Are You a Self-Sabotager?
See if either of these sounds like you:
-You’re careful with what you eat for a while, lose some weight, and improve your fitness… then gradually revert back to your old ways.
-You know exactly what to do, but can’t seem to do it. You feel like you could write a diet book with everything you know about weight loss. But you don’t act on it.
Sound familiar?
The truth is, there’s a huge difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it. It’s easy to hop from one diet to the next without ever sticking with anything. Success (or lack of) comes down to our mindset, psychology, and habits.
A diet won’t fix emotional, mindless, stress-induced eating, and it won’t fix habitual, compulsive binge eating either.
Basically, a diet won’t get to the root cause of why you overeat.
People often think a fear of failure is holding them back. I frequently hear, “I don’t want this to be yet another failed diet attempt.”
But surprisingly, it’s a fear of success that holds people back the most. The best diet won’t matter—no matter how determined you might feel—if a part of you wants to destroy progress toward your goals.
So here we go with the self sabotage process.
Self-Sabotage Happens When You’re Scared of Success
Why would you be scared of success? Well, if you’re successful, any number of fears could be realised. For instance, you won’t have food as a way to temporarily escape or quiet your mind at work or home. Or you’ll have to deal with uncomfortable feelings such as self-doubt, regret, disappointment, or fear (because you’re not suppressing them with food).
Maybe you’ll lose the “Once I lose the weight I will finally…” safety blanket that protects you from taking action on an intimidating (but ultimately rewarding) prospect.
These are real psychological roadblocks, but nothing that can’t be overcome. To break from a pattern of self-sabotage, you need to get to the root of why you’re sabotaging yourself.
We fall off track because a part of us isn’t sure that the goal we’re working toward is going to make our lives better. This causes inner conflict, and when there’s inner conflict, we do the easiest thing of all: nothing.
Until we identify and deal with the reasons we fear success, we’ll never be successful. A lack of knowledge about what’s good for us is rarely the real problem in this day and age.
Instead, we tend to suffer from a lack of consistent action… and that usually comes down to what’s going on between our ears.
This why my years of experience in the weight loss world will help you.
Have you ever sat in a weekly weight loss group and the leader, faced with a member who has gained weight this week? Mary says "I have stuck to plan all week 100% and had a 3lbs gain" The leader says "Oh well you could be wearing different clothes this week, you might need to go to the bathroom, you haven't drunk enough. Try again next week and I am sure it will come off". The group gets restless quickly as Eastenders is on this evening and they want to get home.
Absolutely no help at all for Mary who wants to be listened to, to understand her gain not to be brushed aside. Do you think Mary will go back? Probably not.
My approach is based on a one to one basis. I will listen to Mary but ask relevent questions that only Mary knows the answers to to find out how Mary's week really went.
Just this morning I had my monthly client arrive without his wife in tow for the first time in 6 months. He is struggling with his weight loss journey so I asked him how he was feeling, really feeing. He said being this overweight is sending him into a depression, he hates himself, for what he is doing to himself and his family.
I asked him a series of questions and with his answers he identified he is self sabotaging. We put a plan into action, we role played and he left happier that this week was going to be a great week. I spent a full hour with him as he really needed guidance. I said say hello to Wendy (his wife) from me and he said it was probably better she wasn't here today as he wouldn't have opened up to me like he did.
I take all my clients seriously and I am genuinely interested in helping them form habits around food, be successful in their weight loss journey and help them face sabotaging with techniques they learn from me.
Remeber, my door is always open....
Lots of Love
Carol
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Cathlene 27 w
great information!