Using Psychology to Lose Weight
Subscribe in a reader
Have you ever wanted a weight-loss coach, someone who could tell you what to do to lose weight and keep it off?
What kind of a weight-loss coach would you want? Would it be someone who yells at you when you make the wrong move? The tough love approach. Is that what you think you need? Or, could it be someone who is more of a player’s coach? In that case, more sympathetic, more of a gentle motivator, more a teacher than a task master.
Most women don’t have a weight-loss coach. So you have to be your own coach. That works, but only if you don’t raise your expectations about having negative experiences and negative expectations about losing your unwanted weight.
There are, however, going to be adverse events along the way. These need to be anticipated and planned for. It is in how you present these things to yourself that will make the difference in how you perceive them. For example, the way you explain to yourself the necessity of not eating sweets when you first start dieting makes a big difference in the way you perceive your first cheat. “If you eat sweets, you’ll ruin your diet.” “If you eat sweets at the outset, that’s only natural. You can go right back on your diet again. Don’t worry.” See the difference?
They say that coaching is an art. True. True. But where there is science to lean on, coaching also takes what it can from science. And science says that “stimuli that would never normally produce pain began to do so after verbal suggestion” that the stimuli would indeed produce pain.
The take-away message is clear. Be the kind of weight-loss coach who makes you feel as comfortable as you can in facing the adversities of weight loss. In other words, be very careful with how you frame your weight-loss instructions to yourself.
