The psychology of food and weight loss

Weight loss & the Parent contract

Tony White
7 July, 2007

Weight loss is always a Parent ego state contract.

When someone seeks counselling to loose weight one can be fairly safe in saying

that it will be a Parent contract at least in part. A Parent contract is a

contract for change made from the Parent ego state. Contracts from the Parent

ego state rarely work, or they can work for a little while and then don't.

For example a contract (or goal) to loose weight, or to stop drinking, or to

exercise more, or to stop taking drugs, or to work harder are all Parent

contracts to some extent. The reason why they don't last is because they involve

deprivation of the Child ego state, namely the Free Child. When people (the Free

Child) discover something feels good then there is quire a strong drive to have

more of it. This seems to be the normal human condition. If someone discovers

that they very much like the taste of fish and chips then there will be quite a

strong urge to have such food more often.

In reaction to this FC urge the person's Parent ego state may then say "no you

cannot eat fish and chips because they make you fat and are unhealthy". When

this happens then one has intrapsychic conflict. This means there is a conflict

between two parts of the psyche. In this case the Free Child and the Parent ego

state are in conflict. They are at an impasse.

Two forces in the personality collide and you have an impasse


The originator of Gestalt therapy (Fritz Perls) used to talk about it and called it
a battle between top dog and bottom dog. In Transactional Analysis the conflict
is between the Parent and the Child ego states. In the final analysis it is the
bottom dog that wins, or it is the Child that wins out in some way.


It look like Free Child



This raises the question; What happens if FC does not get its needs met? A
number of factors come into play at this point. The first is the degree of the
deprivation. If one is deprived of food the need is very high. If one is deprived
of their favourite TV show for a week then the need may not be so high. Also it
depends on the amount of frustration tolerance the person has.

If a teenager is told they can't go out one Saturday night, some will take it on
the chin whereas others who tolerate frustration much less well may provide
quite a dramatic response.

Some one used to say, "People are where they want to be". Another way of saying
this is, "where there is a will there is a way". Sooner or later the Child ego state
will get its way. So sooner or later the deprived person will get their fish and
chips. When the Parent ego state says no because you will get fat, sooner or
later the Child will get the food in some form. Hence there is no weight lost and
usually there is some put on!




However some people do loose weight. I once saw a journal article titled, "The
anti-diet approach to weight loss". This approach works for those people who
harass themselves. They get strokes by putting themselves down. Those who have
a large internal Critical Parent ego state. If they give them self permission to
eat what they want (anti-diet) then they are more likely to loose weight.

In this instance the person eats and then criticises self for eating and putting
on weight. In this type of weight gain it is the after effect (or hangover) that is
important. So if the person allows self to eat anything they want and not
criticise self then the psychological purpose for the poor eating ceases. Then the
person will tend to eat in a more healthy fashion.




The game of “Internal critic” results in lots of negative strokes or
reinforcement of the eating behaviour

What have I done here?. I have refused to address the weight loss directly (ie
not taken the Parent contract) and snuck around the side and gone through that
door. How?

1. I have discovered the psychological function that the eating/weight gain
serves. It is a source of strokes and results in the game of "internal critic".
2. I have gotten rid of that function (ie the negative stroking and the game)
3. Thus the negative strokes and the game serve no psychological function any
more and thus using eating to get such strokes ceases.

Of course there are other reasons why people over eat and carry excessive
weight but this is just one example of how one can avoid the Parent contract
that a weight loss contract always is.


The psychology of food


With all the comment around about obesity in society, I thought I would make
some comments on the psychology of food and eating that I have seen over the
years.

Food and strokes.
As we know we all need psychological strokes(Attention) to survive and remain
sane. Without them we quickly deteriorate as happens to someone when they are
put into solitary confinement. Food is a very rich and good supply of positive
strokes. Food feels good and not only does one get the strokes from food but the
strokes are physical and inside our very bodies. Food can make us feel good inside.
Very few other things can do that besides alcohol and drugs.

So if someone is stroke deprived then they can become an over eater as it
becomes one of their main sources of strokes. The good part about this is that it
is relatively easy to alter. If the person starts to develop other stroke sources
then the food intake can decrease as it looses some of its psychological
importance.

As food is a strong positive stroke, if someone is in an environment where they
are getting many negative strokes it is appealing to eat as it is one way in which
they can get positive strokes. Sometimes this is called 'comfort eating'. The
strokes from the eating makes one feel 'comforted' and pampered. If one lives
around people who are quite critical environment one can understand why some
eat for comfort.



(A harsh environment can lead to comfort eating to make it feel a bit better, and
it does).




Sometimes the 'harsh' environment can even be inside the persons own head. If
someone has been traumatised by some event in their life then they can feel
considerable pain, angst, anxiety and so on, over and over in their own head.
"Comfort" eating can help ease some of that internal pain. The problem is the
person eats to satiate hunger AND eats to get comfort and that usually results
in over eating.

As we know kids copy parents and if parents are critical of them in childhood
then they internalise that critical parent in their own head. Thus in later life
they can have a big internal critic that jumps on them given the slightest
opportunity. Again comfort eating can be used as a counter to this large internal
critic that one has in side their own head.



(Humans sometimes cannot even recognize when they have enough food)





If the issue of power is poorly handled by parents then a power struggle can
develop between child and parent. This power struggle can be lived out in a
variety of formats such as through temper tantrums or being disobedient. It can
also be lived out through eating. All parents want children to eat and to eat
healthy food. Children learn this and can fight with parents by not eating or not
eating properly. This is a very common feature in anorexia where the child can be
claiming its own sense of personal power by not eating. The same can happen the
other way where the person can defy the parents by over eating.

This can also manifest in another way where the person has a sense of loosing
their own power with themselves. Those with eating disorders often report that
their eating is out of control, many obese people feel like this at least from time
to time. “I have a sense of disempowerment and thus my eating is out of control”.




Food and sex
How one looks physically is determined to a large extent by how much one eats.
Sex involves two people being physically very close and thus both parties see the
other persons body to some degree. In this way over eating and thus obesity can
be used as a protection against sex.

"If I am fat, therefore I am ugly and thus no one will want to have sex with me".

"I just feel so bad about how I look I can't have my husband see or touch me and
thus we can't have sex"

These are two views that some women and men to a lesser degree can maintain.
The psychological drive behind it is a fear of sex, or some other emotional
problem with sex.

Food and feelings
This one is a huge area which can result in over eating. Food and feelings get
mixed up in some way. Sometimes food and love get mixed up. Mother’s sometimes
find that they can express love to their children by feeding them. This is
particularly so if the mother has difficulty with the more open and direct
expression of love and closeness to a child. So she feeds him up instead and that
is how she shows her love to the child

But it does not end there. It does not take long for the child to realise this and
then the mother can use guilt. “If you don’t eat all your food then you are
rejecting me and then I feel bad”, can be the mother’s attitude. Thus the child
will feel guilty if it does not eat the food mother prepares. This will usually
result in over eating to some degree.


Food can be used as a way of dealing with a child’s emotions and emotional
distress. If a child gets angry the mother may think, “That must mean he is
hungry” and she gives him a sandwich. The child starts to mix up anger and hunger
and that can easily lead to obesity. In adulthood every time the person gets
angry they eat. If a child gets distressed about finding his goldfish dead mother
maybe at a loss of how to deal with the distress so she gives him a freshly baked
muffin. Distress and hunger get mixed up and that person later in life solves
their own distress by eating.


As is so often the case, physical activities that are crucial to our physical
survival, such as eating, easily become encased in a web of psychology for the
person. They cease to remain a simple biological function and get embroiled in
powerful psychological motives.



Self esteem


In each of us we all have our ideal or perfect self and our real or actual self.
IDEAL or PERFECT self

Our ideal self is they way we would like to be. How much we should weigh, how our
hair should be, how popular we are meant to be, how funny we are supposed to be,
how we want our nose to be and so on for many, many things.
REAL or ACTUAL self

This is the way we actually see ourselves. How popular we actually think we are,
how our hair actually is, how much we actually weigh, how funny we actually think
we are and so on.

In everybody the IDEAL self is always above the REAL self. Everyone wants to
be different in some ways. Everyone wants to have a bit more of this or a bit
less of that in our bodies and our personalities. It is a matter of degree. For
some people the difference between the IDEAL self and the REAL self is small.
When this is so these people will have a good self esteem. They like themselves.




For other people the difference between the IDEAL self and the REAL self is
very big. How they actually are is very much below what they see as being ideal
or perfect. These people will have a poor self esteem. They do not think much of
themselves. They do not like themselves.


The ideal me




To get the IDEAL self and the REAL self closer it is much easier and better to
make the IDEAL self lower rather than the REAL self higher.

Instead of thinking the IDEAL self is 45 kg it can be 55 kg
Instead of thinking that you have to have a nose like Nicole Kidman you think
that other types of noses are OK as well
Instead of thinking that you have to be like the most popular girl in the class you
think that you can be more how you are.

If you do things like this then you will feel better about yourself and you will
have a better self esteem.

Procrastination and the Parent contract (Part 3)

In order to gain a more robust understanding of the Parent ego state contract one must eventually examine the phenomena of procrastination as the two are closely linked. It also highlights how humans can be self defeating even when they are quite aware of doing so.

Procrastination has its origins with some kind of Parent ego state ‘telling off’ by either the person them self or from some outside source. This moves the person from the Free Child to the Adapted Child ego state. The pathological procrastinator is the person who has forgotten what they want. They have become caught up in what others want them to do.



As soon as one is told to do something that makes it harder for them to decide if they want to. As soon as one told to do something their Adapted Child ego state is being enlivened. Pressure is put on the person to go into that ego state which makes it harder for them to respond from the Free Child ego state or the Adult.

Pressure is put on the person to respond from CC or RC (which are both subsets of the Adapted Child ego state). In either instance they are not responding from a decision on what they want. That comes from an understanding of the FC need, then an Adult decision on that FC need.



This diagram shows how a Parent ego state directive moves the FC away and stimulates the AC in the personality.


The FC does not reject the the parental directive it simply does not listen to it. It is hard to respond from FC if someone else is repeatedly telling you what to do. Each time a Parent transaction is perceived the AC is more alert.

The problem for the procrastinator is he has lost sight of what he wants. His AC has been stroked so many times by the Parent transactions from self and others that the FC is lost. He has forgotten what his FC wants.

This is why the “telling” type of therapies can have trouble. The therapist that tells the client what to do negates the client being aware of their own Free Child need.

For example the therapist who says to the client; “Stop smoking marijuana”. The client is put into a position where it is harder for him to know if his FC wants to stop smoking. Then the Adult can not make a decision on what the FC need is. The therapist is pressuring him to respond from either CC or RC.



Long term behavioural change will happen when there is a FC want. The client may have even wanted to start giving up marijuana but if told to do so he will begin to loose sight of that. Regaining an understanding of one’s own FC is one central component to dealing with pathological procrastination.

The procrastination transaction.
All Parent contracts involve an internal transaction that forms the basis of procrastination.



As the client makes a Parent contract one knows there is an internal CP transaction inside telling the client he is bad. The client then will most likely respond from either CC or RC.

If they respond mainly from CC they will slowly descend into depression or a sense of low self worth. If one tells a child repeatedly that it is wrong or bad eventually the child will take it on and develop a low self esteem. This is particularly so for the child who does not fight back.

We are all born with one primary response to stress either fight, flight or freeze. The child who freezes is the most vulnerable as they will tend to take on the external criticism from a CC position. Those who have a basic sense of fight in their temperament will tend to respond from RC to parental directives. Thus we have the basis of the pathological procrastinator as shown by the procrastination transaction.



The procrastination transaction is quite a simple. It involves a CP transaction to the Child ego state. This is responded to by the RC in a disguised way. It is not open rebellion against the Parent ego state. If that happens then procrastination cannot occur. Indeed this is another way to deal with procrastination. To bring the hidden rebellion out into the open.

The chronic procrastinator initially gives the perception of agreeing to the parental directive. Often they will be convinced of such a thing them self but underneath the RC has no intention of complying. Hence you end up with procrastination.

The woman brings work from the office home. She has to write a report which she plans to do after the evening meal. She is complying to a Parent ego state directive to work at home this evening to catch up at the office. She prepares well by putting her paperwork next to the computer ready to go. She then has dinner which tends to drag on with a long coffee and discussion with hubby afterwards.



Eventually she sits down at the computer, turns it on and realises she has to go to the restrooms. On the way back she makes herself a little snack and notices a magazine on the side board which she flicks through for a while. Eventually she gets back to the computer, is ready to go when she notices a new incoming message in her email. It is a long lost friend from high school who has found her on FaceBook and requested her as a friend. She immediately confirms the friend request and must chat with her as they were such good friends such along time ago. She goes onto Facebook and that is the next two hours gone. Finally at 11pm she quickly types half a page of the report before she has to go to bed feeling angry and frustrated with herself.

All along she gives the appearance of complying to the CP directive and all along the RC is sabotaging the plan making sure it is not going to happen or only happen in a half arsed form. These transactions can (and often do) go on endlessly for many years. Hence we end up with the pathological procrastinator.

1. Lost touch with what the FC wants
2. Tries to comply with the CP directive
3. Has an active underhanded RC which will not comply

Procrastination is the consequence of an internal Parent contract. In the example of the woman above she made a Parent contract with herself, “I should take the report home tonight and finish it so I can catch up at work”. She made this contract with herself and as we can see she has an active RC and thus considerable procrastination eventuated.

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Parent contract and counterscript action (Part 2)

In Transactional Analysis terms a contract can be made from any of the three ego states. They are worded in three different ways. A client is contracting to loose weight.



If the novice client comes to therapy and says, “I should loose some weight” the therapist knows that is a Parent contract. A contract that is motivated by the Parent ego state. The bottom line of human nature is that the Child ego state will always win out in the long run. What the Child ego state wants is what the person will end up doing in the long run.

In Parent the client may say they should loose weight and from their Adult ego state confirm that it makes sense to loose weight, which it does. This will all amount to nothing unless the Child agrees in some way or form. If the Child ego state says it likes food and does not like exercise then in the long run it is going to eat nice tasting food and not do much exercise.



In most cases the Child ego state wants will predominate fairly quickly. The person may start a new diet and within a week or two or three it is pretty much forgotten. The person may take out a new six month gym membership and after a month they don’t get there very often. In each case the power of the Child in the personality dominates over the influence of the Parent and Adult ego states. Even when the Adult thinks it is perfectly rational and sensible to loose weight, which it usually is, that does not matter as far as the Child aspect of the personality is concerned.

There is an exception to this which is called counterscript action. Some people can exert considerable influence over self from the Parent ego state. They may be highly self controlled people or have a severe self punitive attitude. They are capable of depriving their own Child needs for an extended period of time.

If this is the case then the Parent contract will work for longer periods of time than the customary few weeks or months. The person may loose 20 kilos for a year or two. However still the Child will win out in the end and the weight goes back on as the Parent ego state looses dominance in the personality over time. In these cases one gets what is called yo-yo weight loss. They can loose significant weight for an extended period of time but eventually is put back on. People who do this are capable of severely clamping down on their own Child needs which indicates some significant psychological maladjustment. It can indicate significant self loathing or anger.


Child ego state

One can now see how important it is for the therapist to identify when a client is presenting a Parent contract. If missed the client can do work on a piece of behaviour over a number of weeks and it is never going to work in the end. Indeed if the therapist gets a sense of the work not going anywhere this may be a sign it is a Parent contract and thus one goes looking for it.

Some are easy to identify. In any contract to loose weight, exercise more, stop drinking, reduce drug taking, working harder it is highly likely there is a Parent contract in there somewhere. They are easy to identify when a client makes a contract that uses Parent ego state language. “I should loose weight”, “I must go to work on Saturday mornings”, “My wife says I need to say what I am feeling” are all relatively easy to identify as Parent ego state contracts.

These are contracts which obviously the Child ego state will not like. Other Parent contracts come from a significant rather than one the client wants to make. For example, “My wife says she will leave me if I don’t get counselling” is very likely to be a Parent contract. With any coerced client there at least partly a Parent contract to the therapy.


The Child ego state will always win out in the end



Novice clients make it easier to identify Parent contracts because of the language they use. That is Parent ego state language as stated above. With the experienced client it is not so easy. As the client learns about Parent contracts and the words used by the Parent ego state they can then change the language. They learn the culture of the therapy approach and fit in with that and that includes using the language.

What the therapist is wanting a client to say in a contract is something like, “I want to stand up to my mother” or “I want to take some time off work”. “Want”, is a good word to have in a contract as it reflects Child ego state investment in the contract. As clients become more experienced they learn the language and may unconsciously change the language to fit the culture or to try and convince self they want it when really they don’t.


The Child ego state wants what it wants - whether good or bad


The experienced client may say, “I want to complete my thesis” when underneath the real contract is, “You should finish your thesis you lazy bum”. A Parent ego state contract is presented as a Child ego state contract because the experienced client knows the language and culture of the therapy. They are not setting out to deceive the therapist they are just wanting to do the right thing.

Any contract can have a Parent contract hidden in it. A mother may come to therapy and say she wants to learn boundary setting with her son. That seems like a very reasonable request. Behind it however there is the belief, “I am a bad mother who is hurting my children and should know better”. The therapist needs to ascertain if there is any Parent ego state involvement in the contract being presented.

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