Psychedelics and Weight Loss

Everyone knows that losing weight is just a simple case of counting calories, doing enough exercise, having enough willpower, and being disciplined to keep on top of your progress…right? Could it be that this dominant biomedical and cultural model of weight loss is only looking at part of the story? What if we’re missing the part where we might potentially be able to rewire our brains, change our relationship with appetite and food, and engage more positively with movement? 

Psychedelic substances can certainly assist with this rewiring process, where our perception, behaviour, and relationship with the self might be profoundly altered. This is to say that psychedelics don’t have a mechanism to target weight directly, but more so that they facilitate the right kind of indirect mechanisms to allow us to work with our body in a positive way. 

We can explore these indirect mechanisms, such as inflammation, interoception, trauma processing, habit change, and nature connection, to see where the introduction of psychedelics can have a profound impact on our lives. My own personal experience has been one where psychedelics have been central to repositioning relationships with food and exercise, as well as having a positive impact on the relationship I have with myself. My perspective on how different plants and fungi can play a role in this goes beyond just psychedelic plants and fungi, but they have certainly been highly impactful in facilitating the formation of new habits and breaking out of unhelpful patterns. The patterns, despite being unhelpful, might serve a purpose in providing some sense of protection from the outside world.

Being overweight can often be pathologised from a societal perspective, where overweight people can feel marginalised in the midst of a lot of anti-fat messaging via social media. Various messages from influencers about what we should or shouldn’t be eating, or how we should exercise to burn the most fat, are becoming more and more prevalent on different platforms. While I find a lot of this helpful, especially when it comes to understanding the science behind something such as insulin resistance and weight loss, we might need to look further than just the biomedical model to understand where being overweight might serve as some kind of adaptive response to traumatic situations. 

I grew up in something of a stressful household. I experienced a lot of grief as a child, which certainly resulted in me turning to food as a source of comfort, especially in my teenage years. Research has shown that emotional eating is considered a critical risk factor when it comes to recurrent weight gain. The weight I gained might have served as something of a protection to the outside world, where I had a literal barrier that could have just allowed me to go further inside myself and not deal with the issues that might have been behind this weight gain. Perhaps there was something where I prioritised feelings of safety over aesthetics or being fit and healthy, and it’s not surprising that stress and traumatic life events can result in weight gain when it manifests as comfort. 

The evidence surrounding stress and PTSD suggests that these can both lead to obesity and metabolic dysfunction, with impacts on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, along with alterations in appetite hormones and neural activity changing our consumptive behaviours. Further research has shown that people with abdominal obesity have elevated cortisol levels, along with an increase in glucocorticoids, which are steroid hormones associated with an increased consumption of foods rich in fat and sugar. It seems quite obvious that the food industry has capitalised on this by producing countless products that are targeted to make us desire these kinds of foods more often. It’s important to emphasise that we shouldn’t be blamed for making choices in an environment which creates situations where making reasonable food choices is almost impossible. 

When we’re in these states of stress, we might be feeling quite disconnected from our body, and it could be that psychedelics offer the potential for reconnection and more awareness surrounding the choices we make.

During my psychedelic experiences, I certainly feel more aware of my internal bodily states. The increase in interoception can allow us to become more aware of the different processes within our body, and have more awareness of our general well-being. Interoception can provide awareness about things like our breath, heartbeat, or the sensations in our gut. Psychedelics seem to have a relationship with our gut-brain axis, where the state of our gut microbiome can influence our psychedelic experiences, and simultaneously, some of these substances, such as psilocybin mushrooms, can impact the state of our gut via serotonin receptors.

Within this state of interoception, we might be able to shift our attention away from habitual self-judgement and external signals, to more recognition of what we’re experiencing through internal signals. The reduction of our sense of self through the disruption of the Default Mode Network in our brain might allow us to break out of certain patterns that might not serve us, and potentially create more space to reframe our relationship with our bodily states. Certain eating disorders might be represented as distortions in bodily awareness, but psychedelics have the potential to disrupt this and restore some order, where maladaptive self-patterns can effectively be reset. 

This resetting can also allow for further emotional processing, and I’ve personally found a lot of benefit from utilising psychedelics in this way to reframe my relationship with food and how it relates to the events in my life. Research has shown that psychedelics such as psilocybin mushrooms can rewire the brain and address the root causes of binge-eating disorders, rather than simply dealing with the symptoms. Further research has shown that psilocybin binds to the 5-HT2C receptor, and this can have an effect on appetite and satiety, potentially mitigating instances of overeating. I’ve certainly noticed during my experiences with mushrooms how my appetite is drastically reduced, and how aware I am of the experience of consuming food in a way which feels more present than my usual waking state. 

This reconnection with my body has also manifested in a way where I’m able to move more freely and receive positive benefits from psychedelics in managing symptoms of fibromyalgia, as well as other challenges from various injuries throughout my life. Chronic pain and inflammation can greatly impact exercise, where many people believe that it will make their pain worse if they move, and that not moving will reduce their pain – this unfortunately creates a dangerous cycle where further pain and deconditioning occur as a result of not exercising.

There’s increasing evidence that psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms can assist in managing chronic pain, as they disrupt some of the functional connections in the brain involved in pain through activation of the 5-HT2A receptor. Psychedelics can provide analgesic benefits, and there’s growing anecdotal evidence to suggest that many people who are experiencing chronic pain can greatly benefit from consuming psychedelics. I have personally found this to be one of the most immediate benefits – when I would often find exercise difficult, psychedelics such as psilocybin mushrooms have provided me with the energy and enthusiasm to explore more of the outside world, and to keep going where I ordinarily might need to turn back. 

The euphoric feelings that I’ve experienced while walking outside in nature under the influence of psychedelics have changed my relationship to pain and movement, where I feel good in moving my body and excited by the possibility of exploring more of the outside world in a more enchanted way. There is more possibility to use my body in a calm way in this world, where I’m able to take more in and not be distracted so much by the demands of the body. Where psychedelics are able to decrease discomfort allows me to experience the joy of movement as an emergent aspect of the experience, rather than it being something called exercise, which feels like it gets imposed through discipline. 

I’ve been able to find more confidence in how I engage with the physical world and an increase in my awareness of how to move more in flow with my natural surroundings. Moving through modern urban surroundings can often feel challenging for my body, but my experiences with psychedelics in more natural environments have taught me a softer awareness that I can bring to every kind of environment I find myself in. 

The joy of movement also seems to be in juxtaposition to more commonly spoken about fitness goals, where there seems to be so much of an obsession with optimising performance that we might not actually enjoy the exercise we’re doing. Tracking our performance is useful for understanding what we need to do, but this pressure might actually become toxic when we start to compare ourselves to others or become anxious because we’ve failed to meet certain goals. This kind of self-surveillance doesn’t seem healthy at all, and it feels like psychedelics might hold the key to forming a positive relationship with exercise that doesn’t necessarily contain as much pressure as a regimented fitness routine.

Instead, we can engage with the natural world in a way which can have positive, long-lasting effects that provide benefits to our whole body and mind, where we might be more aware of our senses and take in more from this natural world. Moving through the world in these states can be transformed into curiosity, exploration, or play, where we’re able to appreciate the joy in the new discoveries. This way of engaging with the world has personally felt like it ties in with the ability of psychedelics, such as magic mushrooms, to forge new pathways in the brain, which can potentially get to the root of some of the issues associated with weight gain, as well as address the relationship we have to exercise and food.

When we think of the term appetite, it’s all too easy for our next thought to be how to control it. But what if psychedelics have the potential to reduce certain patterns around our appetite, where we don’t feel like we always need to control it? In this way, we might think about our appetite more in terms of how our body is communicating with us, rather than it being some indulgence or annoyance that we either have to find ways to satisfy or control.

I’ve personally found limiting my intake of sugary foods quite challenging, and a lot of this happens during states of anxiety, where I’m essentially unconsciously eating (more specifically, over-eating) and not engaging with the state that I’m in. I’m sure this has created an unhealthy pattern, especially when there’s so much readily available sugar to purchase, so you can put aside those negative emotions and experience a nice hit of dopamine to induce positive feelings instead. When the food industry doesn’t make it easy for us to not engage with unhealthy food in this way, we can offer more compassion for ourselves and others, where we can think about our appetite without moralising over what we should or shouldn’t be eating. In reconnecting with our body, psychedelics have the potential to allow us to tap into what our body really needs – and this isn’t a quick process either, so it’s important to praise ourselves for making the right kinds of decisions and not judging ourselves or others if we occasionally slip up.

It could also be that where psychedelics have the potential to treat substance addiction and compulsive behaviours, we might also find that this has an impact on the kinds of food we eat. This can allow us to create new positive lifestyle changes which go against a dieting culture of shame and restriction, as we might not feel the same kinds of cravings prior to our psychedelic experiences and then won’t feel the need to restrict or shame.

There might also be something to be said for the potential of psychedelics to help us break free of certain ways of thinking in our culture, which might have a knock-on effect regarding the impact of consistent advertising from food companies. With this in mind, there could be a wider effect outside of the brain where psychedelics could treat disorders such as binge-eating by deconditioning us from the effects of food advertising, which can have an acute impact on our food intake after exposure to it. It could be that we naturally start to engage in healthier habits after our psychedelic experiences through the creation of new neural pathways in our brains. But it could also be that we start to engage with others who probably already exist in spaces where they’re not so exposed to these kinds of adverts, as well as having the opportunity and resources to practice healthy habits through a shared sense of community. This might also allow for these habits to emerge in a way which can have more of a long-term impact, rather than just something we try out for a little bit before slipping back into old patterns.

It seems that psychedelics such as psilocybin mushrooms tend to have an overall positive impact on our lifestyle, with notable changes in promoting a good diet, exercise, engagement with nature, mindfulness, and stress-reduction practices, which all contribute to a healthier lifestyle. In particular, there’s good evidence to suggest that psilocybin can treat alcohol use disorder, with enhancements in goal-directed action, improved emotional regulation, and diminished cravings.

I’ve personally not experienced any serious issues with alcohol, but I’ve become more acutely aware of how it impacts my body and my ability to lose weight, so I made the decision almost three years ago to stop my consumption of it entirely. I was utilising the benefits of microdosing at the time, and I was intrigued to notice the sensations that arose when I was exposed to the potential of having a drink. It was like I could see the wave of desire rising up in me, almost getting to the point of having the thought that it might be nice to have a beer, but the thought was never allowed to fully form. (I should note that it’s also been nearly four years since I started a medical cannabis prescription in the UK to manage symptoms of fibromyalgia, so the combination of this with alcohol consumption wasn’t really sustainable long-term, and cannabis has certainly been a lot more preferable to consume!)

But it does seem that I’ve been able to change these habits without so much conscious effort compared to before I ever encountered psychedelics. It always seemed like a struggle, or something I had to force myself to focus on, which ultimately created acts of resistance against the self-imposed discipline that seemed to come from external voices. As much as there have been good habits created from my experiences with psychedelics, there has also been a lot of what seems to be a realignment of values. My focus is able to go to places which are nourishing, where it might have previously been easier just to give in to the immediate cravings. It sometimes almost feels harder to actually give in to those cravings when I’m more aware of things like the negative impacts of ultra-processed foods (which I refer to as ultra-processed “junk”) and how much we’re manipulated into going for the immediate reward, rather than desiring something more nourishing and healthy. 

I’m still very much on a journey of losing weight, but it wasn’t necessarily an objective I had when I first encountered psychedelics. To be honest, my eating and exercise habits took a while to change, and a lot of my experience with psychedelics in my early adult years was often intertwined with other substances and something of a party lifestyle as a student. I wasn’t paying too much attention to the kinds of foods I was eating, and it wasn’t until my mid-20s, after travelling to Australia to volunteer on organic farms, that I started to connect more with natural ways of eating. Even then, as a backpacker, there were times when I’d be off farms and cutting corners with money or being in places where cooking facilities were a bit limited, and I consumed some food that today I tend to avoid.

This path has taken a while to unfold, but with that, I feel like I’ve developed an ability to not worry so much if I deviate from the path. It feels like losing weight has been a byproduct of engaging with psychedelics in a way that allows more connection to my physical body, other people, and the outside world. There has been an indirect impact where my experiences with psychedelics have shifted how I inhabit my body, and how confident I feel to use it in ways where I can strengthen it to do more. There have been times when I’ve felt like my mind wants to do more than my body is able to handle, and this is certainly one of the consistent challenges with having a diagnosis of fibromyalgia. But when I’m able to offer more compassion to myself as a whole being, the body and mind tend to align more, and I find that I’m able to implement health in a sustainable way.

When I push myself to do more exercise or focus more on what I’m eating, I don’t see it as rules or restrictions, as this just naturally makes me want to rebel and spiral into negative patterns. Instead, I’ve found that psychedelics have opened up the space for more self-love, where these patterns feel like positive reinforcement, rather than treating my body like an adversary or feeling frustrated when I’ve not got to a certain point. Psychedelics can teach us to enjoy the path we’re on and appreciate what unfolds to help us in getting to the next step on our journey. 

Oli is one of our community bloggers here at Chemical Collective. If you’re interested in joining our blogging team and getting paid to write about subjects you’re passionate about, please reach out to Sam via email at [email protected]