TRUST YOURSELF TO LOSE THE WEIGHT AND KEEP IT OFF

Losing and regaining can seem like a never-ending cycle. You follow all the rules and work very very hard, only to wind up right back where you started, or worse. It’s disheartening. 

Eventually, you might start to feel like losing weight is hopeless, like you will never get control of your eating and be happy inside your body again. Sometimes it can even feel like your body is against you.

That’s a miserable place to be. No one wants to feel uncomfortable in their clothes, social situations, heck—their own skin. We all want to get

healthy and stay healthy.

To stop the crazy diet cycle, you’ve got to learn to trust yourself. Most dieters are awfully hard on themselves. Plagued by an all-or-nothing mentality and a hard-and-fast list of rules, they set themselves up for failure. And that failure creates a lack of trust in themselves. They stop believing they can manage their weight and then they can’t.

Positive visualization and faith in yourself go a long way toward creating a ripe environment for weight loss. If you can allow yourself to see your success you are so much more likely to keep working toward it. Weight loss, like all success in life, requires trust and commitment.

Create a can-do attitude.

One of the best ways to build trust in yourself is by developing a can-do attitude. A defeatist mentality says, “No. I cannot go out to dinner with my boss and his wife and eat healthy.”  But you can train yourself to say, “Yes!” to the career opportunity AND good self-care if you change your attitude.

When an invitation comes up, do a little research beforehand. Make a plan. Have a sparkling water with a twist instead of a cocktail, stick to a fresh, simple entree and skip appetizers and desserts. A clear head and a light plate will make you a sharper conversationalist and a comfortable dinner companion, plus ordering decisively with a smile and ease only makes you look that much more competent. The key is to come at those situations with a “Yes I can!” attitude instead of an, “Oh God, how will I ever?” mindset.

If the exercise class gets a little too intense for your fitness level, there’s no shame in marching in place. Your can-do attitude will keep you making it work instead of making excuses and every time you figure out a way to keep moving forward you’ll reaffirm your ability to make healthy decisions and to care for yourself. That builds trust.

• Relinquish control.

Most dieters don’t depend on trust so much as they depend on a strict plan that controls every aspect of their weight loss. They are so tied to restricting, measuring, denying and clocking their exercise minutes that every aspect of the journey is controlled, planned, and premeditated. Right there we’ve Identified a major reason most diets fail. While every aspect of the program is planned out, life isn’t. Every day is filled with a host of curveballs that will throw you off your game. For a lot of folks, those small detours from the plan wind up being the first steps toward giving up completely.

Relinquish control. Let yourself eat intuitively based on simple guidelines and stop trying to live in perfection. Give yourself permission to take baby steps to the finish line. All that adhering to a regimen is exhausting and what’s more, it almost never results in lasting success.

Learn what choices work best for you and then live your life. As a coach I want my clients to know what a portion looks like, but I don’t want them feeling like they need to take measuring spoons to dinner. I want them to know what foods fuel them best, but I don’t want them to deny themselves cake on their birthday. And I want them to move their bodies every day, but I don’t want them crying in the locker room because they didn’t get enough steps in, today. When you let go of controlling behaviors, you build trust in yourself.

• Believe that you can change.

Even if you have been struggling your whole life, developing your can-do attitude and letting go of control prove to you that you can identify old behaviors and do something new. The beauty of being human is that we are constantly changing, evolving and growing. To make weight loss lasting, you have to embrace the belief that you are completely capable of change.

And why shouldn’t we believe that about ourselves?  We believe that everyone we love is capable of making better choices to improve their lives. We celebrate our friends for getting out of a bad relationship or leaving a job they hate. Because we love them, we believe they can make better choices and live a better life. Can’t you believe that for yourself?  

You are an amazing creature filled with potential. If you learn to trust yourself and your ability to adapt, you can and will lose weight because every time you are faced with an obstacle, you will make it work. The way to make this time different, the way to make this time the time you take the weight off and keep it off, is to love yourself enough to believe you can change.

When you allow yourself faith and a positive attitude, everything is possible. It’s time to stop hating the skin you’re in and start living fully, wholly, and happily in the healthiest body you can create. One baby-step at a time, trust and self-love will take you there.