Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight (10 page)

If you're habitually unfocused and daydreaming, the decisions you make while you're mentally checked out can gradually push your home toward chaos and your body into obesity.

If you feel like you never have the time or energy to make substantial improvements to your weight or your home, and your busy schedule leaves you no time for exercise, the best you can seem to do is shift around piles of clutter. You lie awake at night stressed, and you start the next day already tired.

I'm not the only one making these connections. A growing body of scientific research offers support for my suspicions.

The Hoarding-Obesity Connection

Other researchers are noticing the same thing as David Tolin: Excessive clutter and excess pounds may be related.

In a small 2011 study that included 12 people with a diagnosis of hoarding, researchers noted that 11 were overweight or obese. How come? Here's one
possibility: A cluttered environment can lead you to make poor food choices. In 2013, researchers asked 34 students, one at a time, to answer questionnaires while sitting for 10 minutes in an orderly or a messy room. The messy room had the components found in many cluttered homes: extra furniture, papers strewn about, and objects piled where they didn't belong. The clean room was streamlined and tidy, with everything in the right place and no needless clutter. When they left, the participants were given their choice of two snacks. Those leaving the clean room were more likely to take an apple than a candy bar as opposed to those leaving the cluttered room.

People who merely have too much clutter, but
don't
have hoarding disorder, may be more likely to have weight problems. A 2008 study included a group of people who said they struggled with clutter, but didn't meet all the criteria of hoarding disorder. These people were 77 percent more likely to be overweight or obese compared to participants taking part in the study who had a family member with hoarding-type behaviors.

Another study found that people who met the criteria for hoarding were significantly more likely to have a higher body mass index (BMI), and to be obese. Your BMI is a measurement of your weight in relation to your height. This number gives a sense of whether your weight is at a healthy level or not. In this study, the researchers found some evidence that a genetic link might help explain both hoarding and obesity. People with a specific type of variation in a gene called
BDNF
were more likely to have more severe hoarding behaviors. They also tended to have higher BMI scores.

The particular gene the researchers examined helps produce a protein that's active in your brain, including the parts of your brain that control your eating and your weight. But it's important not to jump to conclusions. None of this
proves
that if your house is cluttered, you're also going to be overweight—or vice versa.

Kiara Timpano, PhD, a hoarding researcher and assistant professor at the University of Miami, tells me that “our average patients are in their fifties and sixties, and statistics have shown that we tend to put on weight as we age, regardless of whether we have hoarding or not. Does that mean we're going to quit studying this connection? No, but we'll have to be careful about jumping to conclusions, since I don't think the data's clear yet.”

Also, the
BDNF
study, which Dr. Timpano led, only included people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In some way, this condition could have influenced the hoarding-obesity connection the researchers found. In addition, it's important to note that researchers have spent very little time looking at the health effects of garden-variety clutter. They instead focus on people with hoarding disorder. These individuals' way of looking at possessions (as well as the activity going on in their brain) doesn't always apply to the person with a run-of-the-mill messy home. But, as you saw in the sidebar above, some
research supports my notion that “cluttered” and “hoarding” are two points on the same line.

With all that said, a psychologist can make a good case for why clutter and obesity might show up together. Shared factors may help fuel both concerns, like the same stream of electricity running two appliances. “While the relationship is probably really complicated, one theory is that they share a common mechanism of deficient self-regulation. That's a sciencey way of saying ‘discipline,'” Dr. Tolin says.

“If you think about it, some of us are naturally slender, but for a lot of us, not being obese actually requires some effort. You have to regulate your diet, and you have to get exercise. Similarly, for some of us, cleaning just comes easy, but for a lot of us,
not
building up clutter is a matter of effort. If you don't have the psychological wherewithal to identify that a problem exists,
then
make a conscious decision to do something about it, and
then
actually stick to a plan even when it doesn't feel good, it's likely that lots of different things could pop up, obesity and clutter being only a couple of them.”

Plenty of research has also found that some of society's most common emotional and mood problems may raise your risk of both obesity and clutter.

The Power of Thoughts and Emotions

Not so long ago, many experts thought that hoarding was a specific type of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a problem typically marked by intrusive mental images and a powerful urge to do certain behaviors. Today, hoarding and OCD are generally regarded as separate issues. But experts are finding that when people have difficulty with extreme levels of clutter, often other psychological issues, such as the ones that follow, are also present.

ANXIETY

Researchers looking back at a number of studies on people who hoard found that more than half of these people also had an anxiety disorder. One of the most common types of anxiety they show is social anxiety disorder. With this condition, you often worry that you'll do something to embarrass yourself,
and you fear that other people are judging you. Many people who hoard are embarrassed by the chaos in their homes.

Another common type of anxiety in people who hoard is called generalized anxiety disorder. If you have this type, you often worry uncontrollably about a variety of issues.

DEPRESSION

In a study that included 217 people with hoarding disorder, more than half also had major depression. Another 5 percent had a milder form of depression.

ATTENTION-DEFICIT/HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER

Researchers have found evidence of ADHD in about one-fifth to one-third of people with hoarding disorder. Adult ADHD is marked by difficulties with:

Focusing on details

Staying organized