 There was a really interesting study done about women and being overweight and you might be surprised as to what the actual cause was. So make sure that you stay tuned to find out. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And this video was actually inspired by the book I've mentioned. It's called Lost Connections. It's an amazing book about depression. I highly, highly, highly recommend it to everybody. I will leave a link to the book down below. But anyways, this is a study that was about people who were overweight and specifically I wanted to focus on the female aspect of it. So there's two main reasons why I'm making this video. The first one is to increase empathy, okay? And this is very important because so many people, and like I know this because I'm an overweight guy, so many people just look at somebody who's overweight and they just get these harsh judgments about why this person's overweight. And they lack this empathy, okay? And one of these people, somebody I've mentioned on my channel before, Miss Nicole Arbor. I'm talking about the 35% of North Americans who are obese. That means you are so fat, you are affecting your own health. So yeah, this video is to help increase empathy. So if you happen to stumble across this video, please share this video. Please help people get some knowledge about what is actually happening behind the scenes and why people are becoming overweight. Now, I will make it very clear, in this video I'm going to be talking about a study and it's the answer to the question as to why some women are overweight. It's not all women, it is some women. The second reason I'm making this video is because what I do here at the Rewired Soul is provide people with solutions to problems that they're dealing with with their mental health. So please make sure that you stay around until the end of this video because I'm going to provide you with not one, but two different solutions, okay? So this interesting study that happened was actually taking place in San Diego a few decades ago, okay? There is a big company called Kaiser Permanente and they hired this outside doctor to come in, find out what's going on because obesity was something that was really driving their cost up. So they said, look, come out here, wipe the slate clean, look at it with a fresh pair of eyes, see what's going on. We need people to start losing weight because it's costing us a lot of money. So he's like, okay, he does all this research and he actually finds this fasting diet that can work for people. And it's actually a great diet. I'm actually going to look into it and see what it's about, but it can help people lose massive amounts of weight. And once they get to this point, then they can start eating a little bit more regularly, right? So this was going to have great success. So they got a group of people and they implemented it, right? And they were highly supervised to make sure everything was safe and the results were amazing, okay? So people were losing weight, like just, but not like 10, 20 pounds. We're talking about hundreds of pounds. People are losing weight. Now throughout this process, something really weird happened that the doctor noticed. When all these people are losing weight, you'd expect them to be happier, more excited. Just, yay, I've lost weight. Like that's how I get when I lose weight, but something the exact opposite was happening. People were developing a lot of anxiety. They were getting depressed. Some people were just freaking out and they would leave the program, go binge eat and put all this weight back on. And this doctor sitting there like, what's going on? These people should be happy about all the ways they're losing. Like what is happening? So he decided to get down to the bottom of it. So he did something that not many doctors were doing and still not many doctors do today. But instead of just going in their face and wagging their finger and saying, why did you fall off that program? He wanted to sit down with these people instead of talking at them. He wanted to start listening to them. He wanted to start understanding why they were putting on this weight. Why were people freaking out? So he started to interview a lot of different people who got very emotionally distressed in this program and decided to leave. He wanted to sit down and find out what the actual root cause of this was. So one of the first women that he interviewed was about 28 years old. And when he met her, she was about 408 pounds. Now over the course of 51 weeks, so almost a year, she went from 408 pounds down to 132 pounds. Now once she got down to that weight, something happened to her and in about a month, she gained 40 pounds back. And over the course of the following months, she was back up to over 400 pounds and he wanted to understand why this happened. So he sat down with her and just started asking her questions like, what happened? How did you feel when you lost all this weight? How did it make you feel? And as they got deeper and deeper through this discussion, an instance came to mind and she said, after she dropped all that weight, one of her colleagues, who she worked with, came and he started hitting on her and approaching her and she knew very well that this man was married and that kind of freaked her out. So she decided to start putting weight back on, right? The doctor proceeds to ask her and he asks, he says, when did you start putting on weight? And she says about the time I was 11 years old and he said, did anything else happen around the time you were 11 years old? Like he wanted to figure out, like why didn't you start putting on weight a year before or a year after? Was there anything around this time that happened around the time you started to gain weight? And as she was talking to him, she told him that she had never told anybody else before. When she was 11 years old, her grandfather started to rape her. So when he found that out, he was kind of taken aback because nobody was really getting down to the issue. So something that has been talked about in this book many times is that we're often trying to battle the smoke rather than actually getting down to the fire. Like what's actually happened? What's causing that smoke? Because a lot of people have these underlying issues. So what this doctor did was he started interviewing more and more people who fell off from this program. And when he did this, he found that 55% of the people who were in the program, not even just the people who fell off, but 55% of the people in the program, specifically women, were sexually abused as children. Now think about that for a second. 55% of these people who were morbidly obese in this program, these women, were sexually abused as children. Then as he started interviewing more men, while some of them were sexually abused as children, some of them, if not all of them, had some sort of childhood trauma. One of the women in the interview said something that was really impactful. She said overweight means overlooked. So some of these women were actually putting on weight because when they felt like they were overweight, that men weren't looking at them and they wouldn't have to deal with men hitting on them. So again, like I said at the beginning of this video, one of the main reasons I made this video is to increase some empathy. Too often we look at people and we say, oh, that person's just overweight. They just need to control their eating. Or we look at somebody who's in a bad mood and we say, oh, they just need to be nicer. We are so selfish and self-centered by nature that we're never trying to think past it. We're never trying to think what's really going on with that person. What was their upbringing like? What's their home life like? Is there a reason why this person is the way that they are? And that's something that I experience a lot by working with clients on a day-to-day basis. I work at a drug and alcohol rehab center. When I actually sit down and talk with my clients, like within the first 10 minutes of just talking to them about how they grew up and different situations in their life, within about 10 minutes, I just sit there. I'm like, no wonder you became a drug addict. So many people struggle with other issues but all we're looking at is the tip of the iceberg. The first solution I wanted to offer anybody out there who's struggling with their weight is a program that I actually went through. I've done some other videos about Dr. Judson Brewer. He recently came out with an anxiety app, but the app that I went through first was called Eat Right Now. And I will put a link down below. Unfortunately, I don't have a coupon code for it, but maybe after I show Dr. Judson Brewer this video, he'll hook us up with one, so stay tuned. Make sure you subscribe. But anyways, I went through the Eat Right Now program and something that they did in that Kaiser Permanente study, they started setting up different support groups. So the Eat Right Now program, it starts using mindfulness as a way to manage and lose weight. And it's great. It worked out for me because it wasn't about any kind of fad diet or anything like that. It was really being about conscious of the way I'm feeling, how my stomach feels. Am I just wanting more or am I full or am I actually hungry? But one of the best parts about this program is that every single week, they have a video conference call where it's pretty much a group setting. And one of the best things that you can do is be in a group environment so you know that you're not alone in this journey. Like every week when I would go into this group, I was like, oh man, that person's dealing with something, so am I. Oh, that person's dealing with this, so am I. And you start to feel less alone in your struggles on this journey to lose weight. It's a great option for anybody out there trying to lose weight and you need kind of a group support system. Now, option number two, for any of you who could really relate to this story that I was sharing, if any of you are finding that maybe your weight gain came from some kind of traumatic childhood, I will put a link down below to some online therapy which is very, very inexpensive. You have access to hundreds of therapists and they're always available. You can always find somebody who is willing to sit down and do some therapy with you. They're all licensed too. All right, so that is an affiliate link. So not only do you get a discount on it, but it also helps support this channel on what I'm doing. So if you are somebody who struggles with trauma or depression and you find that that's part of the source of your weight gain, make sure that you reach out and talk to a therapist. All right, some of you out there, you might find benefits from the one-on-one therapy as well as the group setting from the Eat Right Now program. Okay, so again, like I said, I hope this generated some empathy with some people out there, even if you don't struggle with weight gain. I hope it's helping you see a little bit past what you see on the outside. And like I said before, please share this video with other people so other people can start to develop this sort of empathy. All right, but anyways, thanks so much for watching. And if you liked this video, make sure you give it a thumbs up. And if you're new here, I'm always making videos to help you with your mental and emotional well-being. Make sure you click the little round subscribe button right below. And if you'd like to check out some other videos, click the top on one of those thumbnails right there. All right, so thank you again so much for watching. Try to be a little bit more empathetic today and I'll see you next time.