Positive Self-Talk: A Key Piece to the Weight Loss Puzzle

Positive Self-Talk: A Key Piece to the Weight Loss Puzzle
Positive Self-Talk: A Key Piece to the Weight Loss Puzzle
By susanb, June 30, 2011

Last week, I was interviewed by one of our local news channels about a ‘new’ strategy for weight loss. The idea goes a little bit beyond “thinking your way thin” – which focuses on behavior change when it comes to food choice – to something more like, “believing your way thin”. It’s basically an attitude adjustment. If you tell yourself – and believe – that you’re already a healthy, active person who eats well, then you’re much more likely to behave like one. And those healthy behaviors should, in turn, lead you closer to your goal.

The psychology of weight loss focuses mostly on shifting one’s approach to food – like determining what it is that leads to overeating, and how to replace bad behaviors with good ones. It also means teaching our inner voices to ‘talk nice’. Positive self-talk means that we don’t beat ourselves up when we slip – instead, our inner voices remind us that just because we slipped, doesn’t mean we have to fall.

The new twist to this psychology takes this a step further. It’s more than believing that we have what it takes to reach our weight loss goals – we actually tell ourselves that we’re already there.

The thinking goes like this – if we constantly tell ourselves that we’re fat and lazy, it’s pretty much a given that we’ll act the part. But, if we see envision ourselves as healthy and active, we’re more likely to behave the way healthy people do. We’ll eat better, we’ll get more exercise, and we’ll shift our self-image into a something much more positive.

Of course, positive self-talk isn’t going to lead to weight loss all on its own, but it is an important piece to the complex puzzle of weight control. Because along with attitude adjustment, successful weight management also means learning new skills – like healthy cooking and calorie counting – finding time to exercise, and learning new and healthy eating behaviors.

So what you do is important, but how you feel about yourself matters, too. It’s more than just the number of calories you’ve eaten or how many steps you’ve logged on your pedometer – it’s about giving yourself a pat on the back for your efforts, and noticing how much healthier, trimmer and stronger you feel as a result.

But sometimes we’re our own worst enemy. We tell ourselves that we’ve never been able to lose or that exercise is too hard – and when we mess up, it’s even worse. Then it’s “I’m a failure”, “I have no willpower” or “I’m lazy”. We tend to focus more on the negative (“I ate way too much at lunch”) – and less on the positive (“I walked a lot faster than usual on my walk this morning”).

Let’s say that you do slip up – maybe you picked away at a donut at work. Your inner voice might say, “since I’ve already messed up, I may as well pig out for the rest of the day”. But you could turn that self-talk right around, and let that voice tell you instead, “it’s not the end of the world, and if I’m careful the rest of the day, I’ll be fine”.

There’s an old saying, “don’t say anything to yourself that you wouldn’t say to someone else”. If one of your friends complained to you that they were having struggles with their weight, you wouldn’t tell them that they’re lazy, or that they’ll never reach their goals, would you? So why do you say these things to yourself?

Learn to give yourself encouragement, just as you would with your friends. Because when it comes to weight loss, if you tell yourself you can, it’s a lot more likely that you will.

Written by Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD. Susan is a paid consultant for Herbalife.


Tags: Healthy Eating, herbalife, how do I lose weight, how to lose fat, obesity, weight control, weight loss diet, weight management
Nutrition, Weight Loss