Every weekend, you go off the rails with your eating but justify it by telling yourself, “I’ll start over Monday.”
You start over on Monday. Breakfast goes great. Lunch is awesome. You even manage to cook and prepare a healthy dinner. By 9pm, you’re mindlessly eating peanut butter and chocolate chips from a spoon while standing in front of your kitchen sink.
You stick to your diet plan, workout consistently, and lose a solid 20 lbs. You congratulate yourself with a double stack from Wendy’s.
You do your weekly weigh-in and you’re down 3 lbs. Woo hoo! You celebrate by ordering a hot fudge/caramel sundae with whip cream of course.
Each time, you tell yourself “Just one more time. I’ll get back on track tomorrow.” Weeks and months go by like this. Next thing you know your clothes are tight again.
Your entire life has been a roller coaster of weight loss, weight gain, and binges. You know exactly what to do, but can’t seem to do it consistently. You could write the book on how to lose weight. Except, your intentions for yourself don’t match your actions. You blame your lack of weight loss on everyone and everything around you. There’s only one person that you can hold responsible. YOU. You are the only one self-sabotaging your weight loss.
The question is why? Why would you sabotage the one thing that you want more than anything else in the world? You want to stop feeling fat and miserable but yet you keep doing the things that make you this way.
Who Are You Without Comfort Food?
When you have a shitload of weight to lose, the road ahead feels defeating before you even get started. Food has been a go-to comfort for self-medicating for so long that you don’t know who you’ll be without it. What’s going to happen when you want to binge? How will you comfort yourself after a long stressful day? How will you socialize with friends and family? We all know that food is the heart of all relationships. We use it to come together to celebrate, to relate, even to mourn. If you can’t use food as a comfort, how will you survive? It feels like part of you is dying so you sabotage your efforts with the “just one more time” mentality.
Read This: How To Reset After a Binge
You’re Afraid of Losing the Fat Girl
This sounds completely counter-intuitive. We don’t think these things in our conscious minds so of course they sound crazy. Our subconscious is controlling these decisions that self-sabotage our weight loss efforts. Just like food has become your lifelong confidant, your identify is wrapped up in being the “fat girl.” I know. I know. You don’t want to be the fat girl. You hate that bitch. But, what else do you know? Who will you be when she is no longer part of your identity? You’ve become addicted to the process of dieting, of starting and stopping. It’s a distraction from all the other stuff in your life that you don’t want to deal with.
Read This: Dear Fat Bitch
Fear of Success & Being Seen
How many things have you declined or put on hold until you lose 50 lbs? How many times have you said, “Once I lose the weight, I’ll finally….?” Your weight, while uncomfortable has also been a shield. A protection from actually being seen. Even though our fatness consumes our thoughts and makes us feel physically huge – we also feel invisible. Your weight keeps you playing small and invisible. Your weight has been holding you back from going all-in with your career, wearing a bathing suit, saying yes to events, and getting outdoors and exploring. When the weight is gone, what will your excuse be?
Changing Your Lifestyle is Fucking Hard
I don’t believe in fad diets. I believe in changing your lifestyle from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. Let’s say you’ve lost 30 lbs. You’re not at goal but 30 lbs is a significant amount of weight. So significant that you notice your clothes are fitting loose, your face looks thinner, your confidence is coming back, and you are looking and feeling good. This is the stage where other people are starting to notice your success. Then a big event like a birthday happens and you tell yourself you’ll splurge on cake, some margaritas, and of course a birthday dinner. That’s perfectly ok to do! But next thing you know, you’re having little splurges here and there. The weight is still coming off or staying about the same. Then, about a month later you’ve gained 10 pounds and you don’t know why.
Except you do. The closer you get to the new version of you, the more you start self-sabotaging yourself.
Changing your lifestyle is hard. Not turning to food for comfort is hard. Feeling your icky feelings is hard. Exercising is hard. You won’t always want to do it. This is where you have to decide, “Do I want to go back to feeling fat and miserable or do I want to push through the pain of changing my life?” It’s in the little decisions each day where we find transformation. So while it might be hard in the moment to walk past the bakery without buying anything, you’ll feel 1000 times better next month when you can wear shorts again and put on a bathing suit. Change is hard. It’s takes consistency over and over again.
You Don’t Have a Real Why
I lost a ton of weight in 2009/2010 because my “why” was my wedding. That wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough. No matter how much I lost. I still thought I was fat no matter how great I was doing. I literally started binging the day after my wedding and couldn’t stop for months. Yup, I gained the weight back. I gained it back because I had a real “why” to keep me motivated past the wedding. My why was over. I didn’t have coping skills when life decided to through me a curve ball covered in spikes.
I have lots of whys now. Mostly it boils down to the fact that I love my new life. I love that I actually LIVE life instead of sitting on the bleachers watching everyone else. Being fat and miserable will rob me of that. It will rob me of my life that I don’t get back. Ever. It will rob my daughter of that “irresistible” version of me and the experiences that we can share together. I refuse to go backwards and be that fat miserable girl who stays indoors 24/7. Never again.
Read Next: 5 Signs You’re Ready To Change Your Life
It’s Too Hard to Lose Weight
Have you ever gone swimming when it’s a little chilly? It feels fine once you jump all the way in. But, if you so much as lift your arm out of the water, it’s freezing! So instead you stay in the pool even though it would be a lot more comfy and warm inside the house. That’s how I think of being overweight and depressed. Even though you’re miserable, it’s comforting to stay right where you are. The pain of having to get out of the pool and be cold for two minutes seems worse than staying in the water and not moving.
If you have 50 or 100+ lbs to lose that journey ahead seems painful. So, you stay that way even though it’s miserable. The thought of what it’s going to take to lose the weight seems daunting. Sure, it’ll be hard at first – just like it’s freezing cold when you get out of the water. But once you start changing your habits and seeing results, it will be worth it. You just have to get up and get started.
Get out of the damn pool. Feel cold for a split second so that you can spend the rest of your life comfortable and happy in your own body.
In Conclusion
Stop standing in your own way. Stop sabotaging your weight loss efforts. This shit is exhausting. You didn’t get this far to only go this far. Shut your mouth with all of your bullshit excuses. Losing weight is actually really freaking simple. Eat less. Move more. Period. BUT, trust me that I know there’s SO much more to it and it’s easier said than done. The physical part is easy. Well, it’s easy in theory. So easy it’s stupid actually. It’s changing your mind and taming your emotions that are the hardest part of this journey. Getting your mind in shape will be the hardest thing you ever do…but you can do it.
The time is going to pass anyways. Who do you want to be this time next year. In 6 months? You and ONLY you have the power to control that outcome. When you think of it that way, it’s pretty damn empowering. You are in control. Will you give up the fat girl to become the irresistible version of who you are really meant to be?
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What To Do Next? Download My Free Irresistible You Workbook!
How was I able to change my mindset about weight and my body? Through the work I have done which led me to create the 5 guiding principles of an irresistible life. The free workbook includes those with actionable plans to get started creating YOUR irresistible life! Click here to download your free workbook or click the image below.
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Hi! I’m Aimee with 2 E’s. I'm a confidence coach that empowers women to love themselves by breaking down body image issues, so that they can lose the emotional weight and gain the confidence to look and feel irresistible...at any size.