Are you asking yourself why you can’t lose weight?
You may be thinking that to lose weight, all you have to do is:
Eat Less and Exercise more.
If you have tried countless diets and done the exercise thing and still struggling to lose weight, then it’s time to look beyond food and exercise.
Eating less and exercising more is not working because that is not your root problem. You have to get to the root problem or all your efforts will not work. All your hard work will never last for too long.
Putting all your focus on the food will only have you wasting more time and money.
For me, one of my root causes was that I was a perfectionist.
Yup, I thought I had to do everything perfectly, had to get it all right. That meant when I started a diet, I believed I had to follow it precisely and if I didn’t, then there was no use continuing.
My thought when I went off track was, “I messed up, so why bother.”
Being perfect, having to get it right, was what lead to my all or nothing thinking.
If I didn’t do it perfectly, then it wasn’t good enough, so I quit.
Why continue if I blew it, right?
The all or nothing approach will never work in losing weight because it is simply not possible to be perfect.
I want to share with you how it looked in my life.
I would do great for a few days following my diet, feeling so proud of myself, but then my friends invited me to dinner and have some drinks. I would end up eating off-plan and having more wine then I told myself I would, so I quit because I blew it.
Or,
I did great following my diet all day; my boss asked me to do more work then I thought I should have to do so by the time I got home all I wanted to do was sit on the couch, binge watch tv and eat ice cream and I did just that! AND that was the end of that diet.
I was great at blaming the reason I quit on not having the perfect diet; it was too restrictive, or it didn’t have the foods I liked to eat. But what I did not do is see that it was my perfectionism that had me quitting.
Research has shown that being a perfectionist leads to failure because you will never do things good enough, and for most people, they feel that if they are not doing good enough, that means quitting.
When you learn to let go of having to do it perfectly, you don’t have to start over again on Monday.
Why?
Because then you can see that there will be times where you don’t stay on plan, and that is ok. When that happens, you get curious about why you overate, what the situation was that triggered you, or what didn’t work so that you could learn from it and plan to do things differently next time.
Or you become aware that you may have to high expectations, that maybe they are too rigid and unrealistic and then working on shifting this.
Or you notice that when you are not perfect in following your diet, you end up beating yourself up, which leads you to eat even more so you realize its time to be kind and nonjudgemental with yourself.
When I learned to let go of having to be or do things perfectly, that was a significant turning point with my weight loss. Stopping the all or nothing way of living and committing to eating what I said I would, learning and growing from my mistakes is how I lost 100 pounds and have kept it off for over ten years now.
Perfectionism is only one reason; there are many more that cause us to have a hard time losing weight, but most importantly, keeping it off. Working with my clients on finding their root cause in what is holding them back so they can live the life they are dreaming of is so important to me.
If you feel frustrated and stuck with why you can’t lose weight, I would love to support you.
You can book a 30 min complimentary call here where I am going to take a look at what you have been doing, look at the list of reasons you may be struggling and then identify what exactly is your root cause. Once we get to the root cause, I will give you individualized action steps that you can take to stop the struggle and lose weight for the last time.
Hugs, you are worth it.
Karen
Certified Weight, Emotional Eating and Confidence Coach
