Everyone knows that if you want to lose weight, you have to improve your eating.
But most people have one primary obstacle to doing this.
What is that obstacle?
We usually think our obstacle is some kind of strategy or tactic:
- Discovering the perfect diet plan
- Finding more time for exercise
- Having more discipline or more willpower
- Curbing cravings
But guess what?
The real secret is not a tactical thing.
It’s not “Just tell me what to do, and I will finally be able to lose weight and keep it off.”
For just about every one of us, our #1 obstacle is
THE VOICE IN OUR HEAD.
You can have the perfect diet plan, the perfect workout plan, the “WünderSecret” you found on the internet, whatever you think the key to success will be.
And you follow it for a few weeks, and good things happen. 💪🏼
And then something happens…
Life happens.
Things get stressful or chaotic.
Life looks different than you’re used to, or different than you want it to.
And the voice in your head says,
“This is too hard. Let me just get through this, and I’ll get back on track next week.”
Because the voice in your head tells you that managing life AND paying attention to what you eat is impossible.
It’s not true, but that’s what the voice tells you.
We hit a bump, and that voice tells us we might as well turn one bump into 20 bumps.
Eating one cookie turns into devouring a whole bag of Doritos, because the voice tells us
“Well, you failed at the no-cookies thing, so you might as well forget everything and start over tomorrow.”
And when you decide to put off food intentionality until later, that voice can also shame you about your “failure”.
And feeling ashamed feels really crappy.
So we eat to cover up the crappy feelings.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
So here’s the simple way out of this cycle:
We have to recognize that we are not our thoughts.
Thoughts are just creations that our beautiful minds put together. They’re like other people sitting around a meeting table talking to you.
But you’re the CEO, you’re the decision maker.
The thoughts are just ideas, stories, and opinions.
YOU are the one who absorbs all this input and comes up with a decision and an action.
You’re the boss, not the chattering thoughts.
(In psychology, the concept of observing your thoughts is called ‘metacognition‘. It’s also one of the core concepts of meditation.)
So just because the voice in your head tells you that because you ate a cookie, you’re a horrendous failure and nothing you do for the rest of the day matters, DOESN’T MAKE IT TRUE.
Be your own Thought Boss.
Listen, evaluate, decide.
Because you are not the voices in your head.
And if you want help sorting this all out, let’s talk.
We’ve got 30 years of this kind of work behind us, along with literally thousands of success stories — we’re obviously doing something right 🙂
Your friend and Coach,
Dan