex, complex problem, because there are more causes for it than common remedies for dealing with it.

Here are some of those reasons:

1. Primary obesity is not associated with any disease. It is caused by an excess of calories in food. It is typical for families where everyone is overweight, or where a child is taught to "eat well" from childhood.

2. Periodically arising bouts of gluttony (bulimia), after which there is an awareness of the inadmissibility of such behavior, but there is no way to cope with oneself. This is not a disease, but some kind of behavioral disorder that can be corrected with the help of psychotherapy.

3. Wrong diet, which can be associated both with ignorance of what you need to eat to maintain a normal weight, and with financial opportunities (dietary products are expensive, and not everyone can afford vegetables and fruits in winter). Unfortunately, this applies to most Russians.

4. Heredity.

5. A sedentary lifestyle with a tendency to eat well.

6. Secondary obesity is a manifestation of some diseases:

hypothyroidism (lack of thyroid hormones);
hypercortisolism (excessive amount of hormones of the adrenal cortex - corticosteroids);
hyperinsulinism (an excessive amount of insulin - a pancreatic hormone that regulates the flow of glucose into cells);
brain diseases (tumors, etc.);
hereditary genetic syndromes (rare).

7. Taking certain medications such as hormonal contraceptives, steroid hormones, etc.

8. In addition, the role of age, gender, professional factors, some physiological conditions (pregnancy, lactation, menopause) is undoubted.

9. And finally, psychological reasons, which we will consider in detail below.

To ordinary consciousness, the main reason for the obesity of most people in our country is seen as a heavy ancestral memory of wars and hunger strikes, ignorance of the basics of proper nutrition, and the lack of a culture of caring for one's body. Many hours of employment does not allow most residents of the metropolis to find time (or desire) for physical activities. A typical daily routine: a person wakes up, has a light snack and runs to work. He doesn't really eat there. but after the end of the working day he dine "to satiety". This happens at the most inopportune time for good absorption of food, which leads to the accumulation of fat.
This is both true and not true at the same time. Not all people leading such a lifestyle are overweight.

Today, there are two main traditional approaches to the problem of weight correction in medicine.

One of them is to consider an excessive increase or decrease in weight as a disease, which is based on some kind of metabolic processes, most often hormonal. Accordingly, the treatment in this case is medication. What do, for example, pills: they either break down fat, or reduce appetite, or increase intestinal peristalsis. But at the same time, the organism remains indifferent, it does not participate in this process. The deep cause of the onset of the disease, hormonal imbalance is not clarified, but simply a struggle is being fought with the consequences. There is a symptom and they learned how to eliminate it, but ... nothing more.

Another approach within traditional medicine is a psychotherapeutic view: a disease is an external expression of some psychological internal problems. There can be a variety of reasons, as, indeed, for any psychosomatosis. For example, some kind of suffering, dissatisfaction, conflict - a person, simply speaking, "seizes" problems, or, conversely, suffers so much that he cannot eat.

And the appropriate treatment is an attempt to cope with the psychological problem that caused the disease. And even more than that. Hormonal imbalance, the strength and speed of metabolism, all this we ourselves unconsciously regulate in our body. No one does it for us - we ourselves unconsciously manage these processes. And if a person eats little and still gains weight, then this, as Mayakovsky successfully noted in his time, "someone needs it."

Here are some hidden psychological motives for being overweight.

1. Perception of oneself as being insignificant, with whom no one considers, and at the same time the desire to control the environment, can lead to an unconscious desire to take up more space.

2. Lack of security in childhood, when you are still too young to protect yourself and depend on everyone, can lead to the same result (there should be many good people).

3. Overprotection of the mother or her substitute (especially when accustoming the child to pot), forming a masochistic type of character with a characteristic physique. The desire to occupy as much space as possible in the lives of loved ones, to shoulder as many problems as possible that give significance, leads to an increase in body weight. The masochist gets fat in proportion to the place he wants to occupy in life.

4. Localization of body fat in women in the abdomen, waist and hips - protection from encroachment of men - fear of sexual intimacy.

5. Finally, we eat stress. And not only stress, but also any unpleasant emotions or even thoughts. This is especially true for single women. Man is a social being. He, like air, needs communication with his own kind and the exchange of signs of attention (according to Eric Berne - a shortage of strokes). Oral pleasure from eating is a universal way to compensate for a variety of frustrations. And since all other methods are more costly in terms of volitional efforts, our hand involuntarily reaches for a pack of cookies, or a box of sweets, or a bag of nuts. And the mood improves, the blood sugar level rises, we are saved!

6. Many, many, many individual reasons that allow a person to live the way he lives, without changing anything, to avoid events that he considers potentially dangerous for himself. For example, a woman who does not believe in herself, is afraid of someone else's assessment, suffers from her husband's inattention, trembles in front of her boss and has given up on herself for a long time, finds an excuse for being overweight: "What can I change, I'm such a grower. Where should I look for another work, another man… another life… After all, in order to change something, you have to strain, sacrifice something…"
All of the above reasons are absolutely valid, protective for the individual as a whole, allow her to better psychologically adapt to difficult environmental conditions. And if we consider overweight as part of protective behavior, which basically has a positive intention to preserve the personality, the whole arsenal of means with which we have worked with other psychosomatoses is applicable to it.

But at the same time, active participation is expected from a person - he himself must want to get rid of the psychological problem that has taken deep roots in his mind and led to obesity. And the difficulty is just that people do not want this, because it comes with pain.

A person is not ready not only for the fact that his life will change in terms of his appearance. He is not ready to change his attitude towards others, to himself, to the fact that he will have to forgive someone or, conversely, to sort things out with someone - to do just what he does not want. That is why the