Have you ever heard that all you need to do to lose weight is to eat fewer calories than you burn? Sounds simple enough, right? Then why is it so sinking hard to lose weight?
If you have tried and tried but still find yourself tugging on your belt loops to pull up your jeans, searching desperately through your closet for something that fits, it might be time to figure out just what is standing between you and your healthy weight goal.
As a Health Coach, I can tell you that my clients who struggle do so for a multitude of different reasons, all of which are real and valid, and all of which can be overcome. You don’t need to stay stuck in the frustration that's been plaguing you for years.
Ok Jen, so where do I start?
Honestly, with your brain!
Huh? What does that have to do with calories?
The simple truth is that losing weight and more importantly, maintaining it will not be possible until you understand the reasons why change is so hard for you, and much of that comes from understanding the way your brain works. The hard truth is that before you get your body healthy, you have to get your head healthy.
When you understand how your brain works, you'll start to understand your habits - not just your doing habits, but your thought habits and emotion habits! Along with your habits, you will need to understand what beliefs you're holding on to, and how to change them!
Here are some of the common types of MENTAL barriers that might be keeping you from losing the weight.
1. Poor Body Image: A poor body image can keep you from fully committing to weight loss. If you don’t feel good about yourself, you are much more likely to give up before you get to your goal. To improve your body image, try focusing on appreciating the function of your body. Even if you can't fully appreciate the way it looks, practice thanking your body parts you want to change, for the function they perform. "Thanks arms for enabling me to hug my loved ones!" You do not have to be at your goal weight to have gratitude for your body!
2. Emotional Eating: This one’s a doozy. If you look for food to sustain you in times of trouble, you are going to gain weight. And that weight will be troublesome. And you can bet your booty that will propel you to eat more. To stop emotional eating, you’ve got to be able to get 'good' at all emotions - even the 'negative' ones. When I say get good at them, I mean being able to process and experience them in an accepting way and to view them as what they are - part of the complete package of the human experience.
3. Comparing Yourself to Others: Simply, when you compare yourself to others, you lose. In the short term, comparisons can boost your ego or motivate you to work harder, but most often, comparisons result in a disastrous assault on your ego, an attack that you instigated. Focus on you. Don’t worry about anyone else. Weight loss is all about you. Instead of comparing yourself to others, compare yourself to who you were yesterday, last week, last month or even last year.
4. Making Yourself a Low Priority: Even the airline will tell you: before you can save someone else, you have to put on your own oxygen mask. You will be better able to do your job, love your family, and be a friend if you take care of you first. Move yourself to the top of your priority list. This can be so hard for most women, but I can't tell you how many ladies come to me in their mid-life, seeking to do just this - put themselves back at the top of the list!
5. Lack of Trust in Yourself: If you don’t believe you can lose the weight, you won’t. You’ll make excuses to skip exercising and eating better. Basically, your follow through will suck. It all comes back to the relationship you have with yourself.
To blast through your mental barriers, you’ve got to understand what creates them, and then gain the tools to overcome them. The first step is to learn to have ferocious self acceptance and that means knowing yourself, seeing yourself as you really are, and being willing to nurture yourself the way you would anyone else you love.
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