How Do We Gain Weight

Last Updated On: 21 September 2025

Looking at Hamer’s model shows why focusing on food intake is like looking for a needle in a haystack and in this article I’m going to walk you through Dr Hamer’s model to show you how, which may shed some light that you can relate to, for weight and other ailments.

This looks at the simplest of the two there may be three weight gain-loss-gain biological programmes for processing a stress-based event that happened in your life. Understanding this pattern will help with the other one later. It may seem random but we’ll start by looking at the cause of disease.

When a doctor refers to The Merck Manual a go-to manual used in traditional medicine, it will often refer to the cause of a condition as being unknown. But Hamer, a German Oncologist, had a personal experience that made him question this.

He took the model as shown in the image above where the body goes into stress in Phase 1 and healing in Phase 2 and added what is increasingly being recognised as the missing link. META-Medicine (the founders trained with Hamer) and who I trained under put in layman’s terms thus:

Disease is not random

Hardly surprising when we think on it. After all scientist’s are still unravelling the complexities of the brain, so why wouldn’t there be a direct connection between the state of the body, the mind, the environment in which we place (or find) ourselves, and the habits we carry out on a daily basis.

And it’s widely accepted that the body functions without conscious awareness

But it might surprise you to learn that this model doesn’t only apply to physical illness, it also applies to mental health, behaviours, compulsions, fears, phobias, allergic reactions, eating disorders like like anorexia and bulimia, addictions and yes you know it weight issues.

The 9-step process underpinning what could also be thought of as the human-condition is created by trauma / shock something that rocks you out of normality and has an adverse effect on your nervous system, you know that feeling when the body goes into the stress-response of flight or flight? The model runs like this:

1. Life is sweet, let’s call it normal
2. An unexpected trauma or shock occurs
3. Stress based symptoms ensue
4. The shock eases as the triggering issue reverses
5. The beginning of physical symptoms arrive
6. The point when your symptoms are at their peak
7. The calming down of symptoms
8. Convalescence
9. Back to normal

That’s it in a nutshell. Now let’s dig a little deeper.

No 1 – Life feels normal

This is the point when life is going it’s own sweet way, things are running smoothly, and all seems well with the world. It’s a familiar feeling, almost trance-like, where patterns are entrenched and life is running on automatic pilot. We’re using a trigger event for our example.

As sentient beings we’re vulnerable to being affected by our surroundings from as early as preconception

Which means we’re forever adjusting the psyche in order to adapt and operate from the best version we can apply at any one time

No 2 – A stressful event

Life suddenly takes a turn, something happens and what Richard Flook coined as a UDIN happens that is a stressful event that fits into the following category’s, it’s:

• Unexpected
• Dramatic
• Feels isolating
• We’ve no coping strategy (to deal with it)

In order words, something happens which is out-of-the-blue, because we didn’t see it coming. And simultaneously it’s not well received, in fact the reaction is more likely to run along a gamut of emotions. The fat-cell patterns of weight-gain are as follows in a mock event example:

I come home and find my lover in bed with my best friend
My world falls apart
A cacophony of reactions ensue
They’re in my bed
I don’t feel strong enough to deal with it
I feel numb
I can’t find words

The above reaction is a what-could-happen, if not feeling strong enough is one of my themes and I have the fat loss/gain biological programme running.

But how my physiology reacts is predetermined by my perception, and my perception is built on previous experiences and the beliefs I’ve taken on.

No 3 – Going into stress related symptoms

Now I start obsessing over That Scene:

How could it happen?
What did I do wrong?
Why didn’t I say something?
Why were they together?
Where did I go wrong?

Other subtle symptoms ensue:

My appetite becomes erratic
My sleep patterns are affected
My blood pressure increases slightly
I take on a new belief about myself

When I look back on this I may be flippant about how it was the most effective-diet I’ve been on. But physiologically what’s actually happening is that my system is processing the shock.

During this phase my fat cells are reducing, my relationship with food is sporadic, the weight may well drop off, but it’s due to the biological programme around the fat cells.

No 4 – The UDIN reversal

One day, it all changes! Something happens that subconsciously eases the stress process. It’s directly related, but it’s unconscious so you may not catch it. And now I feel safe, sticking with our example let’s say, I have a new partner.

Now I feel strong again, I’m back in the game, I feel good about myself again, but this is fleeting in terms of what’s going on physiologically!

No 5-7 – The arrival of the symptoms

Now my physiology moves into the next step of it’s recovery (from the shock at Step 2) and my fat cells wioll now multiply in order to return my body to the norm:

I start eating again
My body starts increasing it’s fat storage
With weight issues may store more than it would for others
After all it’s my pattern

So now although I feel good, my body’s putting on weight, maybe disproportionately to the weight it lost, even though I’ve only resumed similar eating patterns to those I had before the UDIN.

At steps 5-7 it varies, according to the condition, but with weight we often find the body is flipping between 5 and 7, where 6 doesn’t feature much, i.e, this generally features more with physical symptoms.

No 8 – The calming effect

At this point in a physical illness, we’d be experiencing the subsidence of symptoms, the body temperature returns to the norm. this step is associated with feel-good foods, homemade soups and stews, foods that build strength.

And as a foodie it’s important to be careful, discipline and self-awareness are the order of the day. This is not an excuse to over-indulge or make up for lost time.

Bearing in mind there is no established research for this model, as far as I’m aware. But I do know that traditional western medicine is based on this entire model, it just happens to have missed the link between emotional cause and effect. And I have great success using it with my clients.

My feeling about this step is that it’s a vulnerable one, when new patterns for overeating can really embed themselves. Be aware that Steps 5-7 can hang around for years, because the amount of time for the major steps is not predetermined.

No 9 – Back to life

Now I’m back on my feet, I have no answers for what my body went through and probably haven’t made a meaningful connection in terms of my weight issues being programmed at a deeper level.

Once out of the 9-step process I might think I need a diet to get rid of the excess weight, especially when I’m in the wholesome foods stage at Step 8. But the feel-good wholesome foods stage is unlikely to last unless I make some serious lifestyle changes which depending on how embedded the pattern is may need more intervention, especially in terms of breaking my stress-reaction-cycle.

If I’ve got wonky hormones there will be more to untangle.

And with what we now know about dieting, and according to the UCLA report from 2008, a diet is probably the last thing I need to embark on. Their conclusion:

Over time diets are the best way to put on weight for approx 75% of the population

Once you develop a pattern of turning to food for comfort, it strengthens each time you flex it, like a muscle. It becomes your pattern, and over time you start to identity with it as though you are it. But like all patterns it can be broken.

Breaking your comfort-eating patterns brings you much closer to where you want to be on the road to feeling in control around food. And this helps you makes better choices more easily.

The other pattern

As I mentioned earlier, there are two weight gain programmes, we’ve looked at how the fat-cell issue works, the other pattern runs differently by putting weight on in the initial stress stage, taking it off at the later stage. Some people have both patterns running especially where the weight fluctuates but fails to resolve itself long-term.

Jane

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PS – Directing your own destiny begins by arranging a quick 15-min chat which kick-starts having more energy to develop what you really, really want.

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