Why Your Partner Might Not Want You To Lose Weight

You're ready to begin losing weight and you probably expect your partner to support you. Nothing particularly unusual or unreasonable in that and you may well be right. You may on the other hand be surprised to find out that for a whole host of reasons, they might prefer you to stay exactly as you are.

It probably sounds a bit odd at first. If you want to lose weight, then naturally they want that for you too, because they want what makes you happy, right? Well, that may be so on one level, but there may be a whole other thinking process going on at an unconscious level, which contradicts this entirely.

Conscious v Unconscious

Your conscious mind is what you use to think and reason with. It's the part you hear talking in your head and it is bound by all your beliefs and values. You are aware of what goes on at this level. If you think of your mind in terms of an iceberg, then the conscious mind is the bit above the water.

Your unconscious mind is like the engine that powers the machine. It's there in the background, constantly evaluating and passing information up to the conscious mind, so that you become aware of it. It's working 24/7 because it runs your body for you, making your heart beat and keeping your breathing going while you sleep for example. It starts as a blank when you are born and evolves in line with your life experience. Your memories and beliefs are stored here and you will be oblivious to most of its work.

One very important thing to understand about your unconscious mind, is that it always has your best interests at heart. It always wants what's best for you. That in itself is not too hard to understand. What complicates things is that sometimes it goes about things in a way which conceals this good intent very effectively.

Lets' look at an example. Sue is very overweight and because of this she is very shy and avoids social situations. She would love to have a boyfriend, but is convinced that no-one will love her because she is fat. Not an uncommon scenario at all, in fact you may well know someone just like Sue. Now, Sue's unconscious mind understands her underlying fear of rejection - this is actually one of the most common fears on the planet - and so it maintains her body weight at an elevated level, knowing that this will give Sue a reason to avoid situations, where she may come up against that rejection. In this respect, her being overweight actually protects her. She can hide behind her weight if you like, can avoid the risk of rejection by pinning it on her being overweight. Obviously, being overweight brings with it other issues, amongst which you are likely to find low self esteem, but in this one aspect her unconscious mind is fulfilling one of it's most important functions and protecting her.

This is the same for everyone. Your unconscious mind is your greatest ally and is always on your side.

The next thing to understand is self esteem. Put very simply, self esteem is the difference between how we see ourselves now and how we would ideally like to be. We use all kinds of things to measure these two things, many of which are not actually very helpful in truth! If you take body image as an example, how useful is it to compare yourself to an airbrushed picture of a skinny super model, who spent 3 hours in makeup, before the shot you are looking at was taken by a professional photographer? Not very you say, and yet we all do it to some degree. We compare ourselves to ideals and people we know nothing about, and then, surprise surprise, we come up short!

We also base our lives on that which is known and familiar and compare things and people, in order to decide where we fit in. We all have a friend we look at and think "I wish I had her x", or "He has much nicer y than me". Our world is safe and familiar to us, even if it is not always happy or comfortable.

So, knowing this, put yourself in your partner's shoes. You are part of their world, you, just as you are. Now you are going to change something about yourself and in so doing, change something in their world, which is not in their control. You are going to alter a reference point and that may be scary for them at some level.

Bring their self esteem into the equation and you open up a whole other realm of possibilities. If you change, will you suddenly feel differently about them? about how they look? Will you still fancy them? Will other people suddenly fancy you and tempt you away? Will you still need them in the same way? There are lots of things that might go through their mind, which will mean that they'd prefer to keep you just as you are. They are unlikely to be aware of this consciously and if they are, they are even less likely to admit it - let's be honest, they're difficult ideas to put a positive spin on aren't they?! How do you say "Actually I'd prefer you stayed overweight, because despite the health risks to you and the fact that you don't feel good about yourself, I'm scared you might not need me so much if you lose weight" without sounding selfish or insecure?!

There are a whole other group of people who would rather you didn't lose weight, because they are controlling or selfish, but let's not waste time worrying about them.

So, what can you do if you suspect your partner might not want you to lose weight unconsciously? There are a number of things you can do, starting with getting your own head straight, about your reasons for wanting to lose weight. Then you can either be direct and talk to your partner about how they feel about your desire to change and its possible ramifications. If you don't want to do that, or you try and still don't get the support you need, you can either change the way you deal with their lack of support, or try more subtle ways to find out what their issues are.

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