4 Thoughts That Are Sabotaging Your Weight Loss (Plus, How to Shift Them)

All of your actions that lead to weight loss, are powered by your brain of course. This means you have thoughts that then lead to actions. A feeling will always occur in between the thought and the action, but a thought always needs to come first.

For this blog post, I’m focusing on how your thoughts ultimately determine your actions, which of course determine your weight loss results.

When you have supportive thoughts, weight loss will be much easier for you. When you have thoughts that are unsupportive, you’re actually sabotaging your weight loss efforts. Luckily, you can “correct” those unsupportive thoughts with some simple shifts.

Once you get in the habit of more supportive thoughts by shifting some of your unsupportive thoughts, you’ll be hitting your weight loss goals much more easily.

Your Brain is Just Doing its Job

Your brain is going to love using past experiences as evidence for the future. It was made to do this to help protect you. This is incredibly useful in situations like not touching something hot, not going near an animal bearing its teeth at you that might want to eat you, etc.

It’s not so useful for things that aren’t typically dangerous, such as trying to lose 15 lbs. Your brain sometimes doesn’t know the difference though, so it will try to avoid something not dangerous too.

In addition to avoiding danger (whether it be true danger or not), your brain likes to avoid negative emotion. So, if you had attempted to lose weight in the past, didn’t succeed, and felt a negative emotion surrounding the weight loss attempt, your brain will want to avoid this in the future.

So, it will sometimes do everything it can to make you NOT try to lose weight again. This typically entails thinking thoughts that will prevent you from really succeeding at weight loss.

Thoughts that aren’t motivating and can often be de-motivating, sometimes making you quit altogether.

Even though it seems like your brain isn’t on your side with the weight loss, your brain is really just doing its job. Trying to protect you. Luckily, there are ways around this.

Catch Onto Your Brain

First, you have to catch onto your brain.

The easiest way to catch onto your brain when it’s trying to protect you by sabotaging your weight loss efforts with certain thoughts, is to look for negativity.

When you set a weight loss goal, you’re probably thinking some positive thoughts and feeling some positive feelings, right? Or at least initially.

Your brain might be sabotaging your weight loss right away with some negative thoughts to counteract the positive ones. Or, the negative thoughts might start creeping in after awhile, especially if the weight loss is a little tougher than you thought it might be.

So start out by looking for any negative thoughts. If you’re having some difficulty with that, then here are some examples of common ones, plus how to make a little shift it to a thought that is more encouraging.

• RELATED: Habit Change for Weight Loss (Podcast Episode)
• RELATED: Weight Loss With a Busy Schedule (Blog Post)

Thought #1

Sabotaging Thought: “I’ll just never be the weight I want to be.”

Shift: “I might not be able to be the weight I want to be, but I also might be able to.”

See how instead of saying “never,” you’re accepting that you may not, but it’s also possible that you may. This can leave you with a better feeling than the original thought, right?

Thought #2

Sabotaging Thought: “I’ve plateaued again. This always happens. Why do I even try?”

Shift: “Okay, this plateau just means I need to try something different now. Let’s pick something to try next.”

This shift helps you to problem-solve, rather than detect a problem and then just completely give up. The original thought is sabotaging your weight loss, because it can often lead you to quit, or at the very least not try something different so you can succeed.

• RELATED: When You Can’t Keep the Weight Off (Podcast Episode)
• RELATED: 10 Mindset Shifts for Weight Loss (Blog Post)

Thought #3

Sabotaging Thought: “Weight loss is just hard for me.”

Shift: “Weight loss can be hard, but it can also not be hard for me.”

Thinking that sabotaging thought will MAKE weight loss hard for you. So, shift it to something that is actually more true, which is that it can be hard, but it can also not be.

Thought #4

Sabotaging Thought: “I just can’t get those last few pounds off.”

Shift: “Those last few pounds are tough, but once I get them off, it’ll be that much more satisfying.”

This shift helps you to look at the bright side of the challenge of losing those last few pounds. Instead of the challenge making you want to give up, it can help drive you forward because of the greater reward.

Final Notes

Your thoughts are typically the biggest culprit when it comes to sabotaging your weight loss, even when there are other challenges making weight loss difficult.

Your thoughts may not be exactly the ones I shared, but you’ll probably find that you have some similar ones. It’s best to write them down and think of ways you can shift them. Keep those ideas in a place you can glance at every once in a while to refresh your memory.

Practicing the new thoughts will make it so that the older thoughts that were sabotaging your weight loss, are pushed away and are less likely to come creeping up again in the future.