Weighty Mind, Weighty Body: How Our Mind Causes Us to Have Weight Imbalance

Often, the most important relationship we have as we go through life is with ourselves. As we accumulate life experiences, whether positive or negative, constructive or destructive, we create stories for ourselves. These stories hold the key to our wellness and sanity. It is not as simple as telling ourselves that “I am a good person” or “I am a bad person.” It is more complicated than that. Our story for ourselves is frequently multi-layered, loaded sometimes with contradictions and maybe even self-harms.

There is always a tug-of-war between our body and mind regarding food, eating, and satiety. Our body might say, “you are hungry; you need to eat.” or “this is an exquisite chocolate cake; you should eat it.” These are not necessarily wrong statements. Appropriate satiety, balance, and pleasure-seeking activities are a MUST for nourishing our body and soul. It is when we turbocharge or enhance these statements such as “You should eat as fast and as much as you can” or “this is a great cake; you need to eat it all.” That’s when we get into trouble with our weight and our health, and even harmful to our minds. After our binge activity, we tend to blame ourselves and then do it again. It is a vicious, negative cycle that creates hate. Then the hate compounds like a bank account with interest, and a deep rabbit hole is created, making it increasingly difficult to pull ourselves out of it.

One late morning in the summer, I walked along a multi-purpose fire road, in my neighborhood, for both hikers and cyclists. It was a beautiful day but a little on the hot side. As I ascended upward, I saw a HUGE rattlesnake lying in the middle of the path, and I could not get around it. As I got closer, I realized that the snake was quite giant in the center. It seemed to me that the snake just engorged a big meal. I would say a little too big for this snake to handle. It seemed not to want to move away, and I could not go around it. I decided to stomp hard on the ground. Someone told me snakes sense ground vibrations and will move out of the way if the vibration is big enough. Well, the snake did not budge at all. I then took a rock and threw it hard right next to it without harming it. But again, the snake did not move. I looked for a larger rock to create even more vibration on the ground. In the meantime, a cyclist whooshed down the hill, running over and killing the snake. It was not a pretty sight. I felt awful and buried the snake and went on my way. As usual, I asked myself, is there a lesson in this? It cannot be as simple as if one is too full; one should not cross the street. Maybe it is about balance; too much of something, even though good for you, may not be good in the end after all.  

Life is like carrying a backpack. When we walk through the trail of life, we pick up experiences, good and bad, and stuff them into our backpacks. Frequently our backpacks become too heavy and weigh our minds and bodies down.

It is time to do a mental cleansing and eliminate things you don’t need. Get rid of thoughts that are not conducive to a well-balanced life. When we lighten our minds, we can lighten our bodies. A lighter sense is a form of enlightenment that transforms our understanding between needs and wants; a lighter sense reduces and diminishes our excessive wants and desires. Then we can dance through our life instead of dragging. Therefore the first step to a more balanced weight is lightening our minds.