This week I was re-editing a short programme I wrote called the ‘Body Image Reset’, which is a self-paced workbook to improve your understanding of body-image and how to create a healthy relationship to yourself.
In one of the sections I discuss the benefit of looking at the history of how your body has changed over the years as it is a representation and insight into a part of your life story. When this is done across many people, different characteristic patterns present themselves. Here are some of the most common patterns: (See the photos down the page)
Classic Yo-Yo Dieter – They can both gain or lose weight easily in either direction. In the pic below the person has gained weight 4 times in their life and successfully lost it three times.
The Gradual Gainer – This person has very gradually gained weight over a period of time with only minor successes in weight loss attempts. This means they continue to gradually increase.
The Specific Period Gainer – This person has gained weight due to a specific time period within their life. Outside of this period they are pretty much in balance with their body weight and remain stable.
Events causing this could include – pregnancy, bereavement, break ups, depression, change of lifestyle, e.g. travelling, heavy workload, new partner, house etc.
Static Patterns – For some people their body remains stable all their life, this could be that they are at their goal and stay there or as is commonly seen now, have been overweight since young and remained there during adult life.
A Combined Pattern – Often in the real world people show more than one of the above patterns at different stages of their life.
Maybe they first gained weight during a specific period and then went through a period of Yo-Yo dieting with changes of weight up and down for a few years. This was followed by a period of gradual weight gain up until present day
Transformation Patterns – When people make a transformation that sticks, the majority of the time it is done in a slow and gradual way. That said, a fair percentage of people do it with a more rapid loss approach. These produce two different patterns on the chart.
What Does This Mean For You
These graphs allow us to detach from the emotion of our body shape and history and instead analyse the three main areas of how you gain, maintain and lose weight. This gives us an insight into what areas need to be worked on for results.
Many people see that they have only gained weight in one or two periods during their life, this should give you confidence you are good at maintaining your results outside of the gaining periods. You may find that you are good at losing fat but tend to always put it back, you should feel positive that you can actually lose fat (most struggle) but understand you need to look at ways to develop your skills in maintaining your results.
There are of course no better or worse body history graphs, almost everyone’s pattern will be shared by many thousands to millions of other people just like all the facets of body shape. I would suggest you draw out your own body history and then ask yourself these questions:
How Many times Have You Gained Weight?
How Many times Have You Lost Weight?
What is the total amount of fat lost in your lifetime?
How long Have You Been Stable with your weight(s)?
Feel free to share your answers with me.
Photo – The two main transformation type patterns:
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