Why Being Nice Makes You Fat
Being Nice Makes You Fat
You probably know someone in your life who is really, really nice. (Maybe it’s you?) This person is so nice that no-one has ever seen them angry or even a little bit irritated. They’re always eager to please, and if a misunderstanding should arise between themselves and someone else, they try ever so hard to placate the other person, hoping to make the problem go away. You must have also seen people taking advantage of this person’s kindness, often treating them with disrespect or even contempt. The more they try to please, the less respect these nice folk seem to get.
If this person is a woman, she may be this way because she’s afraid to express any so-called “negative” feelings. This could be due to a number of factors, including social pressure. In general, society tells women that it’s not ladylike to get angry or overly irritated, and that angry women are “shrews” and “harpies” whom no man would ever want to love and no boss would want to keep in their employ. The media portrays female anger as crazy or dangerous, and shames women out of expressing this type of emotion, describing them as “bitches,” or worse.
Women are also frequently taught that it’s not OK for them to be powerful, either. They hear (often from other women) that being more ambitious or successful than a man will ruin a relationship. They are also told that other women won’t like it if they’re strong, because they’ll be seen as a negative role-model for the gender. They’ll be made to feel that they’re perpetuating the stereotype that all women are catty and competitive with other women, even when they’re simply trying to pursue their own goals.
Women take in messages that having a strong opinion isn’t pleasing to others, and so they learn to equivocate, saying “kind of,” and “sort of,” when they really know exactly how they feel and what they want. They are made fearful that people will be turned off if they were to be clear and definite in what they believe and what they need.
I remember being in university, and noticing that the young men who were go-getters were called “ambitious,” while the young women who were like these were called “aggressive.” And this was at the so-called height of feminism!
Families can participate in spreading these messages, too, which just reinforces what a young woman hears in the schoolyard, at the mall and from the TV. Because of this, many women grow up believing that strong emotions or strong opinions are not acceptable, and that the only way to obtain love and approval from both men and women is to be “nice.” It’s not like this for every woman, but enough are affected that everyone knows at least a few women who they’d identify as pleasers.
The problem with being so “nice,” and with stuffing down your “bad” feelings or your powerful opinions or needs, is that these things don’t go away, and they don’t want to stay down. Feelings by their nature want to come out, and if we stuff them down, they just rise up to the surface again. The same goes with urges, needs and wishes. We can only be who we are, and when we try to suppress or repress parts of ourselves, it doesn’t really work.
Things break down on several levels: a woman who has a genuine need to express her anger, her ambition or her opinion will become frustrated if she continually feels obliged to stuff these down. This frustration will turn into resentment, and the resentment will build and build. The woman will then have two options in dealing with the it: to stuff it down along with all the other feelings, or to let it out. If she lets it out, though, it’ll be bad and people will become upset. Built-up resentment, when released, never comes out as a clear expression of feelings, but rather, as hot, ugly emotion. This, then, will reinforce to the woman that expressing her true needs and feelings will bring negative consequences like others’ displeasure or even rejection.
If, on the other hand, the woman chooses to stuff down her growing resentment, she’ll need some help. She’s already been stuffing down her feelings, opinions and so on; she won’t be able to keep in the resentment on top of that pile of repressed material. She’ll need a plug, so to speak, to keep it all inside. And that’s where food comes in.
Food is the perfect thing to help stuff down and keep down unwanted needs and feelings. A woman can eat until she’s physically full and somehow, this psychologically enables her to bury her feelings as well. The one problem with eating is that it’s only a temporary solution. She’ll need to keep pouring in the food to keep the old material buried in her psyche, and to keep stuffing down any new resentment or needs or opinions she might believe are better kept inside.
As the woman eats and eats to keep her feelings buried, she will probably begin to feel bad about herself. This is because she realizes that she’s out of control of her eating or because she’s beginning to gain weight. Still, if she needs to keep stuffing her feelings down, she won’t be able to stop this behavior. Once a woman starts to use food to keep down unwanted emotions, she’s gotten herself onto an unending cycle of eating that she can’t break free of. As long as she needs to be “nice,” she’s pretty well doomed to be fat. It’s certainly not the only reason a woman overeats, but it’s a significant one.
On another level, the “nice” woman is trying to please the people in her life. She tries to make sure, with her placating behavior, that no-one is ever angry at her or in any way displeased with her. The longer she engages in this behavior, the more unsuccessful she realizes she is at it. No matter how much energy she spends being “nice,” it doesn’t really work. People still get angry at her and aren’t always happy with her, and in fact, a lot of them take advantage of her generosity and patience. They take her for granted and expect her to always give and give, regardless of how she’s treated.
Even the nicest woman eventually tires of this, and begins to be unhappy. Sadly, despite the fact that her way of being isn’t working, she remains convinced that it’s the right way to live. Inherent in the personality in a pleaser is the fundamental belief that this is the right way to meet her needs for love and fulfillment. She’s unhappy with the results, but she won’t stop pleasing because she’s convinced that eventually, it’ll start to work, once she’s figured out a way to “do it right.” Her unhappiness though, needs some placating, itself. And this is easily done with food.
The compulsively nice woman is a sitting duck for sweets, because she needs to sweeten her life. She craves “comfort foods” because she needs to be comforted, and she wants things to chew on because she’s frustrated and needs to grind her teeth against something. She turns to eating as a way to soothe herself and to work out some of her frustration over things not going how she hoped they would, in terms of her pleasing behavior.
Just as for every positive, there’s a negative, for every pleaser, there’s a user. There will always be unscrupulous people out there who will take advantage of the “nice” people, and exploit them for everything they’ve got. The pleaser will give and give and the user will take and take, and this nice woman will eventually realize deep down inside, that she’s not being treated properly. She’ll know that she’s being disrespected, but she won’t be able to let go of the powerful belief that if she just keeps going at it for a little while longer, eventually being nice will pay off.
This woman will turn to food to make her feel better, while she’s waiting for her pleasing behavior to finally work out, and in the meantime, she’ll get fat. In fact, very often you’ll see that the nicer the woman, the fatter she is. The more of a pleaser, the more silently frustrated and overweight she’ll be. Finally, if a woman is using niceness and pleasing as the way to get her needs met; if she thinks that making others happy will get them to love her, and that this is the key to her happiness, she’s doomed to endless frustration. It’s impossible to find complete fulfillment outside ourselves. Love is necessary in life, but it’s not everything. Only with the fulfillment that comes from pursuing meaningful goals can a person be totally satisfied.
If a woman is a pleaser and only a pleaser, she’ll never be really fulfilled, even if she manages to find someone who’ll appreciate her niceness and not exploit her. She still needs something to do just for herself. It can be as simple as domestic tasks, volunteer work or a hobby, or as big a deal as being a surgeon, a pilot or a successful artist. Whatever it is, it’s hers, and it satisfies a need for meaning and purpose in her life.
Without this personal fulfillment; this pursuit of the thing that no-one else can give her, a woman is left hungry for meaning in life. It’s easy for this hunger to transform into a hunger for food. As long as she continues to be nice, and to neglect her own dreams and goals, this woman will continue to use food to replace what’s missing in her life. She’ll be filled with food, instead of fulfilled by pursuing her own meaningful activities in life.
In this way, it’s easy to see how being nice will make you fat. If you are this woman, you might want to look at what is driving you to be a pleaser and to bury your power, your needs and your dreams under all that food. You will have the opportunity not only of being able to let go of this need to eat, but also of finally discovering and becoming your authentic self. Even if some people aren’t pleased by it, that’s a small price to pay for real happiness, isn’t it?
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About the Author
Marcia Sirota MD FRCP(C) is a board-certified psychiatrist, that does not ascribe to any one theoretical school. Rather, she has integrated her education and life experiences into a unique approach to the practice of psychotherapy. She considers herself a realist with a healthy measure of optimism. Sign up here for her free monthly wellness newsletter. Listen here to her latest podcast. marciasirotamd.com
