The Power of Mindset in Achieving Successful Weight Loss
In 2023, over 43% of women dieted according to the International Food Information Council.
Every year millions of people in the US are trying to lose weight.
We want to lose weight for many reasons. Some of them include being healthier and fitter, improving our appearance, losing weight for our family and spouse, and raising our self-esteem.
Sadly, more than 50% of weight loss through dieting is regained within 2 years.
What if I told you that weight loss has nothing to do with your diet or exercise program but with your mindset?
Let’s look at why having the right mindset is critical to successful weight loss and how you can mentally prepare yourself to lose weight by knowing how your mind works.
The Psychology of Weight Loss
Other than helping you make excuses and procrastinate on starting that new diet or going to the gym, how else does your mind influence your body weight?
Here are some ways that your mindset affects your weight.
1. Finding It Hard To Stay Motivated And Committed?
You probably heard that weight loss doesn’t happen overnight.
It’s a long process that involves time, effort, and commitment.
When you have a positive mindset and you believe in your ability to succeed, you increase your chances of reaching your goal.
You choose to create healthy habits over achieving quick results to make sustainable changes.
2. Your Lack Of Belief
Change starts from within.
A strong belief that you can make the positive changes you need to lose weight helps you to overcome any challenges along the way.
You believe in your own abilities to succeed and to get through problematic situations so that you keep persisting till you reach your goals.
3. Effective Goal Setting And Planning
The right mindset helps you set realistic goals and breaks them down into bite-sized pieces so you’re set up to see continual progress like using a wall calendar for habits.
When you have a clear, well-defined plan that is set up for you to win along every step you stay motivated, make it easy to track progress, and feel good about your actions.
Having the right mindset sets you up to see how far you have come from where you started not how much further you need to go which can be demotivating.
4. Getting Through The Challenges
A growth mindset allows you to see challenges as opportunities for learning and improvement so that you can bounce back from an unexpected change and continue on your journey.
Weight loss is never linear and there always be challenges, setbacks, and plateaus. How you view these roadblocks and deal with them determines your success.
Having a growth mindset allows you to adapt and adjust along the way.
5. Stress Management
Change can be uncomfortable and stressful especially if you’ve failed to lose weight before.
The right mindset can help you cope with stressful and emotional changes in a healthy way.
It can create awareness of triggers and emotions that lead to emotional eating or using food as a coping mechanism.
When you have other coping mechanisms like meditation, a support system, or breathing techniques, you can minimize resorting to food for comfort or stress relief which can self-sabotage your goals.
6. Self-Acceptance Of Your Body Image
One of the reasons many women want to lose weight is to stop hating the way they look in the mirror. They rationalize that they’ll finally love their bodies if they lose some weight.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen that way.
Developing a positive mindset toward our appearance is essential to persevering on our weight loss journey. We cannot stay motivated and commit to the process if we hate our bodies.
It’s very difficult to give ourselves love and take care of our bodies if we hate ourselves.
Working towards a positive mindset that cultivates self-love and body positivity creates a better relationship with our bodies. This makes it more likely that we’ll keep up our healthy habits to maintain our new weight and create a sustainable lifestyle.
7. Do You Ask For Help?
A strong self-belief and a positive mindset increase your chances of asking for help and support when you need it.
You see reaching out as a strength when you’re experiencing a challenging moment because you love yourself.
Sometimes it’s the encouragement, guidance, and motivation from our supportive community, friends, and family that helps us pull through the hard times.
When you have the right mindset you don’t hesitate to reach out.
How Do I Mentally Prepare To Lose Weight?
Preparing mentally to lose weight doesn’t mean reciting affirmations or thinking positively all the time. It also doesn’t mean you have to develop more willpower.
It’s about understanding how your mind works to reach the outcomes you want.
Unlike the hundreds of books that teach you how to change your habits to change your life, successful weight loss doesn’t start from different actions, it starts from within.
Now that you know how your mindset affects your weight, let’s look at how your mind works so you can change your habits to lose weight and change your life.
We’ll look at the different layers of change to help you create the weight loss results you desire.
1. Beliefs
We hold certain beliefs that we developed through life. Most times they were not created by choice.
They were passed down to us by family, friends, our culture, and experiences. We developed a set of thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs that shape our perception of our world and the people around us including ourselves.
These beliefs impact our behaviors and our successes in life because they form our identities.
Some beliefs include,
“My family is overweight so it’s in my genetics.”
“I’ve tried everything. Nothing seems to work for me.”
“I am addicted to chocolate. I must have chocolate.”
“Only dieting helps me to lose weight.”
2. Identity
How you answer the question “Who are you?” sums up your identity.
You can describe yourself by elements such as race, gender, personality, physical attributes, religion, professional associations, etc.
Your identity determines a set of behaviors. Here are some examples of identities,
“I am a mom.”
“I am a cardio bunny.”
“I am someone who only eats clean, healthy foods.”
3. Behaviors
This is a set of actions to make changes. It’s how you conduct yourself based on how you feel within.
You can change the way you feel simply by changing your thoughts, having a different perspective, or telling yourself a different story of what’s going on.
This influences your behavior which repeated over time forms our habits.
4. Habits
To conserve energy, a paper written by a Duke University psychology professor estimates that over 40% of our daily behaviors happen automatically.
This means we’re not even paying attention to what we’re doing, it happens subconsciously!
These semi-fixed habits involve not just our actions but also our way of thinking and feeling that was developed through past repetition.
Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”
We become what we keep doing and ultimately it takes us to a certain outcome.
5. Outcome
This is the final stage. Your outcome or result is the manifestation of your beliefs, your identities, your behaviors, and habits.
If you’re struggling to lose weight or keep the weight off one of the four previous stages of change is not in alignment with your goal.
It can be as simple as not believing you’ll lose those 20 lbs and you give up easily.
Or it can be as complicated that you have a family history of being overweight so it’s in your genes and being overweight is inevitable so you don’t persevere when you reach a plateau.
How permanent transformation happens in your brain.
It’s Time To Shift Your Mindset To Help You Lose Weight
Having the right mindset impacts how successful we’ll be in working toward our weight loss goals.
Change happens in different stages but your brain is malleable and you can reprogram your mindset to succeed.
When you do this you’ll stop struggling with finding more willpower.
You’ll no longer have to wait for motivation to get started.
And you won’t have to restrain yourself from having a bite of dessert and feeling guilty about it.
Your weight loss journey gets easier when you harness the power of your mindset.
Candace is the owner of Rhodes To Strength. She provides weight loss and mindset coaching services to women around the world to create sustainable habits that work for their lifestyle.
You can find her rollerskating, hiking, and bird watching in her spare time.