Empathy can help a loved one lose weight

It’s hard to watch a loved one gain more and more weight when they’ve been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Losing weight may save eyesight, a limb or a life, but that may not make sticking to a diet possible.

Sadly there are too many stories of losing a loved one who needed to lose weight to save their life – literally needed to lose weight to save their life. It seems hard to understand how a disease that puts one’s life at risk and could be reversed or at least managed by weight loss, isn’t motivation enough for successful weight loss. No matter how much they tried to get their family member to lose weight to save their life, they couldn’t do it.

shutterstock_263824958

Threats don’t work. Dire predictions don’t work. Anger and disgust don’t work. Bribes don’t work, at least not long enough to make a difference. There is something that can make a difference. It’s empathy.

Empathy isn’t sympathy. Being empathic is feeling with the person. Sympathy is feeling for the person. Empathy can empower. Sympathy can further disable. Sympathy is accepting the condition is permanent. Empathy is knowing how hard it is to lose weight and understanding the challenges the other person faces. The understanding is how you can help them overcome them.

Empathy is experiencing another person’s condition from their perspective. In other words, you open up your mind to imagine yourself as if you were them. You feel what they are feeling. It’s not, “if I were you.” It’s “I am you.”

Before you stop reading this because you think it’s a bunch of psychobabble, let me put the theory of empathy into a practical application.

Sympathy

  • Ailene is diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Her doctor advises her that losing 80 pounds could reverse the disease. If she doesn’t lose weight she is likely to die of complications of her disease.
  • Ailene wants to live and hopes that this diagnosis is what she’s been needing to finally help her to lose weight. She discovers that a deadly disease isn’t powerful enough to get her to change her behaviors to enable her to lose weight.
  • Kevin, her sympathetic husband wants to help his wife. He feels sorry for her and scared for her but he doesn’t understand how her disease hasn’t brought about immediate changes in eating and exercising.
  • He reminds her how important it is that she lose weight. He gives her what he believes is support and help. “Should you eat that? You’re going to have seconds? Did you exercise today? Have you lost any weight yet?”
  • Ailene and Kevin feel hopeless. Kevin doesn’t understand her and his “help” is nagging that serves to reminds her of how stuck she is in her pattern of destructive behavior.

Empathy

  • Ailene is diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Her doctor advises her that losing 80 pounds could reverse the disease. If she doesn’t lose weight she is likely to die of complications of her disease.
  • Ailene wants to live and hopes that this diagnosis is what she’s been needing to finally help her to lose weight. She discovers that a deadly disease isn’t powerful enough to get her to change her behaviors to enable weight loss.
  • Kevin, her empathic husband wants to help his wife. He puts himself in her shoes to enable himself to understand her challenges. He listens to her and pays attention to her non-verbal cues to get a real sense of what she’s facing and how she feels about it.
  • He doesn’t question her about her eating and exercising, and understands she’s doing the best she can to make small changes.
  • He praises the small steps she’s making to lose weight. He helps her set achievable goals.

 

Empathy isn’t about pity parties. It’s not joining somebody in their despair. It’s understanding their condition and using that understanding to work with them, where they are, to move forward. It’s helping somebody decide what they want, how they can get it, and getting assurance that they can and will.

 

 

 

 

Jackie Conn

About Jackie Conn

Jackie Conn is married and has four grown daughters and four grandchildren. She is a Weight Watchers success story. She's a weight loss expert with 25 years of experience guiding women and men to their weight-related goals. Her articles on weight management have been published in health, family and women's magazines. She has been a regular guest on Channel 5 WABI news, FOX network morning program Good Day Maine and 207 on WCSH.