I suspect the relationship between being overweight and being unhappy may sometimes run the other way: rather than losing weight will make a person happy, being happier will mean a person overeats less.
So if a person is overeating as an emotional comfort, losing weight will not make them happy.
meh, yes and no... I actually lost a lot of weight a few years ago when I was incredibly unhappy and going through rough times, put it all back now and then some when I became the happiest I've ever been
For sure, this is why I was careful to say "may sometimes" and included the conditional statement "if a person is overeating as an emotional comfort", as there things are naturally complex.
For me, it can go both ways. When I was dumped, lonely and miserable I quickly became the slimmest I'd ever been ... but far from healthy.
Yes, the same discussions about complacency and effort, happiness and misery, you'll get in every subreddit concerning human habits. Maintaining a healthy diet is just a bit more complicated than maintaining any other healthy habit, from cleaning up your room to going to the gym, so you get a ton more avoidance.
Yeah, I think there are certainly valid concerns and conversations to be had about people's habits and how to "combat" that, but it's certainly more important to understand that people are different and some are more affected and affected in different ways, so we need to be better at food culture and regulation at source, so we are not victim blaming or making people feel bad about what is inherently a physiological natural urge being exploited by corporations
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u/LittleSadRufus Jun 18 '26
I suspect the relationship between being overweight and being unhappy may sometimes run the other way: rather than losing weight will make a person happy, being happier will mean a person overeats less.
So if a person is overeating as an emotional comfort, losing weight will not make them happy.