This has been a difficult article to write. Partly because this is a painful topic for many, and partly because I have to be completely open and vulnerable to write about it. I only write this in the hope it can help others in similar situations. Nothing in this article is meant to judge you. If someone judges you for being or feeling fat, they should go f…figure out themselves. Judging people inside the fat trap just intensifies their misery and reduces the odds they can get out of it.

Let’s start with my story. I have been overweight (occasionally bordering on obese) from about age 8 to 23. At 23 I found out I was pre-diabetic and went on a strict three month diet that put me back on a healthy weight. I’ve maintained a healthy weight since then till the present (I’m 40 now). However, I’ve spent most of that time focused (sometimes obsessed) with not becoming fat again and generally struggling with food. It is only in the past couple of years that I am finally starting to trust myself with food and giving up the feelings of worry and insecurity about how my body looks and feels.

The notion of two traps, a physical trap and a mental trap, comes from Allen Carr’s fantastic Easy Way To Stop Smoking. He states, quite convincingly, that there is a physical aspect to smoking (nicotine addiction) and a mental aspect to smoking (feeling that you need it).

I believe that the fat trap is also physical and mental. Let’s start with the physical, which is the easiest to understand. There is a range of body fat percentage that is healthy. If you are outside (probably above) this percentage, you are damaging your health. The science is unequivocal on this. What the range is is a bit harder to ascertain, but, from what I’ve read, it is about 10-20% for men and 15-25% for women.

The physical trap of being fat is being physically laden with just too much fat. Besides the overall damage to your health, it is less fun to be in an overweight body: you have less energy; you have more aches; it is harder to move, your sleep is worse. As painful and sad this is, there is no denying it.

Now, I believe the body positivity movement is a great step forward. Body positivity is about accepting others’ bodies, as well as your own, without regard to size, shape and gender. For those inside the fat trap, this brings tremendous relief. Being judged for being fat, or for being obsessed about fat, is almost always extremely counterproductive. It is harmful. If you are a non-fat person that goes around judging fat people, it might astonish you to find out that most fat people are painfully and constantly aware that they are fat, as well as the fact that that’s bad for them and they should make a change. There is nothing to be gained and everything to lose by judging someone for being fat. Eating disorders have extremely high mortality rates among psychiatric disorders: if you’re making someone feel bad about their weight, you may well be increasing the likelihood they will die sooner.

And while self-acceptance is essential to get out of the mental fat trap, I don’t think you should accept that you are going to be overweight or even obese for the rest of your life. I might be wrong, but I believe you have a choice. It might be a very difficult choice, and it may take years, but you have the choice to step out of the fat trap. Both of them.

Getting out of the physical fat trap, strictly speaking, is simple:

• Develop basic sleep habits so that you get decent sleep.
• Exercise daily or almost daily.
• Walk 7500 steps a day.
• Reduce refined carbs, unhealthy fats and alcohol from your diet. Focus on getting enough vegetables, fruits, complex carbs and healthy fats.
• In some cases, you’ll also need medical advice, particularly if you have hormonal issues.

If you stick to the above, you’ll be out of the physical fat trap in a few months — if you are morbidly obese, it might take a couple of years. But it doesn’t really matter how long it will take. What matters is that you start the journey.

Simple, however, is not easy. And what really makes it hard to stick with a healthy lifestyle is the mental fat trap.

The mental fat trap is the most difficult one to escape. For me, it manifests in the following thoughts:

• I want food but I can’t have it.
• If I have what I want, I will be fat again.
• I cannot trust myself with food.
• I don’t look good enough to feel good about myself.
• When I manage to achieve X target weight, then I will feel good.
• Counting the days or weeks until you reach “your goal”.
• I’m too old not to be fat.
• I don’t have the genes not to be fat.
• I don’t have the genes to eat healthily.
• Let’s read about this diet.

These thoughts are the walls of the mental fat trap. It is an obsession with the problem of being or feeling fat, even if you’re objectively not overweight. A typical pattern (at least for me) is to fixate on “when will I get there”. The answer is: you are there now. It is only through daily acceptance and work that you can be free. This point comes straight from Carr’s insight: that the mental trap is a waiting-for-nothing. When you focus on the present, the trap dissolves.

If getting out of the physical trap is to switch to a healthy lifestyle and stick with it, getting out of the mental trap is to leave behind the thoughts that keep you obsessed with food and dieting. Getting out is learning to identify as someone that no longer has issues with food, and that is healing every day from the wounds of being in the fat trap.

How to get out of the mental fat trap? I know three ways only.

• Therapy.
• Meditation.
• Read books on the subject.

Therapy is going to reveal painful, uncomfortable truths that you’ve been avoiding — or rather, confronting indirectly through your obsession with food. Therapy can also give you tools to replace your harmful thoughts with better alternatives.

Meditation will give you space to detach from your thoughts, so that you can identify them and be able to start letting some of them go.

Reading is probably the easiest starting point. I can highly recommend Geneen Roth’s Breaking Free from Emotional Eating. This book taught me about how some of us use food as a way to comfort ourselves, numb ourselves, and generally avoid or withstand painful aspects of our lives. Another great recommendation is Andrew Dasselaar’s Let Go. Both books are based on harrowing personal trials by the authors. Geneen has been helping people out of the fat trap for decades.

I’m still not out of the mental fat trap, at least not yet. I’m mostly out, and very grateful to have made it this far, but I still worry about food every other day or so. For me, getting out of this trap is a process of letting go of those thoughts that make food the main problem of my life, as well as the go-to solution for any uncomfortable feelings that arise.

I hope to have helped you, and not hurt you. If you think any of this is wrong or counterproductive, please let me know ([email protected]) and I will carefully consider your opinion.