4 Ways You Are Accidentally Sabotaging Your Own Weight Loss
YOU are your own worst enemy.
Getty Weight loss is a fickle and somewhat mysterious process. It eludes most Americans.
There are so many opinions about how to achieve weight loss out there that trying to sift though all of them can be nothing short of mind-dizzyingly confusing. Should you go low-carb? High-carb? Eat a diet of mostly vegetables or a diet of mostly meat? What about exercise?
There might be some generalized answers to these questions, but the fact is: it depends. Every person is a biologically unique individual.
Weight loss practices and habits that work for me, won’t necessarily work for you.
Instead, let’s focus on 4 ways that most people are sabotaging their own weight loss goals without even realizing it:
1. You’re not working through your emotional connection with certain foods.
Food is nurturing and can be associated with emotional comfort and a sense of safety. When we try to change habits it can feel unsafe and scary. We need to acknowledge and work through our emotional relationship with food if we are going to permanently change our eating habits.
2. You’re not taking into account the power of your subconscious mind.
A lot of time our subconscious mind is not on board with our goals. We are harboring limiting beliefs, negative self-talk, and old ingrained patterns of behavior. These thoughts and beliefs can sabotage our weight loss goals, even though on the surface it looks like we are doing everything right.
3. You force yourself to eat things you don't WANT to eat.
When we try to force ourselves to eat certain foods or make certain habits that feel instinctively wrong, we are effectively waging war against ourselves. For long- term change to occur we need to feel as though we are working with our bodies.
4) You're not sleeping enough.
Sleep is more important that diet and exercise when it comes to weight loss. However, a lot people think that to lose weight they need to add even more tasks to their already busy days (meal prepping and exercise), and end up getting even less rest.
Focus on consistently getting 7-9 hours of quality sleep per night before you try to lose weight.
People always want a quick fix. I’m certainly guilty of it too. The fact of the matter is that to healthfully lose weight for the long term we have to be willing to dig deep, work though our emotional issues with food, our subconscious thoughts about our worth, learn to speak our body’s language, and make sure we get quality sleep consistently.