So many of us learned that the path to change is paved with hard criticism of what’s wrong. But this is a problematic misconception because it doesn’t work.
And when it comes to weight loss, you cannot criticize yourself thin. Plus, if you’re one of the millions who struggle with emotional eating, self-criticism actually fuels the fire that drives you to overeat.
But when learning how to lose weight, there’s a completely different way to go about it. It’s called loving your body, but not in the way you’re thinking. This isn’t about waiting to love yourself and your body once you see a specific number on your bathroom scale; instead, it means confidently loving your body now — lumps, bumps and all.
This is a counter-intuitive way to lose weight, I realize. But it works. Here are seven powerful ways to lose weight while loving your overweight body.
1. Drop all self-criticism.
This is a biggie, but continuing to criticize your body and berate yourself only leads to more emotional eating (in an attempt to make yourself feel better). And we all know the results that follow: More weight gain and more disappointment in yourself, which only feeds the cycle you desperately want to end.
2. Release your fear of staying fat.
This is the number one reason my coaching clients struggle to stop criticizing themselves prior to working with me. They fear that if they stop criticizing their fat and stop beating themselves up about their overeating, they’ll stay overweight forever.
Not true. The way out of this is to let go of that fear.
3. Be kinder to yourself.
Start with baby steps and take just five minutes each day to do something nice for yourself that has nothing to do with food. Why will this help you lose weight?
Just like all seven of these tips, the more conscious, positive, loving action you aim toward yourself, the easier it becomes to live a healthy lifestyle. Let’s face it: the only solution for permanent weight loss is a healthy lifestyle.
But you must live that healthy lifestyle daily. And a healthy lifestyle doesn’t include emotional eating, binge eating, or yo-yo dieting. Start with being nice to yourself and see how much easier it becomes to be healthy and fit.
4. Release all fat hate.
The more negativity, hate, and shame you feel about the excess fat on your body today, the stronger the pull to keep it there. This doesn’t mean you’re consciously holding the fat on your body, but research shows that 90 percent of weight loss is about what’s going on inside of you.
If you never address your inner self and heal the root of what drives your food addictions and binge-eating, it won’t matter how many food diets you start. So, let go of fat hate. Really, the fat on your body is just fat. It’s not good or bad, unless you deem it so.
I’m in no way encouraging you to remain overweight — you really can achieve struggle-free permanent weight loss once you heal your inner self. But the way to achieve this outcome is never found through hating your fat.
5. Find one thing you love about your body.
Find just one thing you love about your body and start focusing on that one thing every single day. Pause to focus on it, admire it, appreciate it. Do this instead of focusing on your jeans size or the number on the scale.
You’ll begin to feel better about your body more often. Why is this good? Because feeling bad only perpetuates the cycle of overeating and overweight, and that’s no fun, is it? See what shifts with your eating when you consciously maintain your focus on the one thing you love about your body.
6. Choose a healthy lifestyle.
You’ve probably heard this before: Love is not a noun, it’s a verb. Love is all about action, not telling someone you love them. There are women in abusive relationships who hear the words “I love you”, but their partner’s actions do not match those words.
Take a look at the actions you direct towards yourself. What if you decided that living a healthy lifestyle is an act of self-love? What if living healthy and fit were your choice instead feeling like they’re being forced on you because you hate your overweight body so much?
Remember: body hate, fat-hate, and binge-eating shame are not found on the path of permanent weight loss.
7. Commit to loving yourself.
Society has a lot of opinions about men (and women) with commitment issues when it comes to relationships. But what is your current commitment to yourself and your body? What is your commitment to embracing your body right now so that living a healthy lifestyle becomes easy (versus about trying to free yourself from some kind of horror you’re living in an overweight body)?
When you come from a place of self-love, transforming your body is a completely different experience because it becomes part of living a healthy lifestyle. Maybe you can relate to the desire to get away from a body you don’t like. Unfortunately, this only solidifies the patterns of food addiction, emotional eating and yo-yo dieting.
Originally written by JoLynn Braley on YourTango
Photo by Gantas Vaičiulėnas on Unsplash
