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Psycho-social and other factors

Injuries and obesity

A common cause of obesity or worsening of obesity is to sustain an injury. Physical activity is a major factor in regulation of weight. The professional athlete, the laborer, or the office clerk who sustains an injury and is no longer able to be as physically active will gain weight. The body does not automatically decrease calorie intake when physical activity decreases; rather, one has to make a conscious effort to monitor food intake. The vast majority of injured individuals are not initially concerned about weight gain and may not even be aware of it. However, the weight gain can lead to a vicious cycle of worsening the injury causing less physical activity and further weight increases. Even worse, once obesity is established, it is very unlikely that an individual will return to the pre-injury weight (it has to do with changes that take place in the body).

Speak to your healthcare professional as early as possible for direction in preventing this complication. (As an aside, we do have obesity programs designed to help injured workers who may have their injuries complicated by obesity. For more information, click here.)

Sexual abuse and obesity

After I authored a brief article about this, several other articles have addressed the link between sexual abuse and obesity. Insufficient data has been collected so far to determine whether the same correlation exists for obese males. It has been known for years that sexual abuse of women is associated with eating disorders (anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa); but at the time, nothing had been published about the association with obesity.

In a sense, obesity protects a person from their sexuality since, in Western culture, obesity is frowned upon. It is obviously a coping mechanism, albeit a deleterious one. Frequently, survivors of sexual abuse have low self-esteem and severe problems with depression. They often feel that it is their fault that the sexual abuse took place — an emotional but totally illogical belief. Additionally, there is some experimental evidence that suggests that the increases in so-called "stress hormones," such as cortisol, that result from extreme psychological stress can induce the proliferation of fat cells and predispose sexual abuse victims to the development of obesity.

If you are a victim of sexual abuse and are having problems, there is help available. There are groups that deal with sexual abuse and private therapists and psychiatrists available to help. If you are a victim, please get help. Pretending the problem does not exist does not make it go away and leads to years of unhappiness.

Getting therapy to help understand and deal with the sexual abuse may not help you lose weight immediately, but will make you much better off and make it easier to address weight management at a later date.

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