How Your Thinking Affects Weight Loss
In this article, I will look into the psychology of dieting and how it can make it difficult to achieve your goal if you don’t address this before starting a weight loss journey. Hopefully, you can use this to help with your New Year’s resolutions next year.
Understanding Weight Gain
Being overweight essentially comes down to two things:
- What goes on in our heads
- The environmental factors that we live in
The combination of these two things can lead to us doing less than we should and eating more than we want to. Overweight/obese people tend to show symptoms of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and high levels of body dissatisfaction. Unfortunately, a common coping mechanism that people turn to when experiencing these symptoms is emotional eating. This, in turn, can trigger the vicious cycle that many people find themselves in. Using food as comfort can lead to weight gain, which can cause depression and anxiety symptoms to worsen, leading people to reach for unhealthy food again, continuing the cycle.
The Dieting Cycle
When you look at this cycle within the world of dieting, you will see a similar pattern and how it all fits in and results in inevitable failure year after year:
- A person decides they need to lose weight and go on a diet.
- They set unrealistic goals or choose a diet that is not enjoyable/sustainable.
- They don’t see the results they want or they “fall off the bandwagon” and give up.
- They feel really bad about it (think anxiety symptoms I discussed previously) and reach for unhealthy foods.
- They gain more weight, get stuck in the cycle of weight gain/anxiety and depression symptoms, and gain more weight over time.
- Eventually, they decide they need to lose weight, and the cycle continues.
Before a Diet
What people don’t consider before going on a diet or embarking on a weight loss journey is how they can break this cycle, improve their relationship with food, and properly plan a lifestyle change that will work for them. For a lot of people, food is seen as a negative thing and is often victimised in offices up and down the country. Think about how many times you hear people saying negative things regarding food like “oh, I have been bad and had a bit of chocolate?”. Personally, I absolutely love everything about food—the cooking of it, the flavours, and the amazing social element to it (family meals around the table, going out for dinner with friends, etc.), which I think is often forgotten about and should be celebrated rather than being seen as a negative thing.
On a restrictive diet, the social aspect is lost, further leading to a negative relationship with foods. This negativity is associated with binges, which can easily see you consuming thousands of calories without even thinking about it, which is a big part of the problem.
Think about this… If you have ever been in a state of stress and you start eating a big bar of chocolate, have you ever stopped for a second and asked yourself why you are doing it? If it is going to reduce the levels of stress you are feeling? Or in fact, is it actually going to lead to you feeling worse in the long term? Probably not, but we still go ahead and eat the chocolate bar and then often feel guilty afterward. We need to break this cycle before it becomes problematic.
Triggers & Environment
You can spend all the money you want on weight loss tablets, slimming classes, shakes, and other weight loss aids, but if you don’t understand what YOU need, you will find it extremely difficult to be successful. You have to understand how your body works psychologically. What are your triggers? Are you able to fit these into your lifestyle in a way that means you can still enjoy them without overdoing it? Did you know that researchers have found that we will crave foods that we have been told not to eat, leading to a greater desire to eat the banned food than if they were allowed? This is why heavily restrictive diets tend to cause you to reach for these banned foods and end up giving up.
We live in a massively obesogenic environment, which does not help matters when you want to try and lose some weight. Next time you go out, just take a look at how much our lives are affected or influenced in a way that makes “being lazy” the easier option. Think escalators with no option of stairs, lifts right next to the shops for easy access, the lack of street lights or pavements which makes walking more dangerous or undesirable—the list goes on. Our day-to-day lives are much less active now than they were 15+ years ago. There has been a huge rise in the use of computers, cars are much more popular, manual labour has reduced, and convenient food such as takeaways, ready meals, etc., are much easier to get. Things like the price difference of going large, which is often only pennies of a difference, are meant to tempt you into going large. All of these things make gaining weight so much easier.
So, What Do You Actually Do About It?
A good starting point is don’t dive headfirst into a diet that is a complete 180-degree flip from your current one. The simple fact is, everyone is on a diet; it is just that yours might not be serving you the way you want it to. You could easily pay someone for a diet plan to follow every week (there are a lot out there), and you would see changes, but as soon as you stop paying, you are back to square one again, having no idea what to do. Instead, you should look at your current diet and see what changes you could make to it to make it better.
Weight loss is a journey where you may have bumps in the road, good points, and bad points, but at the end of the day, you are aiming to get to one place. There might be a few detours, but as long as you get there, does it really matter that it took you an extra few months? I read a good analogy on life the other day which is so relatable to weight loss. If you have ever played a computer game, did you give up as soon as you died? No, you analyze what you did wrong and how you can improve to get to the next level and have another go. It might take you 10 attempts, but you stick at it and you succeed. The same should apply to weight loss. Don’t just give up at the first blip. Analyze what went wrong and see what you can do to make it better. Come back stronger and get to the next level!
Behaviour Recognition
A big problem that people have when it comes to weight loss is that they believe the inability to lose weight is due to causes outside their control such as:
- “It’s genetic”
- “I have a slow metabolism”
- “I was born this way; there’s nothing I can do”
- “It’s my hormones!”
- “I have a medical condition that makes me overweight”
Although there is some evidence that these things can play a part in weight, it does not help us change our behaviours because we think there is nothing we can do. If you get professional advice on how to lose weight but in your head, you believe you can’t lose weight due to your metabolism or another factor, you won’t follow the advice through to the end because it doesn’t match your belief. We often only adopt solutions to a problem if they match our beliefs about the cause.
It is with this in mind that we need to think about our behaviours and how our thoughts may be affecting our ability to lose weight. People who have been successful in losing weight and keeping it off often talk about finding new coping mechanisms such as exercise, talking to friends/family, or a new hobby.
Developing New Habits
So going forward, we now need to consider how we can start feeling more in control. Developing new habits, finding new coping strategies, addressing your beliefs about foods, and changing your attitudes. Look at developing a more flexible approach to your diet rather than seeing foods as being forbidden or either good or bad with no in-between.
Self-Evaluation
Something I am a strong advocate of is monitoring your own progress. Habits are often ingrained in us and therefore occur with very little conscious thought involved. By evaluating yourself, you can help to prevent mindless behaviours such as overeating as these behaviours become more conscious and less automatic. Set yourself small achievable goals and review these at the end of each week/month depending on what they are. That way, you can see if your plan is working and make changes where necessary rather than getting one year down the line only to find your plan was not working and seeing it as a completely wasted year. Another good method is to make plans for the coming days/week. Making shopping lists to take to the supermarket, eating at the table rather than on the sofa in front of the TV, etc., can really help you to alter these negative behaviours and start creating new habits.
Steps to Take Going Forward
Find Your Trigger to Change
A lot of successful weight loss, where the weight has been kept off, is triggered by a life event, such as a breakup, a bereavement, an embarrassing situation, etc. The reason is that this shakes up a person’s life and helps to create a chance for change rather than just waiting for January and saying you are going to lose weight just because it is “what you do in January.” We can’t make these events happen, so it can be useful to find the mini-events that happen in our day-to-day lives, such as an injury, a birthday, special celebration, house move, new job, holiday, etc., which all offer the potential for change. What often happens is that we let these events slip by, and we re-establish the ‘normality’ that we were in before and end up slipping back into the old habits and old ways of thinking. Instead, you should try to identify one of these changes, think about it, focus on it, write about it (make notes, keep a diary, etc.), and use it as an opportunity for change. It is a thing in medicine that is known as a ‘teachable moment’ and is something that doctors use to get a message across to patients that something needs to change. When it comes to a trigger for weight loss, we need to find our own ‘teachable moments’ by focusing on any opportunity we have for change and making it the trigger we need to make things different in the future.
See Any Event That Disrupts the Routines in Your Life as a Positive Opportunity, Not a Threat
Changing What Is in Our Heads
You have to believe things can change! As I mentioned earlier, if you still think your weight issues are caused by things like genetics, hormones, or a medical condition, then it is just generating feelings of hopelessness, which will result in you giving up. If you want to succeed, you have to believe you can, and this also applies to other changes you want to make in your life.
If you fall into this category of thinking, ask yourself these questions:
- Have I ever lost weight?
- Have I ever gained weight?
If the answer to these is ‘yes,’ then ask yourself why? Could the weight gain have been when you were on holiday and you ate a lot of food and drank a lot of alcohol? Did you lose weight when you were ill and you lost your appetite? This shows you that your body weight is linked to your behaviour, where eating more leads to weight gain and eating less leads to weight loss. Again, with this in mind, you will have a clearer picture that you can lose weight, which helps you in believing it is possible.
A big thing that people do when it comes to our behaviours is weighing up the benefits and costs. Basically, we go ahead with things because the benefits outweigh the costs. In terms of weight loss, we need to make sure we understand that the benefits of eating well to lose the weight outweigh those of not doing so. Instead of jumping straight into it without any thought, think about what the benefits will be for you if you lose the weight. It could be fitting into a certain dress, being able to play with the kids, feeling better, feeling fitter, etc. Write these down and use them as a motivational tool. We are also very driven by rewards, so another good way to stay on track is to set up a reward system for yourself. It could be something like buying a dress you love but the size smaller than you are so you have something to work towards, or perhaps you will reward yourself with tickets for a show once you reach a certain goal, etc.
Create New Behaviours
When you look at successful and unsuccessful weight loss, you will see that a new behaviour regimen is absolutely necessary if you want to keep it off long term. In terms of psychology, this new regimen should be looking at what, where, when, and why to eat.
What to Eat
The basis of weight loss is simple: consume fewer calories (energy) than are used up in day-to-day activities. What also needs to be considered is your overall health. I hear too often about people going on extreme diets where they eat very low-calorie intakes. This is not sustainable and is also dangerous due to the high level of dietary deficiencies that will arise as a result. There are loads of diets out there where foods or food groups are banned, which could cause deficiencies and also adds to the negative relationship with food as we discussed earlier. Take the ketogenic diet, for example: Carbohydrates are seen as being bad, and you are instructed to avoid them. This can make you feel bad if you eat something like a banana, which is packed full of fibre, vitamins, and minerals essential for health.
Instead of following a generic diet that someone tries to put on you and a lot of other people, you should aim to find the way of eating that best fits with YOUR lifestyle and individual needs. As I have said on so many occasions, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all diet.
Where to Eat
In the obesogenic world we live in, it can be very easy to overeat without realising it. Many people grab food on the go, eat in the car, eat at their desk, or sit in front of the TV in the evenings. As a result, eating is done mindlessly and without thinking, which means we don’t take notice of our eating behaviours, often leading us to not feeling full after. Research has shown that people who eat when distracted, such as in front of the TV or having a snack whilst walking around, eat more than if they sit at a table and eat with a plate, knife, and fork. So, where possible, you should aim to pay more attention to your eating behaviours. It can also help you feel better if you have a proper lunch break where you sit down away from the computer and eat rather than eating at your desk.
When to Eat
As discussed earlier, food is often seen as a comfort and is regularly eaten when we are bored, needing a treat, or just because someone else is eating. This also leads to overeating. Like the previous point, you should try to pay more attention to your eating behaviours so you know when you are actually hungry and only eat then. A really good way of achieving this is to plan ahead of time what you are going to eat. I am a big advocate of meal planning, and it is something I do with all my clients. Whether they are looking to lose weight or are professional athletes, everyone will find a benefit in doing so. This doesn’t mean you need to start filling 100s of plastic tubs with chicken and broccoli as seen regularly on Instagram; you just need to make a note of the meals you are going to eat each day and put in a bit of preparation to make sure you are actually able to have it. For example, defrosting meats and making sure you get all the ingredients in your shopping. Doing this will also help you save a lot of money as it will reduce the amount of food you are wasting. It also helps you to learn to accept feelings of hunger that develop between meals. As you have planned out in advance, you know that you are getting everything you need, and if you eat more than that, it will negatively affect your goals.
Why to Eat
Once you have achieved the what, where, and when, then the why should change as a result because you will no longer be spontaneously eating in response to things going on in your head or the tempting environmental triggers. Once you get to grips with all of the points discussed, it will help enable you to be less food-focused, and you can learn to live to eat rather than eat to live.
Manage Your Environment
Our behaviours are clearly a response to what is going on in our heads, often triggered by our environment. In an ideal world, we would all be able to reprogram what is in our heads so we can easily ignore these triggers and just do the what, where, when, and why that we plan for. It is important to maintain perspective and remember that at times this can be hard, and we might need a bit of extra help from our home environment.
We are all adults and in charge of our home environment. It is up to us where we drive to, what we buy, what we cook, etc. Therefore, we need to try and limit the temptations in the home if it is something that often causes a trigger. By planning your week out, you can make sure you are sticking to the rule that only things you are planning to eat should be brought into the house. If you don’t want to eat it, don’t buy it! Sometimes there are avoidable steps we can take to change our routine if it is something that causes issues:
- Shop online rather than going to the supermarket where you can see all the tempting products
- Don’t shop hungry!
- If you walk past a shop/takeaway on your way to or from work, plan to walk a different route so you are not going past it and are tempted in by the smells
- Don’t take small children shopping with you
- Choose a better place to eat in the house – Make sure your table is clean and tidy with no clutter so you are not forced to go and sit on the sofa
- If you are going out for a meal, look up the menu ahead of time and choose what you want. That way, you are not browsing the menu when you are really hungry, which is when we are more likely to make less healthy choices.
Look to the Future
The last step you should focus on before going on a weight loss journey is looking forward rather than back. Look forward to a renewed sense of control, a new identity as a healthier person. Use the steps discussed above to help achieve your goal! Unfortunately, life always finds a way of getting in the way and disrupting our progress, so it is important that you can learn to cope with failure if it happens, as well as learning other valuable ways of thinking to help you stay in control!
Coping with Failure
However organized we are or motivated to succeed, there are times that you will eat or drink more than you wanted to, skip the gym, and start to see your progress going backwards. The best way to look at this is don’t try and kid yourself that these moments will never happen, but have a strategy to deal with them when they do. This way, they are not going to snowball into a full-blown relapse that would see you doing the classic: “What is the ****** point” and giving up. Here are some ideas to help you create an effective strategy:
Plan to Deal with High-Risk Situations
You are always going to have to deal with situations that are going to be more difficult, such as weddings, holidays, birthdays, etc., and life is there to be enjoyed. You shouldn’t approach these things with fear and dread or go there and only eat a few lettuce leaves because “I’m on a diet.” Before you go, put yourself in the situation and think about how you will feel. Plan what you are going to do when you are there. You can also plan ahead when you know you might be consuming more food than you want by shuffling the rest of your day to help limit the damage. Instead of going to the wedding after eating as normal, why not have a smaller breakfast and lunch to give you some more calories in the evening.
Don’t Put the Blame on Yourself
The most common reaction to a negative situation, such as overeating or not exercising as much as you would have liked to, is self-blame. When we blame ourselves, it is likely to lead to a negative mood and lowered self-esteem, which in turn can start the downward spiral into the vicious cycle discussed at the start of the article. A good solution to this, if you find that it is something you do, is to find something else to blame. It was a wedding, you didn’t cook the food, work was very busy and caused you additional stress, etc. Doing this helps to shift the blame away from you, which makes you feel better about the situation and maintain your positivity and motivation.
Be Kind to Yourself
If you are in a situation where you feel bad about doing something, such as overeating, it is important that you are kind to yourself about it. Remember, this is a lifelong journey which is going to have ups and downs. A lot of the time, when people are dieting and they “fall off the bandwagon,” they are very negative about it and often say things like “I will start again on Monday,” “I will just be naughty this once and have a bar of chocolate,” etc. These negative thoughts add to the sense of guilt and can affect self-esteem. Instead of this, you should look at being more constructive, forgive yourself but understand why it happened, and then move on. When you understand this, you can also look to adjust your food intake the following day to make up for it. For example, you had a bar of chocolate, instead of beating yourself up about it and feeling bad, understand that you were perhaps stressed out because of work, and you had a bar of chocolate, you enjoyed it, and now is the time to move on. Maybe think about what steps you could take to stop it from happening too often, or you could reduce the portion size of your next meal to make up for the additional calories you had earlier.
See It as a Learning Opportunity
Thinking back to the analogy I made earlier about the computer game, when you die, you learn what you did wrong and go back to it to succeed. The same should apply to weight loss. If you have a blip, see it as a way of learning rather than feeling bad about it and calling it a failure. Evaluate why it happened and see what you can do to help avoid it next time.
Conclusion
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope you find the information useful and can apply the discussed points to assist you in your weight loss journey.
Remember, don’t rush into the first diet you come across or one recommended by a friend. These often don’t align with your lifestyle and can lead to frustration and failure. Instead, tailor your plan to fit your preferences and lifestyle, creating a sustainable way of life that works for you long-term, not just for a “6-week blast.”
If you need further assistance, explore the various services I offer. These can help you understand your needs and guide you in achieving your goals.