How To Stop Sabotaging Your Weight Loss
If you are reading this blog then my guess is that you are overweight. A simple explanation is that you’re overweight because you eat more than your body needs. That’s a fact. However it could be you are reading this because you are ready to do what it takes, to lose weight and break the self-sabotage habit.
However the question is Why do you overeat? Have you actually sat down and thought about it?
Having worked with clients to lose weight for the last 17 years, there are four main reasons for overeating.
1) Having little knowledge about healthy food choices.
2) Not aware of the impact your unhealthy food choices has on your weight.
3) You do not know how much food your body needs
4) You eat for either conscious or unconscious reasons. For Example ‘Emotional Eating’
Triggers - Where Unplanned Eating Begins
There are three types of Triggers in your environment such as seeing or smelling food.
- Biological triggers, such as hunger, thirst or cravings - intense urges to eat.
- Mental triggers like thinking about food, reading a description of food on a menu in a restaurant or recalling food you have enjoyed eating in the past or imagining eating food in the future.
- Then there are Emotional triggers such as feeling sad, angry or happy. When you're feeling anxiety, food comes to mind and when feeling bored or stressed. Maybe you just want a distraction from work when a difficult task comes up.
- And finally Social triggers such as people who push you to eat or you feel in situations you just want to eat like everyone else.
The first thing is to identify the triggers that bring about sabotaging thoughts and lead to you eating in unhelpful ways. Once you do this you can reduce exposure to them or change your response to them.
Straying From Our Diets
There are many ways that we stray from our diets for instance, have you ever felt upset or stressed and thought that eating would make you feel better? Or you opened the cupboard and you were tempted by the chocolate in there? Or you may have been invited out to a friend's house for lunch and you didn't want to upset your friend by turning down her dessert she had baked?
Do any of these thoughts sound familiar?
- I know I shouldn't eat this, but I don't care
- Its okay to eat this food I deserve it
- I've had a hard day, so I deserve to have some pleasure
- I can't resist this food
- I'm upset I have to eat to make myself feel better
- I ate something not on my plan so I might as well blow my diet for the rest of the day
- This is hard, I don't want to keep dieting
- I'll never lose weight
You'll need to learn to talk back to these sabotaging thoughts.
These are all practical problems and to successfully lose weight and keep it off, you'll need to solve these kinds of everyday problems.
How can you stop this kind of thinking and lose weight permanently?
Is it even possible?
Yes it is. I've done it and so have many many women too! So if I can do it you can do it too!
You need to know how to 'talk back' to your sabotaging thoughts in a convincing way especially when you have that voice in your head saying …
“Oh just eat it…. It won't matter this once”
You will be able to tell yourself ……..”YES it does matter!!!”
“I want to lose weight”
“If I carry on eating when I'm not supposed to, it makes it more likely I'll do so in the future”
“It matters every single time”
“I'm only fooling myself when I give in”
“I can resist this”
“I want to lose weight more than I want a few seconds of pleasure”
You might in the moment, say to yourself ……”but I have to eat!” and just grab some food, but on the other hand if you 'stop' in that moment and think about helpful responses such as
“I am able to feel hungry”
“it's okay to feel hungry”
“I'm going to eat in a couple of hours…I can wait”
This approach means that you feel in control. But then go and get involved in doing something else to keep busy until it's a meal time.
This approach helps you feel better as you have identified your sabotaging thinking and have alternative helpful ways of responding to it.
How Your Thoughts Can Sabotage Your Diet
There is no doubt that your sabotaging thoughts encourage you to eat. Thoughts that give you 'permission' to rationalise what you eat. " I know I shouldn't eat this but….” then come the excuses like, “I've had a hard day or it will only go to waste etc…..”
Example of How a Trigger that leads to Eating:
A trigger: Someone offers you some cake
You have a thought: That cake looks good
You make a decision: I think I'll have it
You act: You eat the cake
Another situation could be you having an inner argument with yourself. Such as:
“I think I will have it…
No, I really shouldn't….
But I really want it…
It's not on my diet…
And it looks so good etc.
This inner argument between sabotaging and helpful thoughts can make you feel tense.
When a trigger comes up, how you deal with it will determine whether your resistance muscle is strengthened or your giving-in muscle is strengthened.
Responding to sabotaging thoughts is a skill that you can learn for a lifetime to keep off excess weight permanently.
In my The Weight Loss Breakthrough 90 Day Intensive program you'll learn how t resist the urge to overeat when you're confronted with cravings, hunger, stress, social pressures and lots of other problems.
You'll learn how to follow your diet and exercise programs no matter what. These strategies take practice - yes - but in time they'll become automatic.
The program also shows you how to deal with triggers that lead to unplanned eating by learning how to: Modify your eating environment; tolerate hunger and craving; think differently about food; deal with you emotions in a productive way and make healthy eating a high priority than pleasing other people or satisfying a momentary desire.
I offer a 50 minute Free Coaching consult to women with emotional eating and overeating struggles. Book your coaching session here.
