Deep Dive: Weight, self-criticism, and compassion-focused therapy
If you’re overweight, like me, you experience body-weight shame and are likely to be self-critical. Compassion-focused therapy seemed to help. In this study, Compassion Focused Therapy to Reduce Body Weight Shame for Individuals with Obesity: A Randomized Controlled Trial the authors found that compassion-focused therapy (CFT). Their focus was on self-criticism. There appeared to be a meaningful reduction in self-criticism and weight-shame. However, from my read of the data, there were a couple of significant gaps in the study design: The study used an RCT design with participants randomized to the CFT (n = 28) or waitlist control (n = 27) condition. Participants in both groups were assessed at pre- and post-intervention, with the CFT group alone assessed at three- and six-month follow-up intervention. Both self-report and a physiological measure of parasympathetic nervous system activity were used (i.e., heart rate variability). Results indicated that CFT had a significant positive impact at post-intervention compared to the control group for body weight shame (internal & external), increasing self-compassion, reducing fears of compassion (self, other, and receiving), reducing self-criticism, and reducing external shame. Although there were no significant group effects at post-intervention on depression and anxiety, 66% of participants had clinical improvement on depression in the CFT group compared to 8% in the control group at post-intervention. My question is this: would this alone a compelling reason for me to engage in such a practice? I don’t think so. But, it’s interesting. Tie these results to weight loss and you have a cottage industry.
This week I’ve been making Kefir Water a cultured beverage sharing characteristics with Milk Kefir and Kombucha. You mix kefir grains with water, sugar, and a mineral of some sort. I used molasses. I find the taste of Kombucha too acidic, too vinegary. All these beverages provide healthy benefits to the gut (and perhaps the gut-brain axis). Or, at least that’s the claim. I’m not making that claim but certainly other fermented substances like sauerkraut are very healthy. Anyway, my first batch is now done. It’s sweetish and tastes, to quote my sisters, like pool water that’s clean and slightly sweet. I think that’s not a ringing endorsement. But, it was cheap to make a batch and interesting, if only as a science experiment.