A subconscious need to comply with the wishes of others—or just with the wishes of certain others—is sometimes a serious source of the motivation to be overweight. Whether general or specific, drives to social compliance can be among the most potent forces we experience.

Generalized social compliance (the subconscious need to be compliant, that is) is a strange and inadequately studied phenomenon. For some reason, some people are subjected to generalized pressure from a significant proportion of people in their community to be overweight. This can be explained from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, but so far this is little more than armchair theorizing. (Note: Since I first wrote this, there has been significant work done in this area, especially at Stanford. So far nothing has proved me wrong.) The gist of it goes something like this:

In order to assure species survival during lean times, it would be in a community's best interest to fatten up some of its members. These fatted members would then give the gene pool a better chance of survival during times of famine. Just why certain individuals are chosen is something only your genes know, but it probably has to do with body type. And random distribution. (Let us never forget the standard normal probability curve. That's all we used to talk about back in the Panhandle when we would sit around Bob's Texaco on those long winter days.)

Endomorphs are the ones most likely to be chosen for this role. There are usually plenty of volunteers for this in a plentiful society, but reinforcement from the society itself makes survival even more likely.

Isn't this great? If you fall into this category, you can blame society for your overweight!

The other side of the social compliance coin is specificsocial compliance. It tends to be caused more by another person's insecurity. In this case the person whose wishes or needs with which one complies (the complyee) is not comfortable unless the person doing the complying (the complier) is overweight. The complyee can be a spouse (fear of competition), parent (fear of almost anything), or a friend.

Sometimes it is the eating behavior itself, as opposed to the condition of being overweight, that is the focus of social compliance. The complyee may not necessarily need for you to be overweight; he simply wants you to eat with him. Or her. Sort of a "misery loves company" kind of situation.

Use the Chevreul pendulum or some other form of autoquestioning to determine if social compliance is a problem for you. Be sure to distinguish between general and specific. And find out if you are subconsciously driven to be overweight or simply to eat (in which case the side effect of getting fat is not what the subconscious is after). Or of course it could be both.

If you discover that the general sort of compliance is your problem, be prepared for a longer, more arduous campaign of suggestion than if it is some specific person (or persons) with whom you are complying. In the case of specific social compliance it might be easier and simpler to just shoot the other person. JUST KIDDING!!!

Seriously, while it may be somewhat easier for you to deal with your own psychodynamics in the case of specific compliance, you also run the risk of seriously changing the relationship with the complyee. Sometimes complyees are not really doing it, "it" being mostly a figment of the complier's subconscious. On the other hand, maybe not. Keep a close eye on the relationship as you begin to lose weight and watch for signs that the complyee is feeling threatened.

Signs of threat can be just about any change, but watch especially for newly emergent jealousy or envy, increased sexist behavior (macho for men or sex-kitten for women, for example), or emotional withdrawal. If you do see indications that the complyee is being threatened, you will have to engage in some high caliber communication and emotional reinforcement strategies of your own to keep the situation from getting out of hand. If you are not successful with that, your only two remaining options will probably be to either go back to the old behavior that is bad and unhealthy for you, or sever the relationship. This can be a terrible dilemma, one of those situations in which there may be no happy solution.