Why you keep gaining the weight back — and what actually changes when it stops
The psychology of lasting fat loss: why identity is the missing variable in obesity treatment
For informational and educational purposes only. This article does not constitute a clinical diagnosis, medical advice, or a substitute for professional psychological or medical assessment. If you are experiencing disordered eating, acute metabolic crisis, or body image distress, please consult a qualified clinician.
You know the feeling. Monday morning, fresh resolve. A new plan — cleaner, tighter, more specific than the last one. By Wednesday, you are negotiating. By Saturday, you have quietly agreed to start again next week. And somewhere underneath the negotiation, a question that no diet plan is designed to answer: what is wrong with me?
Nothing is wrong with you. What is happening is that your behaviour is perfectly consistent with your identity. The plan belongs to the person you want to become. The behaviour belongs to the person you currently believe yourself to be. And in that gap — between aspiration and identity — willpower is always eventually outspent.
India is home to an estimated 70–180 million adults living with obesity — figures vary by study depending on whether WHO international BMI thresholds (≥30) or India-specific thresholds are applied — representing one of the largest and fastest-growing obesity burdens in the world.[1] Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that more than one billion people are now living with obesity, nearly triple the rate of 1975.[2] Yet for all the dietary science, pharmacological advances, and surgical options now available, the most rigorous long-term outcome data tells a consistent story: more than 80% of people who lose weight through conventional means regain it within five years.[3] Not because the information was wrong. Because something deeper was never addressed.
In India, this problem is compounded by specific cultural dynamics: the equation of food with care and hospitality, family pressure around eating, the stigma that still attaches to visible body size, and a near-total absence of psychological support within most weight management programmes. The result is a population that knows more than ever about nutrition and exercises less than ever the psychological capacities that determine what they actually eat.
This article will take you through what conventional approaches miss, what three decades of clinical work with clients across more than 100 countries has taught me about why lasting change happens — and why, when it does, the person rarely feels like they are exercising discipline at all.
The fastest path to lasting fat loss:
a 6–10 day residential reset
If you have read enough and want to begin — not in a few months, but now — the residential retreat is the fastest clinical route to lasting fat loss that I know of. Immersive, medically supervised, and structured around the same MTP™ principles described in this article — but compressed into a format that produces what months of outpatient work often cannot: an environment-level reset of the conditioning itself.
control developed — not willpower, the impulse itself changes
The team
Why does the retreat work faster? Because the single largest obstacle to lasting change is the home environment — the same rooms, routines, relationships, and refrigerators that have reinforced the existing pattern for years. Remove that environment entirely for 6–10 days, replace it with a clinically structured alternative, and the nervous system has no choice but to begin forming new defaults. The hunger changes. The impulse changes. People leave not having exercised discipline for a week — but having become, even briefly, a different kind of person around food.
Retreats are available in limited capacity. Dates, location, and programme details on enquiry. Medical clearance required before booking. The 5–10 kg outcome range reflects clinical observations and is not a guarantee.
Obesity: what the science actually says
What is obesity — really?
The ICD-11 (International Classification of Diseases, 11th Revision) classifies obesity as a complex, chronic, multifactorial disease — not a failure of willpower, not a lifestyle choice, and not a character deficiency.[4] It is defined clinically by a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above, though clinical assessment must also account for body fat distribution, metabolic markers, and the psychological architecture beneath the visible presentation.
The primary features of obesity as a clinical condition include excess adipose tissue accumulation affecting multiple organ systems; disrupted hormonal signalling — particularly leptin and ghrelin, the hormones governing hunger and satiety; progressive insulin resistance; and, critically for the present discussion, disrupted neural reward pathways that alter the subjective experience of food-related pleasure and drive.[5] It is this last factor — the neurological dimension — that explains why conventional behavioural approaches so frequently produce temporary results.
What causes obesity — and why is it so hard to treat?
How does it develop? Obesity rarely has a single cause. Genetic predisposition, early childhood food environment, trauma history, stress and cortisol dysregulation, sedentary occupation, and the pervasive availability of hyper-palatable food all contribute. Crucially, the psychological literature increasingly points to identity-behaviour misalignment as a central maintaining mechanism: the person holds an implicit self-concept as "someone who struggles with food," and every decision — however consciously well-intentioned — is filtered through that self-concept before it becomes action.[6]
Common comorbidities include Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, obstructive sleep apnoea, chronic joint pain, depression, and anxiety. The bidirectional relationship with depression is particularly important clinically: obesity increases the risk of depression by approximately 55%, and depression increases the risk of obesity by approximately 58%.[7] This means treating body weight without addressing psychological state — and vice versa — is always going to be incomplete.
Obesity in India: why it is different here
The Indian context. In India, the picture has additional complexity. Urbanisation has produced a sharp transition from physically active rural lifestyles to sedentary urban ones, while food environments have shifted dramatically toward ultra-processed options. The concept of a thin person as unhealthy ("too thin") and a heavier person as prosperous is still culturally embedded in many families, creating a confusing double-bind — social pressure toward thinness from media, and social pressure toward fullness from family. Meanwhile, the psychological component of weight management is almost entirely absent from the Indian clinical conversation, where the default intervention remains diet prescription and pharmaceutical management.
Myths that are keeping people stuck
Before examining what actually works, it is worth clearing the field of what does not — starting with the beliefs that most directly prevent people from finding effective help.
Is identity-level work part of your picture?
This is not a diagnostic tool — it is an invitation to honest reflection. Select the statements that genuinely apply to you.
- I have successfully lost weight before, but regained it within 12 months.
- I know exactly what I should be eating, but regularly find myself choosing otherwise — especially under stress or in social situations.
- Exercise feels like something I have to force myself to do, rather than something I naturally want to do.
- A difficult day reliably leads to food choices I later regret — negative emotion and eating are connected for me.
- I feel, at some level, that my body does not reflect who I really am — there is a gap between my inner self-image and what I see.
- The thought of permanent dietary change produces a feeling of loss, not liberation — as though I would be giving something important up.
- I have tried multiple structured plans — diets, programmes, apps — and found them impossible to sustain beyond a few weeks.
- My internal conversation about my body and food tends to be harsh, critical, or punishing.
- I eat differently — and more healthily — when I am around certain people than others, suggesting my food choices are identity-state dependent.
- I sometimes feel that food is a source of comfort, reward, or emotional regulation that I genuinely do not know how to replace.
- I often know what I intend to eat before a meal, but find the actual decision feels as though it is made by a different part of me than the one that planned.
This is a reflection tool, not a clinical screening instrument. A qualified clinician is required for formal assessment. Scores above do not constitute a diagnosis.
Why conventional treatment so often falls short
Why don't diets work long-term?
Standard clinical management of obesity encompasses dietary intervention, physical activity counselling, pharmacotherapy, and — in severe presentations — bariatric surgery. Each of these has genuine value, and it would be neither accurate nor honest to dismiss them. Semaglutide and related GLP-1 receptor agonists, for instance, represent a genuine clinical advance, producing 15–20% body weight reduction in controlled trials.[12] Bariatric surgery, in appropriate cases, dramatically reduces mortality from metabolic disease. The science is real and the tools are useful.
And yet. The question is not whether these tools work in controlled conditions. The question is why, for the majority of people over the long term, the underlying pattern reasserts itself. The answer lies in what these approaches typically do not address.
Dietary prescriptions work at the level of information and conscious intention. They say: here is what you should eat. They do not reach the level at which decisions are actually made under pressure, fatigue, social context, and emotional state — which is to say, the unconscious level at which the majority of human behaviour is initiated automatically, below conscious awareness.[8] Cognitive-behavioural therapy reaches deeper, working at the level of thought patterns and conscious beliefs. It produces better outcomes than dietary advice alone. But even CBT largely operates in the cognitive, explicit-awareness layer and rarely penetrates to the level of identity and unconscious automaticity where the real architecture of eating behaviour is encoded.
Why psychological support for weight loss is missing in India
India has approximately 0.07 psychiatrists per 100,000 people and an even smaller number of qualified clinical psychologists per capita.[13] This means that for the vast majority of people struggling with weight, psychological support is simply not accessible — not in the public health system, and rarely recommended within private medical practice. The result is a population receiving dietary and pharmaceutical management without the psychological infrastructure that determines whether those interventions produce lasting change.
| Approach | What it addresses | Time to effect | Addresses root cause | Long-term outcomes | MTP™ Method |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diet plan / calorie prescription | Caloric intake, food selection | 2–4 weeks | No | Poor — 80%+ regain | – |
| GLP-1 / pharmacotherapy | Appetite hormones, satiety signalling | 4–8 weeks | Partial | Moderate — regain on cessation | – |
| Bariatric surgery | Stomach volume, hormonal reset | Immediate | No | Good for mortality; psychological patterns persist | – |
| Cognitive Behavioural Therapy | Conscious thought patterns | 3–6 months | Partial | Moderate — better than dietary alone | – |
| MTP™ Method | Identity + unconscious patterns + cognitive frameworks | 4–12 weeks | Yes — identity layer | Strong — impulse nature shifts | ✓ All three levels |
Table is illustrative and based on clinical outcome literature and practice observation. MTP™ outcomes are drawn from clinical practice rather than peer-reviewed RCT at this time.
The research on MTP-based interventions for obesity
Can hypnotherapy help with weight loss? What the research shows
The MTP™ Method — Meditation, Trance, Psychotherapy — is an integrative clinical framework developed over 25+ years of practice with clients across cultures, contexts, and clinical presentations. Its application to obesity addresses the three layers that conventional approaches leave largely untouched: the unconscious automaticity of eating behaviour, the identity-level self-concept that determines what feels natural, and the conscious decision-making architecture that governs moments of pressure. Each pillar draws on its own body of research.
Meditation — rewiring the observing brain
How does meditation change eating behaviour? The neuroscience
The neurological research on meditation and eating behaviour has advanced substantially in the last decade. A systematic review published in Obesity Reviews examined fourteen randomised controlled trials of mindfulness-based interventions for obesity-related eating behaviour and found significant reductions in binge eating, emotional eating, and external eating cues — the three primary psychological eating drivers in the obese population.[14]
The mechanism is neurological. Hölzel and colleagues at Harvard Medical School demonstrated that eight weeks of mindfulness practice produced measurable increases in grey matter density in the hippocampus, posterior cingulate cortex, and cerebellum — and reductions in grey matter density in the amygdala, the brain's alarm and reactivity centre.[15] A smaller amygdala stress response means a weaker automatic link between emotional discomfort and the impulse to eat. This is not metaphor; it is structural neurological change visible on MRI.
In my clinical application, meditation is used not primarily as a stress reduction tool — though that is a useful secondary effect — but as a training in the distinction between what arises and what one does with what arises. The impulse to eat is experienced. The identification with that impulse is not. That distinction, practised repeatedly in meditative awareness, begins to operate in ordinary life. The person who once felt compelled to eat in response to an emotion begins to experience the emotion as an event — present, observable, and not requiring food to be resolved.
Trance / Hypnotherapy — accessing the unconscious pattern layer
Does hypnotherapy for weight loss actually work? The Kirsch meta-analysis
The most rigorous study of hypnotherapy's contribution to weight loss was a meta-analysis by Irving Kirsch and colleagues, published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. The study examined the addition of hypnotherapy to cognitive-behavioural weight loss treatment and found that patients who received the combined intervention lost significantly more weight than those receiving CBT alone — and, critically, continued to lose weight over an 8-to-24-month follow-up period, while the CBT-only group had plateaued.[16] The effect was not marginal: the hypnotherapy group showed approximately twice the weight loss of the comparison group at follow-up.
Why does this occur? Eating behaviour, at the level at which it is most resistant to conscious intervention, is stored as procedural and implicit memory — the same neural system that governs how you tie a shoelace or drive a car. This system is not directly accessible to conscious reasoning. It responds to a different language: imagery, metaphor, embodied suggestion, and the altered state of attention that clinical trance produces. Hypnotherapy reaches this layer. It can install new procedural templates — new ways the body automatically moves toward or away from food — that conscious instruction cannot.
In practice, I use trance work to accomplish three specific tasks in the obesity context: to dissolve the emotional charge attached to specific foods or eating contexts; to install the felt sense — the somatic experience — of being a person for whom healthy food is genuinely appealing; and to reprogram the reward anticipation response so that movement and physical activity begin to carry the neurological signature of pleasure rather than punishment.
Psychotherapy — identity reconsolidation and conscious decision frameworks
What is identity-based fat loss — and why does it work when diets don't?
The psychotherapy component of the MTP framework addresses what Daphna Oyserman of the University of Southern California terms identity-based motivation — the mechanism by which an individual's sense of self determines not just what they want to do, but what they spontaneously do before wanting ever arises.[17] In the context of fat loss, this research suggests that sustainable behaviour change requires not just new habits but a new answer to the question: what kind of person am I?
Verplanken and Sui, in a study examining the relationship between habit strength and self-concept, found that individuals whose habits were integrated into their self-concept showed dramatically greater consistency of behaviour across varied situations — precisely the varied situations (social events, stress, fatigue, celebration) in which most people's intentions collapse.[18] A person who eats well because they have decided to is fragile. A person who eats well because they cannot easily imagine doing otherwise is robust.
The psychotherapy component also develops what I call conscious decision-making frameworks under pressure — structured internal protocols for the moments when identity pulls in one direction and conditioning pulls in another. This is not willpower training. It is the construction of clear, pre-committed decision architecture for the specific situations in which the client has historically defaulted to unhealthy patterns. The decision is made in clarity, before the pressure arrives.
Finally, the psychotherapy work distinguishes between what I term the essential identity and the personality — the difference between what a person fundamentally is, beneath all conditioning, and the accumulated responses, defences, and habits that have been layered over that. Most people who struggle with obesity have an essential self that is not actually interested in excess food — the appetite is a conditioned response, not an authentic one. Reconnecting the client with that essential identity is, in my clinical experience, the pivot point. Once that reconnection is sufficiently stable, the behaviour follows without force.
"The goal is not to make healthy eating a discipline. The goal is to make unhealthy eating feel strange — and the only path to that is through identity, not information."
— Dr. Maruti SharmaThe integration principle
The reason these three components are most effective in integration is that they address three distinct but interconnected layers of human functioning: the neurological-somatic layer (where automatic eating patterns live), the identity-narrative layer (where self-concept is maintained), and the executive-cognitive layer (where conscious choice operates under pressure). Address only one layer, and the others compensate. Address all three in a coordinated clinical programme, and the change begins to feel — and this is the most consistent client report I receive — inevitable.
Research timeline — key milestones
An Eastern lens — what contemplative traditions saw first
What contemporary neuroscience is now confirming through imaging technology, the Vajrayana Buddhist and Natha Siddha traditions described in the language of consciousness more than a thousand years ago. The concept of vasana — latent impressions stored in the subtle body that generate automatic patterns of thought and behaviour — maps precisely onto what modern psychology calls unconscious procedural memory. The traditions understood that these impressions are not accessible through the reasoning mind; they require a different mode of engagement: contemplative practice, altered states, and direct work on the body's energy field.
The Natha Siddha tradition in particular held a sophisticated understanding of prana and its relationship to appetite — recognising that distorted vital energy produces distorted hunger, and that genuine spiritual practice would naturally normalise the body's relationship with food without requiring the constant exercise of restraint. This is not mysticism. It is an observation, refined over centuries, that aligns almost precisely with what the neuroscience of mindfulness and habit reconsolidation now shows.
My clinical work integrates this wisdom not as a philosophical decoration but as a technical resource. The meditative and trance practices used in the MTP framework draw directly on this lineage — and their effectiveness is not incidental to their contemplative origin.
Working with Dr. Maruti Sharma
What does working on fat loss with the MTP™ Method actually look like?
Who it is for, who it is not for, what to expect session by session, realistic timelines, and how to begin — including the residential retreat option.
Dr. Maruti Sharma on this condition
In this teaching, Dr. Maruti Sharma discusses how conditioning creates the unconscious eating loop — and what it actually takes to dissolve it at the root.
What I have seen — and what actually changes
Pattern recognition, over 25+ years of practice with tens of thousands of clients across more than a hundred countries, reveals something that the outcome research is now beginning to confirm: the question that determines whether a person's fat loss will last is never "do they have the right plan?" It is always "do they have the right identity?"
What follows are composite clinical observations — constructed from the patterns I see repeatedly, with all identifying details altered. They are not case studies and they make no specific outcome claims. They are descriptions of what clinical work in this area actually looks like.
A 44-year-old corporate executive presented having lost the same 18 kilograms three times across fifteen years — each time through a structured diet programme, and each time regaining the weight within 18 months. The third regain had brought additional weight, and significant self-contempt. Initial sessions revealed a consistent pattern: the executive's eating behaviour shifted dramatically in social contexts, in situations of high professional stress, and when travelling — which was frequent. He could maintain dietary intentions perfectly in a controlled home environment. He could not in any other context. This told me immediately that we were dealing with identity-state dependency: the "dieting person" was a role he could inhabit in familiar environments and could not sustain in others. The work was never about food. It was about developing an identity stable enough to remain consistent across all contexts — and an unconscious relationship with food that did not require conscious monitoring to maintain.
A 38-year-old homemaker presented with a 12-year history of obesity and a family structure in which food preparation was central to her role and identity. Her food choices were, in her own account, "impossible to separate from love" — cooking for others was the primary expression of care in her family system, and eating what was cooked was the primary expression of receiving it. A purely dietary approach would have been not just ineffective but actively destructive — it would have required her to sever herself from a relational language that mattered to her. The work in this case required distinguishing between the love and the food — developing a richer repertoire for expressing and receiving care that did not route entirely through food, while simultaneously using hypnotherapy to dissolve the somatic equation between eating past satiety and feeling safe and connected. Over four months, the shift that emerged was not one she described as discipline. She described it as clarity. Food became food again — still enjoyed, still prepared with love, but no longer required to carry the weight of an entire emotional vocabulary.
A 29-year-old software professional presented with a relatively recent onset of significant weight gain — twelve kilograms over two years — coinciding with a transition from a physically active outdoor lifestyle to a sedentary desk-based role following a promotion. He was surprised by the gain because he had never had to think about food before; his body had "just taken care of itself." What had changed was not his relationship with food but his relationship with his body — the physical self that had previously been an active, capable presence in his life had become something he sat behind. The work was largely identity restoration: reconnecting him with the body-relationship he had had in his earlier years, using both meditative awareness and trance work to bring that felt sense back online. Within three months, he reported that not exercising had begun to feel uncomfortable — a reversal of the experience that brings most people to clinical work. The impulse had shifted direction.
What these patterns share is not a common cause but a common clinical pivot: the moment at which the person's relationship with their essential identity — the self beneath the conditioned responses — becomes sufficiently stable that behaviour begins to follow from being rather than from effort.
What change looks like
Real clients. Real outcomes. Shared with full consent.
All transformations are real clients who have given explicit consent to share their experience. Individual results vary.
"I had been to three nutritionists, two gyms, and one bariatric surgeon's consultation before I came to Dr. Sharma. I lost 14 kilograms in nine months — but what changed most was that by month four, I genuinely did not want to eat the way I used to. It felt strange even to try. I have not tracked a calorie in over a year. Something at a deeper level simply changed."
What a typical MTP™ engagement looks like
The initial consultation is a 90-minute deep assessment — not a data-gathering exercise but a genuine clinical conversation. I am looking for the pattern beneath the behaviour: what the food relationship is actually doing for the person emotionally, what the identity-state dependency looks like, what the specific pressure contexts are, and what version of this person was present before the conditioning thickened. This session alone produces insights that most clients report never having encountered in previous interventions.
Session structure. Typical engagements involve weekly 60-minute sessions for the first two months, moving to fortnightly as consolidation proceeds. Sessions are conducted primarily online, making the work accessible regardless of geography. Each session draws on whichever MTP component is most indicated at that stage — early sessions tend to be more psychotherapy-focused as identity and pattern work is established; mid-engagement sessions incorporate more hypnotherapy as unconscious reprogramming takes place; later sessions build the conscious decision architecture and develop the meditation practice that maintains the changes. All three components are present throughout, but in different proportions.
Between sessions, clients engage with assigned practices — typically a short daily meditation specific to the work in progress, and awareness exercises in the specific contexts (social eating, stress eating, celebratory eating) that have historically been most challenging. These are not willpower exercises. They are attention training — developing the observer capacity that is the foundation of all lasting change.
Realistic timeline. Most clients report a qualitative shift in their relationship with food — a sense that it is beginning to feel different, not just thought about differently — within 6 to 10 sessions. By three months, the impulse-level changes that I consider the signature of genuine progress are typically evident: the client is no longer fighting an impulse to eat unhealthily; the impulse itself is arising less frequently and with less force. By six months, clients who engage consistently typically report that maintaining healthy eating has become, as one client put it, "the line of least resistance." The goal is reached not when discipline is mastered but when it is no longer required.
Want to compress this timeline? The residential retreat.
For clients who want the fastest possible start, the 6–10 day residential retreat delivers what months of outpatient work builds toward — in a single immersive programme. Clients typically lose 5–10 kg during the retreat and, more importantly, develop genuine hunger control: the impulse level shifts, not just the behaviour.
- Medically supervised — qualified doctor on the team throughout
- Daily yoga, Tai Chi, and Qi Gong with specialist teachers
- Clinical nutrition support alongside psychological and trance work
- Environment fully removed — the home conditioning pattern has no foothold
Who this is — and is not — for
Clinical integrity requires honest exclusions. The MTP approach to fat loss is not the right intervention for everyone, and I would rather name that clearly than allow someone to invest time and resources in a process that is not optimally matched to their presentation.
This is likely a strong fit if you…
- Have a predominantly psychological or conditioning-based presentation — you know what to eat but consistently don't
- Have tried structured plans without achieving lasting results
- Are willing to engage with genuine inner work — not just techniques but actual self-inquiry
- Are able to commit to a process over months, not weeks
- Are open to an integrative approach that draws on both Western psychology and Eastern contemplative science
- Sense that the issue is deeper than information or habit — that something at the level of identity needs to shift
This requires a different path if you…
- Are in acute metabolic crisis requiring immediate medical intervention — please see a physician first
- Have an active eating disorder with dangerous restriction or purging behaviour requiring specialised medical management
- Are expecting a passive treatment — something done to you rather than with you
- Are not willing to engage with the psychological dimension and prefer a purely physiological approach
- Have obesity with a clear organic cause (hormonal disorder, medication-induced) that requires primary medical management
In presentations that require medical co-management, I work alongside treating physicians and dietitians. The MTP work addresses the psychological layer; the medical work addresses the physiological layer. These are complementary, not competing.
Frequently asked questions about psychological weight loss treatment
Resources and support in India
If you or someone you know is experiencing significant distress related to body image, disordered eating, or the emotional dimensions of obesity, the following India-based resources may be helpful.
India-specific research note: The ICMR-INDIAB study (published 2023) provides the most current and comprehensive picture of obesity prevalence across Indian states — including the important finding that central obesity (waist circumference) is a more clinically relevant measure for Indian populations than BMI alone, given differing fat distribution patterns compared to Western cohorts.
मोटापा और वज़न घटाना: असली समस्या क्या है?
मोटापे की असली जड़ जानकारी की कमी नहीं है — बल्कि यह पहचान (identity) की समस्या है। जब तक व्यक्ति अपनी गहरी पहचान से नहीं जुड़ता, तब तक कोई भी डाइट प्लान या व्यायाम लंबे समय तक काम नहीं करता।
डॉ. मारुति शर्मा की MTP™ पद्धति तीन स्तरों पर काम करती है: ध्यान (Meditation) — मस्तिष्क की स्वचालित प्रतिक्रियाओं को बदलता है; ट्रांस/हिप्नोथेरेपी — अचेतन मन के पुराने पैटर्न को नई दिशा देता है; और मनोचिकित्सा — व्यक्ति को उसकी असली पहचान से जोड़ता है।
परिणाम: बेस्वाद खाना खाने की इच्छाशक्ति नहीं — बल्कि अस्वस्थ खाने की इच्छा ही खत्म हो जाती है। व्यायाम न करना कठिन लगने लगता है। यह बदलाव अनुशासन से नहीं, बल्कि भीतरी पहचान से आता है।
References & citations
- Mohan V, et al. Type 2 diabetes and obesity in India: ICMR-INDIAB nationwide study. The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. 2023;11(7):474–488.
- World Health Organization. Obesity and overweight: fact sheet. WHO Global Health Observatory. 2024. who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight
- Wing RR, Phelan S. Long-term weight loss maintenance. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2005;82(1 Suppl):222S–225S.
- World Health Organization. ICD-11 for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics — Chapter 5: Endocrine, nutritional or metabolic diseases. E65–E68. who.int/standards/classifications/classification-of-diseases
- Lustig RH. Obesity: the neuroendocrine view. Nature Reviews Endocrinology. 2010;6(9):504–514.
- Oyserman D. Identity-based motivation: Implications for action-readiness, procedural-readiness and consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology. 2009;19(3):250–260.
- Luppino FS, et al. Overweight, obesity, and depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Archives of General Psychiatry. 2010;67(3):220–229.
- Bargh JA, Chartrand TL. The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist. 1999;54(7):462–479.
- Schwarzer R, Luszczynska A. How to overcome health-compromising behaviors: The health action process approach. European Psychologist. 2008;13(2):141–151.
- Fogelholm M. Physical activity, fitness and fatness: relations to mortality, morbidity and disease risk factors. A systematic review. Obesity Reviews. 2010;11(3):202–221.
- Marino JM, et al. The emergence of eating psychopathology after bariatric surgery: a rare outcome with important clinical implications. International Journal of Eating Disorders. 2012;45(2):179–184.
- Wilding JPH, et al. Once-weekly semaglutide in adults with overweight or obesity. New England Journal of Medicine. 2021;384(11):989–1002.
- Garg R, Sharma S. Mental health professional availability in India: The gaps and the path forward. Indian Journal of Psychiatry. 2020;62(Suppl 3):S311–S316.
- O'Reilly GA, et al. Mindfulness-based interventions for obesity-related eating behaviours: a literature review. Obesity Reviews. 2014;15(6):453–461.
- Hölzel BK, et al. Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. 2011;191(1):36–43.
- Kirsch I, Montgomery G, Sapirstein G. Hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy: a meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 1995;63(2):214–220.
- Oyserman D, Elmore K, Smith G. Self, self-concept, and identity. In: Leary MR, Tangney JP, eds. Handbook of Self and Identity. 2nd ed. New York: Guilford Press; 2012:69–104.
- Verplanken B, Sui J. Habit and Identity: Behavioral, Cognitive, Affective, and Motivational Facets of an Integrated Self. Frontiers in Psychology. 2019;10:1504.
- Prochaska JO, DiClemente CC. Transtheoretical therapy: Toward a more integrative model of change. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice. 1982;19(3):276–288.
- Graybiel AM. Habits, rituals, and the evaluative brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience. 2008;31:359–387.
Further reading
The pattern can change.
But not at the level where you have already been looking.
Every engagement begins with a conversation. No commitment required. If what you have read here resonates — if you recognise the pattern being described — a 30-minute consultation is the right next step.
Every engagement begins with a conversation. No commitment required.