Does this clutter make my butt look fat?

I think Oprah can read my mind. Just last week I discussed the similarities between compulsive hoarding and compulsive eating, inspired by an episode of Dr. Phil.  Today’s episode of Oprah had my favourite clutter expert Peter Walsh discussing the relationship between excess clutter and excess weight. OK, so maybe she can’t read my mind (after all, Oprah does own Dr. Phil - or at least his show, anyway) but it’s pretty interesting that I’m not the only one who can see a link between the two.

Right at the beginning of the show, they put up a quote that practically had me jumping out of my seat: “Eating more and buying more is an attempt to fill the need for something more.” Yes! This is what I’ve been saying all along. In fact, Walsh has written an entire book on the topic, “Does this clutter make my butt look fat?” Check out his book here.

A couple of things stood out to me during the show. First, this woman kept her treadmill (what she called her “high-tech bag holder") folded up in the kitchen. Can you imagine staring at that thing every time you go into the kitchen for a snack? Talk about guilt-inducing. Walsh couldn’t have put it better when he told her “your treadmill is making you fat.” Because for anyone who’s ever been stuck in the overeating/guilt cycle, just looking at something that makes you feel guilty can lead you to eat. As funny as his statement was, it couldn’t have been more true.

As the family cleared out the their stuff, they kept making comments along the lines of “I’m actually feeling lighter.” It is so important to take your environment, which includes both your physical surroundings and the emotional climate of your life, into account when you examine the context of your weight. If your life is cluttered with stuff, with issues, dramas, stress, problems, unhealthy relationships, etc., then the way you take care of your body is going to reflect that. In fact, Walsh pointed out that a lot of the stuff she had in her house was very similar to the things she ate: cheap, easy and not what she really needs. And what’s more, that stuff represented who she believed she was or who she wanted to be: a baker, a loving mother, the kind of person who actually uses wooden skewers to make beef satay. But instead of being those things, she was just collecting the idea of being them. Ask yourself: how is your environment affecting your lifestyle choices, or representing who you want to be?

I applaud this family for having the courage not just to appear on TV, but to take the steps necessary to finally move past this excessive lifestyle. The woman’s pain was palpable, and her desire to be better and do better was so moving. She finally realized that all of this was about more than just the stuff and the weight, but to some deeper issues that she hadn’t fully worked through. In fact, Bob Greene, Oprah’s personal trainer, put it best when he said that if you don’t focus on the issues underneath, you’ll never lose the weight. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

Compulsive hoarding on Dr. Phil

Today’s episode of Dr. Phil focused on people with compulsive hoarding issues. The first guest on the show (and by the way, for the record, I rarely watch the show - I liked him better when he was on Oprah) was a young man with an enormous collection of Star Wars items. He had apparently spent $200,000 building up this collection and his house was filled with the stuff. His wife (understandably) was fed up and wanted Dr. Phil to wake him up. He even admitted that if Star Wars didn’t exist, there would be no reason to be alive.

You have to ask yourself what void this guy is literally trying to fill with all this stuff. There are a lot of reasons that people keep get attached to their stuff, from sentimental reasons to the fear that if they throw something away, they might need it again someday. People collect things because it gives them a sense of safety, belonging, or identity. But in many cases of compulsive hoarding, which is a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that the “stuff” is a symbol for something that the person feels they’re lacking in their life. So to fill up that feeling of emptiness, they collect and/or keep things that have some special meaning to them, instead of satisfying that need in a healthier way.

In some ways, compulsive eating and emotional eating are similar to compulsive hoarding. In the case of eating, the food represents something that the person feels they are missing, like love, comfort, or a sense of pleasure. And in a very literal way, the extra weight is the extra “stuff” that the person is carrying around. Obviously, this type of behaviour varies, from having a couple of extra pounds and being a bit of a packrat, to being morbidly obese or suffering from the most extreme forms of compulsive hoarding. But wherever you might fall on that continuum, ask yourself: what hunger are you trying to fill?