Is Your Self-Talk Sabotaging Eating Habits and Weight Loss?

Listen to the Episode:

Add the show to your podcast library on Apple (iPhone) Here or Spotify Here.

You’ll Like These Too:

• RELATED EPISODE: The Power of Thoughts on Weight Loss Results
• RELATED EPISODE: Healthy Mindset, Healthy Weight Loss

Tired of struggling with the same bad eating habits?

I can help you transform your eating habits and lose weight sustainably in my 1:1 coaching program, Eat with Intention, Lose Weight Sustainably.

Imagine going through your day feeling healthy, confident and free.

Why delay feeling your best yet? Book your free 60-min. consultation with me now.

Enjoying the Show?

Help make the show more discoverable to others who are frustrated with their eating habits by leaving a rating/review.

Just use the links below (or go right onto the app you normally listen on). Thank you!

• Rate/review on Apple (iTunes) HERE
• Rate on Spotify HERE

Know someone who’d benefit?

Just send them a text with a link to this page.

Full Episode Transcript:

Is Your Self-Talk Sabotaging Eating Habits and Weight Loss?

Hi there, welcome to the Eating Habits for Life podcast. Today I want to talk to you about the significance of your inner self talk or inner dialogue in shaping your eating habits and weight loss.

By the end of the episode, you’ll see the power of yourself talk on eating habits and weight loss success, you’ll understand the difference between negative and positive self talk. You’ll also gain awareness of if your current food or weight struggles are related to some negative self talk or inner dialogue.

Let’s start out by first defining what inner dialogue or self talk is. So you know that little voice in your head that says words to you all day long, also known as your thoughts? That’s your inner dialogue. But a little bit more specifically, the topic of conversation is you.

So it’s your thoughts about yourself, about your actions, about anything involving you.

You can have two different types of inner dialogue or inner self talk. You can have positive self talk, which is constructive, meaning it’s helpful and it serves you. Or you can have negative self talk or negative inner dialogue which is destructive. Meaning, it can be harmful and at the very least does not serve you well.

Now, where does inner dialogue come from? Your thoughts about yourself and really about life in general are all formulated from experiences that you’ve had starting from birth. So this also includes words that other people say to you.

So basically, your experience of other people, your experience of the world just by observation, your experience of specific situations.

All of this helps to form your inner dialogue.

Now, as you know children are easily influenced. Adults can be easily influenced as well, but children especially, because their brains aren’t fully developed yet, and they’re getting all of this input from the outside world and from other people, that’s not necessarily counteracted yet by anything else.

Now, as you go on in life, you may have some other experiences that mold or shape the thoughts in your head that may counteract a negative experience or some negative input.

Overtime, any negative self talk can get reinforced because our brains love to look for evidence to support negative things. They also will do so with positive things as well, but our human brains do tend to focus on negative. That’s just because we kind of had to for survival purposes. We always had to be looking for potential danger.

So let me just give you a quick example of this. When you were young, if your mother told you that you were too chubby and needed to go on a diet, you may then start comparing your body to other people’s, or you may start telling yourself every time you look in the mirror that you’re too chubby.

So your brain is just collecting evidence, in your mind at least, that you’re too chubby and that you need to go on a diet.

And what do you think this will most likely end up causing you to do? Go on a diet. You’ll likely lose a little bit of weight, but the diet is not one that is maintainable, so then you’ll gain it back. You’ll continue thinking that you need to go on a diet because you’re too chubby, therefore then you might go on another diet. You might lose some weight again, but then gain it back, and then you may start telling yourself that you’re a failure on top of it.

More negative self talk, which just adds fuel to the fire.

So how does inner self talk or inner dialogue influence eating behaviors, eating habits, and weight loss?

Because your inner dialogue is your own thoughts and we know that our thoughts create our emotions and our emotions drive our actions or are inactions, also known as behaviors, that means that your inner dialogue has a very strong effect on your behaviors.

And then your behaviors always result in something. So that can be strengthening an actual eating habit, meaning an eating behavior that you’ve done over and over again that it has become habit.

Or a result can be weight loss, weight gain, or staying at the same weight.

So that’s how your inner self talk or inner dialogue ultimately affects your eating habits and weight loss results.

Because your thoughts create your emotions, which then determine your behaviors, which then result in something.

So if we want different eating habits and weight loss results, we of course need to change the behaviors, but we also need to manage thoughts and emotions. So we need to manage that inner dialogue.

Which is why this is something I help you greatly improve in my 1:1 coaching program. Without this, the negative inner self-talk continues.

Making it tough to stick to any new changes and keep any new results.

That’s why I incorporate it into my coaching. It’s not about a short-term fix. It’s all about creating results you can keep for life.

I realized this when I had formed some bad eating habits when I was a physician assistant, and had gained some weight because of it.

I realized that I couldn’t just change what I was eating or how much I was eating, but also had to address the fact that I was using food to cope with a stressful day. Cope with anxiety. Cope with my insecurities at the time. I was using food as a reward for getting through the day.

So I had to start becoming aware of what I was thinking that was then driving me to do these things.

And I had to start intentionally deciding if I wanted to continue with the negative self talk that was resulting the negative feelings that I was having that were leading to my eating behaviors. That were leading to using food for something that it’s not supposed to be used for.

I discovered that when you have a healthier relationship with yourself, you have a healthier relationship with food. And then when you have a healthier relationship with food, you continue having a healthier relationship with yourself. It’s all a beautiful cycle.

But the reverse is also true. Instead of a beautiful cycle, you can have a vicious cycle.

A vicious cycle of having a bad or maybe just not so great relationship with yourself because of your inner dialogue, leading to a bad or not so great relationship with food. Then causing you to feel guilty, or ashamed, or just plain terrible. Which then just feeds that cycle over and over and over again.

So now I just want to give you an example of how negative inner self talk will negatively affect your eating habits or weight loss. Also, I will give you an example of how positive inner self talk will positively affect your eating habits or weight loss results.

We’re going to go very simple here with the negative inner self talk of “I have no willpower.” Now, this may not seem so bad, but part of my job as a coach is to help detect the thoughts that are having potentially having a negative impact on your eating behaviors and results.

And I can tell you that this one will. I’ll show you how.

So you may have had the thought I have no willpower multiple times and just believe it as if you’re just telling a fact, just the way it is.

But when you think this thought, how do you think this makes you feel? Probably not in control. So probably something like out of control, maybe even shame, or weak.

So let’s just say that the thought “I have no willpower” makes you feel out of control around food. What do you think is going to happen when you’re around food and you’re thinking this thought that’s making you feel out of control?

You’re probably going to behave in a way that aligns with this. Likely resulting in overeating or even binge eating.

And then overeating or binge eating will then have a result. Now of course, when it’s done over and over again, it will become an eating habit and likely cause weight gain.

At the very least the direct result in the moment will be you not feeling very well both physically and emotionally.

Now let’s just change this thought “I have no willpower” to “it’s possible I can be in control around food.”

Because it is possible. The possibility is always there for any human to be in control around food. Why? Because there’s multiple examples of humans that are in control around food.

I can tell you, that my clients are evidence of this as well. I’m evidence myself.

So if you have the inner self talk of “it’s possible I can be in control around food”, what feeling do you think that would create?

Maybe a feeling of hope, relief or even peace.

Let’s say that it creates a feeling of peace. I like that one.

If you’re in a situation where you’re around food, and you have that inner voice saying it’s possible I can be in control around food, and that’s creating a feeling of peace, what do you think is less likely to occur?

If you’re actually feeling somewhat peaceful in your body, you’re probably going to be less likely to overeat or binge.

You might even find it relatively easy to be near the food and not eat the food and not be completely uncomfortable either.

There’s a lot of possibilities here. And so let’s just say that that feeling of peace is allowing you to be near the food, and either not eat it at all, or if you do eat it you don’t overeat.

This will result in you probably feeling pretty darn good physically and emotionally, but also long-term, this will help to break any prior “bad” eating habits such as overeating or binging, it will also help you to lose weight if you’re not overeating.

And, it’s just evidence for your brain that it really is possible you can be in control around food.

And I can tell you this, before my clients come to me, they have the hope or desire that they can be in control around food, and they often believe it’s at least a little possible they can be in control around food.

So, as long as you have some hope or desire, that is often all you need to start out with period if you have a belief that it’s at least a little bit possible, that’s even better. But, if you don’t believe that it’s possible just yet, this is exactly one of the things that we start working on. Your belief, which is strengthened with getting evidence right away.

And to create evidence right away that it is possible, we create small wins. I make it as easy as possible for you to have some quick wins over and over and over again, to serve as evidence. This starts making you feel really good and feeling in control, which then helps you further with your eating behaviors and results.

So if you’re tired of doing this alone and you feel like you may need help with breaking bad eating habits, so that you can have a healthy relationship with food, a healthy body, feel better emotionally, and create lasting weight loss, I can help.

The beautiful thing is that the way by help you in my one-on-one coaching program, transforms you into someone who feels in control of eating habits. Someone who loses weight and keeps it off. Someone who is proud of her eating habits, rather than ashamed. That way, you don’t have to worry about these things again.

The next step to take if you are feeling tired of trying to do this on your own and wasting further time and energy, is to book a free consultation with me.

I can learn about you, your specific struggles and goals, provide insight, and tell you exactly what would get you from where you are now to where you want to be.

And then you are welcome to ask about potentially working together to achieve that through 1:1 coaching, and I can give you details about that.

So book your free consultation with the link in the episode description, so you can get the help that you want and need and start really moving forward with your life and who you want to be as you’re living it.

Or, if you are listening to this episode directly from my website, you can book your free consult with the button below (scroll down just a bit).

Thanks for listening, take care, and I’ll talk with you next week.