How Your Mind Powerfully Influences Weight Loss

A hidden gem in your weight loss journey is the remarkable power of your mindset.

Your thoughts (your beliefs/opinions/judgements) affect how you feel (your emotions). How you feel, determines what you do. Meaning, the actions, inactions, or reactions. Those will then result in something.

So when talking about weight loss, your thoughts powerfully influence your weight loss results.

So to create the weight loss results you want, you’ll want to create a winning situation by making sure your thoughts are being as helpful as they can be.

In this post, I’m explaining how your mind powerfully influences weight loss, plus sprinkling in some practical tips for some easy wins.

Quiet the Inner Critic

We all have that inner critic that tends to sabotage our best intentions. Negative self-talk can show up as thoughts like:

• “You can’t lose the weight.”
• “You’ll just gain it back.”
• “You haven’t been able to do it before, so what makes you think you can now?”

Thoughts such as these can lead to feelings of inadequacy, disbelief, and self-doubt. When you feel that way, it’s more challenging staying on track with a weight loss plan.

Your inner critic may even be preventing you from seeking out help in your weight loss journey or fully committing.

Quieting that inner critic means learning to identify and challenge these negative beliefs. Only then can you start replacing self-criticism with self-compassion. Once you do, you’re cultivating a healthier, more positive mindset that supports your weight loss goals.

Practical Tip to Quiet the Inner Critic:

When you catch yourself thinking negatively, identify the specific thought. Write it down, then pause and ask yourself if this thought is helpful or if it’s holding you back. You can then shift the thought, but it has to be a thought you actually believe.

This is one of the things working with a coach will help you with. I then help you poke holes in that negative thought and shift it around to a more positive, but believable one.

• LISTEN OR READ: Self-Compassion and Your Eating Habits (Podcast Episode)
• LISTEN OR READ: Thought Habits and Your Results (Podcast Episode)

Maximize Motivation

Your thoughts influence your motivation, which is a feeling in your body that serves as fuel to take action. Because you’ll want to maximize your motivation, you’ll want to maximize those motivating thoughts.

A helpful way to do that is to set goals that are doable, but also that excite you. Also, envisioning yourself working toward those goals until you reach them is a powerful motivator.

Imaging the benefits of who you will become as you’re losing weight and what weight loss will enable you to do is part of this too. It’ll also make it less likely you’ll want to give up when you hit any challenges that might come up.

Practical Tip to Maximize Motivation:

Create a vision board or write down your goals and the reasons why that are really meaningful to you. Keep this visual reminder in a place where you’ll see it regularly to help stay motivated. And check out these podcast episodes….

• LISTEN OR READ: 2 Tools for When You Feel Unmotivated (Podcast Episode)
• LISTEN OR READ: What ACTUALLY Motivates You (Podcast Episode)

Unwind Emotional Eating

Emotions often hijack our eating habits. This occurs to all humans.

This means unpleasant emotions such as stress and anxiety can lead you down the path of emotional eating. Your emotions are just physical sensations that are a reaction to your thoughts.

So when you start to see which emotions are leading to emotional eating, and then find the thoughts leading to the emotion, you’ll start really unwinding your emotional eating.

If a client finds herself emotionally eating, we find the emotion first. Then, I teach her how to process the emotion, and we look at what she’s thinking that is causing the emotion.

We investigate and “problem-solve” from there.

Practical Tip for Unwinding Emotional Eating:

Every time you feel an urge to eat, pause and ask yourself if it’s your emotions or hunger at play. If it’s an emotion, just identifying that emotion is a great first step. If you want, you can then explore to see what you’re thinking that is making you feel that way.

Emotions are one of the biggest factors in weight loss success. I help my clients with strategies, but also with the thoughts and emotions side of it.

• LISTEN OR READ: 3 Thoughts to Overcome Emotional Eating (Podcast Episode)
• LISTEN OR READ: Emotional Eating at Work (Podcast Episode)
• LISTEN OR READ: My Emotional Eating Habit (Podcast Episode)

Ride the Rollercoaster

I remind my clients that the path to weight loss is rarely a straight line. It’s more like a rollercoaster. Just knowing this, helps make those little downs much more tolerable.

Especially when it comes to the number on the scale. (By the way, there are several ways to measure weight loss, so check out my podcast on this below.)

This is often why when you’re on a weight loss journey without a coach, it’s very easy to fall off the wagon and stay off. A coach helps keep your mindset where it needs to be, so you can keep pushing forward.

Practical Tip for Riding the Rollercoaster:

When confronted with a setback, look for a useful lesson to help you going forward.

Also, remind yourself that the scale won’t always go in the direction you want it to every time you step on it and that’s completely normal. Step back and look at the bigger picture.

• LISTEN OR READ: 7 Ways to Measure Weight Loss (Podcast Episode)
• LISTEN OR READ: 5 Mindset Shifts to Help You Lose Weight (Podcast Episode)

Final Notes:

By setting up your environment for success and implementing these strategies, you can gain the upper hand over your candy cravings and consumption.

Remember that it’s a journey, and small steps in the right direction will lead to significant changes in your habits and overall well-being. With determination and the right environment, you can enjoy a sweeter, healthier life without the guilt of candy consumption.

Make it easy to stay on track with eating habits, mindset, and weight loss. Get short, weekly email tips delivered every Sunday morning by putting your first name and email in the form below.