Very clearly, no woman inflicts draconian sacrifices "just" to enter one of these micro-dresses imagined for nymphets with improbable measurements. We lose weight to restore self-esteem and to please ourselves, we lose weight to love and be loved. To untie the anxiety in itself too, or to say it.

As if erasing the pounds allowed to exude the overflow of inner life. To empty his emotions by lightening the body, tame his fears by pruning his curves. We lose weight because we want hope.

"Women who want to lose weight always make a projection on their future thinness, they think that their lives, in all areas - social, professional, emotional - will be better when they are thin, they will succeed better in their work that they will be more worthy of being loved, etc.

Because thinness, and therefore weight control, has become the standard measure of everyone's ability to dominate and succeed in life, " says psychiatrist Gerard Apfeldorfer (1).

Lose weight to give the best self-image

In the end, it pushes some to level even lower, and lucidly, their goal slimming. If you try a "you have a little too thin", they welcome it. To "I preferred you before" in front of a face that was emaciated and forms that have been erased, "Everything is better than being fat," retorts Myriam, who has shed eleven pounds instead of seven originally planned.

"It saddens them to have lost their breasts or their buttocks, but all prefer to be thin, have a nice figure, even if you pay for it," confirms the plastic surgeon Sydney Ohana (2).

It must be said today, the body validates the personality. More than clothing and fashion, it is the silhouette that makes the monk . "From now on, we are in" the extimacy ": we project the intimate outside of ourselves.

Having an ideal weight replaces the ideal dress that would make the ideal woman, "decries the psychiatrist and nutritionist Bernard Waysfeld (3) ." The tyranny of the appearance is exerted all the more that one liberated the bodies, complete the sociologist Jean-François Amadieu (4).

In the past, the outfits said all there was to know. Today, we exist on our own. We are unveiled and gauged where we could before sheltering ourselves behind a well-established social status. The cult of the body reflects this drift. "

1. co-author, with Jean-Philippe Zermati, of Dictature des régimes attention! (Odile Jacob).
2. author of "History of aesthetic surgery from antiquity to the present day" (Flammarion ed.).
3. author of "The Weight and the Self" (Armand Colin ed.).
4. author of the "Weight of appearances: beauty, love and glory" (Odile Jacob ed.).

Lose weight to regain power over your life

But why do some of us always push the slider down? "Lose weight provides a psychic enjoyment, that of controlling his life.This seizure of power is so jubilant for some women that it participates in the frenzy of diet, never satisfied, which leads them to continue when they are already thin.

They are all the more greyed because the lack of self-confidence is great and the failures will have been numerous before. Because the loss of weight is proportional to these, as if it were a revenge where they will finally prove what they are worth, "says behavioral nutritionist Jean-Philippe Zermati.

Add to this a process similar to that of addictions : "Losing weight is a pleasure of lack that is akin to the enjoyment of desire.Women who lose weight a lot are hungry, but they feel their bodies vibrate more. a kind of ecstasy in which desire is more intense, including living and sexual, than when they are saturated with food, desire increases with this lack, and it is also a way of showing their autonomy, their side alive and wild, while living in a consumer society, "says Bernard Waysfeld.

At this stage of the diet, the slope is all the more slippery that, in the early days, physiology adds its grain of salt to psychology: losing weight generates a euphoric state linked to the breakdown of fats.

This causes, in effect, the massive release of ketone in the body, which chemically has a psychostimulant power. Conversely, eating releases endorphins - morphines naturally produced by the body - whose effect is soothing.

Finally, representations, conscious or unconscious, which we sometimes wish to divest, also mingle with the desire to be thin. "Often fat is an impossible identification with a mother that women do not want to look like. A mother who was not desirable in their eyes, because she was not deceived the father. A mother that they don ' could not accept, because she was neither present, nor structuring, nor loving, "says Dr. Waysfeld. Danger, after tightening the belt beyond the tolerable for the body? End up with a psychological balance in a spin.

Lose weight at any cost: the flip side

Women who want to lose weight always have an anorexic approach, even if they eat, it is only a matter of proportion.

The problem ? Some scientific messages encourage them because today being thin is the guarantee of good health, warns Dr. Apfeldorfer. Internally, they are perpetually struggling with themselves, under surveillance. In the long run, it weakens emotionally, destroys self-esteem, and encourages people to seek comfort in food. "

And many are the ones who switch from restriction to compulsion : "Inevitably, when the euphoria falls, once you have passed the first stage of weight loss, you fall back into frustration, the notion of effort, hunger, and being on a diet becomes a fight against one's own body, explains Jean-Philippe Zermati.

The compulsion does not disappear by itself, there is a big psychological work to do, with the risk of taking back more pounds than before . "

And then there are those who turn to the targeted obsession, which is called dysmorphophobia in psychiatry: they focus on a part of the body that refuses to lose weight, which they consider unsightly. We see ourselves differently from what we are and we fess on the area that is resistance.

This is the case of anorexics who see themselves as buxom when they are skeletal, but also women who are frenzied hunting improbable bulges - because of course, there are different degrees of severity.

Others, finally, get caught up in a double obsession: lose weight and swallow only the ultra-pure. For hours, Orthorexic inspects labels, checks the cold chain, confronts glycemic indexes, immediately glues black nitrates and genetically modified organisms, tracks fats, pesticides, etc.

She ruminates her menus a long time in advance, goes miles to find the nutritionally perfect ingredient, and imposes such drastic rules that she can only eat on her own. The attitude is close to obsessive-compulsive disorder, and sometimes, it signs a depression. To get out of it, it will first be necessary to get rid of the fantasized image of oneself, by going through a personal work.

In the form of behavioral therapy to twist the neck to erroneous thoughts ("To deserve a man, I must be thin") or therapy of analytical inspiration, to find, for example, the unconscious origin of anguish.

Learn caring for oneself

In all cases, we learn to eat according to his feelings (envy, hunger, satiety) and not according to the verdict of the scales. "Many women who persist in losing weight always display their thinness to seduce the other, but often the relationship scares them.They are stuck between a desire for mastery and perfection that leads them to an inability to let go feelings, experienced as dangerous because they are likely to overwhelm and destroy them, and the desire to be loved.This dilemma creates great suffering, "says Dr. Apfeldorfer.

Final step: to show oneself of benevolence to appease oneself. "Often, women who constantly reproach themselves have first suffered from their mother, and continue the maternal attitude towards themselves, says Bernard Waysfeld. to tell them, "Stop, be a good mom for you, try to love yourself and we'll love you."

The case of the models

Why are the tops so lean? A mannequin weighs on average 23% less than a typical woman. In 1986, according to the Media Education Network, the difference was only 8%. The parades have opened a parenthesis to the luscious like Estelle Lefébure and Laetitia Casta.

To make a career, the tops must enter the small 36 of the couturiers. The garment is made sculpture: it is the body that must put itself at the service of creative aesthetics. If they run without blinking, it is also because they have to brave the competition of the babies from Eastern Europe, ready to do anything to break through.

In response, a cosmetics brand has built its pub on the praise of curves. In photo, non-model women who display their shapes and sometimes canonical age. If the campaign has been much talked about, has it really led to the expected sales?

Because if consumers applaud the approach, they do not always want to identify with these images, mirrors of their imperfections, and they shun the product if the girl is not sublime. All the ambivalence is there. However, this does not excuse the photographers and agencies that summarize the image of femininity to a top 17-year-old anorexic.

To MC, we have to fight against these flaws, and it is not rare that in desperation we fatten a girl to the graphic palette. It was well for her to starve at dieting.

And yet ... We do not decide on its weight

Everything is fixed in advance in the heart of our DNA. At the price of unheard-of sacrifices, we come down to this weight determined by heredity, but women who have a weight of genetically high balance can not remain thin durably, the physiological still outweighing the weight dreamed.

In fact, we can only hope to lose weight in a single case: when we have grown in excess of its genetic weight. With one caveat though: it depends on how one has grown.

Two possibilities: either the fat cells have also grown and swollen like a balloon (excesses of punctual table, less sport), but their number has not changed; in this case, weight gain is reversible. On the other hand, when the adipocytes have multiplied in number (and not in volume), it is irreversible.

Once created, the fat cells do not disappear, and trying to regain the initial weight is to fight against a new physiology. In fact, the body has corrected upward the weight of genetic balance. This occurs when one has increased in a very prolonged way its food intake, during certain diseases and hormonal disorders.

Slimming race: they testify

Aude, 35, office worker

She lost weight up to 48 kg for 1.64 m and is now paying the consequences.

"All my life I've been on a diet - kid, already Six years ago, I decided to apply the one who was going to walk for good so that I could get into my wedding dress. I am deprived of everything, but I was happy to have lost thirteen kilos (at 48 kg for 1.64 m).

At dinner, I had a hard time enjoying it so much I felt guilty. It was my wedding anyway, so I ended up letting go. Afterwards, I recovered myself, I was hungry, but I lost the four kilos taken and I stayed at that weight for a few months. Until the day I had a problem at work and I cracked.

It was like valves opening. I bought a panini and pastries that I ate in my car, without waiting to go home. Since I had made a big gap, I decided to take advantage of it at night too. The next day, I cried all day. I had more and more often irrepressible desires, to which I succumbed.

What I swallowed did not even make me happy. I swallowed, that's all. Often in my car, like the first time. Some days, the idea of ​​eating obsessed me, I made a movie about when I was going to choose what I liked in the deli or bakery. Each time, I stopped eating the following days to reframe myself. I really fell into horror when my covers in hand did not work anymore.

Two years ago, the doctor I went to told me that I had imposed four years of violence on my body and that I probably could not fall back. I started a therapy for my compulsions, because I happened to throw half of a cake in the trash to be sure not to swallow it. But I only thought about it and, two hours later, either I went looking for him in the middle of garbage, or I went out to buy another, because I could not even wait for a new cuise. As a drug addict, I needed my dose. It's humiliating, but I got there. I was very happy in my thin skin, I have beautiful memories, but I destroyed my brain. "

Armelle, 44, Business Strategy Consultant

"In college, our friends talked about my sister greedily, she was very successful.It is true that it looked like a candy, it was a little blonde all round, always in a good mood, very coquettish, it looked like a Russian doll.

Besides, she went out with very beautiful boys, who made us all dream. After an emotional shock, she decided to lose weight, and she did not go dead: sixteen pounds less! She saw a doctor, she is also gone in cure. It took her over a year to be like she is today.

I would never have suspected that her weight was a problem for her, she had never said so. His figure was part of his character. She cooked marvelously, she had followed courses of oenology, it was always a pleasure to dine at her place and to have it at the table, it was the good living, the gourmet, she was funny, beautiful and intelligent more ! She always cooks for her friends, but she often eats differently from us at the table or she pecks.

Physically, for sure, she has a superb line. But she lost all her seduction. To be thin does not suit him, she seems sad. When we first knew her, she made no one sick. She has lost her dimples, it makes her look stern and tired, even when she is not. She is damaged, I think she has aged. She is delighted, she enters the 36 for the first time in her life. "